By Michael Scanlon

Data is great — if you understand how it was collected and what it means. But so often in the local government world, we use data as a hammer to prove a point. A point tied to data is often forgotten within a week or even a few short hours.

Unlike data, stories are built for our minds to remember. Stories allow for:

• Emotional engagement. Emotionally charged stories are remembered more because they engage more of your brain.
• Relatability and context. Stories provide context and relatability, which help us understand the data and information with which we are presented.
• Cognitive engagement. Stories often require the listener or reader to think, imagine, and predict — engaging multiple cognitive processes.

Yes, data play a role in the choices we recommend as local government leaders and the decisions our elected officials make. But the stories carry the day. Storytelling is used in education, marketing, and leadership to convey messages more effectively and ensure they are remembered.

Here are a couple of quick stories that illustrate that point and will set you on your own storytelling journey.

The opossum on the roof

“There’s an opossum on my roof. What are you going to do about it?”

Yes, that was the first constituent call I received as a newly minted city council member. I tried everything to calm the constituent down and tell her that in time the opossum would leave, but it didn’t matter. There was an opossum, it was on her roof, and, as her city council member, I needed to take care of it.

I finally got her to agree to give it time to leave — and leave it did. Except this opossum loved my constituent’s maple tree that hung over her roof. So, it kept returning. And about every two weeks, I would get the opossum call: “The opossum is back on my roof. What are you going to do about it?”

Eventually, she grew tired of my answer.

So, one night under the Citizens’ Comments period of a city council meeting, she relayed her opossum story to the full city council. With a bit of embellishment included in her story, she convinced the city council to act. No data. No input from city staff. Action was required.

Now what can a city council do to stop a branch-jumping opossum?

Well, as you can imagine, the answers ranged from shooting the critter, which the property owner didn’t want, to trapping and moving it to the park, which the parks and recreation director didn’t want. After 45 minutes of discussion, someone suggested the city council should write an ordinance that allowed the animal control officer to capture and euthanize wild animals that were becoming nuisances.

Then the worst thing of all occurred: The city council decided it was time to start writing the ordinance during the meeting. If you want to watch a train wreck in slow motion, it’s the city council writing an ordinance on the fly. After another hour, we got to the end of the ordinance writing. A motion was made and quickly seconded, only to land at a tie vote. The mayor broke the tie for the great Opossum Ordinance of 1997. It was repealed within the year.

That’s the power of stories. My constituent convinced the city council through her experiences that the opossum was a problem that not only bothered her but others, although no other opossum roof sightings could be found (relatability). She was able to tap into council members’ emotions about how the opossum made her feel at night when she could hear it walking across her roof. She said the “pitter patter” made it feel like someone was breaking into her home (emotional engagement). And she ended with: “Would you like an opossum on your roof?” (cognitive engagement).

Stop and think about it for a moment. How many times have compelling stories from citizens turned into action by city councils? Probably more times than we would like to admit.

Time and place

Now let’s counter that story with one I’ve used hundreds of times. I call it the Time and Place story.

Prior to, and following, my experience as a city council member, I spent decades as a city administrator. When I was just getting into the profession, I had lunch on Fridays with a city manager who was mentoring me. He shared his thoughts on what made a good city manager, and he always reminded me that everything boiled down to time and place.

Too often, he said, city managers get crosswise with their city council or community because they forget time and place. He noted that we can all come up with policies, ordinances, and ideas that might be very good. But, if introduced at the wrong time but in the right place, it will fail. If introduced at the right time and the wrong place, it will also fail. And if you want to get fired as a city manager, introduce something at the wrong time in the wrong place.

“You must match time and place if you want a policy to stick or an ordinance to matter. The right time and right place matters,” he counseled.

Let’s return to the story of the opossum. Fast forward: It’s now the summer of 1998 and the Opossum Ordinance has proven ineffective. The city council is mad and wants answers from the staff. The staff does a great job pointing out that there’s only one house with an opossum problem, which is likely being caused by the compost pile with food scraps just 50 feet from the house. The staff asked what they should do if the homeowner refused to help with the opossum problem.

Staff was right, but how do you get a city council to pivot? Well, time and place work well. Being “junior” on the city council, it was finally my turn to speak after other council members weighed in.

I began, “I want to commend the city council for taking this issue to heart and wanting to help my constituent (emotional engagement). I tried and failed to solve her problem, and I appreciate the city council taking this issue on and being creative problem solvers when writing the ordinance (relatability). But I think this might be an instance where time and place matter.”

Then I relayed what my mentor had told me when I was getting into the profession, “This was a case where it was the right time to try to solve our constituent’s problem, but it was probably the wrong place. Had we known about the compost pile, our actions would have probably been different (cognitive engagement). But sometimes we all miss. May I suggest we repeal the ordinance that we’re having a hard time enforcing and see if we can convince the homeowner to get a compost bin? I don’t think this ordinance will ever work — it fails the time and place test.”

Within seconds, there was a motion to repeal from the author of the ordinance, followed by a quick second, and a unanimous vote to repeal.

The moral of these two stories is that time and place do matter. So, the next time you feel like creating a 50-slide Power- Point presentation filled with bullet points and stats, step back and put your presentation into a story. Good stories carry the day.

Michael Scanlon is a recently retired city manager from Kansas and Colorado communities and the principal at Our City Planning LLC.