How Change Happens E-Book

Leslie R. Crutchfield

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 385

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Discover how those who change the world do so with this thoughtful and timely book

Why do some changes occur, and others don't? What are the factors that drive successful social and environmental movements, while others falter? How Change Happens examines the leadership approaches, campaign strategies, and ground-level tactics employed in a range of modern social change campaigns. The book explores successful movements that have achieved phenomenal impact since the 1980s—tobacco control, gun rights expansion, LGBT marriage equality, and acid rain elimination. It also examines recent campaigns that seem to have fizzled, like Occupy Wall Street, and those that continue to struggle, like gun violence prevention and carbon emissions reduction. And it explores implications for movements that are newly emerging, like Black Lives Matter. By comparing successful social change campaigns to the rest, How Change Happens reveals powerful lessons for changemakers who seek to impact society and the planet for the better in the 21st century.

Author Leslie Crutchfield is a writer, lecturer, social impact advisor, and leading authority on scaling social innovation. She is Executive Director of the Global Social Enterprise Initiative (GSEI) at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business, and co-author of two previous books, Forces for Good and Do More than Give. She serves as a senior advisor with FSG, the global social impact consulting firm. She is frequently invited to speak at nonprofit, philanthropic, and corporate events, and has appeared on shows such as ABC News Now and NPR, among others. She is an active media contributor, with pieces appearing in The Washington Post. Fortune.com, CNN/Money and Harvard Business Review.com.  

• Examines why some societal shifts occur, and others don't
• Illustrates the factors that drive successful social and environmental movements
• Looks at the approaches, strategies, and tactics that changemakers employ in order to effect widescale change

Whatever cause inspires you, advance it by applying the must-read advice in How Change Happens—whether you lead a social change effort, or if you’re tired of just watching from the outside and want to join the fray, or if you simply want to better understand how change happens, this book is the place to start.

Leseprobe

HOW CHANGE HAPPENS

Why Some Social MovementsSucceed While Others Don’t

LESLIE R. CRUTCHFIELD

A project of the Global Social Enterprise Initiative at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business

Cover design: Wiley

Copyright © 2018 by Leslie Crutchfield. All rights reserved.

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.

Published simultaneously in Canada.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Crutchfield, Leslie R., author.

Title: How change happens : why some social movements succeed while others

   don’t / Leslie R. Crutchfield.

Description: Hoboken : Wiley, 2018. | Includes index. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2017057782 (print) | LCCN 2018006548 (ebook) | ISBN

   9781119413707 (pdf) | ISBN 9781119413783 (epub) | ISBN 9781119413813

   (hardback)

Subjects: LCSH: Social change. | Social movements. | Environmentalism.

Classification: LCC HM831 (ebook) | LCC HM831 .C78 2018 (print) | DDC

   303.4–dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017057782

For Caleigh, Quinn, and Finn

List of Tables

Introduction

Table I.1

Table I.2

Conclusion

Table C.1

List of Illustrations

1

Figure 1.1 MADD Victim Support Services

Figure 1.2 Select National Movement Landscapes

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Figure 3.1 Commercial vs. Social Marketing

6

Figure 6.1 Drunk Driving Death Rates (1982–2016) 

Figure 6.2 Leadership Spectrum of Social Movements

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Introduction

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Foreword

THIS IS AN important book, and it comes at an important time. Leslie Crutchfield has given us a well-researched, highly readable examination of how the messy, complicated world of social change works, and does not.

There’s no real recipe for social change, no “movement in a box” that we can put in place to create a more equitable, just society. This shouldn’t be a surprise. But Leslie has studied a number of organizations and changemakers and given us conclusions that we can apply—if we have the courage and the ability to take up a cause worth fighting for. In other words, we can make change happen.

Most big, important social and environmental issues are daunting and scary, and seem beyond solutions. But this book tells us otherwise. It also shows us that champions and leaders come in all sizes and shapes. And that we can do it, too. In fact, that’s the only way positive, sustainable change will happen.

I’ve been involved in many social change endeavors, including high blood pressure control through my social marketing work at Porter Novelli; striving for women’s empowerment and education at CARE; fighting the tobacco wars at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids; advancing age-related causes at AARP; and reforming advanced illness and end-of-life care at the Coalition to Transform Advanced Care (C-TAC). I’ve got the scars to prove it, and Leslie’s insights and conclusions strike me as being right on target.

