Your story, well told
Facts explain, but stories reveal
By Patrick A. McGuire
In more than two decades as an award-winning writer and reporter for The Baltimore Sun and The Denver Post, I learned that people will read almost any topic if clearly presented in the form of a story whose point is relevant to their lives.
Unlike fiction, stories based on facts do not lie waiting in dry columns of data or archival files as neatly arranged concepts to be stitched together, just so.
The best historians recognize the tendrils of a story deep in the dusty trunks of document and memory. Their art lies in grasping the threads, developing details and narrating those stories in meaningful context with the main theme.
Your organization deserves more in a history than a droning enumeration of names and dates. Success, like a mosaic, combines the bright colors and rich textures of leadership, personalities, conflicts, challenges, setbacks, ideas, philosophies, scenes, characters, dialogue and lessons learned. Reading such ought to be fun, not a chore.
Opposite: My most recently published organizational histories
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