I’d love to see a course for leaders (or prospective leaders) of social change organizations built around the following core readings:
What else would you add to this list?
I’m pleased to announce the release of “Engagement Organizing,” a short whitepaper about the culture and technology of building power for social change in a networked era. I had the great pleasure of collaborating with my dear friend Matt Price, and I’m really pleased with the final results. If you are working to make progressive change in the world, please give it a read and share your thoughts with us at http://engagement-organizing.org.
This didn’t make it into the paper on Engagement Organizing that we’re about to release, but I thought it was an important point on its own. Curious to hear your thoughts.
One thing is common to all of the engagement organizations we interviewed: authenticity. These are organizations that are so comfortable with their identity and able to explicitly connect their work of the moment to deeply-held core values that their supporters feel it and respond to it with higher levels of engagement than in other organizations. In a world where people are less trusting all the time, authenticity is a critical foundation of social change.
I’m working on a fairly big chunk of writing about advocacy campaigns, organizing and strategy. (More on that very soon!) In the meantime, one idea that popped out along the way that didn’t really fit into the main thrust of the piece was the observation that, for many organizations, there’s a deep tension between building an army of passionate followers and being credible with the not-already-converted. One manifestation of this tension, with which we’re all probably familiar, is the organization that is extremely fired up but decisionmakers don’t take them seriously. More common, though, is the organization that is well positioned to be credible, but extremely weak. The creative challenge, I think, is to be both passionate and credible.
I’ve been reading and thinking a bit about “collective impact” lately. (Here’s the seminal article introducing the buzzword.) It’s a solid, mostly-common-sense framework for thinking about collaborative/coalition efforts. There are five elements that define a “collective impact” approach:
At this point, you’re probably thinking, “Jon, why are you wasting my time with such obvious folderol?” Most coalition efforts I’ve seen fulfill these first three conditions pretty well. Hang in there, it’s the next two that are the most interesting:
It’s these last two points where most collaborations falter, and probably not concidental that they require sustained, long-term resource commitments. How do collaborations you’re involved with stack up?
The thing I am loving most about grad school so far is that it is exposing me to bodies of literature that my former life as a nonprofit sector consultant just didn’t. (Whether it could have, that’s another story.) Today, I read Lt. Col. Paul Yingling’s article “A Failure in Generalship,” which resonated for me in unexpected ways.
Yingling’s brief article is a tough look at the reasons why America’s military leaders failed in almost identical ways in both Vietnam and Iraq, despite the nearly thirty years they had to learn and adapt. He concludes that the reasons are not about individual personalities, but in the systemic ways that we select our generals, and the ways those systems fail to produce generals that are capable of succeeding at important aspects of their jobs.
Here’s a long excerpt that you should read closely. I’m blown away by how much this analysis is directly relevant to the failures of leadership in social change movements. I’ve boldfaced some of the best bits. Hint: every place he writes “generals” you can sub in “social change leaders” and every place he says “war” you can think “social change.”
I wish that the social change sector had the courage to examine itself so honestly and to ask tough systems questions like this. Of course, it is also true that we lack the systems of accountability that are at least theoretically provided by Congress, so it may be that our challenge is even harder than the military’s. Food for thought.
The Generals We Need
The most insightful examination of failed generalship comes from J.F.C. Fuller’s “Generalship: Its Diseases and Their Cure.”… He found three common characteristics in great generals — courage, creative intelligence and physical fitness.
The need for intelligent, creative and courageous general officers is self-evident. An understanding of the larger aspects of war is essential to great generalship. However, a survey of Army three- and four-star generals shows that only 25 percent hold advanced degrees from civilian institutions in the social sciences or humanities. Counterinsurgency theory holds that proficiency in foreign languages is essential to success, yet only one in four of the Army’s senior generals speaks another language. While the physical courage of America’s generals is not in doubt, there is less certainty regarding their moral courage. In almost surreal language, professional military men blame their recent lack of candor on the intimidating management style of their civilian masters. Now that the public is immediately concerned with the crisis in Iraq, some of our generals are finding their voices. They may have waited too long.
