Action

Salimah Samji Welcome to the fifth episode of the Leadership, Organizing and Action podcast series with Marshall Ganz. Welcome, Marshall. 

Marshall Ganz Hi. Thanks, Salimah. Good to see you. 

Salimah Samji Good to see you too. In today’s podcast, we will discuss the fourth key practice, which is Action. Marshall, let’s start with why is action important to organize? 

Marshall Ganz The way we think of action is that it is the mobilization and deployment of resources in new ways. In other words, it’s where the rubber hits the road. We can have a good story. We can have great strategy. But unless that strategy turns into actual differences on the ground, so to speak, well then it’s all theory. And so how to actually make things happen? That’s how you change the world. Not just think about it. We’ve talked about a foundation of relationships. We’ve talked about values turning into narrative. That’s the heart work. We’ve talked about turning resources into power. That’s the head work, the strategic work. And so now we get to the hands work, which is actually changing facts on the ground. It is actually creating a new reality. Whether it’s a reality in terms of votes or whether it’s in terms of people or programs or projects, but this is really where the rubber hits the road in organizing, and it’s also one of the most important things I learned that I think informs what I do today, probably more than many things, which was I was told early on that if you can’t count it, it didn’t happen. In other words, it’s not about gestures, it’s not about… All that stuff is important. But if it doesn’t turn into something that you can see, this happened, this did not happen. Well, then, you have no way to learn. Because if you can’t measure what it is you’re doing in ways that you can observe success, failure, in between, how do you learn? And one of the constants in organizing is change. You know, there’s change. And so how to engage with it and remain sustained learners. How we look at action, I think is a critical, critical piece of that. Yeah. I mean, I went through my own experiences of that. I mean, Cesar Chavez brought in Fred Ross to train us, the guy who trained him. And, you know, I was just out of Mississippi. I thought it was pretty cool. And this other farmworker organizer and I well, we didn’t exactly show up on meetings on time. We thought counting, you know, how many cards? Well, you know, it’s more or less. So Fred said Cesar wants to talk to you. And so we met with Cesar and Fred. Cesar said, look, it’s great, you know, the energy you bring to this is great. We’d love to have you working with us. But let’s just be clear. Fred’s in charge. And so if you can work with that, terrific. But if you can’t, thanks for the work and we’ll see you later. So that was an important lesson in how can I say no bullshit. In other words, you got to be real about this stuff. And unfortunately there’s a whole lot of non-reality out there. So that’s kind of the setting for, I think, appreciating what action really is about. 

Salimah Samji And how does action work in practice? What does that look like? 

