Don't Do It! Organizational Suicide Prevention for Progressives

For most of my professional life, I've made my living consulting with organizations, many of them involved in social change or cultural activism. Like almost everyone I know, as the reign of Bush the Second grinds along, I've been searching for signs of a progressive* revival in the U.S. Lately, I've been finding them in massively successful Internet organizing projects such as Moveon.org and Truemajority.org, in the outcry over abuse of prisoners in Iraq, and not only in the fact that humorous and critical progressive books are being written, but that they regularly make the best-seller list.

A feeling of possibility is in the air. No one knows what tips the balance from somnolence to social change, but we do know it isn't necessary to move mountains to make it happen. The course of events can be shifted by an energetic and persuasive minority, and at the moment, progressives show definite signs of both energy and persuasive ability. The external conditions for success are in place: truly villainous and over-confident villains; widespread outrage; passionate desire for change.

Yet I can't say I've become optimistic, because these factors are only half the story. Success also depends on internal strengths, on how shrewd, resourceful and focused a nascent movement's members might be. And I haven't seen a lot lately to assure me that a U.S.-based progressive movement isn't going to commit suicide — again. You can only shoot yourself in the foot so many times before you bleed to death. The good news, of course, is that we don't have to pull the trigger. In the second half of this essay I suggest several ways to avoid doing so. But first I want to explain my reasons for fearing we may.

The sources of my anxiety are countless tales of organizations threatening to collapse over internal issues. The particulars vary greatly, but the through-line is always the same: People have an undeveloped idea of democracy and an aversion to power. They pledge allegiance to a slew of honorable values: inclusion, participation, empowerment, diversity, transparency and free expression, among others. But trying — and failing — to pursue them equally and simultaneously, they find themselves stuck in neutral, spinning their wheels. They feel demoralized, mired in unproductive process rather than where they'd hoped to be, navigating their way to solid accomplishment.

Sometimes people are snared in the briar patch of their unexamined fears and desires. Progressive organizations are convenient arenas for enacting power relations, especially dramas of victim and oppressor. Very often, I have found that people who are up against formidable social pressures, who lack influence in the big world of political and economic power, find ways to rehearse their dramas of domination and submission in the little world of an organization. They lose sight of a big-world goal that seems unattainable and focus instead on getting the best of each other.

Equally often, progressives are so suspicious of structures of constituted authority that they have been willing to forego continuity and growth to inoculate themselves against the charge of power-mongering. These attitudes are not altogether unfamiliar to a 60s-era activist like myself, but I find their persistence dismaying. To be fair, I suppose it could be said that the escalation of such suspicion in the last four decades has been proportionate to growth in the abuse of power and authority in both government and commerce. But bending over backwards to avoid the sins of power, progressives tumble to the ground. Those without a positive image of power wielded in the service of freedom and justice are certain never to have any real-world power with which to be tempted.

First, there's the time- and energy-wasting attachment to ideological purity, leading people to focus more on correctness of political values and behavior than on accomplishing something. For instance, one group I know of spent exhausting months trying to repair years of well-meaning but incompetent management by putting a committee in charge of organizational clean-up. After countless meetings, the committee decided to conduct a national search for a new director, someone with the skills and focus needed to address very real financial and organizational problems that had taken ages to ripen, then harden into seeming intractability. Good candidates emerged, were interviewed and narrowed down. Just as the job was about to be offered to one of them (and well past the announced deadline for applications) a new candidate emerged who, if qualified, would also be perceived as advancing the organization's aim of cultural diversity — and who would incidentally be unable to start the job for several months. Did the group's values demand that they put the finalists — indeed, the entire process of bringing on a new director — on hold while they investigated and interviewed this candidate?

Second, there's the organization hampered by a primitive idea of democracy, rendering it helpless to defend itself when threatened. One group's stalwarts had been worn down by a highly organized (if obscurely purposed) faction that packed meetings to push its own agenda. It was easy to become a member, and the rules had it that once a member, one had an equal say in any issue, from electing committee chairs to making major policy decisions. Thus the faction was easily able to run puppet candidates for committee chairs, stocking key meetings with enough of its own members to ensure its candidates' elections. What's more, the faction was able to shape organizational agendas by using agenda-setting meetings to build a Potemkin village of fake but imminently discussable issues, filling up the time that would otherwise have gone to proposals of substance and immediate relevance that the faction opposed. Some of the hardest-working group members were worried about wasting so much time on distractions, but when they tried to raise these concerns, the less-sophisticated members condemned them for picking on the faction cohort, asserting that democracy required giving absolutely everyone equal space and power in any group.

