I spend my days helping organizations build story-driven strategy for health equity and community change. When I get to a sticking point, I remember that the most elegant models for how to do this work already exist in the natural world. Let’s look at bees, for example. 

Now, we all know bees are pollinators. We know they’re important. But there are things about the way bees live and work that go way beyond what most of us think about. And when you look closely, you’ll see an abundance of lessons for our work in public health, in advocacy, in community engagement, and in storytelling.

Bees circulate around the landscape. They don’t convene meetings in central places. They travel and navigate through their given geography. And as they travel, they both communicate and serve. They gather pollen and nectar that meets their needs and also supports the health of the wider ecosystem. The act of gathering is also the act of giving.

That’s what story-driven strategy looks like when it’s working. The listening process itself builds trust. The act of collecting stories is also an act of service. You’re not just showing up, recording, and leaving. You’re creating something for the community in the process of learning from it. And then you take what you’ve heard and you build programs that are stronger, strategies that have real buy-in, and impact that gets the attention of funders and decision makers. All derived from what you heard when you listened to your community. That cycle continues and feeds itself.

Bees also iterate. They circulate over and over again, trying different paths, finding what works. And when one bee finds a rich source of resources, she doesn’t keep it to herself. She performs something called a waggle dance that communicates the direction and distance of that abundance so every other bee can get there too. These resources are shared widely.

I think about this a lot in the context of the work we do. There can be so much pressure to get everything right. And when we remember that iteration is built into the process, that each pass gets us closer to the most effective, impactful way of working, it takes some of the pressure off. There’s no one right way to do a lot of this work. There are very few very wrong ways. But there are so many right ways. And we get to them by trying, and trying again.

One of my favorite things about bees is that it should be impossible for them to fly. Scientists have looked at the body of the bee and the wings they have and it just does not make any sense that they fly. But they do it anyway. And that is worth noting in the work we do.

75% of global food crops depend on pollination. Bees are the primary pollinators. Their work is not upholds our global ecosystems. And when we think about story-driven strategy the same way, when we make community wisdom and community insight the system and spread that across our whole ecosystem, everything else works.

One more thing. Bees band together to address predators. They buzz so much that they heat predators to death. They’re not big or powerful in the traditional sense. But they use the tools they have. And right now, so many of us are doing work where funding is changing and we really need to come together and collaborate, to share resourcing and insights, to move quickly but not urgently. There’s something about making an environment where we are so strong and so collaborative and so synchronized that we can come together and make it inhospitable for those trying to sideline the work or shut the work down.

What would it look like if your organization stopped trying to control narrative and started circulating through the community like a bee? What if the act of listening was also the act of building? What if iteration wasn’t a sign that something’s broken but a sign that the process is alive?

We have this whole planet of teachers. The blueprint already exists. And when we look beyond the traditional ways we’ve been taught to think about this work, we might find new ideas, new connections, and a freshness and aliveness that we’ve been missing.

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Okay, let’s get serious about bringing story & strategy into your organization. Below are a few ways we can partner, and, of course, you can reach out if you want to collaborate in a remixed sort of way:

+ Story Lab Sessions: Tailored strategy mapping to chart your organization’s storytelling journey, followed by a comprehensive brief with guidance to implement the findings from our session. These sessions are perfect for organizations ready to take their first steps or needing focused guidance on specific initiatives.

+ Story Hour: Real-time support, guidance, and peer learning through a suite of trainings and regular calls. These group sessions provide ongoing support and practical insights for implementing storytelling initiatives in your organization

+ Customized Collaboration: Long-term, tailored support for comprehensive organizational transformation. We’ll work closely together to integrate storytelling deeply into your existing processes. This is designed for organizations looking for in-depth support designing, implementing, and learning from storytelling initiatives.

+ Intensives & Retreats: Individually designed intensives for your staff retreats and training blocks to engage your staff in a process that centers their experiences and connections to their work through story. Great for organizations looking for a unique, connective experience for their team.

Entangled Health can be in your ears, too! Listen to the show wherever you tune into podcasts.

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