She gives us a big-picture perspective so that we can look back on what’s happened as a way to inform how we can look forward and plan for future challenges.

More specifically, she shows us how networks and coalitions are critical to success. No single organization is big enough or wealthy enough to tackle huge social and environmental problems alone. Strategic partnerships and alliances across sectors are necessary for change. This requires patience, skill, and ego adjustment. I recall a frustrated participant at an unruly public health meeting saying, “I know how to defeat the tobacco industry; let’s make them work in coalitions!”

Sometimes—or, rather, oftentimes—it takes incredible optimism to fight these battles. Today the gun lobby seems undefeatable. But we can all remember when the tobacco industry was so big and bad (it still is, especially internationally) that it lied to Congress, hired a hoard of law firms, PR and advertising agencies—and had an addictive product to boot. Tobacco’s story seemed unassailable: cigarettes are sexy and alluring; tobacco use is a right (after all, it is a legal product), disease is the smoker’s responsibility, government intrusion is bad, the scientific evidence is in doubt, kids will be kids, and on and on. Take heart; nobody is too big to fall.

Leslie tells us we have to change both hearts and policy, that is, achieve policy reform as well as shift social norms and individual behaviors. So true. Her examination of changing norms and expectations in drunk driving and marriage equality are important examples of how it can work. Media, technology, and policy are important levers for change. Then–vice president Joe Biden helped tip the issue of same-sex marriage when he surprised the nation, and his boss, Barack Obama, by saying he was “absolutely comfortable with . . . men marrying men and women marrying women.” Biden credited his change of heart to the TV show Will & Grace. And for good measure he officiated at the wedding of two gay White House officials at his home a few years later.

But it’s also important to know what stories not to tell . . . what won’t work in shifting norms and expectations. At the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, I wanted to attack tobacco company executives. So we came up with a communications concept we called “Does your mother know what you’re doing?” It was about shaming their senior executives. Consumer testing showed us that the concept didn’t work. People hated the industry, but attacking specific individuals seemed to make them too uncomfortable.

Persuasive stories that change minds have to be fact-based, as well as emotional. For example, in our Global Social Enterprise Initiative here at Georgetown, we’re working with the Viscardi Center and the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy to encourage companies to hire and retain more people with disabilities. We want to persuade human resource professionals that this is the right thing to do and that there is a logical business case, as well. But our research among small- and medium-sized businesses operating at local and regional levels in different parts of the country showed that many HR directors don’t even think of disability as part of diversity and inclusion. So we need to start there, not down the road.

Leslie also shows how the private sector plays an important role in social movements, today, more than ever. Decades ago, in the National High Blood Pressure Education Program (led by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute at NIH), companies became involved in a quiet way because they realized that we were creating a market for their medications.

But today, as Leslie points out, companies are much more up-front and engaged. They increasingly see that speaking out on public issues, involving their employees, and appealing to their customers can make a positive difference for them and for society. This will probably increase, because the opportunity to create business value through creating social and economic value—with company shareholders and societal stakeholders both benefiting—is one of the most powerful forces driving growth in the global economy. So whether companies are completely or only partially on board with our issues, we need and want them at the table. (Exclude the tobacco companies, please.)

Many of the movements Leslie studied are decades old, and despite their successes, there’s no end in sight. That’s because social change is seldom permanent, and it can be reversed. New generations grow up, lessons are forgotten, program funds are diverted, and technologies emerge.

Again, consider tobacco. While smoking among kids and adults has declined dramatically in the United States, the industry is still an evil global empire. As this is written, Big Tobacco has enough signatures for a ballot initiative to reverse San Francisco’s ban on menthol in cigarettes. Menthol is an alluring flavor that is the choice among half of all kids who begin smoking—and has even greater appeal among African American beginning smokers. At the same time, the industry is working on a new technology that they “promise” will reduce harm while providing the nicotine and flavor smokers crave. Internationally, it’s the wild, wild west; the industry is using many of the same tactics—from advertising to women and children, to product sampling and sponsoring music festivals—that they used to get away with in the United States. No, you can never drop your guard.