Marshall Ganz Well, there’s a couple of ways to look at it. One is in terms of the motivational foundation. And the other is the dimension of commitment. And both are critical. To start with motivation. When we ask people to do things like. And in organizing it’s lots of volunteer work, then how we structure the opportunity that we’re offering makes a huge amount of difference. And it makes a big difference in how well they do the work. It makes a difference in terms of whether they come back or not. For example, you can organize a phone bank or a iPhone bank or whatever you want to call it now, and people show up, or virtually, it’s the same thing. They show up, you give them a list and you say, here, make these phone calls. And then they do and then they’re done. And you say, okay, just toss it in the pile over there. We’ll see you next week. Now what you just communicated was work of no value, of no urgency. Their contribution of having no value. And so it’s no wonder nobody comes back. So there really is a way to think about how to structure volunteer action in such a way that it sustains its motivation. And it’s drawn from a motivational task design, which has been used a lot more in the management world. But the idea is that people will be motivated to do work, one if they think it’s significant, if they experience the significance of it, it’s like instead of just, here’s a list, call it, you know, we have 500 more voters to identify tonight, and with all the others, that’s going to put us over the top of what we need. And I know you care, because the reason you’re supporting so and so are some real reasons. Isn’t that correct? Yeah. That’s right. Yeah. Okay. So we’re establishing that it’s significant. We’re also establishing what they call task identity, which means: Here’s a piece of work. We have to get 500. I’m going to ask you to identify 100. You’re going to have your part of town or your part of the list or whatever. And that’s going to be your job if you accept the responsibility for that to identify 100, not make 100 calls, but identify 100 voters, it’s about outcomes, not inputs. That’s often a mistake. Okay. And then now, is what you’re going to do just read this script over and over and over. Or you’re probably going to learn as you talk to people how to improve, how to adapt. So we’re counting on you to contribute that as well. Those three elements are important, but if responsibility is to mean anything, it means that you have some choices to make. There is a scope of autonomy. It’s not like, oh, just do whatever. But there’s a scope of choice that you exercise. Otherwise it’s just, well I did what you said. It didn’t work or I did what you said and it worked. But neither way do you author it or own it. And finally is feedback. But not like, hey, you did great. Here’s some cookies, you know, or you get a gold star. It’s that you can actually see the progress you’re making or not. In other words, that’s why people have thermometers around, you know? How are you doing on this? So like today with digital stuff, it’s a whole lot easier. But the point is you need to see concretely, I’m making progress. I’m making progress or I’m not. Because then again, that’s an opportunity for learning. And it’s not just feel good, it’s actual: “Yeah I’m getting this”. So these are elements, the sort of basic elements of how to design action in such a way that people are motivated to come back and to do it. That’s one piece. Now, that piece is really very rare to find, actually, in the world of practice, organizing. There tends to be much more reliance on the other piece, which is commitment, because you don’t create action without commitment. Now, today the fallback is, oh, just pay somebody. Okay, well that’s nice. Then your most critical resource is not people. It’s money. And a fundamental choice when it comes to action is are you relying on money or people you know that makes a big difference? Are you relying on resources that come from within your constituency or from outside it? In other words, outside money leaves you with not a whole lot of autonomy in your organization or responsibility, your constituency. Inside money and people can take it in a very different direction. And one of the challenges today is this donor-ocracy, where you think you got to get a grant before you can do anything. Well, what you’re winding up doing then is creating a dependency of your work and others on the wealthy, frankly, which is not what it’s all about. So that’s why making people work really count, is so important. So commitment then, is about not this thing where, hi, we’re having a big meeting on Friday, can you come? Yeah. I’m sorry you’re busy. Well, would you try? Oh, good. You’ll try. Okay, well that’s great, I hope maybe I’ll see you there. That is not commitment. That is self-deception. Commitment is. Oh, we’re having this meeting Friday night. Can I count on you to be there? Oh, I understand it’s going to be challenging, but we really need a yes or no because we need to count on you or not. Oh. You can’t. Okay, well that’s fine. And so consider x y z. And we’ll see you. Now getting a no is so much better than getting an “I’ll try” because then you know what you got. We tend to be so hesitant to close the deal, which is what we’re talking about that the deal doesn’t get closed. And so then we say, oh, we got 50 people coming to the meeting and ten show up and we say, oh, I guess they just didn’t want to come to the meeting. Well, they were never committed to come to the meeting. So this commitment thing is really fundamental to this whole kind of work. And we have a way of teaching it. We call it the four C’s of encountering with another person, asking them to commit to something. First C is connection. In other words, don’t treat them as generic. Don’t treat yourself as generic. Otherwise, you just dehumanized yourself. And it’s human contact that actually works. It doesn’t take a lot of time. It’s just, hi Joe, I saw you were in so-and-so’s class. I guess you’re pretty interested in this. Yeah, well, you know, I’ve had an interest too. It takes. What is it? How many seconds? But it changes the nature of the encounter from one of use to one of enhancement and relationship. So there’s the first C connection. Now the second C is the context. That’s where a lot of the story of now work comes in from the narrative, because it’s creating a context in which there is urgency, there is consequence to the action, that there’s some plausible efficacy involved. And so you’re creating both hope and urgency in such a way that there’s a context for what you’re asking a person to do. So you’ve created a connection. You’ve created a context. Now comes the commitment. And that’s where it goes. Or it doesn’t go. That’s where it happens or it doesn’t happen. And finally, we have what we call a catapult, which means if someone does commit, then it’s like, well, would you commit to bringing five other people? Oh yeah, I can do that. Oh, no. But who are they? Let’s get their names. Oh, this one, this one. This. Okay, good. So you’re going to be bringing so-and-so. Okay. That’s great. Well, look, I’ll be checking in to see how it’s going and let me know how many of those you have committed as well. There is a whole kind of mini science to this stuff. When I was working in California farmworkers and we would get voter registration stuff and you would have a card table in front of a place, a store. Well, what we discovered was that ironing boards were much better than card tables because ironing boards were higher. They were longer. So you could have several people at the same time. And so from that point on, people driving around with ironing board sticking out their car, they were a voter registrar. But it’s that kind of appreciation and love for detail that makes it excellent. I think that’s true of anything. And it’s true of street work, too. So that’s kind of the spirit of what we mean by action. We could raise several thousand dollars a day in Manhattan with cans. And this was, you know, back in the 70s. This was when there was the farmworker movement. And there was a farmworker who  was working with me. He said, boy, New York’s the best place in Manhattan, because in the morning, all these people come out of holes in the ground. And then at night they go back into those holes in the ground, all you have to do is stand by the holes and you can contact everybody. Well, it was like that. And so we could raise a lot and we had people pretty accustomed. So one day I was walking along. I had my boycott grapes sign, and I had a cup of coffee and I was walking along and somebody tossed a quarter in my cup of coffee. They had been so trained that they thought the cup of coffee was a can. So we did a lot of work in Manhattan, but there are hazards with it. But as you can see, and I hope you’re getting the sense, it’s not drudgery. It’s making stuff happen. It’s making things happen. The last thing I want to say about this is going back to this question of metrics. There’s often a lot of resistance to metrics for a whole variety of reasons, but mainly because we experience them as ways of asserting control or judgment. And so, well, we can’t count it because of all that. So there’s a resistance. Now, the problem is that without metrics, you can’t evaluate what you’re doing. And so creating the right metrics though really matters. It’s the case with a lot of grants and donors. They want stuff you can count. But it’s not stuff that reveals anything about the progress of the work. It’s just something you can count. There’s that story about a guy walking down the street at night, and the guy’s had a little too much drink, and he’s on his knees looking around under the lamppost there, and he says, hi, can I help you? What’s wrong? And he says, I lost my car keys. Oh. Well. Okay. Can I help you look for them. Where did you lose them? Well, over there by my car. Well, where’s your car? Well, the car’s a block away. Well, why are you looking here? He says, well, that’s where the light is. And the problem is determining what we count by where the light is and not where the car is. And so it means being creative in aligning metrics with what really counts. But once you have that, then it’s so powerful not for control but because then you see this works. That doesn’t work. This is working. This works in this place. Then you have a way to really learn and it can be powerfully motivational. The Obama campaign, there was a way you could see how many voters we identified that night in this precinct. How many in this district, how many in this state? How many in the whole country? And you could see that you’re part of something really powerful, and that your part is part of a much greater whole. And boy, that’s really motivational. So this is just in defense of metrics used well. 

