A boy named Takii loved Takis…

What we can learn about implicit storytelling from my mother’s underwear, legal agreements, and a youth publishing and writing organization

When I was growing up, whenever my sister Rachel and I were bratty, my mother would exclaim:  “When I think of all the things that your father and I have sacrificed for you!” She’d then enumerate those sacrifices, ending with the question: “Don’t you know I’ve been wearing the same underwear since before you were born?”

That last line always worked like magic. Rachel and I would hang our heads and stop whining. We could roll our eyes when my parents talked generally about self-sacrifice, but my mother’s underpants were irrefutable. They were as big as dishcloths, and mottled from age and use because—oh!—how could she bear to buy new underwear when the money could go toward my track shoes or my sister’s piano lessons? Sometimes, my mother didn’t even have to ask the magic question; she could just glance significantly in the direction of the clothesline strung across the mudroom, where the evidence was air-drying lest it disintegrate in the dryer.

In response to my Substack about narrative layering a couple weeks ago, a reader asked: “I get that an organization can tell multiple stories about itself, all of them true. But what if an organization tells a story about itself that isn’t really true?” He explained that the organization he worked for told a good story about equity and working with marginalized communities, but that most of their actual partners were all affluent communities. He said: “I get that we have to balance mission with financial sustainability, but then our story feels kind of phony.”

I said that if the story felt inauthentic to him, it probably felt that way to everybody else, too. People can smell phoniness a mile away. Authentic storytelling comes down to the balance between explicit and implicit narrative (which I’ve written about before). Explicit narrative is what we say we do and are about. Implicit narrative is what we show we do and are about. My mother’s explicit narration of her martyrdom was compelling only because Rachel and I saw and felt bad about her raggedy underwear. I, on the other hand, deny myself very little. So while I can wheedle my toddler to be good for mommy who’s sacrificed so much for him, his perceptive little brain will notice that I seem to have a reasonably self-indulgent life.

By the same token, it’s hard to believe an explicit narrative about an org’s commitment to equity, when their case studies featuring affluent suburbs suggest a contrary narrative. It’s hard to believe an explicit narrative about a school “turning learning on its head,” when the examples of student work on display—structured five-paragraph essays, say—suggests a quite traditional narrative. It’s hard to believe an explicit narrative about a company’s “fun and joyful workplace, where people can bring their whole selves to work” when their open job descriptions suggest a pretty conformist culture.

Here’s the thing to remember: your organizational narrative isn’t contained to the shiny comms collateral (website, annual reports, giving newsletters, etc.) you present to the public. It is also evoked by everything that you put out into the world, from artifacts like student work to seemingly mundane docs like legal agreements.

for example…

When I first started Little Tiger Strategic Storytelling, I worked with Erika, a lawyer specializing in legal services for mission-driven companies, to draft a service agreement that I could use with clients and contractors. I knew that everyone with whom I worked would read the service agreement. I also knew that, because I didn’t have much other collateral yet, for the time being, the service agreement would carry unusual weight in shaping others’ impressions of Little Tiger’s values and culture.

Erika asked me what I wanted to include in the service agreement. I said that rather than a standard—and, tbh, fluffy—equity statement, I wanted to draft some sort of commitment about more equitable storytelling practices, specifically. Having recently come from public media, I’d done a lot of thinking about multicultural and multilingual narrative structures. But I also wanted to consider equity around story authorship and ownership. Erika thoughtfully walked me through the intricacies of intellectual property and Creative Commons licensing. This commitment now appears on the first page of every Little Tiger service agreement:

In our work to help mission-driven organizations tell their stories, we name that storytelling is powerful and that there are historic and systemic inequities in who has been allowed to tell stories, and in whose stories have been told. We emphasize that storytelling is a phenomena with multicultural and multilingual roots. As such, there are multitudinous narrative traditions, none more valid than any other. As we collaboratively support partner organizations in their storytelling, we will encourage partners to explore and embrace narrative and linguistic traditions that resonate with the communities they serve. We also encourage partners to include communities in collective authorship of stories. We believe that authors own their stories. We seek to attribute authorship of stories, and encourage partner orgs to do the same. Our contractors retain IP to original artwork and stories, or license them under Creative Commons. We commit to not advancing false narratives about work that causes clear societal harm.