Finally, Leslie’s emphasis on leadership cannot be overstated. Leaders make the difference in social movements, as in most human endeavors. But her finding—and our lesson—is that good leaders exist throughout a movement. You don’t have to be the woman or man at the top to be a leader. You can lead from the front, the middle, or the back of the parade. Colin Powell understood that. He said that real leadership is the capacity to influence and inspire. Powell asked this question: “Have you ever noticed that people will personally commit to certain individuals who, on paper or on the organization chart, possess little authority, but instead possess pizzazz, drive, expertise, and genuine caring for teammates?”

Leaders set the direction and take us there. It’s not so much yelling “Charge up that hill,” but more like “Come with me.” And that’s why we can create social change, despite all the obstacles. That’s what makes Leslie’s book so hopeful. She calls it being “leaderfull.” Not “leaderless” or “leader-led.” We can all be engaged, and we can all make a difference.

A few years ago a newspaper article reported that a newly discovered bacterium was apparently eating much of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and could potentially take care of this enormous problem. Wouldn’t it be great to have a bacterium to attack other big problems, like obesity, socio-economic inequality, or Alzheimer’s?

But no such luck. It turns out the article was inaccurate. There’s no virtuous bug to “eat” the oil spill or any of the other huge problems we face. So we have to tackle them ourselves. That’s what this book is about, and that’s why it’s so important.

Bill Novelli

Introduction: How Change Happens

WHY DO CERTAIN social changes happen, while others don’t? The answer is not simple. Take smoking. It’s hard to imagine now, but just a few decades ago, walk into a restaurant or fly in an airplane, and every third person could have been holding a cigarette. Just watch an episode of Mad Men to recall how ubiquitous tobacco was. Smoking was synonymous with an American way of life—glamorized by celebrities, promoted in glossy advertisements, and even tacitly endorsed by doctors and nurses, many of whom smoked on the job despite U.S. Surgeon General warnings.

Today, the harmful habit has largely been eliminated. Youth smoking rates have dropped down to 6 percent.1 For adults, from an all-time high when more than half of men in America smoked, rates have flat-lined to around 15 percent on average.2 Tobacco is banned from most places in the United States—offices, airports, malls—and, in some states, even in casinos. Joe Camel has evaporated from youth media, and the Marlboro Man is dead, literally. One of the recognized actors who posed for the ads, Wayne McLaren, died in 1992 (of lung cancer). Smoking today is infrequent, unfashionable, and unwelcome almost everywhere.

The abandonment of smoking is one of the most remarkable societal shifts in modern U.S. history. It has resulted in huge health gains: No other single social change has saved more lives or prevented more disease in the last few decades. How did this landmark achievement occur? How could one of the most prevailing trends and addictive habits dissipate so dramatically? It is unlikely smoking simply “went out of fashion,” like big hair, Jordache jeans, or moonwalking, among other 1980s fads.

Consider another groundbreaking social change in the United States: marriage for same-sex couples. Just two decades ago, the proposition of legally recognized homosexual marriage was roiling the nation. President Bill Clinton had signed the Defense of Marriage Act, defining marriage as only between men and women, and thirteen states had ballot measures under way attempting to ban same-sex marriage, fueled by powerful anti-gay conservative and religious groups. But the U.S. Supreme Court settled the matter with its 2015 ruling that same-sex couples must be treated the same as heterosexual couples in every state. How did this flip occur in less than a generation?

Gun rights expansion is another remarkable phenomenon to gain momentum since the 1980s: Gun laws today are more lenient than at any point in modern U.S. history, and firearms are ubiquitous. Guns are ingrained in American culture—glorified on TV, movie, and video game screens, legally owned at home, openly carried in most U.S. states, and easily purchased. There are more gun shops in the United States than there are McDonald’s and Starbucks combined.3 Like cigarettes just a couple of decades ago, guns today are everywhere.

It’s astounding, given that 95 percent of Americans—including Democrats and Republicans, gun owners as well as non-owners—support more “common sense” gun laws such as universal background checks, and 64 percent oppose assault weapon sales.4 Yet when a tragic mass shooting occurs—Las Vegas, Orlando, Sandy Hook, Columbine—public outcry for gun control surges; vigils, protests, and “die-ins” are mounted; reform bills are proposed; but ultimately, little changes.

How We Got to Now

These are just a few of the many examples of the sweeping social changes to occur in recent U.S. history. This book is about how these changes happened. We wanted to understand how society got to a place that allows almost limitless access to guns, celebrates gay weddings, and, at the same time, bans smoking in public and has strict laws so that most drinkers don’t dare drive drunk. This book explores how these seismic social and environmental shifts came about. In essence, we are trying to explain how we got to now.

