Our acorn is hella far from the tree
What do we do when we’re trapped by our awesome origin story?
Last month, I wrote about the value of story as a tool to define and clarify organizational strategy. Yay! But what happens when our attachment to a particular story holds us hostage from making the strategic pivots that we need to make as a social sector organization?
Usually, attachment to story comes in the form of attachment to organizational lore—aka, the organizational origin story. Some organizations cling to a story that resonated when they were founded twenty years ago, even though the story now lands poorly, given the current social ethos. Some organizations cling to a story that hinges on responding to a specific event, e.g. e-learning in response to pandemic era school closures, even when that event is now recent history and the rest of the world has moved on. Some organizations cling to the story that they were conceptualized and built by a bunch of bright-eyed, idealistic young founders in their dorm rooms—a story that, frankly, falls flat when those founders are now middle-aged millennials like myself.
When an organization clings to its origin story, it either limits its strategic options so as not to contradict that story or ends up telling a story that doesn’t represent the day-to-day reality of who they are and what they do—which is really confusing for their audiences. But organizations cling to origin stories out of nostalgia and fear. Nostalgia, because those stories were successful—maybe even wildly so—once upon a time. Fear, because those stories once attracted attention and funding… and perhaps the new story won’t. Those organizations balk at changing their story to match the strategic pivots they need to make in order to stay relevant, because they are afraid they’ll lose traction and brand awareness.
Yet several prominent social sector organizations have tested this assumption and proven it to be false. In 1844, George Williams founded the YMCA to spiritually support young men moving to cities during the Industrial Revolution. In 1961, Peter Benenson founded Amnesty International to advocate for the release of prisoners of conscience—i.e. people imprisoned for political dissent, beliefs, identities, or sexual orientation. In 1971, Canadian activists founded Greenpeace to protest nuclear weapons testing.
Today, the rebranded Y is best known as a network of community centers focused on supporting healthy living, developing youth, and connecting families with resources. Amnesty International now campaigns on a breadth of human rights issues, ranging from abolishing the death penalty to advocating for refugees seeking asylum. Greenpeace now mobilizes activists to protest fossil fuels, protect biodiversity, and reduce consumption. All three organizations have made significant shifts away from their original missions and stories. All three are also relevant even fifty to two hundred years after their founding.
These august nonprofits prove that not only is it possible for social sector organizations to overhaul their missions and stories and survive, but that doing so is sometimes critical to their long term survival. Also: there isn’t room for canon in social sector work, because it should be responsive and adaptive to changing social contexts.
Ditching the canon
Changing your organizational story is a big deal, so here are three things to consider when your org story no longer resonates:
Is it time to change or close up shop? One might argue that the goal of most mission-driven organizations should be to make themselves obsolete. A purist might well say: if the mission is no longer relevant or compelling, then cede the floor to new organizations and stop hogging resources! I’m all about cutting deadstock, but I also know that it takes a lot of time and resources to develop the solid infrastructure, networks, and trust necessary for an organization to operate effectively. Repurposing the bones—and cash reserves—of existing organizations toward evolved missions is arguably resource efficient. Is your organization poised to pivot toward a new type of impact, or is it time to shut the door?
What is the story of your evolution? Answering this question might be helpful for answering the first. If and when you change your organizational story, your new story has to come with another story that explains that change, so that you can bring your audiences along with you. However, it’s important that that story of change is the right one.
In the past few years, quite a few social sector organizations have spun a grandiose story about their evolution… but on closer examination, the changes have only been reactive and cosmetic (i.e. all the organizations who’ve perfunctorily added “social justice” or “equity” or “collective” to their headlines). People see right through this! It’s a good guess that while these orgs know their story no longer resonates, they have no idea how to meaningfully pivot. These organizations probably would do better by the sector by closing up shop.
But when an organization has evolved thoughtfully and proactively, the story is usually one of real growth—and super compelling. One organization who has done this a few times in the past century is the Girl Scouts, which was founded in 1912 to give “womanly training for both mind and body” to the “girls who are destined to be the mothers and guides of the next generation,” and to instill in them “honor, duty, loyalty, kindness, purity, cheerfulness, and thrift.” Today, the Girl Scouts is a leadership program that prepares girls to “look at our world and take action to change it for the better. They make friends, challenge themselves with new experiences, write their own stories, and develop the skills and confidence to say, ‘I know I can do this!’”And while those two headlines are vastly different, Girl Scouts has compellingly narrated its evolution, using the continuity of this theme: empowering girls to push the boundaries of its time.
What will happen internally when you change your story externally? Many organizations change their external story without exploring what that story change means for their work culture. After all, in addition to being an external comms tool, story also acts as a north star that guides us to operate in particular ways. Say, we’ve spent the past ten years telling a story about ourselves as a scrappy social startup. That story has fostered a deeply rooted work culture where people feel encouraged to try new things, get comfortable with the “mess in the margins,” and “fail forward.” If we are now telling a story about ourselves as an established and respected community organization that has served more than 25,000 families over a decade, what does that mean for how we operate? Are we comfortable shifting to a work culture where we focus on replicating what we know works rather than experimenting, carefully conserving our resources, and establishing systems and protocols to prevent failure?
