I just read a helpful Upmarket blog post on the distinction between strategy and tactic.  It was almost a relief to know that the business sector also struggles with the distinction.  Confusing these two terms has led to a lot of trouble in our work for social change.

Mark St. Cyr puts it this way:

 You’ll hear most incorrectly use the term strategy as a descriptor for their long-term discussions, and tactics for their short-term. Strategy and tactics have nothing to do with time frames, nor are they interchangeable. They have two very distinct and different meanings with time frames not being one of them.

 Strategy has to do with the direction of your life or business. Tactics are what you’ll use to implement the strategy.

 You can and need a strategy and tactics to implement it. Not one without the other on any time line. They go hand in hand.

 I have participated in endless ideological conversations on whether and how to engage the electoral process in the work for social change.  To some, it is a strategy in itself:  we will get what we want when we win.  To others, it is a tactic:  electoral engagement is key to implementing our strategy to achieve a more just world.

I can’t help noting that too often, even those who understand electoral engagement as a tactic actually behave as if it was their strategy.  It is so easy to lose perspective.

I have a vision.  It is a vision of a more just and sustainable world.  I have vision of a world that works within the rhythms of nature, and a people who are aligned with an evolutionary thrust.  My vision is of a world that is conducive to awakening, a way of life that is more organic than industrial, a way of being-with that augments our individual autonomy while actually bringing us closer together.

I seek to live my life in ways that can strategically build towards that vision.  My strategy gives certain parameters to the ways in which I will work towards my vision.  Mine is a strategy that focuses on building collaborative capacity and nurturing state experiences that can give us a taste of freedom.  My strategy seeks to raise consciousness and unleash creative potential.  It is a strategy that seeks a dramatic paradigm shift – a shift so powerful that it will make the dominant paradigm oppression crumble at its gaze.

There are tactics by which I seek to implement that strategy.  It includes collaboration with those who are engaging the electoral process and making progress on the policy domain.  But it also includes the nurturing of networks of authentic relationship among those who are passionate about transformation.  My tactics include the active melding of ideas and actors across sectors and approaches – arts, spirituality and yes, business.

Vision, strategy, tactics.

Passion, commitment, wakefulness.

Let’s learn to live in the world we are trying to build.

How we get there is as important as getting there.

Today is May Day.  A few weeks ago I had the unique opportunity to share some ideas about working with complexity with a group of funders who are committed to social justice.  It was quite an honor to sit in the same panel as the great Frances Fox Piven and the amazing Ai-Jen Poo.

Ai-Jen was recently named among Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. I’ve been following her work for a while and I can tell you that the mention is well deserved.  Frances has influenced, informed and inspired thousands of people who have committed their life to this work.

In the presence of such an elder and a luminary anyone would be a fool not to take notes.  I thought I would share some highlights from Frances’ talk with you:

• She reminded us that one out of three Americans are now poor or near poor

• Today’s growing inequality can only be changed with courage, vision and defiance of the level of mass mobilization

• We have to wonder why economic freedom became the only type of freedom that we’ve learned to celebrate

• Movements can do two things:
  • Get out new  messages
  • Make it impossible to govern without dealing with social problems

• Let us a look at how we contribute to the functions of institutions and ask ourselves how do we withdraw our cooperation

• Be intentional and strategic about providing defense strategies for those willing to disrupt

• Seek to create new legal spaces

These have been freely paraphrased and they’re not stated in any particular order. I am grateful to Frances, to Ai-Jen  and to our conveners for keeping the spirit of May Day alive.

What will you do today? How might you disrupt the status quo? What kind of freedom are you looking for?

 We often focus on the understanding of power as a process and as a social construct. As Beth Roy says, “power is not something you have; it’s something you do.” I was struck by a contrast as I listened to a brief story this morning about Lyndon B. Johnson.

Biographer Robert Caro described Johnson as having “no power” as Vice President because the Kennedy’s didn’t want him to have any. When President Kennedy was assassinated, he suddenly had all the power conferred by that office.

It’s tempting to see power on this level as somewhat objective, as a thing to be granted or wielded. But Johnson’s power as President was a socially constructed as his powerlessness as VP. (If you have doubts, consider how difficult it has been for our current President to get things done!)