In writing this book, we specifically wanted to understand what makes the movements and campaigns behind certain causes so successful. The range of issues covered here is purposely broad: How did members of the LGBT movement triumph in their quest to make marriage legal for same-sex couples in the United States? What did members of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) do to cut by half alcohol-related driving deaths since the 1980s? In the same timeframe, the National Rifle Association (NRA) has successfully advocated to expand gun access and Second Amendment rights, markedly easing restrictions on firearm purchases and sales. Teddy bear manufacturers are now subject to greater regulation than gun makers are.

This book is also about why certain changes don’t happen. Gun safety advocates have fought the NRA on the national stage for decades, and have largely lost. Why is it that most American voters support tighter gun laws, and yet the NRA continues to win so resoundingly? Or consider other vexing modern issues, such as climate change. Environmentalists were able to eliminate acid rain in North America by the turn of the 21st century, but have since struggled to cut carbon emissions in the United States and globally. And despite public health officials’ best efforts to promote healthier eating and exercise habits, rates of obesity and diabetes have climbed to epidemic proportions.

Why do some changes occur, but others don’t? What are the factors that drive successful social and environmental change campaigns, while others falter? This book examines the leadership approaches, campaign strategies, and ground-level tactics employed by a range of modern social change efforts peaking since the 1980s. Some changes were achieved through full-fledged social movements, like tobacco control and gun rights expansion—causes that entailed contentious battles with fiercely divided opponents. Other changes involved sustained campaigns, like the worldwide polio eradication effort. (See Table I.1 for a listing of the causes we explored and Appendix A: Research Parameters for more details.) But whether a movement or a campaign, these major societal shifts have a few factors in common that separate successful efforts from the rest. This book is our attempt to parse what sets apart today’s winning movements from others and to find what lessons can be gleaned for change makers in the 21st century.

Table I.1.Select Societal Changes (1980–2016)

Changes That Happened

Changes “in Progress”

Acid rain reduced

Carbon emissions reduction

Drunk-driving reduced

Criminal sentencing reform

LGBT marriage equality established

Gun violence prevention

Gun rights expanded

Living wage increase

Polio eliminated (globally)

Obesity and diabetes control

Mass incarceration increased

Racial tolerance and justice

Smoking reduced

Public education equity

Changes in this study had:

Tipped (or not) during recent decades

Occurred in the United States or were largely U.S.-led

Focused on specific social or environmental outcomes (that is, were not primarily political movements)

Approach

During three years of intensive inquiry into some of the most significant social changes to occur in the last few decades, we investigated what worked, mistakes made, and lessons learned. We wanted to understand why successful movements triumphed over others, attempting to extract insights and advice to help advance today’s causes. (The “we” in this book refers to the author, Leslie Crutchfield, and her twenty- one colleagues and graduate student assistants who made up the How Change Happens book research team housed at the Global Social Enterprise Initiative at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business.)

Working together in rolling shifts over the course of several years, we set out to study each movement’s unique history and spoke with many of its leaders, members, and supporters, as well as opponents. We reviewed materials created by, for, or about the movements, available online and off. When there were visible opponents, we tried to examine all of these same factors from opposing or alternate viewpoints.

We also tried to take under consideration the unique contexts that underpin each cause. Advancements made in these various areas weren’t attributable to the actions of one particular leader or approach. Luck, misfortune, timing, and changing cultural attitudes also influenced outcomes in any given social change effort. So we’ve tried to take all relevant factors into consideration.

But we also recognized that significant societal shifts do not occur at random. Americans didn’t suddenly stop smoking because it simply “went out of fashion.” Gun enthusiasts weren’t able to stock up on semi-automatic assault weapons without legislative and regulatory allowances. Heterosexuals didn’t embrace marriage for same-sex couples because it seemed like “the right thing to do.” These changes occurred because of the relentless advocacy of vast networks of individuals and organizations, campaigning in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles and often against entrenched, powerful opponents. In spite of it all, they prevailed.

