Shared Air

Equal and opposite reaction. That’s what I remember most about Newton’s laws from high school. It might be the most handy thing an observer of people might get from science. If not, maybe it’s what goes up must come down. Or that a motion continues until it’s interrupted by an external force…

NYT: “Community organizing has become cool,” said Marshall Ganz, who dropped out of Harvard in 1964 to join the civil rights movement in Mississippi and spent 16 years with Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. Of course, a tough economy helps attract people to professions they might not have otherwise considered, as does a crusading time when Wall Street has become a symbol of greed, arrogance and irresponsibility.

But the turnabout in popularity is still quite remarkable. Last fall, 200 people, the overwhelming majority of them in their 20s, applied for a single community organizing job at a PICO affiliate in San Diego County, said Stephanie Gut, a PICO director. The salary would be about $35,000 to $40,000, plus health benefits.

If Ganz’s name is unfamilar, know that a lot of Obama’s success and the people-powered steamroller that was his field and head office campaign owes much to the clarifying and motivational ideas of Ganz and his philosophical compadre, Saul Alinsky. Jump below for some backrgound and links to his methods and why his philosophy extends back to Aristotle’s “I don’t care what you know, until I know that you care.” The work of Ganz and Alinsky, as well as Joseph Campbell and William James are things that should be taught, but aren’t as far as I know, in Business Schools and places like VCU’s BrandCenter.

Below is just a snip of a really good Global voices, one world piece that gives concept *and* the methods of Ganz’ approach to building powerful affinty groups for change:

What is the role of narrative in mobilizing people?  … What makes social movements different from fashion and trends? They are different because they are collective and organized.They are efforts of purposive action, of mobilization, of translation power into action. They are not only about winning the game, but also about changing the rules. They are a hopeful response to conditions being intolerable. They make moral claims. Throughout history, they have been major drivers of political reform.

There is no social movement without leadership. Leadership is to accept responsibility to create conditions that will enable others to achieve purpose in the face of uncertainty. Key here is uncertainty – there is no leadership needed if things are routinized and going their way – leadership is needed when things break down.

There is the idea that social movements are about one charismatic leader that everybody follows. That is far more myth than truth. Leadership does require a critical density. Marshall believes that command and control organizations require less leadership, as opposed to what he calls commitment organizations, where distributive leadership is crucial. Social movements are models of distributive leadership. What they do? They do five tasks: 1) bring people together around shared values; 2) bring people together in the form of relational commitments – people make commitments to each other; 3) it provides structure for collaboration; 4) it provides strategies – to turn power into outcome and 5) there has to be action on the ground.

Still here? Go read the whole thing. If that floats your boat, you’ll really like this: Ganz has his ouvre of tools and methods online, hosted by the Hauser Center @ Harvard’s Kennedy School. It really does offer something for anybody involved in moving people, public and private sector. Ganz’s ideas have really helped me persuade clients that healthy Brands are bonded communities (employee/consumer/shareholder) and that the things I/they learned in business school were getting in the way of sustainably engaging and growing those communities. Look at some of the modeling and you’ll see he’s not talking about idealistic abstractions or bombthrowing anarchy…

Again, go click around, you won’t regret it.