Neither the executive branch nor the services themselves are likely to remedy the shortcomings in America’s general officer corps. Indeed, the tendency of the executive branch to seek out mild-mannered team players to serve as senior generals is part of the problem. The services themselves are equally to blame. The system that produces our generals does little to reward creativity and moral courage. Officers rise to flag rank by following remarkably similar career patterns. Senior generals, both active and retired, are the most important figures in determining an officer’s potential for flag rank. The views of subordinates and peers play no role in an officer’s advancement; to move up he must only please his superiors. In a system in which senior officers select for promotion those like themselves, there are powerful incentives for conformity. It is unreasonable to expect that an officer who spends 25 years conforming to institutional expectations will emerge as an innovator in his late forties.
If America desires creative intelligence and moral courage in its general officer corps, it must create a system that rewards these qualities. Congress can create such incentives by exercising its proper oversight function in three areas. First, Congress must change the system for selecting general officers. Second, oversight committees must apply increased scrutiny over generating the necessary means and pursuing appropriate ways for applying America’s military power. Third, the Senate must hold accountable through its confirmation powers those officers who fail to achieve the aims of policy at an acceptable cost in blood and treasure.
To improve the creative intelligence of our generals, Congress must change the officer promotion system in ways that reward adaptation and intellectual achievement. Congress should require the armed services to implement 360-degree evaluations for field-grade and flag officers. Junior officers and noncommissioned officers are often the first to adapt because they bear the brunt of failed tactics most directly. They are also less wed to organizational norms and less influenced by organizational taboos. Junior leaders have valuable insights regarding the effectiveness of their leaders, but the current promotion system excludes these judgments. Incorporating subordinate and peer reviews into promotion decisions for senior leaders would produce officers more willing to adapt to changing circumstances, and less likely to conform to outmoded practices.
Congress should also modify the officer promotion system in ways that reward intellectual achievement. The Senate should examine the education and professional writing of nominees for three- and four-star billets as part of the confirmation process. The Senate would never confirm to the Supreme Court a nominee who had neither been to law school nor written legal opinions. However, it routinely confirms four-star generals who possess neither graduate education in the social sciences or humanities nor the capability to speak a foreign language. Senior general officers must have a vision of what future conflicts will look like and what capabilities the U.S. requires to prevail in those conflicts. They must possess the capability to understand and interact with foreign cultures. A solid record of intellectual achievement and fluency in foreign languages are effective indicators of an officer’s potential for senior leadership.
To reward moral courage in our general officers, Congress must ask hard questions about the means and ways for war as part of its oversight responsibility. Some of the answers will be shocking, which is perhaps why Congress has not asked and the generals have not told. Congress must ask for a candid assessment of the money and manpower required over the next generation to prevail in the Long War. The money required to prevail may place fiscal constraints on popular domestic priorities. The quantity and quality of manpower required may call into question the viability of the all-volunteer military. Congress must re-examine the allocation of existing resources, and demand that procurement priorities reflect the most likely threats we will face. Congress must be equally rigorous in ensuring that the ways of war contribute to conflict termination consistent with the aims of national policy. If our operations produce more enemies than they defeat, no amount of force is sufficient to prevail. Current oversight efforts have proved inadequate, allowing the executive branch, the services and lobbyists to present information that is sometimes incomplete, inaccurate or self-serving. Exercising adequate oversight will require members of Congress to develop the expertise necessary to ask the right questions and display the courage to follow the truth wherever it leads them.
Finally, Congress must enhance accountability by exercising its little-used authority to confirm the retired rank of general officers. By law, Congress must confirm an officer who retires at three- or four-star rank. In the past this requirement has been pro forma in all but a few cases. A general who presides over a massive human rights scandal or a substantial deterioration in security ought to be retired at a lower rank than one who serves with distinction. A general who fails to provide Congress with an accurate and candid assessment of strategic probabilities ought to suffer the same penalty. As matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war. By exercising its powers to confirm the retired ranks of general officers, Congress can restore accountability among senior military leaders.
Social change work is hard, long term work.