Context

This book is about changes that happened as society careened into the 21st century. It’s set during a time when social movement organizations had one leg in the past century, planted squarely in the successes of earlier movements such as civil rights, environmental, worker, and feminist pushes that had peaked in the 1960s and 1970s. The other leg stretches into the 2000s, as new social sector organizations have come online in response to fresh threats and opportunities, just as many movements have spread globally. Meanwhile, new ways of organizing metastasized with the dawn of the Digital Revolution; through the newly ubiquitous Internet, suddenly millions of activists could immediately connect to each other through social media platforms. Campaign messages could go viral in a nanosecond, and anyone could shape the course of an entire movement because now anybody could communicate directly with everybody—without filters, for better or for worse. As Here Comes Everybody author Clay Shirky writes, “When we change the way we communicate, we change society.”5

Just as civil society and social movement organizing were shifting with the advent of social media, the private sector was evolving—at exponential rates. Technological innovation ushered Western society into a post-industrial Digital Age and catalyzed the supply chain revolution. With innovations in sourcing and logistics, suddenly businesses were freed up to purchase inputs from and create their products in almost any nation on earth. As supply chains opened up, the world turned flat once again, and globalization brought a new world trade order. This unleashed boundless new frontiers for fortune-makers—and also new responsibilities. Companies that had been profiting off environmentally unsustainable sourcing practices, or perpetuating cruel and unsafe worker conditions, were exposed to global glare. In the United States, the environmental impact of more than a century of coal-fired industrial progress had laid waste to the air, water, and ground that supported life. Citizen groups and advocates rose up in protest, and the corporate responsibility movement was spawned, as companies scrambled to clean up their acts under new government regulations and, more importantly, consumer and citizen scrutiny.

By the 2010s, some forward-thinking businesses were getting ahead of the environmental and human rights problems that vexed them by adding social and environmental impact to their financial bottom lines. Strategy gurus Michael Porter and Mark Kramer proposed in Harvard Business Review that companies generating shared social, environmental, and financial returns promised to “reinvent capitalism.” Today big businesses don’t just compete to make the “Fortune 500” list of most profitable companies by sales; now they jockey for slots on the more elite “Fortune 50 Companies Changing the World” list of billion-dollar-plus businesses creating shared value.

Policy Matters

The political sphere during the past several decades was rife with foment as well. In response to the progressive movements of the 1960s and 1970s, conservative forces geared up in the 1980s to resist and dismantle progressive-era programs and policies. President Reagan attempted to disassemble the Environmental Protection Agency and built on President Nixon’s attempt to spawn “law-and-order” federal policies with a cascading affect that rippled through the following decades and down into state and local jurisdictions. The result: The United States today is the world’s leader in incarceration, with more than two million people in prisons and jails—mostly men of color. What explains the 500 percent increase in imprisonment over the last four decades? Not increased crime rates, says Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow. Rather, changes in sentencing laws and other government policies resulted in minor drug offenders being punished and branded on par with murderers and other felons.6

Paradoxically, while conservative officials started the United States on this path decades ago, new ultra-conservative forces are pushing back today: The Koch brothers are fighting on the same side as Black Lives Matter activists against the “overcriminalization of America”—although it’s principally Koch’s Tea Party–infused quest for deregulation and sequestering government spending that puts them in the company of such unlikely bedfellows.7

Other vexing paradoxes permeate this period. During a time in the 2000s when more black men became incarcerated than had been enslaved in the 1800s,8 the United States also elected its first black president. President Barack Obama symbolized for many the dawn of a new era of racial tolerance, a harbinger of hope for a “post-racial” society. One challenging reality of his presidency was that, when Obama took office, the United States—and by extension the world—had cratered into the deepest financial crisis since the Great Depression. A fierce conservative backlash quickly formed, with the populist Tea Party insurgents rising up with anti-immigrant, libertarian, nationalist bents. They railed against President Obama’s proposed bailouts for homeowners hurt by the Wall Street mortgage debacle, and later against Obamacare.

Tea Partyers captured a sizeable number of Congressional seats, but their impact was felt far beyond the political sphere: They provided fertile ground for the offensive “Birther” movement (of which Obama’s successor, President Donald Trump, was a prominent and vocal chieftain) and fomented a new caste of global warming skeptics. According to a Pew Research Center poll, by 2013, Tea Party Republicans were the only group of Americans who still believed the earth was not warming.9 By sowing seeds of scientific doubt and emboldening climate skeptics, as well as fostering nationalist and, by extension, racist views, the Tea Party contributed to an unprecedented polarization in U.S. politics and society.

