Narrative IP Part 1: You can’t fix what you can’t name
Defining the problem is the first and most overlooked step in building a compelling narrative. Without it, your strategy lacks focus, and your story lacks power.
Two weeks ago, I wrote about narrative IP—a singular, ownable idea that positions you with clarity in the minds of your audiences. If you haven’t read the original piece, read it here. Quite a few people showed a lot of interest in this idea, so I want to spend some time talking about the component pieces.
Strong, effective narrative IP is composed of four pieces:
The status quo: your point of view on how and why the status quo is broken
A compelling alternative: a credible and inspiring vision of a better world
Your difference: how you as an organization uniquely contribute to this vision
Your big idea: a short, repeatable phrase that serves as a shorthand for your worldview
Today, I’m starting a four-part series on how to uncover your narrative IP and the first installment is all about defining what is broken about the status quo .
What problem do you exist to solve?
I’ve worked with countless nonprofits during my career in brand strategy and I’m still taken aback by how a seemingly simple question stumps the smartest leaders and thinkers. Defining the problem is the foundation of good thinking, good strategy, and ultimately, good communications. It is so critical that, in my opinion, if you skip over it, you’re jeopardizing both the emotional impact and structural integrity of your work.
Defining the problem is important and hard. Einstein was once quoted to have said, “If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it.” (Admittedly, this quote is wrongly attributed to him. But stay with me. The origin of the quote is less important than the message it conveys).
Bridgespan, the pre-eminent strategy consultancy for nonprofits and philanthropies, has an open resource for guiding organizations through crafting their theory of change. Nowhere in this step-by-step document was there an opportunity for problem definition. Who is your population of focus? Where will your organization do its work? What specific outcomes do you want to achieve? A few pages in, in a section titled “Pressure test your intended impact”, there is a prompt: have you prioritized the population where the need is highest? This is the closest I can find to problem definition, but the framing of the prompt assumes the problem is already defined. It’s less about what the problem is and more about where it is most strongly felt.
There are countless ways to approach building out a theory of change, and I know that not all organizations are built on this traditional framework, but this omission felt less like a miss and more like a gaping hole.
So why is this step of defining the problem so often missing, even from the most widely used frameworks? It starts with established norms around how to build your theory of change, but is then reinforced by cultural practices and beliefs throughout the organization.
Why do nonprofits struggle to define the problem?
First, there’s a false assumption that the problem you work on as an organization is widely understood. As someone looking in from the outside, my first challenge to this would be: by whom is it widely understood? If you are swimming in this water, day in and day out, the first principles of your work may have become ambient knowledge that subconsciously informs your work. But for much of your audience, this is not the case. What is normal for you is technocratic-social-justice-babble for them. What is watertight rationale for you is a huge leap of logic for them. The problems your work tries to address are not conventional wisdom for anyone outside of what is actually a very small insider circle.
Second, many nonprofit leaders and communicators are focused on the component parts—the programs we run, the services we provide, the research we conduct, the advocacy that we engage in. We provide disaster relief and refugee assistance and labor force integration. We provide direct services, help scaling organizations build capacity, and conduct research to change narratives. But what does it all add up to? What larger problem does this all point to?
And finally, nonprofits believe that focusing too much on the negative is counter-productive and takes away creativity and headspace needed to imagine a better alternative. The mantra of the day is “asset-based framing”. Trabian Shorters catalyzed a sea change in nonprofit communications with his incredible research and coining of asset-based framing (his very own narrative IP!), the practice of defining people by their aspirations and contributions before exploring their deficits. His teachings have become standard practice for many nonprofits but what started as corrective advice on how we use language to describe people has ballooned into how we describe problems. Indeed, it has led to a misguided aversion to outrightly stating the problems we exist to solve.
Clear problems give way to clear visions
Defining the problem serves two purposes. First, it serves the purpose of drawing attention “to the water”. It reveals the strangeness, the nonsense, and even the indignity of our status quo. It lifts the dulling veil that lies over our eyes and prevents us from seeing with clarity and precision. Second, defining the problem helps you build the intellectual rigor so that you can be clear and focused, both in your strategy and your communications, why exactly your organization exists.
President John F. Kennedy addressing a crowd of 35,000 at Rice University in September, 1962. (source: Space Center Houston)
In 1962, President John F. Kennedy gave one of the most iconic and enduring speeches of all time: “We choose to go to the moon.” It is one of my favorite pieces of social impact communications. I revisited it several times while testing my premise that defining the problem is essential to the success of any project or organization.
This speech supports the theory that leading with vision and possibility, over problem, will expand our imagination and appetite for change. Indeed, he says:
“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”
But look closer. He also says:
“If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred. The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not…”
The implied problem is geopolitical: the USSR was beating the US in the space race. In the context of the Cold War, it was critical that the US move fast to establish its dominance in outer space.
President Kennedy doesn’t say the problem outright, but he knows it with utmost, almost radiant, clarity. Even though he doesn’t say it out loud, his vision is so deftly and passionately articulated because the problem is so viscerally clear—to him as a communicator, to the strategic minds devising the 10-year plan to get to the moon, and to his country as a whole.
How can we build a better world if we are not courageous about articulating the very things we are trying to fix?
You don’t always have to say the problem. But you absolutely have to know it.