INSTRUCTIONS FOR PAPER Design your own Social Movement Organization Organizational Info: 1. 2. 3. 4. 1 page cover page with your name, course name, date, and title of paper 10 pages of text, double-spaced, Times New Roman, 12 point font, 1 inch page margins 1 references page, You are required to do a minimum of 5 in-text citations from readings we read in class. (I will give to you my course readings). Structure and Content In this paper, --You use your imagination to design your own social movement organization (SMO). You will be applying concepts from social movement theory to your case. --You will also draw upon background knowledge about the broader social movement (SM) your organization is a part of. Introduction (max 1 page) • • Describe the broader SM ecology that your organization is part of – brief history, key players, demands, etc. Describe how your organization relates to that ecology –maybe you have criticisms of the movement’s strategy and want to create a new org with a new strategy; etc. 5 Main Sections (min 8 pages) • • • Choose 5 aspects from the additional document on titled “Social Movement Aspects for Assignments” (I will attached in files). For each aspect, describe your organization’s approach Compare your organization’s approach to how the existing SM/SMO deals with that aspect Conclusion (max 1 page) • • Describe how you see your organization contributing to the overall movement and what influence you’d like it to have Describe how you think the movement and/or your organization will develop in the coming decade Organizing: People, Power and Change PAL 177 (HDS 2914) Organizing Notes Charts Reflection Questions Marshall Ganz Lecturer in Public Policy John F. Kennedy School of Government Harvard University Fall 2006 (10/2) Table of Contents Topic Page Week 1 What is Organizing ...................................................................... 3 Week 2 Learning to Organize ................................................................... 7 Week 3 Mapping the Social World: Actors, Values, and Interests ................. 14 Week 4 Actors, Resources, and Power ..................................................... 22 Week 5 Leadership ............................................................................... 34 Week 6 Relationships ............................................................................ 53 Week 7 Mobilizing Interpretation I: Motivation, Story, and Celebration ......... 70 Week 8 Interpretation II: Strategy, Deliberation and Meetings .................. 103 Week 9 Action ................................................................................... 123 Week 10 Campaigns ............................................................................. 145 Week 11 Organization: Communities in Action.......................................... 156 Week 12 Becoming a Good Organizer...................................................... 177 2 What Is Organizing (September, 2006) Organizers identify, recruit and develop leadership; build community around leadership; and build power out of community. Organizers bring people together, challenging them to act on behalf of their shared values and interests. They develop the relationships, motivate the participation, strategize the pathways, and take the action that enable people to gain new appreciation of their values, the resources to which they have access, their interests, and a new capacity to use their resources on behalf of their interests. Organizers work through "dialogues" in relationships, motivation, strategy and action carried out as campaigns. Organizers interweave relationships, motivation, strategy and action so that each contributes to the other. • One result is new networks of relationship wide and deep enough to provide a foundation for a new community in action. • Another result is a new story about who this community is, where it has been, where it is going -- and how it will get there. • A third result is a strategy envisioning how a community can turn the resources it has into the power it needs to get what it wants. • An a final result is action as the community mobilizes and deploys its resources on behalf of its interests - as collaboration, claims making, or both. Organizers develop new relationships out of old ones - sometimes by linking one person to another and sometimes by linking whole networks of 3 people together. Relationships grow out of exchanges of interests and resources, the commitment to sustain them, and the creation of a shared story. Organizers engage people in discerning why they should act to change their world – their values – and how they can act to change it – their strategy. Organizers motivate action by deepening people’s understanding of who they are, what they want, and why they want it: their values. Mobilizing feelings of urgency, hope, anger, self-worth, and solidarity that facilitate action, they challenge feelings of inertia, fear, apathy, self-doubt, and isolation that inhibit action. Organizers engage people in articulating this call to action as a shared story of the challenges they must face, the choices they must make, and the hope that can inspires to courage the make these choices now – a story of self, a story of us, and a story of now. Organizers engage people in deliberating about they can turn what they have (resources), into what they need (power) to get what they want (their interests): strategy. Power is the influence our resources can have on the interests of others who hold resources that can influence our interests. Organizing often requires using our resources to mobilize power interdependently with others whose interests we share to challenge the power exercised over us by others whose interest conflict with our own. Organizers challenge people to take the responsibility to act. For an individual, empowerment begins with accepting responsibility. For an organization, empowerment begins with commitment, the responsibility its members take for it. Responsibility begins with choosing to act. Organizers challenge people to commit, to act, and to act effectively. 4 Organizers work through campaigns. Campaigns are highly energized, intensely focused, concentrated streams of activity with specific goals and deadlines. People are recruited, programs launched, battles fought and organizations built through campaigns. Campaigns polarize by bringing out those ordinarily submerged conflicts contrary to the interests of the constituency. One dilemma is how to depolarize in order to negotiate resolution of these conflicts. Another dilemma is how to balance campaigns with the ongoing work of organizational growth and development. Organizers build community by developing leadership. They develop leaders by enhancing their skills, values and commitments. They build strong communities through which people gain new understanding of their interests as well as the power to act on them -- communities which are bounded yet inclusive, communal yet diverse, solidaristic yet tolerant. They develop a relationship between a constituency and its leaders based on mutual responsibility and accountability. ©Marshall Ganz, Kennedy School, 2006 Introduction: Chart #1 5 Introduction: Chart #2 Introduction: Chart #3 6 Learning to Organize (Week Two) In his discussion of the difference between the "raft and the shore", Thich Nhat Hanh helps us distinguish among a framework with which to structure learning, how we learn, and what we learn.1 Although we may no longer need our raft once we have used it to cross a raging river, we do need a good raft to get across. For learning organizing, we need a raft because opening ourselves to learning any new practice requires dealing with uncertainty, ambiguity and novelty.2 And when we face uncertainty, we often feel conflicting emotions. On the one hand, we may be fearful - things will go wrong, we will fail, others will see. We then retract, metaphorically at least, to protect ourselves from danger. On the other hand, we may be curious - the unexpected can be exciting, bring new opportunities and new growth. So faced with the challenge of learning to act in new ways, we may retreat into the security what we know, or, at least, what will reduce our anxiety; or we may risk leaning into the uncertain. We may learn best when we can do both: secure ourselves in enough certainty that we have the courage to risk exploration. Learning to balance security and risk is not only key to our own learning, but to the learning of those with whom we work, for whom security may be more elusive and the risks greater. Our learning framework can serve as a "raft” - a way to focus on critical tools, attend to key questions, observe the interaction of different ele1 Thich Nhat Hanh, (1993), Thundering Silence: Sutra on Knowing the Better Way to Catch a Snake, "The Raft is Not the Shore" (pp. 30-33), (Berkeley, Paralax Press). 2 Jordan Petersson, (1999), Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief. (New York, Routledge). 7 ments, and share a common language so we can learn from each other's experience. No one masters a craft in a classroom (except perhaps the crafts of teaching and studying). That is a life's work. But you can learn how to learn craft – the craft of organizing - and that is our goal. Organizing is a practice – a way of doing things, with the “hands”. Learning practice is different from learning "theory" because it can only be learned from the experience of acting. Acting, in turn, requires the courage to take risks – risks of failure, making mistakes, losing face, rejection, etc.3 No one can learn to ride a bicycle – to keep their balance - without falling. Because organizing is relational – done in interaction with others – the more you can learn to mindfully distinguish among your actions, the actions of others, and how they interact, the easier it will become for you to learn from the data of your own experience. At the same time, the more deeply committed you are to your project, the more you will learn because you will be motivated to risk new kinds of experience from which you can learn. Organizing is also theory – a way of thinking about things, with the “head”. But we do not learn theory so we can "apply" it. Theory is not how things "really are". Our ability to theorize allows us to simplify reality for specific purposes, such as predicting likely outcomes. Theories serve us as hypotheses, subject, however, to testing.4 We all have our own theories -generalized lessons we learn from our experience that give us an idea of what to expect.5 But using theory "mindfully" requires stepping back from 3 M.S. Kierkegaard, “When the Knower Has to Apply Knowledge” from “Thoughts on Crucial Situations in Human Life”, in Parables of Kierkegaard, T.C. Oden, Editor. (P) 4 Robert B. Westbrook (1991), John Dewey and American Democracy, ( Ithaca, NY, Cornell UP.) 5 8 Howard Gardner, (1992), The Unschooled Mind, (New York, Basic Books.) our experience, writing about it, reflecting critically upon it, and drawing lessons from it. And learning from experience requires entering into it with what Gandhi described as a “spirit of experimentation” – with the discipline to place it in perspective, compare it with that of others, and reflect on it analytically.6 Learning by reflective practice may challenge your theories of how the social world works.7 These assumptions may serve you perfectly well in private life, but not so well in public life. Cognitive psychologists explain that we develop "schemata" with which we organize our understanding of the world.8 Schemata enable and constrain. They enable us to make sense of things, generalize, make choices, draw conclusions, and act. But, as stereotypes, they can inhibit clarity of perception, cause us to see what we expect to see, and make it difficult for us to learn. Psychologist Ellen Langer proposes ways to learn to be more "mindful" of our assumptions so they constrain us less, allowing us to develop more useful theory: generating new categories, considering multiple views, etc.9 Being mindful of our assumptions can help us hear the elements of truth in the arguments of those with whom we disagree, even while we engage in vigorous argument. Fearing argument, debate and conflict only inhibits learning. Rabbi Hillel describes argument for “the sake of heaven”- the 6 Mohandas Gandhi, (1957), An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth, (Boston, Beacon Press.) 