Need a Better Story? Get a Better To-Do List

"Let’s take a wild stab at a generalization: Success at building a business or growing a non-profit or making a community more livable depends a lot on trust."

"You have to keep delivering what you promise to get people to keep buying what you’re selling."

"Simple concept, no? But earning and maintaining trust gets a lot harder when two conditions prevail — when it takes a lot of time to deliver on promises and when the folks doing the promising are strangers. We’ll put up with occasional screw-ups when we’re dealing with people or organizations we know well. But combine a time lag between what’s expected and what arrives with having to deal with folks who, you know, aren’t like us — that’s when the bar for investing trust is set much higher."

Community engagement guru and former journalist, Ben Brown, goes on to give city planners pointers on how to become better story tellers. And it starts with listening.