Sustainability Stories or Statistics?
How many times have you sat through a sustainability presentation that consists of graph after graph, table of data after table of data. And then at the end the presenter says “OK, what are we going to do?” and you rouse yourself from your day dream and think “about what?”
I’ve long promoted storytelling as a way of making sustainability more enthralling than an avalanche of evidence. Most people who use storytelling use a simple little personal story, but the best use the classic narrative ark of the quest. Somebody like us is suddenly thrown into a challenge and they must change to meet it – just like Frodo in Lord of The Rings, the everyman who is suddenly tasked with saving the world. The best example is the late Ray Anderson of Interface who talked of the ‘spear in his chest’ which made him set off on ‘Mission Zero’. I once saw him tell this story in person, calmly and politely with no histrionics, and it was riveting.
Of course I have been a bit naughty and set up a false choice in the title of this post, but it’s a mistake many people make. Stories and narratives wrap us up into sustainability, but the hard facts must be there to underpin the story – substance to match the style.