Soft Arts of Organizing - McNeil

McNeil, Larry B. 1995. The soft arts of organizing, Social Policy, 26 (Winter):16-22.
Excerpts
(Larry McNeil is west coast director of the Industrial Areas Foundation.)

The IAF builds powerful organizations around the concept and practice of relational power.
Contrary to unilateral power, relational power says that we all gain in power if it is
democratically shared with as many people as possible.

The IAF instrument for relational power is the broad-based organization of organizations. The
strongest organizations are those that have built a relational culture both inside the member units
and throughout the broad-based organization. Those organizations with the most serious
organizational problemssmall number of units, weak dues base, floundering institutional
leaders caucus, disconnected leadersare those that have attempted to build action organizations
without transforming the organizational cultures of the member units. Those organizations, while
capable of delivering quotas, winning victories, and manipulating the media, never move to the
deepest level of organizational and personal self-interest, never tap the huge reservoirs of talent
and energy, and as a result become top-heavy, brittle, and thin.

The strongest organizations concentrate on the soft arts of organizing. Most of what the
media see are the hard arts: recruitment, focused actions, disciplined meetings, institutional dues,
carefully crafted strategies, issue victories, skillful use of political levers. The soft arts occur
more frequently, permeate more deeply, and are more difficult to quantify. The soft arts are
necessary to build a lasting organization based on relational power. Key to the soft arts are:
listening, empathy, thoughtfulness and ritual.

1. Listening. Listening involves using everything we have to understand where others are
what they think and worry about, who they care about and fear, what they think of themselves,
what they really value, what fuels their anger. We are hindered in discovering the answers to
those questions by three common maladies: organizational (task) fixation, personal insecurity,
and not really caring. The sounds of our own organizational and personal needs can drown out
the sounds of the other. Since most of the time people are not so clear, we have no chance of
understanding them if our minds are cluttered with wondering how we are coming across, what
to say or ask next, wondering how they would fit into the organization. Caring manifests itself as
curiosity, meaning we want to know a lot about the other person. In the strongest organizations,
from top to bottom in the organization, people are doing individual meetings, checking in,
calling up.

2. Empathy. The word derives from the Greek word, empatheia, meaning affection, passion.
Good leaders and organizers can cross race, religion, age, sex, or family history to stand in
someone elses shoes, to see the world as they see it, to feel things as they feel it. Empathy is
active. It involves asking questions, reading, intuiting, testing. It means we have to know
peoples stories and also know how their stories fit into the bigger story of their race, their
country, their region, the economy, their religion. Organizing is the active unearthing of peoples
individual stories, the collective examination of the meaning of those stories in light of our
shared story, and the opportunity to write new endings to both our individual and collective
stories.

3. Thoughtfulness. Thoughtfulness means paying attention, being considerate of other people.
Empathy put into action is thoughtfulness. Thoughtfulness manifests itself in the small things:
chairs are set up right; visuals are thought through; people are greeted; the less verbal people are
folded into discussion; new people are critiqued differently than veterans; roles are spread
around; the Iron Rule (never do for anyone what he can do for himself) is not violated;
evaluations are precise and personal; opinions are solicited; translation is professional; time is
allowed for percolation and ownership; participation is valued over sophistication; time is
respected; recognition is given with precision, in large doses; organizational assignments are
matched to what people need for their growth; screw-ups are policed; workshops and evaluations
are crafted, not winged; people are held accountable; assignments are given with proper direction
and time to be successful; we take responsibility for the outcomes; we are on time and prepared.
Besides being personally enriching and fulfilling, exercising the Golden Rule, treating people
like we would like to be treated, builds strong organizations, unleashes talent and energy, and
sustains participation in ways that issue and action never will.

4. Ritual. Ritual connects past, present, and future. It allows many different people to connect in
a shared event with central meaning. It sustains beyond the skills and energy of the professional
practitioner. Rituals with a regular rhythm are more important than sporadic, spectacular ones.
The defining IAF ritual is the Briefing-Action-Evaluation. It is our central practice in the training
and development of leaders and organizers. The tight, focused meeting is a second ritual. Our
national ritual is 10-day training, the key element in our expansion and success. Historically, the
strongest organizations have been action-oriented, pay a lot of attention to evaluation, keep the
meetings short and few, and send their best people to national training. The weaker organizations
have more meetings than actions, skimp on evaluation and accountability, and dont require
national training for their best people. The weaker organizations also tend to move away from
our most radical rituals, the individual meetings and house meetings. We cannot build relational
power unless these two rituals are practiced continuously, by as many leaders and organizers as
possible.

THE WAY TO POWER

The way to approach some of the hard side of organizing problems is through the soft side.

If you want more member units in the organization, ask the questions: How are we treating
the members we already have? Are we at the center of their interests? Are we helping them build
a relational culture? Have we imbued them with our rituals? Do we know members stories?
How many people have their story at stake in our collective strategies?

If you want more leaders, ask the questions: What are we doing with the leaders we have? Are
they challenged, engaged, growing? Are they doing individual meetings and house meetings? Do
they have clear, self-interest-based responsibility and support to be successful?

More generally, I would suggest we ask ourselves these questions: Am I listening? Am I
standing in someone elses shoes? Am I being thoughtful in my relationships with other people?

Losing football teams, to right themselves, usually go back to basics: blocking and tackling.
Organizations, to be strong and tough, would be well served to concentrate on the soft arts of
organizing: listening, empathy, thoughtfulness, and ritual.

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McNeil, Larry B. 1995. The soft arts of organizing, Social Policy, 26 (Winter):16-22.

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