7 Donald Schon, (1984), The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action, Chapter 2, “From Technical Rationality to Reflection-in-Action” (pp.49-69), (New York, Basic Books). 8 Susan Fiske and Shelly E. Taylor, (1991), Social Cognition, Chapter 6, "Social Schemata”, (pp.139-42, 171-81), (New York, McGraw-Hill.) 9 Ellen J. Langer, (1989), Mindfulness (Cambridge: Perseus Books); (1998) The Power of Mindful Learning, (Cambridge, Perseus Books). 9 goal of which is to unearth those elements of truth each of us holds, but none of us holds entirely.10 He proposes grounding argument in clarity as to one’s values, entering into an argument humbly, recognizing one can be wrong, and learning how to articulate one’s opponent’s argument to his or her satisfaction. Learning organizing is not only a matter of hands and head, but also of the heart. My approach is rooted in the democratic tradition of engaging people to act on common interests, including holding their own leadership accountable. Although some tactics may be similar, civic organizing is not about how to organize an army, a corporation, or a social service agency. The values that motivate democratic practice grow out of our moral – religious, cultural, political - traditions. The understanding of organizing upon which I build emerged from the religious, civic, and popular traditions of the West. As democracy has become a goal of peoples around the world, this tradition has been enlarged, challenged and enriched. Perhaps the most creative 20th Century innovator of democratic organizing was Gandhi. His combination of Eastern and Western traditions created a legacy further developed in the African freedom movement, the American Civil Rights movement, the work of Solidarity in Poland, and elsewhere. Our framework consists of just three practices: (1) identifying, recruiting, and developing leaders; (2) building community around those leaders; and (3) building power from that community. 10 Various, (1985), Siddur Sim Shalom, Rabbi Jules Harlow, Ed. “Pirke Avot/ Sayings of Our Ancestors”, (pp. 648-649) (New York, The Rabbinical Assembly). 10 Our framework is built of just three components: (1) Actors who do the work: you, your leaders, your constituents, your opposition, your supporters, etc.; (2) Processes we use to do the work: building relationships, telling stories, devising strategy, and taking action; (3) Structures we use to create the space within which we can do the work: campaigns (time) and organizations (space). Much organizing is done as campaigns - a way of mobilizing time, resources, and energy to achieve an outcome – time as an “arrow” rather than a “cycle”.11 Thinking of time as a “cycle” helps us to maintain our routines, our normal procedures, our annual budget, etc. Thinking of time as an “arrow” on the other hand focuses us on making change, on achieving specific outcomes, on focusing our efforts. A campaign is time as an “arrow". It is an intense stream of activity that begins with a foundational period, builds to a kick-off, builds to periodic peaks, and culminates in a final peak, followed by a resolution. This creates momentum strategically by gathering more and more resources - the way the snow that a snowball gathers allows it to gather more snow. Campaigns can also create momentum motivationally, as early successes can create the credibility to make later successes more achievable. You may want to think of this course as a 14-week campaign. To facilitate our discussions I use charts because social processes can often be more easily visualized than verbalized. The four basic patterns I use depict relationship, purpose, feedback, and focus. Relational charts depict interactions, balances, and exchanges among parties fundamental to orga- 11 Stephen Jay Gould, (1987), Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle: myth and metaphor in the discovery of geological time, (Cambridge, Harvard University Press). 11 nizing. Purpose charts depict movement or development toward a goal, a peak, and an outcome. Loops - or more accurately spirals - depict ways action leads to outcomes that influence subsequent action. And focus charts show the effect of concentrating diffuse energy and resources on specific targets. Engaging in a new experience, critical analysis of that experience, and reflecting on the values within which that experience is rooted can be very challenging. This is why much our work is interaction with others – constituency, classmates, colleagues, and instructors. This is not an "extra" but at the core of the learning process. Learning how to challenge, support, and motivate those with whom we work - and to accept challenge, support, and motivation from them - can be one of the most useful lessons you can take from this experience. © Marshall Ganz, Kennedy School, 2006 Helpful Hint #1 12 QUESTIONS Questions about Pedagogy 1. What do you want to get out of your project? 2. What expectations do you bring to your project? 3. What do you think will make for a good project? 4. As a participant, what can you do to make your project good? 5. As an observer, how can you see what there is to see and learn from it? 13 Mapping the Social World: Actors, Values, and Interests (Week 3) Introduction You can begin “mapping” the social world of your organizing project by asking four questions: 1. who are the actors, 2. what are their interests, 3. what resources do they need to act on those interests, and 4. how much power do they have to mobilize and deploy these resources. This week we focus on actors and interests - next week, on resources and power. Actors Actors attend to their circumstances, act purposefully on those circumstances, and try to mobilize the resources they need to achieve their purposes. Actors are not “social forces” but persons - or groups of persons - who remember, imagine, choose, and reflect on their choices. While "social forces" influence the decisions we make, it is we who make - and are responsible for - decisions that shape "social forces”. Moreover, to the extent that we are not isolated individuals, floating somewhere above the social world, we make our decisions interdependently with others, whose decisions also affect our own. How can we understand the "drug problem", for example, without taking into consideration the myriad dealers, smugglers, and producers who mobilize to frustrate every attempt to solve it. Organizers are particularly interested in the roles shown in Actors: Chart #1. 14 Actors: Chart #1 • Constituents - Constituents are the people at the center of our work, people whom we mobilize, whom we serve and to whom we are accountable. It makes a difference whether we think of the people with whom we work as our constituents, our clients, or our customers. Constituent – which derives from the Latin for “stand together”, are people who understand their common interests, contribute resources to acting on those interests, and who govern themselves. Clients – which comes from the Latin for “one who leans on another” – are people whose individual interest is in obtaining services that we provide, are rarely called upon to contribute individual resources to a common effort, and who do not govern themselves. Customers – a term derived from commerce – are people whom we offer a good 15 or service, the purchase of which they judge to be in their individual interest in exchange for resources in which we have an interest. Clients and Customers are served by an organization, whereas constituents are the organization. When constituents "join" an organization they become its "members", just as "citizens" are members of a democracy. Voters in a particular district are constituents of an elected official. Workers who do certain kinds of work or are employed by particular employers are constituents of a union (why wouldn't they be constituents of their employer?). People with environmental concerns are constituents of environmental organizations. And based on Albert Hirschman’s famous distinction among exit, voice, and loyalty, constituents can influence an organizations to which they belong through voice, making themselves heard through internal means, whereas customers and clients can exert influence only through exit, taking their resources elsewhere. Finally, we can distinguish a community – people with something in common – from a constituency, which is capable of standing together on behalf of their commonality.12 The organizer’s job is to turn a community into a constituency. • Leadership - Leaders are drawn from among the constituency, usually having earned selection by it. They facilitate the work of their constituency to achieve its purposes, interact with other actors on behalf of a constituency, and are accountable to their constituency. Leaders who manage bureaucratic organizations, by contrast, often have no relationship with their clients or customers. Leaders include club officers, union stewards, members of a parish council, etc. The full time or part time people who do the day-today work of the organization may also serve as leaders, whether volunteer or 12 Albert O. Hirschman, (1970), Exit, Voice, and Loyalty, (Cambridge, Harvard University Press), p.16. 16 paid, even if not drawn from the constituency. They follow through on the results of meetings, organize events, administer funds, etc. They may or may not occupy leadership roles and may or may not be drawn from the constituency. Examples include full time local union presidents, chairs of mission committees, and the people who pass out leaflets on behalf of a candidate. Most organizations have a formal governing “body” that decides policy, makes major staff choices, and may or may not be involved in day-today activities. Constituency organizations choose governing bodies that overlap with their leadership. In bureaucratic organizations, the governing body may be self-selected, selected by outside groups, or by financial supporters but rarely include leaders drawn from among their clients. Governing bodies include union executive boards, organizing committees, boards of trustees, etc. • Supporters - These are people and groups whose interests are such that they encourage the organization's work financially, politically, voluntarily, etc. Although they may not be part of the constituency or leadership, they may sit on governing boards. Church organizations and foundations, for example, provided a great deal of support for the civil rights movement. • Opposition - These are individuals or organizations whose interests conflict with those of the constituency. The opposition may not be obvious, sometimes emerging clearly only in the course of a campaign. Employers’ interests usually conflict with employees' interests, a tobacco company's interests conflict with those of an anti-smoking group, a street gang's interests conflict with those of a church youth group, interests of a Republican Congressional candidate conflict with those of the Democratic candidate in the same district, etc. 17 • Competitors/Collaborators - These are individuals or organizations with whom we may share some interests, but not others. They may target the same constituency we have, the same sources of support, or face the same opposition. Two unions trying to organize the same work force may compete or collaborate. Two community groups trying to serve the same constituency may compete or collaborate in their fundraising. • Organizers – Where do the organizers fit in all of this? Organizers play leadership roles in the organizations they work with. They may be elected by constituents or appointed by a governing board. Their role is unique in that their primary focus is moving the organizational agenda through the development of other leaders. Actors: Chart #2 18 Needs, Values, and Interests We have a picture of who the actors are, but what drives the action why do we do what we do? Some psychologists use a needs metaphor to describe dynamics at work within us that are not fully understood. Clayton Aldefer characterizes our needs as interactive and focused on existence, relationships and growth. 