The group's rules and policies had been written with a particular concern in mind: its founders had wanted to keep individuals from accumulating personal power or in any other way aggrandizing themselves. Unfortunately, in instituting a weak-leader model to stave off this type of abuse, they also made it impossible to form a leadership group with power sufficient to stop a faction bent on taking over. Their aversion to power rendered them helpless in the face of those who were quite happy to take advantage of it. Was there any way out?

Third, there's the organization so focused on making room for those who aren't doing the work that it disempowers those who are. The members of an antiglobalization group — mostly young nerds and techies inspired by the liberating potential of cyberspace — were stymied by the challenge of devising a system of governance that reflected their anticorporate values. Refusing to be overwhelmed by their antipathy, they had actually formed an organization in a field where others had been content with nothing more than the loosest of networks. They had few resources other than their own time, but much energy for meetings and work-parties. Stumbling into a provisional structure, they operated with the understanding that anyone who came to a meeting had the right to take part in organizational decisions, with the result that (as with the previous example) factions packed the room at key junctures to push through their policies. Most of the organizers were white, and that made them vulnerable to a racial critique they shared. Indeed, they had devised aggressive recruitment efforts, an apprenticeship plan and a series of dialogues to make common cause with organizations based in communities of color. This precipitated the situation that brought them to my door.

In a time of scarce resources for progressive activism, Latino and African-American activists who'd had little involvement with the group's formation or its specific mission had seen it as a potentially viable vehicle for their own social-change agenda. Taking advantage of the group's under-boundedness, they'd declared themselves members and demanded a program of racial remediation: The group's founders would have to undergo a series of workshops devised to rid the white organizers of their racism and white-skin privilege; then they were to turn over the organizational reins to vaguely characterized communities of color. The young organizers were desperately conflicted about what to do. They did not want to be racists or power-mongers and they shared the desire for a multiracial group, so they could see some logic in stepping down from their leadership roles to make room for others. But it seemed crazy to abandon the results of their hard work to the guidance of unnamed people who'd had no part in conceiving or implementing it, and who had made it clear they would redeploy the organizational vehicle for a different if worthy purpose. What should they do?

Fourth is the ideologically overburdened organization in which every action, no matter how trivial, is decoded for political meaning — leaving not much energy to make things happen. The symbolic meaning of a gesture overwhelms its ordinary meaning until the fate of the world seems to depend on a specific turn of phrase. On ideological grounds, key members of one group opposed making its policies, structures and processes explicit and concrete. They argued that structure is elitist, imposing constricting Western ideas of order and privileging those who were trained in such modes. Rules constrain spontaneity and creativity, they said, so that waiting to be called on in order, for instance, discriminates against people who don't feel comfortable with linearity. Defined roles reinforce distinctions between people, as between officers and rank-and-file members. And so on. The stated aim of this critique is to achieve something akin to a state of nature, in which the organization's work evolves in complete freedom and spontaneity. It sounds ideal and fair, especially to novices. But will it work?

In my experience, never. The group in this example followed a pattern I've often seen, in which ideological assertion masks individual ambition. In 30 years of working with organizations, I have never met a zealous advocate for a chaotic, formless organizational environment who has not benefited personally from the chaos, at others' expense. These under-bounded environments give a clever egotist maximum scope to assert his or her own personality and desires. The individual who has no trouble stepping forward, who always has something ready to say, who is forceful and dynamic, will easily dominate a situation that lacks protections and encouragements for gentler, more fragile personalities.