Like most hard work, it takes a lot of practice to get really good at it. Malcolm Gladwell in “Outliers” claims that it takes about 10,000 hours (10 years) of practice to really master something. I don’t see why social change organizing/campaigning should really be any different.
People who have the skills to be outstanding social change activists have lots of choices and opportunities in their professional life–they have the leadership, analysis and “getting things done” skills to be valuable in many fields.
So, given these realities, are social change movements structuring themselves to attract highly skilled potential superstars and to retain them for the 10 years it takes to attain mastery… and beyond, into the most highly productive years that follow?
In my anecdotal experience, not so much. To me, the sector looks like its strategy is more “burn and churn.” Get ‘em in while they’re young, pay ‘em as little as possible, and work ‘em hard for 3-5 years until they burn out. Minimal investment in tactical skills, strategic thinking or leadership skills. The survivors become the next generation of leaders.
In a world where it’s organized people vs. organized money, why aren’t we doing a better job of investing in our people?
Today is the one-year anniversary of the Citizens United Supreme Court case. Gideon Rosenblatt has a fantastic, in-depth piece up on Huffington Post that covers why campaign finance reform is an urgent, fundamental issue that the progressive community needs to rally around in a concerted, strategic way. Hint: money is corrupting not only policy decisions, but the very democratic process itself.
My wife Molly works for a big-time international multidisciplinary buildings engineering firm. Over the dinner table, I’ve learned a bit about how big buildings get designed and built. Another frequent topic of dinner conversation in my house is the myriad challenges of designing and running truly effective environmental advocacy campaigns. The other day, I had one of those “aha!” moments.
Buildings are really complicated. They can’t be designed and built by just one person, or by a team of people with only one set of skills. For example, on Molly’s current project, there’s a mechanical engineering team (they figure out the heating and air conditioning), an electrical engineering team (the do the lighting and electricity), and a structural engineering team (they make sure the building doesn’t fall down). And that’s just the engineers! There are also multiple teams on the construction side, the data center designers, and more. Playing the role of designer & project manager are of course the architects.
Each of these disciplines sees the world very differently. Each of them have different expertise, and each brings important knowledge and skills to the project. Failure to incorporate any of these disciplines’ perspective would almost certainly lead to a failed project — a building that is too hot or too cold, doesn’t have reliable power, falls down, is ugly, doesn’t have the functions the owner needs, or goes wildly over cost.
As you might expect, these different teams often have wants and needs that conflict with the other teams. The most beautiful building design might be impossible to cost-effectively heat or cool. Electrical and mechanical teams can tussle over limited space in the service spaces. Structural wants bigger, heavier beams while the project owner wants to keep cost down.
All of these differences of opinion have to be worked out, typically through ongoing “coordination” meetings. In the best cases, potential conflicts are identified early in the process, before too much time and energy has been spent. But since building design is always an iterative process, coordination is a continuous process, and as the building design evolves, it can become more and more stressful and high-stakes.
Let’s talk about advocacy campaigns. As you may be starting to suspect, I think there are some parallels. Advocacy campaigns are often big, complex, multi-year endeavors. They have a clear goal, but the process can be very messy and filled with unexpected twists and turns. Successful advocacy campaigns will involve people with many different forms of expertise: strategists, lobbyists, field organizers, communications, technology, policy experts, attorneys, fundraisers. Each of these disciplines sees the world very differently, and advocates for different values.
So far, lots of parallels to that big building project, right? But when I look around at the leadership circle of most of the advocacy campaigns I’ve been familiar with over the years, I don’t see that diversity of disciplines represented. Mainly I tend to see lobbyists and/or policy experts. Strategy, field organizing, communications, technology, or development are rarely represented at the leadership table, and if they are, they’re typically represented by junior staff who are lack status and power with respect to more senior lobbyists/policy experts.
Over time, this results in unbalanced campaigns, where critical expertise from all of the relevant disciplines is dominated by one or two limited perspectives. Such campaigns may experience short-run success, but they quickly run into the limitations of their narrow leadership perspective.
Worse, I see a disturbing pattern wherein certain of these disciplines (e.g. communications, field organizing) are long-term under-resourced, which results in these disciplines never developing senior staff-level expertise, which makes it all the harder for these disciplines to credibly represent themselves and be taken seriously at the leadership table. This further deepens the vicious cycle of unbalancing.
