Opposing Isn’t Good Enough

I’m watching an absolutely painful interview clip right now. I’m not going to offer context out of respect for the victim, er, interviewee. But suffice it to say that a public persona is being re-defined in front of my eyes.

In watching this particularly brutal exchange, I’m reminded of a lesson from former Speaker of the US House of Representatives, Paul Ryan. He was quite fond of sharing this observation: “It’s not good enough to be an opposition party. You have to be a proposition party.” Sage wisdom.

There will be quite a few times in your advocacy work where you’ll have to stand firmly in opposition to a proposal. You’ll have to fight back. I’d argue though that, consistently, the advocates who “win” more often than not do more than just lunge into the breach and hold firm. Rather, they come with a plan on how else a challenge can be tackled. Most importantly though – they effectively tell the story of how others can be the conquering hero in that plan.

I’ve been dwelling on storytelling quite a bit lately. Challenged by a friend and colleague to read Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller, I’ve been mulling over how to translate that piece’s concepts into the realm of advocacy.

Here’s the concept in a nutshell: in order to get customers to respond to your call to action, you have to effectively tell a story in which they become the hero. More often than not, brands (i.e. advocacy organizations) position themselves as the hero instead of the decision makers, legislators and public officials they need to take action. I’d also take it a step further and argue that our grassroots recruitment efforts should additionally be reframed to position our volunteer advocates as the heroes of a given story.

Unfortunately, I don’t think my summations would fall neatly into the compressed, three minute reads I strive for on this blog. So, I’m going to dig into some of these concepts more in the coming weeks and I hope you’ll enjoy that targeted content. Ultimately, I believe it will be beneficial in helping arm your advocates to better approach their lobbying meetings and share your mission within their broader circles. That sounds like a win-win to me.

So, over the next few weeks, expect some content focused on storytelling. In the meantime we need to prepare to take a hard look at our agendas and start asking the difficult question: “What’s our alternative proposal?”

If you aren’t creating propositions of your own, you will absolutely struggle to build a narrative wherein anyone can be a hero. If you can’t get to that basic pillar of storytelling, I’d be willing to bet that your interviews on issues important to your cause will end just as painfully as the one I’m watching right now. Let’s work together on avoiding that fate.