By the time of this writing, the Tea Party–infused conservative movement had reached its apex by winning the presidency. In Republican candidate Donald J. Trump, they found the bona fides they were looking for, given his “Birther” background and his anti-immigrant, nationalist stances. But it’s important to note that Trump didn’t create the populist movement that ultimately ushered him into office; rather, he shrewdly tapped the anger and disaffection of white working-class voters in coal country and other parts of the United States who felt left behind by a vanishing industrial economy and increasing cultural diversity.

And it’s precisely because of the some of the successful social and environmental movements profiled in this book that big blocks of white Americans had become increasingly disenchanted: They were incensed by environmentalists who prioritized clean air over coal workers’ livelihoods. They resented heavily pedigreed elites from either coast telling them what they should not eat, drink, smoke, or shoot. Trump’s victory may be interpreted as the apogee of a nation’s hillbilly elegy as told by Kentuckian J.D. Vance or a crippling case of “whitelash” as tagged by civil rights environmentalist Van Jones.10, 11 It depended on which side of the Rust Belt you were on.

Deconstructing the Dissonance

Whether or not whitelash explains the 2016 presidential election results, by the mid-2010s, American society was undeniably experiencing a severe case of whiplash. We had allowed almost unlimited gun stockpiles and freed up gay and lesbian couples to wed, and at the same time banned almost everyone from smoking in public, and no friend would dare let a friend drive drunk—all during the same timeframe. The movements that drove these changes are both catalysts and harbingers of our time. Like canaries in a coal mine, movements are manifestations of the polarizing, contradictory, ever-changing values and beliefs that constitute a democratic society. And they are the engines of change.

Think about it. In the past few decades, “nanny state” tobacco controllers have managed to snuff out smokers’ abilities to light up in most places—including bars, restaurants, and most casinos. They’ve jacked up prices by slapping on sin taxes to the point that a pack of Marlboros today costs a New Yorker $13. (This is, incidentally, nearly double the hourly minimum wage most smokers earn, since unemployed or low-income workers are among the few people still smoking these days). Anti-tobacco groups also stamped out cigarette companies’ license to advertise to young people in the United States, effectively curtailing the industry’s chances of hooking its next generation of consumers—although some teens are now using “smokeless” e-cigarettes, enticed by the sweet flavors these liquid nicotine-delivery devices are designed to emit through vapor clouds.12

But during this same timeframe, gun rights advocates have swung the country to the opposite extreme. Pro-gun activists have managed to loosen gun laws to such lenient levels that almost anyone twenty-one or over can legally purchase a handgun at one of the thousands of gun shops, trade shows, and online venues. People can openly carry firearms into almost any place in more than thirty U.S. states. And gun collectors and mass murderers alike can stockpile as many weapons as they wish: In the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history, the Las Vegas shooter who in October of 2017 murdered fifty-eight concert-goers and injured hundreds more had stockpiled more than forty firearms, many with semi-automatic capability, no questions asked. He was allowed full access to these weapons after passing background checks because he exhibited no prior criminal record or mental health history at the time of purchase. Besides, if it had taken more than three days for gun vendors to complete his background checks, they would have been allowed to sell him the guns anyway.

Or consider this other curious quandary: Same-sex couples in every U.S. state won the right to marry in 2015 when the U.S. Supreme Court decided Oberfell v. Hodges. The ruling followed on the heels of hundreds of local and state court cases and dozens of U.S. states passing measures in support of LGBT rights to marry, establish civil unions, and receive other protections from discrimination. That same year, then-governor Mike Pence (R-Indiana) signed a Religious Freedom Bill that would allow businesses to discriminate against customers based on their sexual orientation; Memories Pizza, a family-owned business in Walkerton, Indiana, became the first company to publicly refuse to cater a same-sex wedding as a result of the law.13 The following year, Pence’s conservative credentials bolstered Donald Trump’s presidential ticket, helping clinch the election.

Darkness and Light

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . . it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness.” So wrote Charles Dickens of the French Revolution. “. . . it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us.” So sits society as it edges up to the 2020s. It’s a time of disturbing societal incongruities—while some people are filled with great hope for a better future, others are slouching in depressive regress. We’ve needed help making sense of it all. In one poignant Saturday Night Live skit that aired a few weeks before the 2016 election, actor Tom Hanks donned a comfy knit cardigan and spoke as “America’s Dad.”