Salimah Samji I really like that. Metrics used well and the example of the light, because sometimes you only do what’s measured and what needs to be done isn’t the thing that’s being measured. I really like your take on that. From a craft perspective, how do you learn to take action? 

Marshall Ganz Well, I guess basically like all the other practice you learn by doing it. So then the question is how do you scaffold the learning? And that means creating settings in which people are prepared. Things are explained. They see models. They do it. I call that getting on the bike. They fall off, and then they figure out how to get back up on the bike. And then they learn, but through debriefing. So it’s a cycle of concept, model, practice, and debriefing. And that’s on any of this stuff. And so it isn’t just follow somebody around with experience. Because one of the things we’ve contributed is a way to conceptualize the scaffolding of this work. The danger often is that people confuse scaffolds with reality. In other words, they confuse…. Here’s how to learn to drive your car. Okay. Step one do this, then do this. Then do this and do this. Now, if they stop at that point and say, oh, okay, driving the car is step one, step two, step three. They’re missing the whole point because it’s only a scaffold to get them to actually what driving is. And too often we treat frameworks as if they were the thing as opposed to a scaffold to enable us to learn the thing. And so it’s sort of a way of approaching learning and practice that doesn’t get hung up on what they call the alignment problem. Right? The premise of the alignment problem is that all models are wrong, because once you construct a model of how the world works, you’re reducing a very complex world to sort of a hypothesis, really. But when that hypothesis starts being understood as the world, as reality rather than a lens on reality, then you start creating a world aligned with that lens on reality, as if it were. It sort of sums up the economics profession for the last 50 years of creating these models and treating them as if they’re reality. So we find it’s very important to explain the role of scaffolding and not confuse step one, step two, step three with what the real practice is. And that runs through all our practices. You know, the other reality about the work of organizing is that you’re operating in a very uncertain context. I mean, the world is pretty uncertain right now, but uncertainty is sort of built into it because there’s so much contingency. I mean, you’re working with people who may not have done this before, trying stuff out that may or may not work. And so there’s just a lot of built-in contingency. You’ve had the experience. We work to set up a house meeting, and then we show up and there’s nobody home at all. So the question then is how do you reduce the contingency? Let me put it this way. You try to take as much of the contingency out of contingency as you can, so that then you can focus on the real surprises rather than getting bogged down on every little thing. And, boy, that’s easy to happen. So when we were doing house meetings for Howard Dean in New Hampshire, the way it would work is there would be a person would agree. And then the first thing the organizer would say, okay, let’s make a list of 50 people that you know. 50 people. Yeah, well, it turns out everybody could do that. It may have included the guy in the pharmacy, but there was like 50 people that they knew. Okay. Then the organizer would say, okay, now we’re going to start calling those people and inviting them to come to this house meeting. Okay, I’ll do it. No, no. Right now, we’re going to get started right now. So then there is a little role play, coaching. I mean it’s not role play, they’re actually doing it and practice right then and there. Okay. Then it’s I’m going to check in a couple of days and see how you’re doing. And I’m gonna check in again just before the thing. And then we get into the science of reminder calls. When do you make a reminder call? And there are different philosophies on when you make the reminder call. My experience has been the most critical time to make a reminder call is about two hours before the event, because that’s when we start saying, well, yeah, I committed to do that but jeez I got this project and you know, and they won’t notice. The call comes and says, hi Joe, we’re really looking forward to seeing you. We got your seat reserved down here. Oh, and you did say you’d bring the cookies, right? Oh, okay. good. Then, we’ll see you in a couple of hours, right? Right. See, that’s the moment when it can go either way. So what I’m describing is it’s craft. It’s taking the uncertain, as much of it as you can out. So then you know somebody they won’t let you meet in the place you had planned to meet. Oh, well, that’s pretty big. You know, you can deal with that because all the other stuff is working. I think that’s something that, oh, boy, often people really resist that. But that’s how you make yourself a craftsperson. That’s how you make this stuff really, really happen. 