13 Existence needs are about physical safety. Relational needs are about social safety (recognition, belonging, etc.). Growth needs are about learning and development. Other psychologists like Jordan Peterson argue that our capacity of consciousness operates so that encounters with anomaly, something unexpected, either spark our curiosity and prompt exploratory behavior or spark our fear and prompt fight or flight behavior. He emphasizes the particularly important role of communal narratives in helping us manage our emotions so as to keep our fear response in check.14 Needs alone cannot explain why we do what we do. Based on who we are, where we are, and when we are, we learn values that translate needs into interests, as Actors: Chart #2 shows. Human beings are situated in specific life circumstances - or social worlds - defined by those with whom they have relationships (family, friends, colleagues, community, etc.), the understanding of the world they have learned (identity, values, beliefs), and the resources to which they have access. Jerome Bruner argues that the communities in which we grow-up teach us to value some needs over others, as well as some ways of meeting these needs over others.15 Our identity as members of these communities consists of how we organize the experiences, values and beliefs that define who we are. And we organize our identities, as 13 C. Alderfer, (1972), Existence, Relatedness and Growth. (New York, Free Press). Jordan Petersson, (1999), Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief. (New York, Routledge). 15 Jerome Bruner, (1990), Acts of Meaning. (Cambridge, Harvard University Press). 14 19 Bruner notes, as stories following a similar pattern: a steady state is breached, a crisis ensures, the crisis is redressed, and new possibilities emerge.16 We grow up, we encounter crises large and small, and we have to figure out what to do. What makes them crises is precisely that we don’t know what to do. So we figure it out. And the way we figure it out, once we are old enough, is to consult a stock of stories, our own and those of others. Of course, at the end of the day we still have to choose which stories will guide our behavior. In choosing we learn lessons, not so much about specific tactics, but about what counts in a time of crisis: friends, courage, faith, family, wiliness, humility, solidarity. In other words, the choice points in our lives, episodes in our “self-story” or identity, reveal our values, allow us to draw energy from them, and enable us to teach others from them. But it isn’t all about needs and values either. We find ourselves with access to different kinds of resources – resources we have been born with, acquired, and been given. Can you think of examples in which people with similar needs and values enjoy access to very different kinds – or amounts of resources? This is where “interests” enter the picture. One way to think about interest is that as purposeful creatures, based on our cultural experience, we assign values to our needs and based on our access to resources, we turn our values into "interests" – or goals. Having learned to value economic security, for example, and having had access to the resources to devote years to schooling, we have an interest in completing a graduate degree to get a good job. If our values define our goals or purposes in life, our interests articulate the outcomes associated with the strategic pursuit of those goals. But even our interests, which in Latin means “to exist among”, are defined in relation to others. How might those with far fewer resources – but similar needs and values – conceive their interests? 16 Jerome Bruner, (1987), Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. (Cambridge, Harvard University Press). 20 Most of us have interests in many domains, although some may be more immediate than others: family, community, work, religious beliefs, cultural or recreational activities, and politics. Again, interests are not the same as values, but are shaped by them. Because of our values, we may have an interest in living environmentally responsible lives, doing meaningful work, or honoring religious or cultural traditions. Interests defined as the accumulation of wealth and power are certainly important, but only play a part in what is a far richer and more complex human drama. Learning to recognize our own interests and the interests of others with whom we interact -- and the values and resources that shape them -- is critical to understanding the dynamics that drive our social world. © Marshall Ganz, Kennedy School, 2006 QUESTIONS Actors, Values and Interests 1. What are your main interests in coming to Harvard, enrolling in this class and doing your project? 2. Draw a map of your project that identifies the main actors involved. Pay particular attention to your constituency. 3. What are the interests of your constituency? How do you know? 4. Where do your interests and the interests of your constituency overlap? 21 Actors, Resources, and Power (Week 4) Last week we identified actors who play a part in the world we are trying to "map" and their interests. This week we focus on the power relationships derived from differences in the resources actors can mobilize on behalf of their interests. Resources We mobilize resources on behalf of our interests. A resource is anything we can use to achieve something else. As shown in Power: Chart #1, natural resources are those we more or less came into the world with: our bodies, our minds, our spirit, our time, and our talents. Acquired resources are distributed far less widely – land, skills, information, money, equipment, status. The fact that some resources are scarcer than others and less equally distributed influences whose interests get served. Different kinds of resources also behave in different ways. Albert Hirschman observed that some resources grow as they are used while others diminish with use.17 Resources that grow with use – like relationships, commitment, understanding -- he called “moral” resources, while those that diminish with use -- money, materials -- he called “economic" resources. What kinds of resources did the colonists use in their boycotts and their tea parties? 17 Albert O. Hirschman, (1984), “Against Parsimony: Three Easy Ways of Complicating Some Categories of Economic Discourse”, American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings, 93. 22 Power: Chart #1 What does understanding actors, interests and resources have to do with organizing? We live in a world of competition and collaboration with others. As shown in Power: Chart #2 some interests are shared, some are different, and some are in conflict. Many resources are limited and access to them is often extremely unequal. The scarcer the resources we need to mobilize on behalf of our interests - and the more skewed their distribution - the more likely we are to find ourselves in conflict with others. Conflicts of interest are sometimes obvious. We may want to keep our job to support our family and send our children to school, but our employer may want to lay us off to move the plant to another place where production costs less. Sometimes conflicts are not so obvious. Allocating the funds for better public schools may require raising the taxes of those paying to send their children to private schools. Keeping kids off drugs may threaten the interests of dealers who rely on getting them onto drugs. Recruiting kids for nonviolent conflict resolution may threaten gangs who are recruiting them for something else. Who wins when there is a conflict of interest? Why? 23 Power: Chart #2 Common interests are not always obvious either. Even when they are obvious, as Jack Walker points out, we don’t always act on them.18 For example, in the fight over the health care system a few years ago, most Americans told pollsters they had a "common interest" in health care reform. But the insurance industry had an interest in stopping health care reform. They mobilized far more effectively than “the public”. This is evidence of the wellknown "collective action problem”. All things being equal, those with narrow interests and lots of resources find it easier to mobilize than those with broad interests and fewer resources. How do you think the interests of your constituency can be addressed? Why haven’t they been? Is it a collaboration problem - one we could solve if enough people realized they had a common interest in pooling their resources in trying to solve it? Or is it a conflict of interest problem - one we 18 Jack L. Walker, (1991), Mobilizing Interest Groups in America. (Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan Press). 24 can solve only if the persons whose interests aren’t heard find the means to assert those interests more effectively? Considering your constituency, does its members have a “moral” problem – a character weaknesses to be reformed by moral exhortation? Do they have an educational problem – one that could be solved with better teaching? Or do they have a “relational” problem – one that could be solved if they just developed more “social capital”? Consider the institutional world within which these individuals live. Is the problem “technological” – one we could solve with the expertise to manage institutional resources more efficiently or design better procedures? Is it “informational” – a problem we can solve by using research and advocacy skills to communicate with those who have the resources to solve the problem? However, if it is a problem of resources, why should those whom the current distribution favors redistribute them? Power So what does "power" have to do with all this? Power is about the interaction among actors in terms of interests and resources. Dr. King defined power as the “ability to achieve purpose”. “Whether it is good or bad”, he said, “depends on the purpose”. In Spanish the word for power is “poder” to be able to, to have the capacity to. So if power is simply a way to describe capacity, why, as Alinsky asks, is it the “p-word” - something we don’t like to admit we want, to acknowledge others have, to concede matters to us or even to talk about? Richard Emerson argues that power is not a thing, an attribute, a quality, a characteristic or a trait -- it is a relationship.19 Sometimes we have ac19 R. Emerson, (1962), "Power-Dependence Relations”. American Sociological Review, 27: 31-41. 25 cess to all the resources we need to address our interests, but more often than not we may need access to another’s resources, just as they may need access to ours. This can create an opportunity for exchange: I trade resources that I have that the other person needs to address their interests, for resources they have that I need to address my own. For example, my friend and I want to go to the movies and he has a car, but no money for gas, while I have money for gas, but no car. By entering into exchange we enhance the “power” we are able to exercise “with” each other. We have created greater capacity to address our shared interests. Bernard Loomer and Jean Baker Miller describe this as “power to” or interdependency.20 In this setting, mobilizing power is not "zero-sum". New immigrants, for example, may pool their savings in a credit union to make low interest loans available to its members -- increasing their financial power. "Power with” is the basis of the benefits of social cooperation and our capacity to accomplish together what we cannot accomplish alone. Power: Chart #3 20 Jean Baker Miller, Women’s Growth in Connection: Writings from the Stone Center, Chapter 11, “Women and Power”, (pp.197-205). Bernard M. Loomer (1976), "Two Kinds of Power”, The D.R. Sharpe Lecture on Social Ethics, October 29, 1975”. Criterion 15(1): 11-29. 