Have you been a part of an “unbalanced” campaign? What was it like? How do we create more balanced campaigns?
If anyone can explain to me the theory of change behind Earth Hour, or how it actually builds power for the climate change movement, I’d love to hear it.
My friends Tim Walker and Michael Silberman have been doing some thinking about the long-term problems with many of the approaches to date about social change + technology and have popped out a provocative (and very welcome!) manifesto about the need for “web thinking.”
http://www.echoditto.com/insights/webthinking
I was honored to contribute some thoughts on the early drafts, and while I don’t think it’s perfect, the final version is a must-read if you’re serious about changing how change happens. It’s great to see people engaging in serious, big-picture critical thinking like this. The conversation’s already going on in the comments. You should join in. See you there in five.
Copenhagen was doomed to failure from the day that Obama decided to do health care in 2009 and not climate legislation. Enviros should have recognized this and responded by de-emphasizing the strategic importance of Copenhagen, and focusing their limited resources to prepare for 2010.
I’ve been thinking a bunch about the challenges of making cultural transformation in the organizations I work with here at Groundwire. It’s a tough challenge. The first step, it seems, is about naming the changes we want to help folks make.
Here are some rough notes that popped out as I was gathering my thoughts for a meeting. I’d love to know what thoughts they provoke for you.
From –> To
Come join our team at Groundwire (formerly ONE/Northwest) and help us build a better world!
Groundwire is growing, and we’re looking for an experienced strategy consultant to join our team. Our ideal candidate will have real world, senior level organizing and/or fundraising experience (online and offline), believe in the importance of relationship building for achieving social change, and understand the power of technology to support relationship building at scale.
Groundwire is a pretty amazing place to work — I should know, I’ve been there for thirteen years! We have a world-class team of kick-ass people, amazing clients and are constantly pushing the intersecting wavefronts of technology and social change.
I’m really surprised by the adulation that the Obama transition team’s website, Change.gov, has gotten. To me, it looks like a pretty design (all of Obama’s design work has been really excellent!), and a few web forms that dump your information into a black hole, never to be seen again (so far). This is what “listening” looks like?
I applaud the speed with which they’ve gotten the site up, and I suppose I appreciate the symbolism of the gesture. But unless they actually build some sort of actual conversation on top of this, or somehow reflect back what they’re hearing (“active listening” anyone?) I’m not going to be very impressed.
[18:00] I’m liveblogging from the event ONE/Northwest is hosting tonight, titled “Political Campaigns and Technology.” We’ve got about 50 people in our office here in Seattle, gathered together for a fast-paced peer-to-peer learning session in which we’re going to explore the various ways that political campaigns are using technology to build and sustain relationships, and what nonprofit activist organizations can learn from the fast-paced world of political campaigns.
Gideon Rosenblatt — ONE/Northwest Executive Director
Gideon is welcoming people, explaining the concept, how it relates to our work. We’ll have three speakers, followed by some group discussion and general socializing.
Karen Uffelman — ONE/Northwest Program Manager
Questions to audience:
[18:05] Karen: dramatic changes in how candidates are using technology. Karen posed several discussion questions for people to consider in small groups, which they are now doing…
[18:10] Report outs:
Group one:
What’s the most innovative use of interactive media you’ve seen this campaign season?
Group two:
Have candidates lost control of their message because of new media?
Group three:
Have candidates lost control of their message because of new media?
Most innovative use of interactive media?
Group four:
We talked mostly about the “relentlessness” of the Obama campaign’s online organizing work this year. In 2004, seemed more episodic than continuous. Lots more use of video from candidates; e.g. video of Obama on his donation page. Very slick.
Group five:
We talked about some of the tools we’ve seen on Facebook and their longer-term potential. How social networking has been used as a fundraising tool, ability to raise money very quickly. Rapid response of Ron Paul campaign around specific issues. Blast updates vs. segmentation.