Caro spoke admiringly of Johnson’s swift clarity about what to do with that newfound power–almost as if he had a list he’d been sitting on all the while. Johnson used his power as President to ensure, among other things, passage of the Civil Rights Act.

That got me wondering – what’s on my/our collective list of things we would do “if we had the power to do it?” And, how do we build that power, so we’re not waiting for power to be conferred from outside ourselves?

Last weekend I had a most unique privilege.  I facilitated the final retreat of a three-year process.  I have been working with the Barrboletas, the Barr Fellows cohort of 2009, since their inaugural learning journey to Brazil in June of that year.  We have a book worth of documentation.  The fellowship as a whole will be highlighted in the May issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review.  This post is a celebration of their last retreat as a cohort – they will continue to participate in an exciting plethora of network activities as they are moved and able.

Our closing circle was a true moment of beauty and a powerful affirmation of our theory of change.  Each of the fellows took the time to appreciate the transformative nature of their experience.  They spoke of being individually transformed – personally, spiritually.  And they spoke of the perceptible power in their transformed relationships with one another.

The fellows spoke of a bond of trust, a sense of authentic relationship and an experience of love.  To sit among them and to hold that space is to see the very fabric of a city’s civic life as it knits itself into a new and dramatically more positive formation.

The fellows spoke directly of their commitment to support one another in the most practical of ways.  They credited the fellowship with creating conditions that allow them to cut through the morass of organizational constraints and straight into collaboration.  They explicitly spoke to the logic of emergence as they affirmed that they did not need to invent a collaborative project for the sake of working together.

The fellows understand that their web of relationship can be called upon as the need arises.  They look forward to working with each other in decentralized ways.  They are free of the idea that the only thing worth doing is what they can all do together.  This network is nimble.  It can work in different combinations.

This cohort of fellows explicitly endorsed the facilitated process.  Participants acknowledged that three years of group process had allowed them to break away from conditioned ways of interacting.  The fellows appreciated a process that allowed them to get below the posturing of the head space into the connectedness of the heart space.  By recognizing each other’s humanity, by sharing one another’s vulnerabilities, by intersecting at the points of shared passion, the fellows have successfully woven a web that will continue to propel them forward even beyond the bounds of this three-year experience.

Our circle’s “talking object” was a vase that held earth from Brazil and earth from each of their homes.  This earth held each of their intentions as explicitly articulated at the beginning of their three-year process.  What I witnessed that Friday night in Baltimore was the manifestation of a most beautiful intention – an intention to build beloved community.  What I witnessed that night was a complete experience of Grace.

Wonder why I’m passionate about collaborative process and strong, creative process design?

Join us at Fundamentals of Facilitation for Racial Justice Work on May 8-9 in Boston to explore these ideas and more!

You can’t have peace or justice without it. Consider the following:

“Peace comes from being able to contribute the best that we have, and all that we are, toward creating a world that supports everyone. But it is also securing the space for others to contribute the best that they have and all that they are.” So says Nigerian human rights and democracy activist, Hafsat Abiola. Her words echo those of John Paul Lederach , who wrote in The Moral Imagination that peace is not a condition—a process through which people can build relationships conflicting parties and continually engage to create a reality where “the other” continues to exist.

“Justice is the ultimate social good. The just social system would be one which power (control of decisions) is diffused, decision making is participatory, accountability for decisions is visible, and resources are adequate and equitably distributed. Justice can only result from continuous interplay of individuals and groups adequately empowered to represent their own interests, with a minimum of superordinate umpiring to prevent power concentrations and, therefore, abuses. Given human fallibility, a system of justice … must emerge from the interplay of empowered, meaning-seeking individuals and groups.”  James Laue, Gerald Cormick in The Ethics of Intervention in Community Disputes

 “Power is not a thing—something you have. It’s an action—something you do.” Beth Roy

These statements form a kind of gyroscope for my work. They cause me to ask myself: Am I designing and facilitating collaborative processes that create conditions where improbable groups of people can build authentic relationships? Where they can create deep, shared meaning? Where power is constructed together and exercised responsibly? Where solid, fair and meaningful agreements lead to lasting change? How do these statements influence your thinking and practice?