“You may have noticed that your complexion is changing—you’re getting a little darker, and you’re freaking out about it. Well, that’s natural for a nation of immigrants like yourself,” quipped Hanks. “Also, you’re a lot gayer than you used to be. . . . And you have a lot more guns. Do you really need all of those?” But he assured everyone, “It’s gonna’ be fine.”

Embracing the Dissonance: Why Some Movements Succeed and Others Don’t

As we examined some of the most successful modern movements of our time, we marveled at the dizzying juxtaposition of outcomes that had occurred. How could society simultaneously grow “more gay,” stockpile unprecedented caches of guns, quit smoking, stop driving drunk, and remove the toxins from the air that created acid rain and destroyed the ozone, only to later fail to cap carbon emissions in any meaningful way? Taking comfort in Hanks’s soliloquy, we needed a way to make sense of it all.

First, as disjointed as circumstances are today, we did find one thread of continuity: Among all of these jarringly juxtaposed outcomes, it was clear no single political ideology or set of religious values was emerging as “right” during the 1980–2016 period. Republicans, Libertarians, and Tea Partyers gained ground on certain issues, while Democrats, progressives, and liberals won others. God didn’t appear to be favoring any one side. And if multiple Gods were involved, there clearly wasn’t consensus.

In the absence of a predominant ideology or values set that might explain why certain sides prevailed, we knew that the answer to why some movements catapulted forth to victory while others faltered had to do with how they were organized. We looked at how each movement and campaign was structured and led and at what strategies and tactics each employed. We wanted to understand whether certain elements were common among the winning sides that the others lacked.

This didn’t tell us much at first. All sides of each cause we studied had impressive leaders, strategies, and many of the same campaign tactics. They organized, mobilized, and canvassed door-to-door; they educated, persuaded, and lobbied—and when that didn’t work, they sued, protested, marched, and demonstrated; they held vigils and town halls and prayer breakfasts; they gathered signatures, got out the vote, and some backed political candidates and influenced elections. They raised money (some more than others) and pitched the press. They did most if not all of the myriad things required to move public opinion, shift behaviors, and reform laws, policies, and regulations to favor their side. And when the Internet became ubiquitous, they used social media—friending, texting, and tweeting up storms. So what differentiated the best from the rest?

We started to look more closely at these movements, observing not just what they did or the number of supporters they had, but how the various pieces fit together. That’s when we started to see patterns emerge. We saw distinctive approaches and different emphases among the winners. It’s not that they had something the others completely lacked, such as charismatic leaders with deep-seated passion for the cause—all causes had plenty of those. Also neither luck nor financial fortune explained why some prevailed over others: The tobacco industry dwarfs the gun industry in revenues, yet anti-tobacco activists prevailed against their powerful corporate opponents. And it’s not simply that certain causes have public opinion in their favor—more Americans want “common sense” gun laws than not. Yet today’s policy outcomes reflect the opposite.

Basically, winning movements and also-rans alike started out with mixed bags of advantages, disadvantages, and neutral factors. It’s what they did with it that matters. The success of winning movements—we found—had to do with their approach and the degrees to which they emphasized certain aspects of their campaigns. It had a lot to do with the strategic choices winning movement leaders made, and how they got their movement’s myriad parts aligned to advance a common cause, despite odds set heavily against them most of the time. In short, winning movements made their destinies come true, rather than being destined to succeed.

As Jim Collins writes in Good to Great, “Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.” Collins was writing about companies that had massively outperformed their industry peers, but his insights are just as applicable to movements. Winning causes didn’t simply get lucky, and they don’t just coalesce out of thin air. The best movement leaders had well-thought-out plans, made tough strategic choices, and led from the grassroots up. They realized they needed to amass armies to advance their causes, and that victory would be secured by unleashing that grassroots energy and channeling it—somewhat like catching lightning in a bottle.

Findings

After several years of intense scrutiny and careful thought about a range of movements, six patterns emerged that seemed to distinguish the effective movements from the others. These patterns are:

Turn Grassroots Gold:

Winning movements are fueled by energy that materializes from the bottom up. The most successful organizational leaders understand they must turn their approach to power upside-down and let local activists lead. They recognize seeding and growing vast networks of millions of passionate individuals organized around a common cause is infinitely more powerful than any single organization or association—no matter how well-resourced or branded. They invest their assets—money, time, know-how, and political clout—into ensuring the grassroots not only survive but thrive. They do this by fostering bonds

between

individual members as well as by empowering them to collectively fight for the cause. It can be tedious, expensive, and time-consuming, but when done right, the investment pays off.

