organizing – Leading Differently

Cutting an Issue Out of a Social Problem

What is the difference between a problem and an issue?

A “social problem” is a condition that negatively affects large numbers of people created as a result of public or private policies, or through practices embedded in social structures. The scale, and complex nature of these problems make them seemingly too big to take on. What can organized groups of people seeking to create change do to address social issues such as, poverty, climate change, or racism? You need to strategically “cut” a realistically manageable and winnable issue out of the problem.

Choosing the Issue

In 1991, Midwest Academy published a very useful field manual titled, Organizing for Social Change. The book’s “Checklist for Choosing an Issue,” provides some helpful guidance for narrowing the focus of a campaign for change. The authors list these sixteen criteria for choosing an issue:

It must result in a real improvement in people’s lives.
It must give people a sense of their own power.
It must alter the relations of power.
It must be worthwhile.
It must be winnable.
It must be widely felt.
It must be deeply felt.
It must be easy to understand.
It must have a clear target.
It must have a clear time frame that works for you.
It must be non-divisive.
It must build leadership.
It must set your organization up for the next campaign.
It must have a pocketbook angle.
It must raise money.
It must be consistent with your values and vision.

Your issue should have most of these, though it may not always be important to find a pocketbook angle, or to raise money. It is probably also impossible to avoid some internal divisiveness. This is why a leader must develop some basic conflict resolution skills.

Don’t get overwhelmed by the scale of a problem. Identify small, winnable issues that will contribute to a greater goal. Your work will complement that of others doing work on related issues. Build on your successes. No problem is too big to overcome.

More Information

The Sum of a Community’s Parts

This post focuses on civic engagement and Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD). For more information on leading change through ABCD see these posts:

Asset-Focused Leadership

Asset-Focused Leadership Part II: the Importance of Associations

One of the most appealing aspects of Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) as a change strategy, is that people’s contributions to the overall effort are not ranked or graded. ABCD is not a competitive endeavor. If “asset” is defined narrowly to refer only to financial assets, then assets are a scarce resource, and solutions to the challenges we face become commodities. However, recognizing the value of assets such as diversity, relationships, social and cultural literacy, and underappreciated human ingenuity, transforms our pursuits into inspiring models of collaboration. This capacity centered approach to community building becomes a great way to ensure that a community is greater than the sum of its parts.

There is no mathematical formula that tells you when a community achieves this ‘greater than’ status. It is not marketing that makes it so. You can’t simply claim it, but it does have measurable indicators. A strong, vibrant community combines among other things, a strong sense of place, the promise of social and economic opportunity, and general agreement on quality of life measures. These are all attributes that complement people’s self-interests. People are always more likely to act where they can see a return on the investment of their time.

So how can we embark on a conscious effort to achieve such a community? How do we leverage all of these hidden assets so that individuals and groups contribute more than their usual ‘part’?

Not all of the community’s positive activity is deliberately communal, or coordinated. Many good things happen without any urging or direction. Individuals contribute to the quality of life in their community in a variety of ways. Many of these actions require very little time, and go unnoticed by most people. Someone may pick up a piece of trash laying on the ground and put it in a garbage can. They might stop a child, or a pet from running out into a street. These are all things that take seconds to do, and people do them without being asked.

Then there is the type of civic engagement that is a little more public. The realities of modern life suggest that there are far more people who will engage in short, easy positive actions because they are just that, short and easy. The longer the time commitment that is expected, and the more people are expected to be “out of their comfort zone,” the fewer the number of people will be involved. But sometimes deeper, more deliberate and focused community engagement is required in order to make a greater impact.

How then do we encourage deeper civic engagement? The simplest answer is that you identify the things that people like to do, or are good at, and find opportunities for them to do more of those things for the benefit of the community. This is one of the fundamental tenets of ABCD.

Another quick path to deeper community engagement is a friendly invitation from someone a person knows and trusts. That’s right, just ask.

There are people in communities with fairly large circles of acquaintances. They seem to know everybody. They are connectors. Their conversations often include phrases such as, “Do you know X? The two of you should meet.” These connectors, whether deliberately or not, are often creating an invitation to actions with a higher profile, and carry a greater time commitment. They might include things such as volunteering at community events, or helping to raise money for some cause. The fact is that anyone can be a connector, regardless of their perceived circle of influence. People enjoy doing things with people like, and with whom they share common interests. Just ask.