26 But what if four of us want to go to the movies and my friend’s car only has room for 2 passengers. One solution would be that we draw straws to see who gets to go and who doesn’t, and those who get to go, each contribute half of the gas. But what if my friend decides that he has an interest not only in going to the movies, but also in making some money from the deal? It turns out that he has control over one resource, his car, that we all need, but no one of us controls the resources he needs, gas money. This gives imbalance of need – or dependency – gives him the leverage to exercise power “over” us by offering the two spots in the car to the highest bidders, regardless of how much the gas costs. But we still have an option, depending on how badly he wants to go to the movies. All four of us can get together and agree that we will only pay the cost of the gas and not a penny more. If we wants to go badly enough, then we will have restored balance to the situation, turning it back into one of power “with”. In other words, Actor A can exercise power over Actor B when Actor A holds resources in which Actor B is interested more than Actor B holds resources in which Actor A is interested. Depending on the degree of the imbalance, Actor A can extract so many resources from Actor B that s/he will have to sacrifice other interests to address this one – accepting a job without health insurance, for example, in order to have any job at all. The scarcer the resources I hold and the more vital they are to your interests, the greater my power to access other resources you may hold. Similarly, the more abundant the resources I and other actors hold – and the less vital they are to your interests - the less power I have to gain access to your resources. So as configurations of interests and resources change, so do power relationships. We often describe power used in this way as exercising “power over” another. I create a dependency on me that I can then use to dominate the 27 other. For example, an employer who controls most of the opportunities for income (resources) in a “company” town can exercise a great deal of power over individual workers. No one of whose individual resources (labor) is overly valuable to the employer. He can thus get access to their resources (labor) in exchange for far less of his resources (low wages). Thus, although the worker may “voluntarily” enter into the exchange, the benefits of the exchange will accrue mostly to the employer because he has the power advantage. But, of course, this is one reason workers form unions - to correct this kind of power imbalance. In terms of your constituency, you can uncover the power relations by asking four questions to “help track down the power": 1. What are the interests of your constituency? 2. Who holds the resources needed to address these interests? 3. What are the interests of the actors who hold these resources? 4. What resources does your constituency hold which the other actors require to address their interests? Do these questions draw your attention to anything you hadn’t noticed before? Two Kinds of Power: Collaboration and Claims Making Both kinds of power – power with and power over – come into play in organizing. In organizing based on “collaborative” strategies, we try finding ways to generate more power to achieve common interests by creating more interdependency among the actors who share those interests. Examples of such collaborative strategies include cooperative childcare, credit unions, etc. This kind of power can be used to solve problems that result from a failure to 28 mobilize around common interests. On the other hand, organizing based on “claims making” strategies, necessary where real conflicts of interest exist, requires finding ways to generate the power to alter relations of dependency and domination. If workers combine their resources in a union they may be able to balance their individual dependency on their employer with his dependency on their labor as a whole. This way a dependent “power over” relationship can be turned into an interdependent “power to” relationship. How did the colonists do this? What were the resources they mobilized? What interests did they challenge? A key to successful organizing is understanding that generating the power to successfully challenge relations of dependency and domination (power over) may require generating lots of interdependency (power to) first. Many unions, for example, began with death benefit societies, sickness funds, credit unions -- ways to create “power to” based on interdependency among members of the constituency. How had the colonists done this before they challenged the English? It is also important to realize that many efforts that begin generating “power to” wind up challenging “power over” as the conflicts of interest that were not apparent begin to surface. The strongest opposition to a recent effort to create a community credit union in New York came from some actors no one had considered -- the loan sharks and their political allies. Three Faces of Power Why are conflicts of interest not always apparent? John Gaventa, citing Steven Lukes, explains that power operates on multiple levels, as illustrated in Power: Chart #3.21 The first “face” of power is the visible face and can be 21 J. Gaventa, (1982), Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. (Champaign, IL, University of Illinois Press). 29 detected by observing who wins among decision makers faced with choices as to how to allocate resources. Attend a board meeting, city council meeting, legislative session, or corporate board meeting and you will see one side win and another side lose - giving you a pretty clear indication of who exercises power and who doesn’t. But there’s more to it than that. Who decides what gets on the agenda to be decided? And who decides who sits at the table making decisions? Lukes calls deciding what gets on the agenda and who sits at the table the second “face” of power. It can be observed when there are groups clamoring to get issues on the agenda, but can’t get past the “gatekeeper” -- the situation that African Americans faced during many years of apparent “racial harmony” before the civil rights movement. There was no lack of groups trying to bring racial issues before Congress, but these issues rarely got to the point of congressional debate because those controlling the agenda kept them off the floor. The third “face” of power is harder to detect. Sometimes the power relations that shape our world are so deeply embedded that we just “take them for granted”. Before the women’s movement, for example, many people claimed that job discrimination against women was "not an issue”. Women’s interests were not being voted down in Congress (there were almost no women in Congress) and women’s groups were not picketing outside, unable to place their issue on the agenda. Yet women occupied subordinate positions in most spheres of public life. Was that because they were “content” with this situation? Perhaps. But sometimes, although people would like things to be different, they simply can’t imagine that they could be -enough, at least, to take the risks to make them so. To detect the power relations at work in a situation like this, Lukes says, you have to look much deeper - beyond the question of who decides or who gets on the agenda, and 30 focus on identifying who benefits and who loses in the allocation of valued resources. If you then ask why the losers generally lose and the winners generally win, you may discover the power disparity at work. (This can be tricky because the winners always claim they "deserve" to win while the losers "deserve" to lose, and sometimes they convince the losers). From this perspective, take another look at your project and ask, “What are the sources of the problems your constituency faces?” Why don't your constituents have the resources they need to act on their interests? Did someone decide not to allocate the resources, as in voting down a schoolfunding proposal? Were the concerns of those with similar interests kept off the agenda? Or do people just assume that this is how things are, so it is wise to make the best of themes legitimated? Ask Luke's’ questions to see if you detect conflicts of interest at work that are not readily observable. A couple of years ago, one Sociology 96 student asked why so many Harvard students do public service, but abandon it in their professional lives. The most common explanation was that her generation just “doesn’t care”. She noticed that despite a very elaborate recruiting festival each fall for investment banks and consulting firms, there was virtually no recruiting for careers in public service. She thought this was an example of the third face of power and organized a "careers and social responsibility" conference in response. What do you think? 31 Power: Chart #4 Power and Right So what about “power” and “right”? What is the relationship between the two? This is the question Thucydides wants us to consider with his account of the Melian debate. Is being “right” enough? Is insisting on one’s “rightness” always responsible? What’s the relationship between being “powerful” and being “right”? What do you think? Conclusion Organized power begins with a commitment by the first person who wants to make an organization happen. Without this commitment, there are no resources with which to begin generating power. Commitment is observable as action - and we only act when we take the responsibility to do so. 32 The work of organizers and others who want to bring about effective civic action, then, begins with their acceptance of responsibility and willingness to challenge others to do the same. This discussion should also clarify why developing common interests is so important - it is the basis of the relationships, shared understandings, and interdependent actions that endow an organized effort with the power it needs to act effectively. Understanding why people need to organize is about understanding their problems. Understanding why people choose to organize, however, is about finding solutions -- and finding solutions requires creating the power to make them succeed. © Marshall Ganz, Kennedy School, 2006 QUESTIONS Actors, Resources and Power 1. Use these four questions to help you track down the power: a. What are the INTERESTS of your constituency? b. Who has the RESOURCES needed to address these INTERESTS? c. What are the INTERESTS of those who have the RESOURCES? d. What RESOURCES does the constituency have which could affect these INTERESTS? 2. What is the relationship between “might and right” or “power and principle” in your project? 3. What have you observed about the three faces of power in your project? Is there anything that you or others can do to reveal them? 33 Leadership (Week 5) Introduction We have been discussing the social setting within which people organize: who are the actors and what are their interests, their resources, and their power to act on their interests. Sometimes people gain the “power to” mobilize resources they need by developing greater interdependence around common interests and shared resources (collaboration). In other cases, people challenge the “power over” them of others who deny them needed resources (claims making). In either case, the first step toward problem solving is to engage people with one another to discern their common interests and develop the capacity to act on them. This is what leaders do. And that's why organizers focus on identifying, recruiting, and developing leaders. What Leaders Do Who is a leader? Many of us call to mind historic figures like Dr. Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Jane Addams, Robert Kennedy or President Reagan. In reality, we find leaders everywhere - linking together networks through which we work to achieve common purposes. In every community, church, classroom, and organization hundreds of people are doing the work of leadership without which these efforts would not survive. So what do leaders do that makes them leaders? Leaders accept the responsibility for enabling others to achieve their purposes in an uncertain world. Leaders choose to accept this responsibility. The responsibility they accept is for engaging with others, their constituency. The challenge they accept is one of enabling their constituency to define and achieve desired 34 goals. When we know exactly what to do, when there are no surprises, no new challenges to face, and we’re following a routine, what need do we have of leadership? It’s when we enter the domain where the rules don’t quite work, where we don’t know which rules apply, where we’re trying to do something that hasn’t been done before – or that we haven’t done before that’s when leadership enters the picture. So what is it exactly that leaders do to earn leadership? How do they “enable” others to engage with uncertainty successfully? What is the work they do? And why is it so important? Most of us have had lots of experience in “disorganizations”, as shown in Leadership: Chart #1. What are they like? • They are divided. Factions and divisions fragment the organization and sap it of its resources. • They are confused. Each person has a different story about what’s going on. There is a lot of gossip, but not very much good information. • They are passive. Most “members” do very little so one or two people do most of the work. • They are reactive. They are always trying to respond to some unanticipated new development. • They are inactive. No one comes to meetings. No one shows up for activities. 