Story of Self, Us, Now

Marshall Ganz's public narrative frame — Self, Us, Now — is the cleanest structure for the storytelling part of a 1:1.

Story of Self: a specific moment from the person's own life when they faced a choice that revealed what they value. Not their resume. Not their abstract politics. A scene — a place, a time, a person, a decision. This is where you learn what they actually care about.

Story of Us: the constituency or community the person locates themselves in. Who are 'our people' for them? Tenants. Black women in higher ed. Working-class veterans. Immigrant parents in DeKalb County. This is where you learn whose interests they will fight for beyond their own.

Story of Now: the urgent challenge facing 'us' right now, and the choice in front of the community. This is where you test whether your campaign is the vehicle they have been looking for, or whether you need to keep listening.

Ganz developed this frame teaching organizing at Harvard after decades with the United Farm Workers. It maps onto how human beings actually make decisions: through stories about who they are, whose they are, and what time it is. Use it in your own story when you open a 1:1, and listen for it in theirs.

A small but important practice: write down the Story of Self the person tells you, in their own words, within an hour of the meeting. You will forget it within a week if you don't, and you will need it when you ask them for something hard six months from now.