All four patterns (and these by no means exhaust the typology) are recipes for organizational entropy. It can be challenging to decode such destructive dynamics in action, because they are usually shrouded in high-minded ideals and the earnest desire to do good. But they almost always lead to the same place: neglecting the organization's raison d'être in favor of engagement in its internal workings, turning the energy inward. In some groups, this distortion emerges simply because it can; organizational dramas are immediate and accessible in scale, thrillingly close to hand, so that they easily capture attention. In some groups, this distortion camouflages a power struggle. Since those who allege that instituting rules and policies is intimidating or oppressive seldom have any trouble asserting themselves, their claims of victimization should raise credibility questions. But they often prevail despite the evidence, because progressives are so sensitized to charges of victimization and so fearful of being seen as oppressive that the default setting is to validate any such charge. It takes consciousness and courage to unmask these dynamics.

I believe in democracy. I've spent a good deal of my life helping people learn to practice it in the little world — the manageable universe of the organization — in the hope that these building-blocks of democracy will influence the big-world social systems that form their larger context. This is not merely wishful thinking, although I admit I do wish for it. Even though we seldom see it in practice, the possibility of real democracy lingers in collective memory and imagination. Like a muscle that has atrophied from disuse, it can be restored through exercise, even on the smallest scale. Unfortunately, few people have been introduced to the principles and processes of truly functional democratic organization. If most of us get any education at all in democratic processes, it is usually superficial and often opaque, like a civics-class version of how government works. Many of us carry these schoolroom views into adulthood: Democracy is where the person at the head of the room asks who wants to be class president and those who raise their hands get to run. In our adult lives, these undeveloped ideas function as inadequate templates, distorting our view of organizational realities and potentials.

For me, the key concept is prefiguration: a truly democratic organization resembles the institutions of the larger polity that advocates of democracy hope to bring about. Every aspect of organizational culture foreshadows a political culture in which equality of opportunity and meaningful participation are freely available to all citizens. To imagine it will be possible to achieve an authentically democratic polity without vibrant small-scale democratic organizations is like thinking we can construct a stone tower from mud and straw. To imagine we will know how to be citizens of that hoped-for polity without opportunities to first practice authentic small-scale democracy is like thinking it is possible to walk without ever crawling, to run without ever walking.

So, how do we do it? Structure sustains organization: Like the elements of an ecological system or the parts of a body, we need at least a few principles that govern how we will communicate, cooperate and share power. We need specialized organs, differentiated and bounded but equally essential to the effective functioning of democratic organizations. We need what I call integral organizations. Below, I offer several principles as useful guides to getting them.

Alignment of purpose. I've seen too many groups locked in conflict, consuming members' energy in attacking each other with far more enthusiasm than is invested in the group's stated purpose. Disputation is important as a means of learning, communicating, coming eventually to consensus. But in organizations as in families, people sometimes fight because conflict seems the only available meaningful contact. In a fight, energy is exchanged, feelings are stimulated. But in a stagnant relationship, when the fighting stops there is nothing to talk about and nothing to do. So a fundamental first question in approaching any organization is the validity of its purpose. Is it still vital? Is it still worth the energy and investment? Does it still stir members' hearts and minds? Is it still the best vehicle to accomplish its core purpose? If key answers are "No," problems that keep people locked in struggle with each other may actually be unconscious strategies to avoid giving up. There isn't much merit in persistence for its own sake. It's always wise to consider whether a group has run its course. If so, it is best to release members to other endeavors where their energies can be turned to actual accomplishments.

Organizational purpose needs to be regularly refreshed with real opportunities to think and feel together about what it worth doing. I'm not talking about perfunctory feedback sessions, where entrenched leaders nod and smile (and think about something else) while a parade of members offer two minutes apiece of "input." What's needed is something like an annual assessment of needs, of goals, of possible points of intervention, of obstacles and allies, of different ways to work together — and a process for implementing whatever the assessment teaches.

An informed electorate. The idea of democratic governance is predicated on people's right to know — on people having the solid, thorough information they need to evaluate choices and make good decisions. We've seen enough of the big world to know what happens when this right is breached. For people to be adequately informed requires translating activity into information. It needs reports on committee work; working groups that carry out the research needed to prepare written proposals for new actions or policies; adequate opportunities to comment on what has been proposed, so that through collective deliberation, bright ideas can evolve into sound initiatives; and a systematic record of decisions that have been taken, so they don't have to be redone each time a related issue arises. Online technologies have made disseminating important information much easier and cheaper. Even so, every one of these elements of maintaining an informed electorate requires time and effort. That may be challenging, but groups that don't invest the effort will waste far more betting on hunches, reinventing the wheel, and watching members peel off as they become fatigued and demoralized.