35 • And they drift. There is little purposefulness to meetings, actions, or decisions as things “drift” from one meeting to the next. Being part of a disorganization can be pretty discouraging, demotivating, and disengaging. On the other hand, some of us may have had experience with organizations that really work. • They are united. They have learned to manage their differences well enough that they can unite to accomplish the purposes for which they were formed. Differences are openly debated, discussed, and resolved. • They share understanding. There is a widely shared understanding of what’s going on, what the challenges are, what the program is and why what is being done had to be done. • People participate. Lots of people in the organization are active - not just going to meetings, but also getting the work of the organization done. • They take initiative. Rather than reacting to whatever happens in their environment, they are proactive in their environment. • They act. People do the work they must to make things happen. • They share a sense of purpose. There is purposefulness about meetings, actions, and decisions and a sense of forward momentum as work gets done. 36 So what makes the difference? Why are some groups disorganizations and other groups organizations? It is the quality of the work that leaders get done within them that makes groups work. • Leaders turn division into solidarity by building, maintaining, and developing relationships among those who form the organization. • Leaders turn confusion into understanding by facilitating interpretation of what is going on in the work of the organization. • Leaders turn passivity into participation by motivating - inspiring people to commit to the action required to accomplish the group's goals. • Leaders turn reaction into initiative by strategizing – engaging others in thinking through how the organization can use its resources to achieve its goals. • Leaders challenge inaction by mobilizing people to specific actions that turn their resources into the means by which they can achieve their goals. • Leaders transform drift into purpose by accepting responsibility for doing the leadership work necessary for the group to succeed. Leaders challenge others to accept their responsibility as well. In each of the upcoming sessions, we will look at how leadership is exercised as relationship building, motivation, strategy, and action. 37 Leadership: Charts #1, 2, 3 Leadership as Relationship Although we will discuss relationships in more depth next week, what is particular about the relationship among leaders and their constituents? James McGregor Burns argues leadership can be understood as a relationship that emerges from repeated “exchanges” or “transactions” between leaders and followers or constituents.22 Leaders provide resources that constituents need to address their interests and constituents provide resources that leaders need to address their interests in turn. (Leadership: Chart #5) These relationships are not limited to a single leader and a single “follower”, but include relationships between a leader and a team, a group, a community or a constituency whom the leader enables to work effectively together. What do we exchange in this kind of relationship? Constituents may get a sense of empowerment, access to resources, help solving a problem, etc. Leaders may get the same things - and they get something that is worth accepting the responsibilities that come with leadership. Dr. King de- 22 38 J. M. Burns (1978). Leadership. (New York, Harper and Row). scribes this as the “drum major instinct” - a desire to be first, to be recognized, and even to be praised. As much as we may not want to admit it, this might sound familiar. Rather than condemn it - it is, after all, part of us - Dr. King argues it can be a good thing, depending on what we do to earn the recognition we seek. He quotes Jesus as saying to James and John, “if you want to be my disciples you not only “can” be first, you must be first - first in love and first in service”.23 Based on this view of leadership, then, who makes leaders? Can they be self-appointed? Can I decide one day that I am a leader? Or do I earn leadership by entering into relationship with those who can make me a leader - my constituents? This makes it easy to recognize leaders. There is one simple test. Do they have followers? Fine speeches, a wonderful appearance, lovely awards and excellent work aside - no constituency, no leaders. Leadership: Chart #4 23 Martin Luther King, J., (1986 (1991)), The Drum-Major Instinct (4 February 1968). A Testament of Hope: The essential writings and speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., (New York, HarperCollins) 259-267. 39 Leadership and Structure Many of us may not want to think of ourselves as followers or as leaders for that matter. Often we are told, especially in elite institutions, that we are all leaders...or we should be. Leadership is highly praised, but no one says anything about being a good constituent, collaborator…or citizen. But organizations that depend on collective action can be effective only if people accept both leadership and followership roles. Leading and following are not expressions of who we “are” but of what we “do” - in a specific meeting, committee, project, organization, or institution. We may play a leadership role with respect to one project and a followership role with respect to another. What are the differences in those roles? Most importantly, leaders accept responsibility for the “whole” – the whole team, the whole project, the whole job - while a team member, constituent, or collaborator accept responsibility for a “part” of the whole. Leaders accept responsibility for seeing to the work that a group must do to work together successfully. Doing the work that enables group efforts to succeed is how leaders earn their leadership. On the other hand, some of us question the whole concept of leadership. Shouldn’t everyone be considered a leader? Is leadership really necessary? Isn’t it repressively hierarchical? Why do we need this kind of structure at all? Can’t we just “come together”? In her Tyranny of Structurelessness, feminist sociologist Jo Freeman argues that organization (or collaboration of any kind) simply doesn't work if we don’t have ways to assign clear responsibilities and hold ourselves ac- 40 countable for fulfilling them.24 The idea of a structureless group, she writes, “becomes a smokescreen for the strong or the lucky to establish unquestioned hegemony over others”. And, “for everyone to have the opportunity to be involved in a given group and to participate in its activities the structure must be explicit, not implicit”.25 Although leadership can be exercised by individuals working in a team - a leadership team can bring complementary strengths to bear on solving a problem - the responsibility of seeing to the team itself still has to rest somewhere. And effective leadership doesn’t imply domination. Effective leaders facilitate interdependence and collaboration to create more “power to”, based on the interests of all parties. Domination is the exercise of “power over”, a relationship that meets interests of the “power wielder” at the expense of everyone else. Leadership can turn into domination if we fail to hold it accountable. Leadership and Authority We are also wise to distinguish “authority” from “leadership”. Authority is a “legitimacy” of command usually attached to specific social positions, offices, or roles - legitimacy supported by cultural beliefs as well as coercive resources. An organization is a way to formalize authority relations among the participants – people’s rights and their obligations. Bureaucracies structure authority as a set of rules according to which managers direct subordinates. Markets structure authority as a set of rules according to which entrepreneurs can design incentives for persons to make enforceable choices 24 J. Freeman, (1970), "The Tyranny of Structurelessness”. Women's liberation movement, USA. 25 Ibid. 41 based on their individual economic resources. Civic associations – organizations we are focusing on in this course – usually structure authority democratically in that leaders are accountable to the constituents whom they serve. Exercising leadership in a civic context can require more skill than the other settings because it depends more on persuasion than on command. Most of us have been in situations in which those with authority have not earned their leadership, but try to compel cooperation based solely on their legitimacy or "power over". In these circumstances, to what extent do we think our interests are acknowledged and addressed? How does this affect our motivation and performance? Cultures have institutionalized beliefs about who is “authorized” to lead and who isn’t that can bar certain “kinds” of people from the opportunity to earn leadership. Leaders who develop under these conditions constitute a challenge to conventional ideas of authority. Authority can also be a resource a person can draw upon to earn their leadership. And sometimes leaders find authority has been conferred upon them as a result of their having earned their leadership. But leadership and authority is not the same thing. Finally, we can distinguish leaders from “activists”. Hard working activists show up every day to staff the phone bank, pass out leaflets, and put up posters, and make critical contributions to the work of any volunteer organization. This is not the same, however, as engaging others in doing the work of the organization. Leadership is exercised through relational work. Leadership Development So if leaders are so important to organizations, how can organizations make sure they have the leaders needed to accomplish its mission? Organ42 ized people are empowered to make lots of things happen - especially new organizations learning to do new things - not by the efficiency of their systems, but by the depth of their leadership capacity. This is particularly true of civic associations that bring people together, facilitate their understanding of one another, and enable them to act together on common interests. Take a look at the “leadership quotient” of your organization. How many leaders do you see doing leadership work? Is there one “leader” with everyone else linked to that leader like spokes to the hub of a wheel? Or are there lots of “leaders” linked with each other and with other members, multiple centers of coordination, inspiration and action. Are some people “followers” in relation to some “leaders” but “leaders” in relation to other “followers”? Or are some people always “leaders” and others always “followers”? Is it "leadership rich" or is it "leadership poor"? Leadership: Chart #5 43 Giving Up Control to Build Power So why aren’t “leadership rich” organizations an everyday thing? Why is it that so often we wind up the dot in the middle of all the arrows? What does it take to develop a “leadership rich” organization? It’s not a new problem. As recounted in Exodus, Moses required the intervention of his fatherin-law Jethro, who had his own interest in the matter to begin getting the picture.26 He was trying to do it all himself, but why? Because he was hungry for the power? Because he needed to keep himself busy? A more likely explanation is that, like many of us, he wanted it done right, and he thought that meant that he had