Group six:
Increased turnout of youth vote during primary cycle. Challenge ahead is how to translate election excitement downballot and to ongoing long term issues. How can we get people to care about the fights that follow. League of Young Voters Facebook application attempts to find people through the campaign opportunity, get a sense of issue priorities as well.
Group seven:
Unexpectedly viral things. Change in tone of campaign emails from “donate now” to fake(?) insider emails. New phonebanking tools. Washington Trails’ experience creating a small Facebook application.
[18:25] Three Speakers
Brett Horvath – Your Revolution
A new nonpartisan nonprofit.
Show of hands: who has a Facebook account? (Many) Who actively uses it? (Few)
Your Revolution: building a Facebook app focused on voter registration. Hope to scale up voter registration efforts by leveraging the reach of the Facebook platform.
What differentiates Facebook from other social networking platforms: Facebook is a “social utility” that allows people to actively do things. Some stats about rapid growth of Facebook.
Massive protest in Colombia, organized via Facebook. Something different is going on here that’s not going on elsewhere.
Obama online: my.barackobama.com — allows users to self-organize, plan events, build groups. Houe parties, fundraisers, phonebanking etc. All outside of the control of the campaign.
Quick rundown of Your Revolution features:
Your Revolution gives nonprofits some collaboration and project management tools for their constituents.
Working with students to bring online voter registration to states around the nation (!) (Now: WA and AZ are the only two states that allow it, but Rock The Vote has technology for generating paper forms online.)
Questions for Brett:
Q: What kinds of privacy safeguards are there? How exposed is your personal information?
A: You can control how much info people see on Facebook. Your Revolution doesn’t keep or use any data from FB.
Q: Is hard to get off of Facebook?
A: Actually, yes. Hard to fully delete all of your profile information. This is generally pretty true of anything you put on the internet these days.
Q: How do you prevent voter reg. fraud?
A: Require valid drivers license info, which is verified by Secretary of State.
[18:50] George Chung – Win/Win Network
How Democratic Party technology has trickled down to interest groups.
An example: anti-immigrant ballot measures in Washington in recent years. Hard to defeat hot-button ballot initiatives like this. Insight: find all the people who voted against a previous anti-affirmative action initiative. Problem: it was virtually impossible to find, and we had to start from scratch. A “learning moment.” Each campaign should build long-term organizing capacity, win or lose.
Democratic political campaigns have consolidated their voter file databases and interfaces. Catalist, Voter Activation Network are two companies that were started by major Democratic party donors to consolidate disparate voter file, demographic and consumer data and then provide sophisticated applications built on top of that, e.g. phonebanking systems with real-time feedback. Trickling down to state parties and the precinct captain level.
Campaigns don’t end when the election is over. Then we go to elected officials and push for policy change. More thinking about cycles of accountability. Elections are means to policy ends.
Win/Win Network – started by Washington Progress Alliance. Goal is to defragment progressive issue communities at the state level so that we can work more powerfully together. Shared services, e.g. voter mobilization tools from Catalist/VAN.
[19:00]
Q: Doesn’t sharing of names among organizations like this pretty much amount to spamming people without their permission and run the risk of inundating people?
A: Learning from the work the environmental community has done here, how to get the word out without violating permission. We don’t actually share emails among groups.
[19:15] Steve Andersen – ONE/Northwest
I work on CRM systems for environmental groups. Constituent Relationship Management. Technologies and techniques for helping organizations develop relationships with their supporters. Companies use CRM to sell stuff. Nonprofits use it to build power. We use Salesforce.com as our main CRM tool; it’s not nonprofit-specific… it’s used by businesses, political campaigns, and nonprofits.
Four very quick demonstrations of how political campaigns use CRM.
1) Raising money…
… and reporting on that fundraising. A core component of any CRM system, but also one of the least interesting. 
Moving on…
2) Managing speaking opportunities
Candidates need to keep track of where they and their surrogates are going to appear, from a huge field of opportunities and possibilities. Nonprofit activists have the same problem. We’re currently working with Van Jones of the Ella Baker Center on a system for managing hundreds of speaking requests per month.