Last week Seth wrote a blog post titled When execution gets cheaper, so should planning.  Provocative statement, specially when planning is at the score of your business!

Here is how he concludes:

The goal should be to have the minimum number of meetings and scenarios and documentation necessary to maximize the value of execution. As it gets faster and easier to actually build the thing, go ahead and make sure the planning (or lack of it) keeps pace.

Facilitating meetings is also core to our work here at IISC! Should we do less of that too?

Seth’s point is actually consonant with a lot of what we’ve been learning and moving forward.  As we shift away from the technical to the adaptive, from the complicated to the complex, planning becomes less and less relevant.

Our work is about collaboration. It is about working well together in an increasingly complex world. It is about experimenting probing sensing – it is about learning as we do.

Our work is about building in the reflection and connectivity that is necessary for true innovation.

Yes! There is planning.  But planning is no longer a place to hide.  Planning becomes the process by which we distill our intention.  Planning here is how we become clear about our vision and the desired outcomes all of our work.  Planning is how we determine what it is we trying to learn.

This post comes courtesy of staff from the Center for Arab American Philanthropy who attended the convening in Michigan that Cynthia and I facilitated last week. As the post mentions, youth played a key role in the proceedings, offering up moving testimonials and powerful elements of a vision for moving the state forward to a place of opportunity for all . . .

Concerned with issues of youth opportunity and racial equity in Michigan, the Council of Michigan Foundations (CMF) hosted State of Opportunity? The Road Ahead for Michigan on March 27. The Center for Arab American Philanthropy (CAAP) was in attendance, representing the Arab American community while the convening tackled structural racism in philanthropy and “cradle to career” grantmaking.

The Aspen Institute defines structural racism as “a system in which public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work in various, often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group inequity. It identifies dimensions of our history and culture that have allowed privileges associated with “whiteness” and disadvantages associated with “color” to endure and adapt over time.” The March 27 gathering focused on the “dimension” of philanthropy.

State of Opportunity speakers advocated for more holistic grantmaking practices, those that from “cradle to career” (birth through adulthood) support the growth of healthy, skilled, and civically engaged youth. This includes looking at problems that face our youth (such as infant mortality, unemployment, and welfare) through a lens of racial equity. In other words, grantmakers need to take into consideration the concerns that affect minority populations, as these populations generally have higher rates of social challenges.

However, the mission of the convening was not to focus on negative rhetoric, but to discuss grant-makers’ visions for a healthy future in the state of Michigan. Attendees agreed that foundations need to put emphasis on communicating stories about the “bright spots” – the organizations, families, and individuals we positively impact through funding and partnerships. In addition, four youth grant-makers from various foundations in Michigan were in attendance, sharing stories about the impact they have in their communities through grant-making. Their positivity was contagious and they truly have the potential to be the future leaders of philanthropy.

Last week, I had the privilege of spending a few hours with a delegation from Egypt—four young men who were involved in the April 6^th revolution and continue to work for democracy in Egypt. They were at the end of a three week tour of the U.S. focused on the role of social media in politics and elections.They were frankly surprised that here, in the country that gave birth to Facebook, Twitter and Google, we not doing more with social media to advance our democracy. Their visit with IISC was to focus on some of the social technology that fuels social change work. Still, I thought to myself, “No pressure!”

We worked through Framing the Big Picture—a framework for describing current reality and a desired future state, as well as exploring the context and stakeholders. The scope of their desired futures was sobering: establishing a media free from control by politicians and business people; counteracting rumors propagated by state media; getting the military out of politics and back into their barracks; building political awareness in rural areas where democracy seems most unfamiliar.

I have to confess to a moment of insecurity. Would the tools that I was offering seem equal to the task? Just as I was thinking this, one of the participants expressed impatience with planning processes in general. But then we got into Designing Pathways to Action—a framework for sequencing discussions during a planning process. We were on our feet moving from space to space within the pathway and the group was more engaged. The participant who expressed impatience with planning shared a story. Four days before the revolution in Egypt, a friend of his share with him plans to launch the revolution. He didn’t think it was possible. He said he had to apologize!

I still wasn’t sure about whether the tools seemed up to the enormity of the tasks before this group. But, in the end, they found great value in these simple tools and even asked if we could come to Egypt to bring these and other tools to their colleagues and communities. What an affirmation!