to do it himself. But as long as he was trying to do it all himself, it couldn’t be done well, much would not get done at all. The belief that holding onto all the control would ensure all was done well was an illusion. So Jethro offered him a way out. Find the courage to let go of some of the control and risk letting others share in the responsibility for leading. But not just anyone – he urged him to find people with leadership potential, people who were “capable, God-fearing, and honest”. Far more fundamental than how we structure our organization, what kind of training programs we have, and what kind of awards banquets we hold is coming to terms with this fundamental question: are we willing, and able, to let go of enough control to let others lead? Can we let go of enough control to allow our organization to build the power that can only be achieved by letting it grow leadership rich? And if we are ready, how do we make it work? 26 44 The Bible, Exodus 18. Leadership: Chart #6 Leadership Development Cycle: Identify, Recruit, Develop Leadership development work occurs as a cycle, as shown in Chart #6: identifying potential leaders (opportunities for them to emerge), recruiting them into leadership positions (opportunities for leadership to be earned), and creating opportunities for them to develop their capacity (opportunities for leaders to grow) on an ongoing basis. It requires learning how to delegate - and mean it; creating a supportive organizational structure; and providing coaching. Identifying leaders requires looking for them. Who are people with followers? Who brings others to the meetings? Who encourages others to participate? Who attracts others to work with them? Who do other people tell 45 you to “look for?" Alinsky writes about community networks knit together by “native” leaders - people who take the responsibility for helping a community do its work out of their homes, small businesses, neighborhood hangouts, etc. They can be found coaching athletic teams, organizing little leagues, serving in their churches, and surfacing in other informal “schools” of leadership. Where would you look for these kinds of leaders around here? Although leading is a matter of “doing” and not “being” – and people do leadership work in different ways - there are some clues you may want to attend to, especially when looking for people that will make good organizers. It is hard for a person who has not learned to be a good listener to become a good organizer. You have to understand the interests of your constituency if you are to help them act on those interests. Listening means learning to attend to feelings - empathy - as well as to ideas because the way we feel about things affects our actions more than what we think about them. Curiosity helps us see the novel as interesting rather than threatening, enabling us to learn how to face new challenges that are always a part of organizational life. A good imagination helps because strategizing is a matter of imagining different futures and possible ways to get to them. A sense of humor helps you from taking yourself and your troubles too seriously and helps keep things in perspective. A healthy ego is very important. Arrogance and a wish to dominate others are usually signs of a weak ego constantly in need of reassurance. Leadership also requires courage - the willingness to take risks, make choices, and accept the consequences. Recruiting leaders requires giving people an opportunity to earn leadership. Since followers create leaders, they can’t appoint themselves and you can’t appoint them. What you can do is create opportunities for people to accept the responsibilities of leadership and support them in learning how to fulfill these responsibilities. If you have to get the word out for a meeting, 46 you can get three of your friends to help you pass out leaflets in the Yard one day or you can find one or two people in each House who will take responsibility for recruiting 5 people from their House to attend. They earn their leadership by bringing the people to the meeting. What other ways can you think of that you can give people the opportunity to earn leadership? No matter how careful you are, leadership development requires coming to terms with the fact that it entails risk. Risk small failures early in the life of a project in order to avoid big failures later on. If you take the risks required to learn to delegate, you will learn how to do it and you will learn who "comes through" and who doesn't. It is important to learn this with a small meeting at stake and not the monster rally of 5000 at which only 50 people show up. One reason to set up quantifiable goals, regular reports, and ongoing evaluation is to detect early failure and success so they become "learning opportunities" for everyone. "So, Mary, why did that work so well?" "So, Sam, what happened there? What could you have done differently?" Don't assume everyone is going to do everything right from the very beginning because it never happens. Also, it is often not completely clear what the "right" way is at the beginning of a project. Think about how to turn this fact to your advantage. Where can you get the courage to take the risk of letting other people share in the responsibility for outcomes you care about? We only develop good judgment about whom to select by taking risks, making choices, experiencing success and failures, and learning from this experience - and we will still be surprised. On the other hand, the more experienced we are the better judgment we can begin to develop. There is no "rule book" to go to on this, but if you are afraid to risk making choices, you never learn to make good choices. Here are some questions you might ask yourself. How do you select to whom to delegate? How do you know who the 47 right person is? How can you find out ahead of time? How do you know when a person is ready for a big job? Are you selecting them because they are easily available or because they are the right people for the job? Are you selecting them because they already know what to do because you have worked together before or because they "look as if they can learn what to do" with some good coaching? Or did you select them because you "heard" they were good? Where did you hear that? Who told you? Should you believe them? How do you know? Developing leaders requires structuring the work of the organization so it affords as many people as possible the opportunity to learn to lead delegation. Distributing the leaflets through House Committees, for example, shares the responsibility for engaging others with many people. It is true organizing the work in this way can be risky. You may delegate to the wrong people; they may let you down; etc. But as Moses learned from Jethro, if you fear delegating, the strength of the community is stifled and can never grow. But you can do things to increase the chances of success. Leadership training sessions help clarify what is expected of leaders in your organization, give people the confidence to accept leadership responsibilities, and express the value your organization places on leadership development. Developing leaders is not about assigning tasks, but offering responsibility. It is different to ask: “would you make these 50 phone calls telling people about the meeting?” versus “would you take responsibility for getting 10 people to come to the meeting? You will? Great! Here’s some things that may help you contact them and get them there -- a list of names and phone numbers of people who said they were interested, 100 leaflets, some posters, and some sign-up sheets you could use to get commits”. Do you see the difference? With the “task”, the person can become a kind of yo-yo: go do this, come back for what’s next, go do that, come back for what’s 48 next. They are “helping” you with your responsibility. With a “responsibility”, the person takes it and runs with it, and you can help them meet “their” responsibility. But when looking for someone to take responsibility, don't make the responsibility easier, and easier, and easier…until there’s nothing left. The challenge is in learning to motivate people to accept the level of responsibility needed to get the job done. And when a person has accepted responsibility, the motivation work continues. Keeping others motivated, keeping yourself motivated, and getting the work done go together. All are based on real accountability, lots of coaching, and lots of recognition of success. Responsibility is only real, however, if the person is clearly accountable for the responsibility he or she accepted. Accountability should be regular, specific, and timely. The point of accountability is not to catch someone to punish them, but to learn what kind of results they are getting so everyone can learn from them. If someone is having trouble, we need to learn why so we can figure out what to do about it. If someone is being successful, we need to learn why so we can try the same thing in other places. Without accountability the most important learning we can do in the course of a campaign - systematic reflection on our own experience - is impossible. You cannot expect a person to take responsibility without authority. If you want someone to take the responsibility to get 10 people to a meeting, hold them accountable, provide training, offer support - but give them the authority to do what they’ve been asked to do. If you see or hear of them making a mistake - or think you can do it better - this means going directly to them, not around them or taking care of it for them. It is really a matter of basic respect. Finally, as Hackman shows, you can provide “coaching” that helps new leaders strategize about their responsibilities and encourages them as they 49 deal with difficult situations.27 Once a person accepts responsibility, it is in your interest to offer her as much support as she wants to ensure her success. The challenge is learning to offer support without taking back the responsibility. “Oh, you’ll get the ten people to come? Great! Let’s sit down for a few minutes and “role play” just what you’re going to say to them”. Or “give me a call to tell me how it's going - or if you run into problems”. A regular coaching session means you want to meet not because you think they are in trouble, but because you are interested in their work. These sessions can be very useful for learning what's really going on out there as well. And coaching is, of course, one of the best ways to make mentoring real. Leadership Team or "Lone Ranger" The most successful organizers are those who form a leadership team with whom to work early on in their campaign. Although it can be a mistake to recruit people to act as an "organizing committee" too early - especially if you are not careful to recruit people drawn from the constituency whom that community views as leaders or, at least, potential leaders - organizers more often err in delaying too long. The sooner you have a team of people with whom to work, the sooner the "I" of the organizer becomes the "we" of the new organization. Once you have formed a leadership team you can more easily establish a rhythm of regular meetings, clear decisions and visible accountability that will help make things actually happen. You don't build an organization of 500 people by recruiting them all yourself. You build it by finding people willing and able to commit to help building it with you. If you don't have a leadership team working with you by midterm, it’s time to look very closely at why. 27 J. R. Hackman and R. E. Walton, (1986), “Leading Groups in Organizations”. Designing Effective Work Groups. P. S. Goodman. (San Francisco, Jossey-Bass), 72-119. 50 Conclusion Although identifying, recruiting and developing leaders is critical to the capacity - or power - of most organizations, it is the particular focus of organizers whose work is to be leaders of leaders. The primary responsibility of an organizer is to develop the leadership capacities of others and, in this way, of the organizations through which their constituents act on their common interests. © Marshall Ganz, Kennedy School, 2006 Helpful Hint #2 51 QUESTIONS Leadership 1. Have you developed a leadership team? If yes, how are you exercising leadership within this team? If no, what is your leadership role within your project? 