Sharpen Your 10/10/10/20 = 50 Vision:

Successful U.S. movements plow through all fifty states with their change campaigns, rather than focusing only on sweeping federal reforms. They do the yeoman’s work of pushing for improvements at the state and local level, advocating town by town, racking up small wins and building momentum incrementally, rather than going for national change at the start. The movements that successfully drive change across all fifty states win big when their grass-tops are organized in

networked

leadership structures—coalitions of leaders who recognize they need to forge pathways so all of the players

around them

can collaborate rather than compete and achieve collective impact.

Change Hearts

and

Policy:

Great social change leaders refuse to choose between either pushing for policy reform

or

shifting social norms and individual behaviors. They realize that to achieve lasting systems change, they must change public attitudes so people believe the changes they seek are fair and right. They strive to make the change they seek the

new normal.

Whether emotional, visceral, heartbreaking, or inspiring, winning movements lead with messages that connect with people at their human core. They put the individuals with the

lived experience

of the problem out in front of the cause—whether they are victims, survivors, or in some other way inured to the issue. And they use all the tools—social and traditional media, sophisticated Madison Avenue–style advertising, and old-fashioned boots-on-the-ground organizing—to get their messages out.

Reckon with Adversarial Allies:

If your movement is crippled by policy disagreements, personality conflicts, territory fights, or scraps over which organization gets the credit, or the donor list, or the prime-time media slot, you are not alone. Every movement—whether winning or struggling—faces intra-field challenges. In all fields, multiple organizations that are ostensibly allies co-exist across a spectrum that spans from extreme left to right. All players jockey to have

their

vision for change dominate the agenda. The difference in winning movements is that leaders manage to put their egos and organizational identities to the side (if only temporarily) so disparate factions can come together around a common agenda—although the path to victory can be arduous and never linear.

Break from Business as Usual:

Traditionally, social and environmental activists were seen as largely pitted

against

business. But it turns out that corporations have influenced the outcomes of many modern movements in more positive and nuanced ways than conventional wisdom would suggest. Businesses can affect major change by altering their employee policies; raising their influential voices in public debates; and leveraging their innovation capabilities, as well as their brands and customer loyalty, for causes. It doesn’t work for every company. Those businesses that continue to employ negative practices harmful to the environment or society suffer even harsher consequences under today’s heightened consumer and social media scrutiny. But companies willing to risk proactively pushing for positive social and environmental changes demonstrate that capitalist market forces can contribute to advancing many important causes.

Be Leaderfull:

The conventional mental model of social change evokes images of mass protests, with waves of activists spontaneously rising up and agitating for change. In crowds that big, no single leader is in charge and the collective appears to move of its own accord, “leaderless.” It’s the opposite of the structured, hierarchical, top-down management approach embodied by traditional corporations and nonprofits, where a CEO is clearly in charge and calls the shots. But the notion that modern movements are “leaderless” isn’t quite right. Rather, we observed winning movements to be “leaderfull.” Instead of small handfuls of elites dictating to troops from the top down or an amorphous mob of activists genuflecting for change from the bottom up, the most effective movements find balance between the “leaderless” and “leader-led” extremes. We observed movement leaders who both empowered and encouraged their grassroots counterparts to take action at the state and local level, while helping guide the movement toward collective goals at the national and federal levels through

networked

leadership approaches. Effective movement leaders share power, authority, and limelight and lead from behind, embracing a long-term view. This is very hard to do—it involves letting go of ego, as well as putting cause and mission ahead of personal or organizational power. It’s the main reason why some movements fail—and why the best movements win.

Research Frames

We came to these insights through an iterative, inductive process. We started with bottom-up research, interviewing leaders past and present from the movements; reviewing organizational documents and public records; and studying the extensive literature about many past and present movements. We started our analysis by borrowing frameworks from social movement theorists. We thought these frames would help us separate the best movement approaches from the rest.

Having studied politics and sociology and the extensive writings on movements from the 1960s, we consulted books on our shelves like Poor People’s Movements by Piven and Cloward and Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and Taylor Branch’s Parting the Waters: America in the King Years. In the works of historian and sociologist Charles Tilly, we found one definition of social movements that crystallized the thinking of that time around the idea of contentious collective action