I’m sure that there’s more that could be done with this service agreement around advancing equity in storytelling. Also, while some of the language provides accountability–e.g. Contractors retaining IP–other pieces are pretty vague and unenforceable–e.g. encouraging partners to explore multicultural or multilingual narrative traditions. But the point here is this: as a contract that all the people with whom I work read, it implicitly begins evoking an organizational narrative around inclusive storytelling, authorship, and ownership.

Here’s an even better example of implicit narrative. I volunteer on the board of 826 Boston, an incredible youth writing and publishing organization. We’re currently in the process of hiring a new executive director, and while discussing how we should describe the organization in the job description, several board members piped up: “Whimsical! We should say 826 Boston is whimsical.”

I would usually caution most organizations to stay away from calling themselves as fun, or quirky, or joyful, much less whimsical, because these kinds of explicit adjectives can come off as pretty empty. But in the case of 826, the word “whimsical” immediately felt right because it put into explicit narrative what was already so strongly evoked through 826 Boston’s implicit narrative. Any candidates researching 826 Boston would know what we meant, whether they Googled an image of the building or checked out our website and YouTube channel featuring student work.

826 Boston is headquartered on the first floor of an apartment complex in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood. Only, the huge glass sign that curves over the double doors doesn’t say “826 Boston.” Instead, it reads “The Greater Boston Bigfoot Research Institute.” The premise of the storefront is that it offers a fun and magical entryway from the street and outside world. As they walk past a seven-foot statue of Bigfoot, various cryptozoology maps, and an aquarium that houses Edwina the tarantula, students don’t feel like they’re entering an extension of school. They feel like they are entering a true “third space,” neither home nor school, in which their internal and external identities are celebrated, and in which they can express through words their stories, both real and imagined. Whimsical!

The huge library of student work available online also evokes a story of an organization dedicated to building students’ “arsenal of literary skills,” while nurturing the individuality and creativity that "rigorous" curricula can often be guilty of squashing. Take this phenomenal story, which begins: “A boy named Takii loved Takis because they were hot. His favorite kind was hot chili pepper. He ate them 24/7, but mostly on Fridays because he had five letters in his name and Friday is the fifth day of the week.” Or the book And Lester Swam On, written by 21 second-graders, about a leopard shark fleeing San Francisco Bay’s polluted waters. Environmental pollution is a heavy topic, and the rigorous research curriculum required second-graders to fact check, yet the book is full of lines like this one, about Trevor the octopus: “Trevor could see that Lester was sad so he gave Lester a hug with all of his eight arms. Trevor had three hearts so he made Lester feel three times better!” Classic second-grade whimsy!

long story short…

Explicit narrative is important because it signposts for our audience the key points we want them to take away. But implicit narrative is even more important, because it builds trust with your audience that you actually follow through on what you say care about.

Implicit narrative is much more compelling than explicit narrative, because… frankly, you can’t pull it out of your ass. It existentially requires substantiation. I have to adhere to the commitments I’ve laid out in a service agreement; the illustrations that I commissioned for Little Tiger belong to the artist. 826 Boston must create the environment and conditions for the whimsical, creative student work that they display on their website. An organization committed to a fun and joyful workplace, where people can bring their whole selves to work, should have an employee handbook that makes its employees certain assurances.

A while back, I wrote that one reason organizations have not caught up with today’s social ethos is because the stories they tell still lag far behind. Perhaps a more accurate statement is that the implicit stories they tell still lag far behind.

Regardless of what a social sector org says explicitly, if it is implicitly storytelling with a nineties era ethos, it’s less likely to behave in a way that meaningfully aligns with today’s (arguably better) social ethos. Its acknowledgment of privilege and power will remain relegated to DEI training, equity statements, and random social media posts. Its shift to asset-based thinking will remain relegated to a feel-good activity at the team retreat. Social sector orgs need to update their implicit storytelling to reflect the current social ethos, because the current social ethos is better than current social sector practice.