2. Who else exercises leadership in your project/organization? How do you know they are leaders? How do they exercise leadership? How do they earn leadership? 3. What kind of organizational structures, procedures, or programs have contributed to the development of the leaders? Who put them in place? How well do they work? 4. Are you delegating leadership? What is being delegating to whom? What have you found to be the challenges of delegating leadership? The rewards? 5. Do you, or others in your project/organization, have conscious strategies for identifying, recruiting and developing leadership? What are they? 52 Relationships (Week 6) We have looked at the setting within which organizing unfolds -- power relations among actors. And we have looked at how leaders can alter power relations by bringing people together to act on their common interests. Organizers do this by weaving three threads together to form new organizations: relationships, interpretation, and action. This week we look at relationships. What Are Relationships? How many of you have ever had a relationship? The fact is, of course, that relationship building is a part of our daily lives, something we are all “experts” on. While true, this fact points to a challenge in learning organizing. Because organizing is about working with people, we revisit many of our day to day activities, such as meeting new people, but from an analytic perspective: what’s really going on here, why does this work better than that, how can we become more strategically intentional about the relationships we form and can how we best go about forming them? Relationships: Chart #1 53 One way to look at relationships is as exchanges illustrated in Relationships: Chart #1. We each have interests and resources. Our interests are diverse, rooted in distinct domains: work, family, faith, recreation, public life, etc. And so are our resources: skills, time, experience, wealth, etc. Because we live in an interdependent world, most of us cannot address our interests without drawing upon the resources of others, just as others require our resources to address their interests. This motivates the “exchange” of interests and resources at the center of any relationship.28 This also makes the point that relationships are as much about difference as about commonality – because difference is what fuels the exchanges that give the relationship purpose. But a relationship is more than an exchange. A relationship implies a future and assumes a past. A conversation over coffee contributes to a relationship only if there are more conversations. The moment of truth comes at the end of the conversation when one of you, pulling out your schedule, may suggest that you get together again and the other has to decide whether to pull out their schedule as well. If each of you commits some portion of your time – to further conversation, you have the beginning of a relationship. If not, you don’t. It is that conscious choice, the commitment of your most precious resource, your time, that gives the relationship life, a future. So relationships don’t just “happen” – they grow out of a series of choices we make to commit resources to them, sustain them, and, at times, repair them. This commitment to a shared future - and the consequences of a shared past transforms an exchange into a relationship. Relationships have another dimension as well because we are more than the sum of our interests, resources, and commitments. Like our rela- 54 tionships, we have a past, live in the present, and anticipate a future. How do you respond if someone asks “who are you?” Most of us are puzzled at first because we are many things and don’t understand what the other person wants to know. Then we usually begin listing categories to which we belong – I’m a student, I’m a man, I’m a woman, I’m a runner, etc. However, many categories we list, however, we are still likely to find others in exactly the same box. So . . . who are YOU? What is it that is utterly unique about each of us? It is not the categories that describe us but the journey we have made – and are making. And the way we can recount this journey is as a story, our story, as illustrated in Relationships: Chart #2. And it is this story we tell about our journey that defines who we are, our unique identity. Relationships: Chart #2 So does that mean that every time someone asks us who we are we pull out a kind of chronology in which we go back to our grandparents, parents, our first birthday party, etc.? No. Because that’s not a story – it’s a list. Our story takes shape about the choice points that have shaped our lives – 28 P. Blau, (1964), Exchange and Power in Social Life. (New York, Wiley). 55 challenges we, or our parents, faced; how we chose to handle those challenges; and what we learned as a result of the outcomes. So if we want to learn the story of another – or tell our own – we focus on choice points. And what else can we communicate about ourselves by telling a story of choices we have made? What does a choice reveal? It reveals the value we place on one path over another. It is one thing to list our values, but quite another to allow others to observe our values based on real choices we have made in our lives. So a new relationship is not only an exchange of resources, not only a commitment to continue that exchange, but , because it is a choice, it is also the beginning of a new “story” – the telling of which is the result of our collaboration. Building Relationships: Creating Social Capital Relationships are beginnings, not endings. Unlike the contracts we make to protect our interests, relationships are open-ended, creating opportunity for our interests to grow, change, and develop. Our interests may change as our interaction with others reveals new interests of which we had not been aware. For example, "Hmm...Before we talked I didn't realize I really wanted to be a doctor, but now.”.. We also may discover common interests of which we were unaware. As you remember from the skills workshop, we may find shared interests in music, in movies, or in doing something about the dining hall service. Most importantly, we begin to develop an interest in the relationship itself. To the extent we hope to preserve the relationship we must do lots of work to sustain it. Just as the relationship becomes a source of new "interests”, it can also become a new source of resources. We may discover new exchanges for our individual interests and resources. "I'll help you with your problem sets if you help me with my literature essay”. Relationships may facilitate de56 velopment of common resources. "Why don't we pool our funds to hire a tutor to work with both of us?" Most importantly the relationship itself can become a resource on which we both can draw. New relationships construct new interests and new resources making them what Robert Putnam calls "social capital" - a source of "power to" which simply didn't exist before. This capacity or "social capital" explains why strongly "relational" communities are capable of collaborative action of all kinds. This emphasis on relationships, especially relationships among members, is the key building block of a civic association, a “voice” organization, distinguishing it from groups focused on providing services to the clients instead of relationship building. Relationships: Chart #3 57 How We Create Relationships How do we really create a relationship? Relationships: Chart #3 offers one way to look at this. • First, we must catch each other’s attention. If I call up a minister to set up a meeting, it will help “get his attention” if I tell him someone he knows referred me. If I’m calling a potential volunteer on the phone, it will be important for me to use their name and explain how I got it. We may also be related to a common institution. Or, across a room full of people, we may just make eye contact. • Once we have gotten each other's attention, we need to establish an interest in having a conversation. I may mention to the minister, for example, how I was told he was interested in doing something about domestic violence in his parish and that’s what I’d like his advice on. Or, I was told he is the key person from whom to get advice about what is really going on in the parish. Or, since we both happen to be taking the same class, maybe we should talk about how we can help each other. • Then comes exploration - asking and answering each other's questions, of probing for areas of common interest, of testing whether the other has anything to contribute to us, and whether we have anything to contribute to the other. The key here is learning to ask good questions, especially why a person has made the choices they made, moments that reveal values and interests that really count. Why did you go to school here rather than there? Why did you study this rather than that? Why did you decide to emigrate rather than remain at home? And as we begin learning each other’s answers to these questions, we learn more about each other, what moves us, and what we have to contribute. 58 • As a result of our exploration, we may make exchanges - not just in the future, but then and there within the conversation. We may turn out to be a good listener for someone who needs listening. We may find we are learning a great deal from our interaction with the other person. We may find we have an opportunity to offer another person some insight, support, or recognition that they find valuable. We may find we can challenge the other person in ways that may bring them new insight. We may also discover a basis for future “exchanges” -- such as going to see a movie we both want to see, deciding to come to a meeting the other has told us about, taking responsibility to help pass out some leaflets, or just deciding to have another conversation. • Finally, if we’ve determined a basis may exist for a relationship, we make a commitment to the relationship by agreeing to meet again, have coffee, come to the meeting, send emails, etc. What turns the exchange into a relationship is the commitment we make to each other and to the relationship. People often make the mistake of trying to go right to a commitment without laying a relational basis for it first. Relational Dimensions: Social Networks Although we may enter into a relationship with one other person and they with us, this is only the beginning in a broader sense. And this is why relationships are the foundation of most political work – and what Malcolm Gladwell’s account of Lois Weisberg is all about - the Chicago based peopleconnector who translates relationships into a powerful capacity to “get things done”“..29 So when we enter into a relationship with another, we become a 29 M. Gladwell, (1999), Six degrees of Lois Weisberg. The New Yorker. 52-63. 59 new link in their social network, as they do in ours. Since social networks are the threads from which society is woven, the social networks we choose to draw upon to form an organization, or use the organization to build, is the most critical strategic choice we can make. One very important distinction is between relationships with people “like us” and relationships with people “not like us” – what Gladwell, citing sociologist Mark Granovetter, calls “strong” and “weak” ties.30 By “strong” ties, he means ties with people who are “like us” -- homogeneous. By “weak” ties, he means ties with people who are “unlike us” -- heterogeneous. His insight is that strong ties may actually inhibit our capacity to organize. This is because they quickly create a closed-in, limited circle of people and resources. Lots of “weak” ties, on the other hand, may enhance our organizing capacity. This is because they open into broader networks of resources by opening the circle outward - an important way people find jobs. He shows how the fragmentation of residents of Boston’s West End into intense ethnically, religiously, familiarlly, or culturally bounded networks inhibited their ability to combine and mobilize resources to resist urban renewal. Communities with “weak” ties found it easier to collaborate with each other and to find outside sources of support. For some purposes, strong ties may be very important - especially purposes we share with people “like us”. But for purposes that are more inclusive than those suited to people “like us”, weak ties are the keys to success. Granovetter isn’t arguing “strong” ties are bad and “weak” ties are good -- just that they are very different and contribute to common efforts in different ways. Which kind of ties does your organization rely on? Does this work? 30 M. Granovetter, (1973), "The Strength of Weak Ties”. American Journal of Sociology 78(6): 1360-1380. 