An often forgotten, but especially important strategy to make your community greater than the sum of its parts, is to look to the community’s marginalized people. Nursing home residents, homeless people, homebound people, and countless others all have knowledge, wisdom, gifts, skills and talents to contribute to a community. Usually, however, nobody bothers to speak to them, or even acknowledge their presence in the community. You don’t know what they are capable of unless you talk to them face to face. Make life more fulfilling for these residents, and you’ll see life get exponentially better for all community members.

Let’s review. What are some strategies we might use to engage residents in an effort to improve your community’s quality of life?

People will act when their self-interests are served.
People will do the things they enjoy doing. They will also do things they enjoy a little less, as long as they’re doing them with people they like being around.
People will act when someone they trust and respect asks them to act.
EVERYBODY has something to contribute to the quality of life in a community.

You don’t try to fight the man by becoming the man

“The trouble with organizing a thing is that pretty soon folks get to paying more attention to the organization than to what they’re organized for.”

– Laura Ingalls Wilder

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Organizing to create change doesn’t require creating your own little officialdom. It is too easy to lose your sense of purpose when you’re concentrating a great deal of energy on organizational charts and chains of command.

Big picture, strategy meetings don’t require pure democracy. Having every allied person vote on every little question that emerges, creates a hole that you may never climb out of. The average person committed to your cause is not a professional meeting-goer. When they do meet, they have an expectation that the next step is going to be actions that move you closer to your goal, not just closer to the next meeting.

If you are so rigidly organized that your main concern becomes creating a single group with an identical message, and speaking in one voice, then you’ll lose the creativity and the unique approaches that come from diversity. Your one voice can not tell the stories that will resonate with all people. Embrace the value of others’ experiences and wisdom.

People feel less free to discover and use their own power if they always feel like they need permission. One of the most powerful things you can do is to help people understand that they don’t need permission to do the right thing.

You don’t try to fight ‘the man’ by becoming ‘the man.’ Give up ideas of authority, and you’ll actually find more power.

One-to-One Relational Meetings

“The art of conversation is the art of hearing as well as of being heard.”
– William Hazlitt

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If you want to organize people to create change, few things are more important as one-to-one relational meetings. One-to-ones are at the heart of community organizing. They are also at the heart of leadership.

These conversations are not about converting the person, or running through a list of intrusive, personal questions. One-to-ones are about establishing a professional relationship with someone, and sharing stories as a way to understand their personal interests, motivations, and how your common interests and values might engage them to act in support of the change you are both interested in trying to create. This mix of personal, sometimes intimate knowledge leading to public, professional action holds unique value.

If I ask you to tell me a piece of your life story as part of one of these conversations, my goal is not personal friendship (though that could always happen as a result of professional familiarity). The intended outcomes of one-to-ones are:

to form a basic relationships across a community (community of place, or community of interest);
to understand common self-interests as well as a person’s passions;
To understand not only what they believe, or want, but why they hold those beliefs and desires;
and to gain insight on how that person’s unique talents and insights might be leveraged to support your common goals.

Conversation logistics and strategies

Email, or ideally phone the person you want to talk to. Introduce yourself. Explain what you are doing and how their name came up as someone you would want to speak with. Ask them for 30-45 minutes of their time. Make it clear that you are not selling anything, and that you are interested in their thoughts and ideas. Do as much homework as you can to understand what you think their interests may be — like you might if you were going to a job interview.

Arrive on time. Enter having thought about the questions you want to ask, but do not arrive with a pen and paper in hand. This isn’t a survey. You can make notes after you leave. There is no script. Listen closely. Keep the conversation relaxed. Let the other person’s interests guide your inquiry. They should do more talking than you.

Ask the person about their interest in your issue of concern. Listen for indicators of how the issue is personal to them. When they express concerns that they you also share, ask them to explain their views further, then try to build on those shared values.

As you near the end of your conversation ask about their interest in committing to a specific action. Don’t be too pushy. If they can’t commit to anything immediately, find a way to keep the door open for further exploration at a later time. If they can commit to some action, ask them how you can be of assistance. Follow up later and thank them for their commitment.

If the conversation is moving in the direction that you had hoped it would, here are some examples of the type of questions you might want to ask:

Have you been involved in this issue? If so, how?
Are there things related to this issue that you wish you knew more about?
What in your mind is an ideal outcome on this issue.
In what ways do you think you could best contribute to the effort?
Can you recommend anyone else I should talk to?

There are numerous resources online related to engaging in one-to-one conversations. Here are a few.