Defined roles and good boundaries. In integral organizations, everyone understands the extent and limit of each person's responsibility and authority, and how they all work together to form the whole. Consider the basic question of how one becomes a member. If it's enough just to show up, then membership is meaningless. To function effectively as part of an integral organization, there has to be some type of investment that warrants a share in decisions. Many progressive groups recognize this, setting a threshold for membership, requiring, for example, that people must take part in a working group or contribute so many volunteer hours. But because progressives are hyper-vulnerable to exclusionary claims, there's almost always a reason not to enforce the standard: "Give him a break, he's been busy!" "Let her alone, she worked for a group just like ours in another place!" "If he says he's been to the committee meeting, he has" (even though no one saw him there). Nobody wants to play the cop, but an excess of such liberality has the effect of erasing all standards. An integral organization has well-defined standards for participation, just as it has clear ways to propose new policies or programs, creating many entry points for members to take initiative and responsibility in carrying out the group's work.

Accountability counts. How do you know if something is working? An integral organization needs ways to know if its strategies are helping, and if the people key to implementing them are doing their jobs. Implementation responsibility needs clear guidelines and accountability checks so that people can stay on track. This is easy when they have straightforward budgetary and time guidelines and when checkpoints are built into the plan. That is, it's easy if there's the organizational will to make effective plans and actually hold people accountable to fulfill their commitments. Otherwise, the group's motto might just as well be "Whatever" and members can probably find better uses for their time.

The perfect is the enemy of the good, to adapt Voltaire's epigram for my purpose. A typical pitfall of progressives is to load each decision with so many and varied significances that it becomes impossible to focus adequately on results. People wind up opting for an ineffectual but politically correct action over a strongly goal-directed one that might not seem so pure. They feel righteous, but have almost no impact on the course of events, which is exactly what I described at the beginning of this essay as a form of suicide. The truth is, it's seldom possible to perfectly embody all of our values at the same time. If time is of the essence, we might have to settle for a process of input and vetting that's not quite as leisurely and extensive as the ideal. If stopping a monster is our goal, we may have to team up temporarily with someone whose potential influence outstrips his integrity. I'm not suggesting that the ends justify the means, only that surely ends matter just as much as means, and sometimes we have to get on with it. It's human to want things — lots of things — but what do we want most? What's most important? It seems to me the failure to answer that question lies at the heart of progressives' proclivity for self-defeat.

Specialize and delegate. Earlier, I compared an integral organization with a body: many distinct systems communicate and cooperate to produce a well-functioning whole. If the liver goes on strike, refusing to work with the circulatory system, toxics accumulate and poison the entire organism. Each member of an integral organization needs a double consciousness, bearing in mind one's own interests and simultaneously, the interests of the whole organism (which may not always be perfectly congruent). One of the ways that progressive organizations fail is when members trust their own judgment but aren't so sure of others. Everyone wants final say in every decision, and after awhile, people stop volunteering for key tasks, knowing that their work is likely to be overturned as soon as it is presented to the group.

Integral organizations need efficient processes for developing and vetting ideas. Ideally, the whole group is able to brainstorm about a problem or opportunity before it is delegated to a working group for research and preparation. That way, everyone's hopes and concerns can be on the table at the outset. Then the working group produces a report that sums up its research, touching on all the points brought forward in the large group, and recommending one or more courses of action. People who can't make a meeting can be consulted by the working group or comment in writing on its findings. When integral systems work well, by the time a recommendation comes to a vote, it almost always represents the best consensus of a membership appreciative and respectful of the working group's effort.

An integral organization needs some organs that are permanent parts of structure, helping the body to communicate and cooperate over time; and some that are ad hoc, dissolving after their job is done. Without them, an organization is merely a mob.

