Truth Telling, Sense Making and Languaging

Building a narrative is a commitment to three ideas: truth telling, sense making, and languaging.

Truth Telling is the most foundational.

The longer we allow the narratives that dominate to have been spun by marketeers, branders, and people without a deep commitment to first principles thinking, the more prone we are as a society, as companies, as community to manipulation.

I'm not saying that someone telling a good Narrative won't have some aspect to it that can turn out to be disproven at some time.

But the true intent and capability must be there, otherwise, the person trying to spin the narrative should have the honesty and humility to not spin the narrative in the first place.

It's just too dangerous.

But this likely won't happen.

It will be those who actually do have something to say that will refrain from building the narrative or they do try, and they do it wrong and fail.

And the third category are those who are participants in the narrative-driven world, and they do not have the ability to distill to compelling story from the b.s.

My belief is that if the third category can grow -- that people grow in discernment and appreciation for a genuine narrative built with deep understanding and empathy -- and we empower people in the second category, we can begin to mute the first.

The responsibility of the right narrative

The reason why narratives can have a powerful hold, especially during inflections, is because humans want to make sense of the world.

They may be more willing to suspend belief to restore some direction in their live.

Or they may be so dissatisfied with the current state of the world or their inner being that grasping a much more compelling narrative gives them hope.

In this regard, all of humanity has some level of fragility, some yearning for sense making.

Some may need more at a given point in their life.

And so those who want to embark on narrative building should have a sense of responsibility.

Many are driving a personal agenda, an outcome to appear good, to take the win, to increase their gain, and this is dangerous.

The responsible story teller recognizes that a poor narrative, one not built on a foundation to seek and tell the truth, can be highly destructive. The advertising and PR industry is rife with false narratives. Political campaigns, too, have demonstrated a cut-throat desire to win at any cost to spin up propaganda machines.

You can be responsible to building a business that grows, that serves, and that doesn't exploit and still craft a compelling narrative that will reach the people you care about.

Languaging is the hidden lever

Often, leaders or companies who do not want to build a truth seeking culture will institute vague language or double-speak into their cultures.

The most worrisome are those that use loaded, vague, and malleable terms as if these are sacred cows, but are visited and revisited with examples, definitions, illustratioins over and over again.

Instead, they shift with the tides and are treated as "values" but there's nothing concrete.

A truth-seeking culture always wants to expand the clarity of their view of the world with better definitions and more concreteness.

A deceptive culture refuses to offer such clarity. Because doing so will expose the wizard behind the curtain.

But for the healthy narrative, languaging is important.

On the one hand, you must ensure that any counter narrative and their language is scoped and defined. You do not want to be starting any contention from shifting sand.

But more importantly, craft your own. It usually will be picking the term or terms that matter to you. It could be creating a new word or phrase that captures the new idea.

It may be appropriating one word in one context and using it differently and deftly in yours.

"Language is a virus."

As we build upon this handbook in future essays, we'll talk about language as part of building the narrative.