Blog by Adin Becker and Kathryn Lang
We’re excited to launch a new podcast series, Leadership, Organizing, and Action, featuring Marshall Ganz. Marshall Ganz is the Rita E. Hauser Senior Lecturer in Leadership, Organizing and Civil Society at HKS and one of the world’s leading authorities on democratic organizing. Our 6-part podcast series walks you through the five key practices discussed in his book People, Power, Change: Organizing for Democratic Renewal. Each episode provides practical strategies to learn the leadership and organizing craft.
In this introductory episode, Ganz discusses his journey as an organizer, which began with his involvement in the Mississippi Summer Project in 1964. He recounts how a combination of personal experience, including his upbringing with a rabbi father, living in post-World War II Germany, and encountering the civil rights movement, led him to find his purpose in enabling others to build community and transform resources into power. Ganz underlines the importance of understanding power as a relationship between needs and resources, rather than a fixed position.
Ganz highlights five key practices of organizing: building relationships, telling public narratives, strategizing, taking action, and creating structure. He emphasizes how each practice is rooted in human capability and involves both skill and personal values. Ganz describes the importance of commitment in relationships, the role of emotion and values in storytelling, the creativity that underpins effective strategy, the need for motivational task design in action, and the benefits of collaborative leadership teams in structured efforts. Throughout the discussion, Ganz underscores the importance of learning, adaptation, and the evolution of leadership in organizing.
To learn more about Marshall Ganz’s work and the five key practices of people, power, and change, visit:
- Practicing Democracy Project: As Marshall’s faculty-led program, the Practicing Democracy Project leverages its position at a major research university and educational gathering place for leaders from around the world to engage with students, scholars and practitioners to advance democratic practice globally.
- Leading Change Network: An independent 501(c)(3) organization for a global community of organizers, practitioners, educators and researchers catalyzing change through the power of narratives, rooted in the pedagogy and practice of community organizing.
Leadership, Organizing, and Action is a 6-part podcast series highlighting the five key practices of people, power, and change. Listen to episodes 1 – 3 and stay tuned for the remaining episodes, which will be released in the next few weeks.