New York City Organizing Support Center
Shriver Center
Regional Center for Healthy Communities (video example one-on-one with introduction)
Ernesto Cortes on Relational Meetings (video)

Revealing the Invisible

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“I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.”

– Ralph Ellison

When it comes to people being invisible, there are a couple of types of invisibility to consider. Both kinds represent significant challenges in the process of trying to effect social change.

First, there are people, or groups of people that are deliberately unrecognized. They often have few financial resources, are generally of poorer health, have less social capital, and are often considered by much more privileged people, as being less important.

The second group of “invisible” people, or groups of people are deliberately hidden. These are people of wealth and influence, whose activities allow them to rig social and political systems under the radar of most people.

The deliberately unrecognized, the unheard, and the unseen, are often at the heart of changes we are trying to create. It is important to amplify their voices, and to shed light on their realities. Awareness, education, and advocacy are key strategic goals. For example, if your city doesn’t have homeless people on street corners, and in parks, officials may deny that homelessness is something they need to be concerned about. Only by hearing the stories of people who are couch hopping, sleeping under bridges, or in cars, can you reveal the true extent of your community’s lack of affordable housing.

It is important to understand that the “invisible” are not simply needy, or victims. Giving voice to the invisible serves to uncover potential strategic approaches and assets. They are the people who often know the best solutions to overcoming the challenges that they face. Any social change effort should seek to leverage people at the margins; not as sad examples, but as full partners in planning the future.

“The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.”

– Woodrow Wilson

Revealing the invisible may not only expose unfairness and inequality, but it can also uncover something on the other end of the privilege spectrum – the so-called, power behind the throne that is working in opposition to your goals. This influence is usually purchased with large amounts of money.

These influencers are usually very careful to not actually break any laws, despite the fact that their actions may be ethically abhorrent. You may never come close to matching their financial clout, but exposing their role can, however, be beneficial. This is because the money trail points to real self-interests, as opposed to those being touted in your opposition’s misleading rhetoric. In some cases, it may be possible to boycott the source of the influencer’s income, or at least send some bad publicity their way.

Ultimately, it will probably be more effective to spend more time on revealing the realities of the deliberately unrecognized, than on exposing the deliberately hidden. That is where there is more untapped power; and it is the kind of power that money can’t buy.

Leadership and the Dunning–Kruger Effect

“Useful men, who do useful things, don’t mind being treated as useless. But the useless always judge themselves as being important and hide all their incompetence behind authority.” – Paulo Coelho

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In 1999, a couple of psychologists from Cornell University, named Kruger and Dunning, published some research findings* which essentially said that there is a tendency for unskilled individuals to overestimate their own ability, and a tendency for experts to underestimate their own ability. This incorrect self-assessment of competence became known as the Dunning–Kruger Effect. When organizing to effect change, this tendency creates unique challenges.

Over-Estimators

If someone has assumed a leadership role, the failure to recognize their own lack of skill, as well as the extent of that inadequacy, is a potential recipe for disaster. This is doubly problematic as the researchers also found that over-estimators also fail to accurately gauge skill in others.

I have written previously about emotional intelligence, and how people can develop their capacity for it. Similarly, I believe that people can train themselves to more realistically assess their abilities in a variety of skills. The fact that under-performance is accompanied by tangible evidence in the end, means that there is incentive for people to seek honest, realistic self-assessment.

Under-Estimators

The real tragedy lies with the under-estimators. Undervaluing your own abilities isn’t just sad and unfortunate on a personal level. It has an impact on group morale, commitment, productivity, and ultimately, success.

One strategy to overcome this challenge would be to use appreciative inquiry, or one-to-one conversations, to map the assets of individuals. People sometimes forget about skills and talents that they have, and require others help to uncover those assets.

If you have examples of how an individual’s over-, or under-estimating their own abilities has played out in you work, please share them in the comments below.

*Kruger, Justin; Dunning, David (1999). “Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Classism is an Obstacle in Social Change Activism

Classism is differential treatment based on social class or perceived social class. Classism is the systematic oppression of subordinated class groups to advantage and strengthen the dominant class groups. It’s the systematic assignment of characteristics of worth and ability based on social class.
– classaction.org

Not long ago, I attended for the second time, a meeting that was part of an ongoing comprehensive community initiative dedicated to improving a variety of quality of life indicators in the city where I live. You may be familiar with the process. An open, public visioning event is held. Priorities are set. Planning committees develop indicators to measure success. Projects and programs are implemented. It is a well-intentioned effort.