3) Influencing key decision makers
e.g. Superdelegates and precinct leaders. (Or, after the election, running issue campaigns for nonprofits). Quick demonstration of a system we built for Futurewise to track their success at influencing regulatory decisions around land-use. The same model can also be used to track efforts to secure endorsements for a candidate. Track decision makers, people & organizations who influence those decision-makers, whether they support or oppose us. Campaigns to our members who relate to that decisionmaker. Share all of this data with the campaign team.
4) Media tracking
How to keep track of all the blogs, viral video and online news coverage that campaigns are getting? Can’t just follow three networks and a few newspapers anymore. Quick demo of a media tracking tool we built for Futurewise. Media clips are connected to decision campaigns (above). Simple bookmarklets make it fast and easy to save items that you find in your web surfing.
“We haven’t had the need to clip YouTube videos for very long.”
Salesforce lets us build little tools like this really quickly. Took us about an hour to be able to clip & watch YouTube inside of YouTube.com.
[19:25] Questions
Q: Can you spit back out stuff that you capture?
A: We can get stuff back out through Salesfore’s APIs and show it via a website to the public, or pull it into an email message.
Q: Can data be linked to projects? Groups of people that might take action?
A: In principle, yes.
Q: How do you assess if an organization is ready for powerful new tools like this?
A: It’s hard. 
[19:30] Gideon Rosenblatt – Thanks, Closing and General Hanging Out Time
These are the facets of a new kind of democratic process emerging. It’s all about putting power back into the hands of self-organizing groups of people.
With that, your loyal liveblogger went off to get a well-deserved beer.
Please go read this incredibly insightful reflection by Eugene Eric Kim. If you’re too lazy, I’ll clip the most important part for ya:
The following day, I co-led a session on this topic with AngusParker. Two of the participants were dealing with the specific challenge of connecting members of a national network of leaders in reproductive health, so we used that as a case study. We decided to use Clay’s contention to frame the problem, resulting in this whiteboard:What do you notice about this picture? Obviously, the Tools column is completely empty. That’s a dead giveaway that I’m facilitating this discussion. (That and the horrific handwriting.) Figure out the basics first. Don’t let the question about technology drive the discussion. During the discussion, one of the participants asked, “What tools can we use?” I responded, “Let’s not worry about that now.” So we kept talking and talking, and I noticed the two non-technical participants in the group squirming like crazy. So I stopped, noticed how gaping the Tools column looked, and said, “You’re uncomfortable about not having discussed the tools, aren’t you.” She nodded. “Don’t worry about it,” I responded. “The tools part will be easy, once we figure everything else out.” “Easy for you, maybe,” she said. “You already know what goes there.” That was not quite true, but I got her point, and the force of it struck me so hard, I had to stop for a moment. I looked at the gap, and I saw possibilities. She looked at the gap, and she saw a void. That was upsetting for her. It made it hard for her to think about the other aspects of the problem. It made me realize how much I take my technology literacy for granted. But it also created an opportunity to discuss how easily we are sidetracked by technology. “Tool” does not have to mean software, and making that assumption prevents us from exploring other viable, possibly better solutions.
I’ll add in a kicker: too often, people who are less technically literate think that if they only fill in the right answer in that middle “Tools” column, that their problems will all be solved. When, really, it is more important to get the Promise and the Bargain right. I like to call this pattern “magical tool thinking.” It results in a lot of wasted time and effort trying to identify that magical, right tool — effort which should go into thinking about process, objectives and how to sustain the non-technological parts of the organizing effort.
Michael Gilbert picks up on an important piece: How Technology Almost Lost the War: In Iraq, the Critical Networks Are Social — Not Electronic
A couple of key ‘grafs:
The network-centric approach had worked pretty much as advertised. Even the theory’s many critics admit net-centric combat helped make an already imposing American military even more effective at locating and killing its foes. The regimes of Saddam Hussein and Mullah Omar were broken almost instantly. But network-centric warfare, with its emphasis on fewer, faster-moving troops, turned out to be just about the last thing the US military needed when it came time to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan. A small, wired force leaves generals with too few nodes on the military network to secure the peace. There aren’t enough troops to go out and find informants, build barricades, rebuild a sewage treatment plant, and patrol a marketplace. … Continue reading