Leadership is a trust, not a right. Integral organizations need capable and responsive leadership, whether embodied by individuals or teams. But sometimes undeveloped ideas stymie even the possibility of leadership. I once worked with an organization that was almost destroyed by an aggressive campaign from adherents of what I earlier characterized as the "schoolroom" view of democracy. Abiding by its stated policies, the group's board had acted as a nominating committee for its successors. Selecting those who had demonstrated responsibility and vision in other volunteer roles, board members asked them to progress to the level of committee chair and from there, to board membership. But the schoolroom-democracy coterie insisted that the only fair way to designate leadership was through a volunteer free-for-all: Put out a call to the membership, and whomever responds stands for election.

Inviting people who lack adequate qualifications to contend for leadership expresses indifference to the effectiveness — the fate — of the organization. There are qualifications of character and industry for effective leadership: are candidates honest and reliable, accountable for commitments? Have they demonstrated willingness to shoulder a fair share of responsibility and to share authority? Do they work well in groups? Are they able to put their immediate personal interests into perspective in relation to the interests of the group as a whole? In contrast, the schoolroom clique was made up of members who desired authority without responsibility. They'd failed to follow through on their own previous volunteer commitments, in some cases refusing even to accept such responsibilities. They were taken with the prospect of attending meetings and making decisions, but not at all interested in shouldering the burdens of preparation or implementation.

Much is made in today's progressive movements of "leaderless organizing," such as the type of mass demonstration that arises through Internet networking. It isn't that it takes a demagogue to make a demonstration; this new development is impressively effective in mobilizing even huge crowds. But demonstrations are only one type of organizing, just as sending a protest email is the simplest type of activism. Other activities need a sustaining structure and program. To express something more complex or more propositional than "Stop the War!" requires the concerted, effective work of an organization, and that needs particular types of leadership. It needs people who can read situations rapidly and accurately as a basis for strategic decisions — who have what Isaiah Berlin called a "sense of reality." It needs people who can articulate resonant aims, inspiring and galvanizing action, people who can act responsibly as emissaries. Some body must be in place to protect the interests of the group — a board, steering committee, council of elders, even a nominating committee — to provide a filter that can catch those who seek leadership for self-serving or destructive reasons. Without such a filter, it is very difficult to sustain democratic organization.

Leadership sometimes has its perks: leaders are generally privy to sensitive information; they may travel for meetings and conferences; they may receive some acknowledgement or honor for their service. But in many progressive organizations, even such modest rewards foster suspicion. Indeed, many people are so sensitized to abuses of power in the larger society, they tend to suspect anyone at all who comes forward to take part in leadership. But deep distrust of leadership undermines those who step up to help. Obviously, the logical outcome of this tendency is to leave leadership only to those who don't mind abusing it or becoming the object of a certain amount of abuse themselves. Integral organizations need to nurture good leadership and support those who exercise it.

Do not unto others that which is hateful to oneself, as Rabbi Hillel famously said two thousand years ago. Humane values encourage meaningful participation. A culture of kindness and consideration — a culture that prefigures the society people are working to bring about — will not take root in a group that isn't consciously cultivating these qualities. The explicit aims must include listening as fully as possible to each other, even when people disagree; thanking people for their ideas and comments; making room for those who may be less assertive to enter the discussion; repelling insults, attacks, attempts to force an agenda; and taking regular opportunities to create moments of sharing and equality, as when the group allots each member equal time to speak at the opening and closing of meetings or when especially significant issues are being considered.

It's perversely encouraging that progressives' own blind spots and missteps are what stand in the way now, because after all, we own the means of production when it comes to correcting such mistakes. The possibility of ceasing to shoot ourselves in the foot is within reach, and if we realize it, our effectiveness will skyrocket. As the Buddhist teacher Thich Nat Hanh has observed:

* As the old terms "left" and "right" don't work anymore, I've adopted "progressive" to stand for organizations that dissent from the corporatist consensus and propose democratic, holistic, and liberatory alternatives.

Arlene Goldbard is a writer and consultant. Visit her Web site at http://arlenegoldbard.com to subscribe to her blog, download her talks and writings, read about her consulting work and buy her new novel, "Clarity," which Lucy Lippard called "an antidote to these dark days."

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Don't Do It! Organizational Suicide Prevention for Progressives

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