60 Roles Another way of thinking about relationships is as “roles” in which we perform our parts, as in social “scenarios”. As Shakespeare wrote, All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players… And one man in his time plays many parts…31 Sociologist Erving Goffman developed a powerful dramaturgical metaphor to help us understand the roles we play.32 He argues we could view our interactions as “performances”, all of which have a somewhat strategic component to them. We both “play” our parts, and at some level, are conscious of the part we are “playing”. He showed the “facework” we do when interacting with others to maintain each other’s “face” and prevent distressing embarrassment if we drop “out of role”. When relationships persist over time, we often think of the patterns of relational interaction we learn as “roles” we play in social “scenarios”. The more conscious we become of the “roles” we play in different social settings the more we can reflect on the extent to which our performance of these “roles” meets our own interests and those of others with whom we interact. Fear of “losing face” if we are rejected can make it very hard for us to ask for the kind of help we need -- as Cesar Chavez writes about when discussing his difficulty learning to ask for food.33 We also learn to play roles of 31 W. Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II, Scene 7, 139-142. 32 E. Goffman, (1956), The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. (New York, Doubleday). 33 Cesar Chavez, (1966)”,The Organizer's Tale”, Ramparts Magazine, July, (pp. 43-50). 61 deference and domination, reinforcing inequities of power through every personal interaction. An extreme example of this was in the interaction conventions of blacks and whites in the Deep South before the civil rights movement. Gendering of our public interactions can be viewed in this way as well. One way we connect the roles we play, giving meaning to them, and making them accessible to others, is through our “stories” – our narrative of where we have been, the challenges we face (and have faced), and where we hope to go. When we enter into a relationship with another, we become “actors” in each other’s stories, not only exchanging resources and making commitments, but influencing how we think of ourselves and who we want to become. Learning each other’s “stories” is a critical step in forming, maintaining, and developing relationships. Public and Private Another important distinction is between “public” and “private” roles and relationships. We maintain many “private” relationships with friends, acquaintances, etc. But when we form organizations to pursue common goals, we formalize our relationships to make our roles within the organization explicit. When our friends become officers of an organization to which we belong, there is often a tension due to the introduction of “formality” – or “publicness” - into what had been a private informal relationship. New teachers are often tense about balancing the “private” ways they relate to their friends, colleagues, and family members and the “public” way they should relate to their students, including the authority they are expected to exercise. As a result, they have to negotiate a way to interact with their students that is true both to their own way of interacting with others and to the formal public role for which they have assumed responsibility. Similar issues arise for lawyers, doctors, social workers, ministers, and organizers. They arise 62 any time we accept formal leadership roles. They require that we distinguish between the kinds of social interactions appropriate in our “private” relationships from those appropriate in our “public” relationships. Failure to make these distinctions can result in great personal cost to ourselves and to those with whom we work. This underscores how important it is that each of us has a place to go where we are not "on stage". By understanding this distinction we can be more mindful when constructing our roles in relationships. In Roots for Radicals, community organizer Ed Chambers makes the useful distinction between being liked in our private lives and being respected in our public lives: “By acting publicly in order to be liked, people invariably violate their group or organization’s self-interest, usually by failing to hold public power brokers accountable at critical moments… What people need in public life is to be respected, which is similar to, but different from, being liked. That is why it is crucial to learn to act for respect in public, to be disinterested in being liked there, to look for liking in the private realm… The most recent in the continuing series of public figures who got liking and respect mixed up inappropriately was Bill Clinton, who thought he could mix public and private with impunity, be President and just plain Bill…. Prophets, visionaries, and ordinary people who value justice and democracy can’t be too concerned about being liked in the public realm, but they must insist on being respected there”.34 34 E. T. Chambers, (2004), Roots for Radicals. (Skokie, IL, Acta Publications), 74. 63 Relational Strategies and Tactics Relationship building is central to the craft of organizing because it is within relationships that we develop new understanding of our interests and new resources to act on those interests. Within relationships we can create new direct experiences that may challenge each other’s existing “roles” and open up the possibility of new roles. We may show respect to those with little experience of being respected; we may challenge those with little experience of being challenged. Relational Strategies Most organizations employ some combination of a few basic relational recruiting strategies: recruiting individuals, networks, and organizations. Sometimes an organization is built in one way, but continues recruiting in another. Think about the advantages and disadvantages of each of these approaches in terms of your project. • One approach is to recruit individuals for an organization out of new relationships. Organizers develop relationships with each individual they hope to bring into the organization. Initial recruiting may be done at tables, street corners, sign-ups at rallies, etc. Kris Rondeau combined this approach with the network approach described below. • A second approach is to recruit networks for an organization out of old relationships. The organization is built by drawing people in through relational networks of which they are already part. New relationships are formed mainly between the organizer and the recruit, but the basic approach is to find people who can bring people in through their own pre-existing relation64 ships. This is how Cesar Chavez built the UFW. Sometimes networks are recruited from old organizations which act as incubators for a new effort. This was the role of many of the southern black churches and colleges in the civil rights movement. • A third approach is to recruit organizations for a new organization. This requires building relationships with leaders of old organizations and drawing them into a relationship with each other to make a new organization possible. There are advantages in this approach in that it makes use of organizational resources that already exist, etc. But it also requires accommodating within the new organization to meet the interests of existing organizational leaders. This was Alinsky’s approach and is that of the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization. Relational Tactics Organizations also recruit by using different relational tactics, some of which fit with certain of these strategies better than others, as shown in Relationships: Chart #4. House meetings, for example, fit with the network strategy. One-on-one meetings, on the other hand, are important for all three. It is also important to distinguish between a “lead” - someone who signed a list indicating interest - and a “recruit”. A person is not a “recruit” until a relationship has been established on the basis of which their continued involvement rests. 65 Relationships: Chart #4 • One-on-one meetings are individual meeting between an organizer or leader and collaborator or potential member. The primary purpose is to build a relationship out of which further involvement in the organization may develop. The meeting is successful if it ends with a commitment to a “next step”, which may just be another meeting. This tactic is very useful for building solid relationships among people who might not otherwise have them. Those of you who participated in the skills workshop at the beginning of the semester saw how one-on-one meeting could reveal interests we share with others that we never suspected to exist. You also found how much we can learn about each other and how well we can establish a rapport in a relatively short time. At the beginning of the semester, we had one-on-one meetings with each of you in the form of the interviews we scheduled. Kris Rondeau also made extensive use of one-on-one meetings, as do most IAF organizers, as recounted by Simmons.35 35 Ian Simmons, (1998), “On One-to-Ones”, in The Next Steps of Organizing: Putting Theory into Action, Sociology 91r Seminar, (pp. 12-15) 66 • House meetings are designed to make use of networks. For a house meeting the organizer first holds a one-on-one meeting with someone whom he or she believes may enjoy lots of relations with other members of the community. At that meeting the person is persuaded to invite a number of his or her friends over to meet the organizer and hear about the organization. If the person agrees, the organizer then coaches the person on how to be successful in getting the people there. At that meeting the organizer leads a discussion of the organizational effort or campaign and asks each of the people present to commit to holding a similar meeting in their home. In this way, one can quickly meet with a large number of people in conversational settings as well as identify among the house meeting hosts a corps of potential leaders. In the 1987 Pelosi for Congress campaign in San Francisco, our team of 6 organizers held 87 house meetings attended by 600 people in just three weeks. In addition to being asked to host another meeting, attendees were asked to volunteer on a phone bank. At the end of the house meeting drive, the 87 hosts and another 50 very active volunteers were invited to a meeting at which they were asked to become precinct leaders. In this way, four weeks into the campaign, we had recruited “proven” leaders for 110 of the 150 precincts we needed to organize to cover the entire congressional district. Each also had their own corps of volunteers with whom to work. • Emergency meetings are well suited to political campaigns or other efforts where “urgency” is very clear. In the 1987 Cranston for Senate campaign in California, we had to organize a get-out the vote campaign in 1200 precincts in the African American and Latino districts of South Central Los Angeles, East Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose and Oakland. We recruited 50 organizers responsible for recruiting 15 precinct leaders each. Since we had very little time (the whole campaign was done in 5 weeks), we got registered voter lists for each precinct that were coded as to which persons “always” voted, which one’s “occasionally” voted, and which ones “never” 67 voted. The organizers set to work calling the “always” voters in their precincts, trying to recruit them for an “emergency” meeting the same afternoon or evening at the campaign headquarters. From among those who attended the organizers recruited precinct leaders for pa...
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