These visitors reaffirmed something I’ve experienced repeatedly over the past 18 years. The tools and frameworks on which we have built our practice are scalable: they work for small projects in tiny volunteer organizations and for efforts that take place on a national or even international stage. They are flexible and transportable across lines of culture, language and other differences. And, they reflect the kind of elegant simplicity that results from working through complexity.

“The New American Academy does a tremendous job of nurturing relationships. Since people learn from people they love, education is fundamentally about the relationship between a teacher and student.”

The following post is a commentary from Stowe Boyd – The New American Academy: Post-Industrial At Last.  It called my attention because it makes a link between education and collaboration, learning and relationship. See what you all think! 

Shimon Waronker sounds like a fascinating character. Grew up in South America, became a US Army Intelligence officer, is an observant Jew of the Chabad-Lubavich movement, and then became a NYC school teacher, and studied at the New York City Leadership Academy.

And now he wants to transform American education, based on modern thoughts about human collaboration:

David Brooks, The Relationship School

He has a grand theory to transform American education, which he developed with others at the Harvard School of Education. The American education model, he says, was actually copied from the 18th-century Prussian model designed to create docile subjects and factory workers. He wants schools to operate more like the networked collaborative world of today.

He talks fervently like a guerrilla leader up in the mountains with plans to take over the whole country. For the grandly titled New American Academy, he didn’t invent new approaches, as much as combine ones from a bunch of other schools.

Like the Waldorf schools, teachers move up with the same children year after year. Like Hogwarts, students are grouped into Houses. Like Phillips Exeter Academy, students are less likely to sit at individual desks than around big tables or areas for teacher-led discussions.

The students seem to do a lot more public speaking, with teachers working hard to get them to use full sentences and proper diction. The subjects in the early grades (the only ones that exist so far) are interdisciplinary, with a bias toward engineering: how flight, agriculture, transportation and communications systems work. The organizational structure of the school is flattened. Nearly everybody is pushed to the front lines, in the classroom, and salaries are higher (master teachers make $120,000 a year).

The New American Academy takes a different approach than the other exciting new education model, the “No Excuses” schools like Kipp Academy. New American is less structured. […]

The New American Academy has two big advantages as a reform model. First, instead of running against the education establishment, it grows out of it and is being embraced by the teachers’ unions and the education schools. If it works, it can spread faster.

Second, it does a tremendous job of nurturing relationships. Since people learn from people they love, education is fundamentally about the relationship between a teacher and student. By insisting on constant informal contact and by preserving that contact year after year, The New American Academy has the potential to create richer, mentor-like or even family-like relationships for students who are not rich in those things.

Waronker is situating these children in a social context that is unlike the conventional US school, which is more or less a factory in which the children are the products being stamped out. Instead, they are embedded in a social network — a culture — where learning is the central theme.

And of course, recruiting the best and the brightest — $120K will go a long way to getting brainiacs involved — is not an anomaly: we should have brilliant people teaching in the US, not people who couldn’t do anything else.

Last night we came together as IISC to bid farewell to the great Melinda Weekes; we are proud that she is moving on to be the Managing Director of the Applied Research Center.  But today’s is not a post about Melinda.  It is a post about community.

We were joyful together last night.  We broke bread and shared drink together.  We told stories.  We expressed love and appreciation for a very special person.  We sang.  We roared with laughter.

We entered into an exceptional space – a particular state – and we loved it.  There is a lot to be learned from such experiences.  Celebration and the expression of joy are bonding experiences, powerful reminders that we find happiness in community – in connection with one another.

In a time when it seems that everything has become work, it becomes increasingly important to tend to community – to create the conditions that generate laughter.  It takes some skill and a certain quality of attention, but it is not a hard science.  Care and authenticity can take us a long way.

I’m reminded of a blog post I wrote two years ago.  I cite research on happiness (after a certain level of income), and the list of activities that produce it:

• Sex
• Socializing after work, and
• Having dinner with others

It’s all about connection.  Create the conditions.  When was the last time that you socialized with your colleagues after work?  Where you bonding around negatives or were you celebrating each other?  Did you break bread together?  How much did you laugh?