Researchers: Start With 'What Would Be Missing?'

Because research stories are stories, not buckets for everything you do.

Photo by Todd Gallant on Unsplash

If you’re a researcher, there’ll come a time when you have to tell the story of something bigger than your research—a center you lead, the impact of a research proposal you’re seeking funding for, a policy you think the world should adopt.

That’s when the trouble usually begins.

Most researchers and research organizations don’t tell stories. Instead, they fill buckets and call them “stories.” For them, “the story” of the thing is a container for conveying every aspect, feature, benefit, program, partner and nuance of the thing.

A list of attributes isn’t a story. It’s a list. You can always add more. But adding more doesn’t make it mean more—in fact, quite the opposite.

Your story is your unique path to impact and how you connect the rest of the world to it. Lists and buckets give the illusion of heft and connection—everything’s in one place—but none of connection’s satisfactions. A bucket is a list with a handle, and now you’re handing it to someone else and saying, “Isn’t my bucket special?”

The sandy beach of Research—and the nearby beaches of Think Tank and Non-Profit—are filled with buckets just like yours, as far as your funders can see.

But it’s hard to tell a story; easy to write a list and add to it. That why bucket communications is the default mode of research storytelling, especially when something’s on the line. The bigger the stakes, the greater the temptation to write a safe list of projects and priorities—at the expense of propulsion, persuasion or even basic readability. It’s human nature, sadly: We’d rather sink clutching a long list than swim holding on to a tight narrative.

But if you can’t just dump the bucket on your audience, where do you start?

‘What Would Be Missing?’

Start with this question: What would be missing without this thing you’re trying to describe?

What questions wouldn’t get answered?

What foresight would disappear? What blind spots would grow? What assumptions would go untested? What truths about impact would remain obscured?

What work couldn’t proceed with confidence or speed? What problems won’t get solved in time, or solved quickly, or solved at all?

What decisions would be made more slowly, or less intelligently, or without any basis in evidence?

Which preparations won’t be made, or made incompletely, and with which consequences?

Which mistakes will continue to be made?

Which essential qualities would your organization or sector or the world lack?

For instance, imagine if the Wellcome Sanger Institute vanished overnight, here’s what would be missing:

• The global genomics community would lose its neutral hub for open-access sequencing and data sharing.

• Private firms would dominate genomic databases, walling off discoveries behind paywalls or patents.

• Rapid responses to pandemics (like COVID-19 variant tracking) would slow dramatically.

Sanger provides more than just global technical capacity. It anchors a model of large-scale biology in the public interest, ensuring openness and speed over ownership.

That’s not a bucket. In the right hands, that’s a story worthy of Hollywood.

Think ‘Hero, Overcoming the Threat’

The Sanger example shows us how asking “what would be missing” takes you prompts you to articulate necessity, which is another way of saying unique value—the kernel of any successful pitch.

Asking “what would be missing” also carries you away from listing and back to story, because it’s impossible to answer the question without thinking in narrative: “Without X, we lose Y, and then Z happens.”

Once you’ve assembled what would be missing, you can flip those into affirmatives: “In a world where decisions are driven by urgency and emotion, our work helps keep this institution grounded in evidence.” Or: If your program prevents data from vanishing into academic silos, your story becomes: “We make vital knowledge usable where it matters most.”

Dramatic narratives don’t begin with lists of character traits. They begin with a threat—and the story of how it’s overcome.

Don’t start with a list. Start with the threat. Start with “what would be missing”—and tell the story of how you make sure it’s not.

If this piece hit home, try this exercise: Take whatever you’re currently trying to tell the story of—a proposal, a center, your work—and spend ten minutes free-writing on what would be missing without it. Let me know how it goes. I’m betting you’ll probably find the beginning of the story you’ve been trying to tell buried in those sentences.