Unfortunately, however, the vast majority of the approximately 150 people in the convention center space for this meeting, were people I like to refer as professional meeting goers. Most of those who were not in this category, were college or high school students. The professionals in the room were people whose jobs led them there. They were employed in philanthropy, social services, education, or healthcare. They were haves, whose job it was to help the have nots of the community.

Though the group was not completely homogeneous, or lacking in other types of diversity, it was clearly not an effort that sought to amplify the voices of the poor or marginalized folks in the community. Nobody was talking about real grassroots community organizing as a strategy to meet the goals expressed in their vision for a healthier, more vibrant community.

The unemployed were not in conversations about workforce development. Low income residents were not identified as assets in gaining a richer understanding of issues challenging the community. Service providers and “experts” were defining and deciding strategies. That’s a problem.

Here are a few things you can do to avoid perpetuating classism in your efforts to create change:

Personally invite low income people to participate from the beginning of your efforts. It isn’t enough to simply say that the public is invited.
Take a look at the processes that you use for things such as communication, scheduling, and direct action. Is there a privileged class bias built in? Are you including guidance from those on the margins? Are you providing opportunities for collaborative leadership?
As you plan, are you creating ‘safe spaces’ where everyone feels as though they can speak in confidence, and in complete honesty?

We have to be deliberate in reaching out to, and including people on the margins of the community. They provide perspectives that people in more privileged classes cannot know. The forgotten, and seemingly invisible people among us have insights and understanding that will inform more effective change strategies. But, we will never tap into that unique knowledge and wisdom unless we extend an invitation to join us.

Change Happens at the Center

We tend to think of change as something that happens at the margins. That’s why people use phrases like “the leading edge,” or “pushing the envelope.” If we are deliberately acting to make social change, however, that change happens at the center. Experienced community organizers know this. It’s why they spend time with people in the middle. Let me illustrate how this works.

Take any issue; polarizing or mundane. We are led to believe that there are two sides: for and against; us and them; red state blue state; you get the picture. Painting this less complex picture is easier for both zealous advocates, and lazy reporters. It makes for good drama. When it comes to change, you will rarely get the people deeply rooted in the “them” side to flip 180 degrees to the “us” side (or vice-versa).

We know for a fact that this is not a complete picture. There are many people who are, in fact, neutral. They may simply be unaware of an issue. They may be conflicted and ambivalent, or they could just be apathetic.

There are also individuals who are passive in their support for us, and people who passively support them. The people in this category fall in a continuum of varying levels of commitment as well.

The key to creating the change that you want to happen, is to spend less time where there is little return on the investment of your time — hurling verbal bombs at the folks who will never change their minds. What you want to focus on is moving people over just one position on the chart, beginning with the people who passively support your cause. The smallest of things can move pieces of the middle.

People’s personal experience guides their opinions. Their experience also defines their self-interest. If you understand this , and organize around this principle, eventually, a tipping point of sorts makes the movement toward change unstoppable.

When You’re Ready To Move From Talk To Action

“The world is changed by your example, not your opinion.”
– Paulo Coelho

Mahatma Gandhi once said that “action expresses priorities.” We can be outraged and upset about something, but unless we choose to act to change it, we are telling the rest of the world that it isn’t really that important after all. Advocacy and educating people about issues is important. It gets peoples’ attention, and may rock some boats, but advocacy alone is not enough. You need to organize.

If you have a group of people who all agree that “A” is unacceptable, and that what they really want is “Z,” you have a common vision, but there are countless paths and countless acts between that vision and realizing change. You need to organize.

Organizing can be complex. It is so dependent upon personal relationships and personal politics, that we sometimes forget about some of the other factors that are crucial in creating change.

“When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.”
– Confucius

The popular and widely-used organizing tool below is from a chapter titled “A Framework for Thinking About Systems Change” by Timothy P. Knoster, Richard A. Villa, and Jacqueline S. Thousand, in the book, Restructuring for Caring and Effective Education: Piecing the Puzzle Together . It was adapted from the work of Delores Ambrose. The matrix serves both as prescription and as a diagnostic tool when groups seeking change meet challenges in their pursuit.

Having all the pieces doesn’t mean that your work is done, that you automatically go from A to Z. They get you from A to B (then celebrate briefly, and reflect on what you learned), and then from B to C (celebrate and reflect), and so on, until you reach your long-term goal.

This chart also reinforces the importance of asset-mapping. That’s how you know if you have the required skills or resources to carry out your plans. Passionate, caring, and motivated people still need the missing pieces. Leaders find those pieces.

More on the importance of organizing to come.