What’s the Story?

it is often said – usually by salespeople – that everything is sales. No matter your profession, no matter your role, it all comes down to sales – not in the literal sense of an actual transaction of goods or services for money, but in the sense of getting people to buy into you, your ideas, your mission. There’s something to that line of thinking, but I prefer to go one step further and say that everything is storytelling. Whether you’re a salesperson trying to close a deal, a doctor prescribing treatment, a marketing professional devising a PR campaign, a politician pushing for legislation, or even just a job seeker trying to nail an interview, you’re telling someone a story. Your success hinges on getting your audience interested and invested in your story, and that requires an effective, engaging and coherent narrative.

I talk about Providence with a lot of people – and typically even more in the several weeks I spend putting together our annual 10 to Watch list. We talk about the city, what’s happening in it, what assets it has, what it lacks, what it can and should be, etc. One common theme that emerges in so many of those conversations is storytelling: Providence has a story, but what is it, and are we telling it effectively?

These are important questions to ask, because a good story can have a profound impact on a place. We need look no further than our city’s own ‘90s Renaissance to prove this point. People remain divided on Buddy Cianci – whether he was good or bad for the city; how much credit, if any, he deserves for its revival; and so on. I won’t claim to have the definitive answers to those questions, but I know this much is true: no one was better at telling Providence’s story than Buddy, and that is both the reason why our city was perceived as having a Renaissance and why he was perceived as the driving force behind it. The guy tells a good story. That got people interested in Providence, it got them to believe in Providence, and thus the Renaisance story became self-fulfilling.

When you look around the country at the cities that are flourishing, that are attracting attention (and thus visitors, new residents and money), that have reputations as vibrant, exciting places to be, they all have good stories to tell. Many of them have the same problems as Providence – struggling economies, failing schools, lack of jobs – but they tell a better story and reap the benefits. Look at Cambridge, Massachusetts: it’s a small city in close proximity to Boston with a diverse population and heavy concentration of students; it’s home to both a traditional Ivy League university and a best-of-its-kind school on the cutting edge of technology and design. Sound familiar? So why is Cambridge nationally reputed as a nexus of innovation, an incubator of technology and entrepreneurship, while Providence is not? One big reason (among many) is that Cambridge is better at telling that story than Providence. Portland, Oregon is another success story: a small(ish) city with a population of well-educated, hip (and heavily tattooed) young professionals, a flair for the artsy and a flourishing local food movement – again, sound familiar? Yet Portland has established a national reputation as the city “where young people go to retire,” one of the top flight destinations for both the emerging creative class and progressive-minded foodies. Why isn’t Providence a bigger blip on that radar?

Our city has problems, limitations and obstacles, but it also has all the resources and assets it needs to be a nationally reputed hotbed of talent, creativity and innovation – we just haven’t leveraged those things to their full potential. We need to build a narrative around our city’s best qualities and then tell it as often, as loud and to as many audiences as possible. That narrative should be concise, coherent and compelling. It should be about the kind of place where people want to be. If we learn to tell a better story, other people will believe it – including us.