Salimah Samji Isn’t it like an accountability mechanism, right? When you force someone, even to your earlier point where you get a commitment from someone? Are you coming or are you not coming? And this whole point of when you call them two hours before I have a seat for you, are you going to bring the cookies? Again, this accountability mechanism of yes, you’ve committed, but am I going to hold you accountable so that you feel that no, I am needed, even if I might have my own excuse of not coming for whatever reason. 

Marshall Ganz You know…. 

Salimah Samji Calling me and telling me makes me feel like, oh, they actually need me, I should go. I said I was going to do this. You’re holding me accountable to my own word. 

Marshall Ganz Yeah. Let me just underscore that, because when you don’t hold people accountable, you’re saying it doesn’t really matter. I don’t really care whether you do it or not. It’s indifferent to that. But when you do what we’re describing, you are over and over again emphasizing how much value they have and they’re creating. People say, oh, I don’t want to harass people. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to. That’s about you, not about the person. We had this sort of thing that when you were mobilizing people who support the candidate, they would take repeated calls as evidence that the campaign is really clicking. If you’re trying to mobilize people who don’t support your candidate, then the first thing is harassment. So you have to appreciate sort of the kind of value you’re creating. And what you said to Salimah is so important that you create lack of value when you don’t follow up. And when you do, you’re saying you matter, what you’re doing matters. Really such an important point. Thank you for mentioning that. 

Salimah Samji In your book. I love the quote that you used, You know, to make this point also of the Yoda from The Empire Strikes Back. Do or do not. There is no try. Right? And that also reminds me of one of my favorite scenes in The Matrix, where Leo is told also, don’t think you are doing. You either are or you’re not. There’s no thinking. It really is a lot of value to that yes or no. 

Marshall Ganz And see the thinking and the planning. All that has to go on before. But then when the rubber hits the road. Yes. Yes. Do or don’t do. Don’t try. Absolutely. I may have mentioned this on strategy. I’v been quoting General Eisenhower a lot, because after the D-Day invasion of Normandy, he said, planning’s really, really important, but plans are useless. And what he meant was that when the rubber hits the road, that’s where it all gets real. And that’s when you have to be on your case and not confuse intentions with actions. So yeah, there’s something really fundamental here. 

Salimah Samji So this is really excellent. Marshall. What I’ve taken away from this podcast on action is that there’s no action without commitment. And there’s four C’s of commitment. There is the connection that you need first. There’s the context, and then you ask for a real commitment. Not maybe – It’s a yes or no. And then you catapult. How can you really grow that into something larger? And then this idea of how do you create measurement, which is so important, but as a mechanism to learn. And you use that by aligning the metrics and finding the right metrics to really create this idea of sustained learners. And it’s about balancing motivational energy and disciplined commitment. I think our listeners will really have a lot to take away from this particular podcast. Any last words of wisdom, Marshall? 

Marshall Ganz Yes, that’s really well said. Really well said. It is that. Motivational energy and discipline, commitment, discipline, craft. That’s the combination that really works. 

Salimah Samji Wonderful. Thank you so much, Marshall.

Marshall Ganz Thank you.