If you are old enough (like I am — as I write this I am transported to the backseat of my parent’s sedan in the early 80s!) to remember radio in its golden age, you remember Paul Harvey. Three minutes. A familiar voice. A story about a person, a moment, a quiet detail of history — and then, just before the end, the reveal: “Bill Gates… and now you know… the rest of the story.” 

Paul Harvey was, by any honest measure, a storytelling genius. He took facts most people already knew and built narratives around them that made you sit in your driveway with the engine off because you had to hear how it ended. The data was almost never the point. The point was always the rest of the story. 

Last post, I argued that the single most important shift you can make before your next board meeting is getting the room to see your facilities as an asset rather than a cost. I also said the word “asset” is the entry ticket — what gets you the vote is the story you craft from the data. 

So how do you actually craft that story? 

Up front: this is a skill, and it is one most facilities people — myself included, for a long stretch of my career — were never trained for. We were trained in systems, lifecycles, FCAs, capital plans, and work orders. Glorious, technical, defensible work. None of it is a story. Boards do not approve funding for systems and lifecycles. They approve funding for stories that happen to be backed by systems and lifecycles. 

Over the next two posts, I want to walk through four moves I have learned, mostly the hard way, for telling a facilities story that actually lands in a boardroom. Two today. Two next week. 

1. Know What They Want Before You Walk In

Knowing your audience is the first and most important part of telling any successful story. What do they want? What are they invested in? What will make them look good? What does success look like, in their words, not yours? 

Understanding these answers gives you the foundation for building your story. If your audience sees you helping them achieve their goals, you have them hooked. 

Here is the part most facilities people skip: people do not act on data. They act with their heart, and then they use their logical brain to justify the decision afterward. Most of us are technical people, and feelings aren’t our primary focus in our day-to-day. After all, data don’t have feelings! 

But the board does. So before you build a single slide, get clear on what your audience wants to feel when they walk out of that room. Confident? Proud? Reassured that they are good stewards? Knowing the answer changes everything that comes after. 

2. Make Your Portfolio the Means to Their End

Once you know what your audience wants, the next move is to weave your facilities into the story as the driver that gets them there. 

The quality of education. The productivity of the workers. How quickly a sick patient recovers. The ability to attract the best and brightest educators, researchers, doctors, and workers. These are all things a high-performance building, campus, or portfolio can deliver. 

So how do you get your non-facilities board members to make the connection? The good news is that we all use buildings every single day, so it is not a foreign concept. We just have to paint a picture. 

I like to use phrases like “Imagine,” “What if you,” or “Close your eyes and picture,” followed by a relatable story rooted in your core business. 

For higher education: “Close your eyes and imagine you are taking your first born on college tours, and every building you walked into looked amazing, was full of high-energy students and faculty, and just felt comfortable.” 

For healthcare: “Imagine a member of your family has been in an accident and is brought to our hospital. Your emotions are running hot. You are scared. Now imagine walking into a building that feels fresh, looks modern, is well lit, and is comfortable. Imagine what that does for your stress.” 

You can use the opposite angle too: “How would you feel dropping your first born off at a university where the buildings are too hot or too cold, half the elevators are out of service, and everything looks like it hasn’t been touched since the 90s?” 

I tend to lean optimistic, so the aspirational version is more authentic for me. But psychology shows that for most people, fear of the negative is more powerful than the pull of the positive. So it is worth offering the negative counter to your vision once in a while. 

Either way, by the time you are done with this move, the buildings have stopped being buildings on a balance sheet. They have become the thing standing between your audience and the future they want. 

Next post, I will cover the second half — how to weave your data into the story without losing the plot, and why you should never leave the moral of the story up to the room. 

Until then, pull up your last board presentation. Find me one slide where the audience feels something. Just one.

If it is not there, that is the homework between now and your next presentation.