Category Archives: Background Reading

“Give More Tomorrow”: Can we program ourselves for social action?

Posted on May 24, 2012 by | Leave a comment

My favorite part of the book Nudge was the section on how to nudge ourselves towards the actions that we know we should be taking anyway.

Because, of course, policymakers and recalcitrant should-be voters aren’t the only people who need a little nudging.

There is evidence, for example, that getting people to commit to increasing their charitable contributions by a predetermined amount at a preset time is an effective way to get them to the desired level of financial commitment.

Because, while I may not be willing to give more right now, I’m also fairly likely to just go along with it once it kicks in.

Inertia, and all that.

And, so, what I’m wondering is, if regularly-scheduled increases in charitable contributions work, then what about regularly-scheduled commitments to take on advocacy?

If we know that imagining, in detail, how we’ll take action, increases the likelihood that we will, then shouldn’t actually committing that it will happen have all-the-greater effect?

We do this some, already, in our campaigns. We ask people to sign up to come to a meeting, we ask them to commit to calling their legislators, we ask them to sign a pledge to boycott a certain company.

But I think, too often, we tell ourselves that the reason that we’re asking for this commitment is so that we have an excuse to call them (repeatedly, sometimes) to remind them of their promise, as though it’s our nagging, and not their own ‘commitment trigger’ that makes the difference.

I think the psychology on that is wrong, and I think that confusing internal priming and external haranguing also leads us to overlook some opportunities to make this whole ‘advocate more tomorrow’ approach work even better for us.

What if, for example, we used social media, or even our websites, to publish people’s commitments? Not in a ‘shame-on-you’ way, but a ‘look who’s going to be there–awesome, hunh?’ way.

Or what if we had people sign a commitment to contact their legislator, with great detail (“I’ll call Senator XYZ about the Earned Income Tax Credit cuts the second week in February”) and then we sent them the reminder in their own handwriting (maybe scanned and emailed), so that they could see where they had already put this into motion?

What if we asked people to tell us exactly when they would be ready to come to a rally, or write a letter, and then we made that date our timeline for their engagement in the campaign, instead of trying to get them to slot into our calendar?

With my kids, they know that they can choose whether they’re going to stop playing to eat dinner, or brush their teeth, or pick up their room.

They can choose to do it now, or in 5 minutes.

And choose they do, programming themselves to do what I wanted them to do.

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I’m a “choice architect”, and you can be too

Posted on May 21, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Yes, I’m still talking about the cool ideas that I have taken from books (the actual, printed-on-paper kind, which still have a lot to tell us, even in 2012!) over the past couple of months.

This week, it’s about Nudge, a book that considerably more social-sciencey than I normally read and, nonetheless, completely applicable to my advocacy practice.

And, I think, to yours.

Much of the premise is that what we think are ‘free choices’ are really choices framed by choice architecture, the sets of incentives and disincentives and defaults that outline some options as clearly superior, others as inferior, and still others as seemingly impossible.

The idea, then, is that, if we can frame our preferences such that they are more naturally appealing to those who are doing the choosing, we can shape the likely outcome in less-obtrusive, but no less powerful, ways.

Like the way that my kids are WAY more likely to choose fruit as their snack if it’s already cut and in individual packaging (because then it’s theirs), and at eye-level (even more if there’s no other option, but, then, we couldn’t call it ‘choice’ architecture, could we?)

What this means for advocacy, I think, is that we need to think more about how we get that elusive ‘eye-level’ placement for our policy alternatives. We need to spend more energy making our policy preferences the easiest ones to choose, so that, perhaps, we can spend a bit less energy trying to convince people that they should really, really, really choose them.

Mostly, I think this is about framing, about how we wrap our policy alternatives in the values and preferences of those who will be doing the choosing.

Especially because we believe there are multiple routes to most good ends, can we opt for those that are likeliest to be chosen by our policy targets? Can we use the tax code, for example, to increase low-income families’ incomes? Can we talk about economic security, instead of always talking about poverty? Can we ‘reward work’ and ‘protect families’, because doing so makes policymakers more apt to choose as we would?

But I think looking at policy advocacy as the practice of choice architecture needs to also encompass building better frames, the step before fitting our policy approaches into that framing structure. Much like, quite honestly, those who do not necessarily share social work values have done for decades, which is precisely why the current choice architecture is mostly incompatible with the kinds of policy aims we articulate.

It means that we need to adjust the shelf height, I guess, so that people are looking where we need them to look–at the corrosive effects of income inequality, at the dangers of global climate change, at the need for educational competitiveness.

It means that we can’t rush in to fit our solution onto the current problem definition, because that’s inevitably going to require a tremendous amount of pushing.

It means that, if we do the right work in advance, people should think that our ideas were…theirs.

Freely chosen.

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Why shouldn’t he want to be a tow-truck driver?

Posted on May 15, 2012 by | 5 Comments

My oldest son wants to be either an archaeologist or a tow-truck driver.

And when he gives that answer to the ubiquitous questioning of well-meaning adults, the response is almost always the same.

They nod when he says ‘archaeologist’ and laugh a bit when he talks about driving a tow truck.

It has always bothered me, the way that I cringe whenever someone jokes to a child about studying hard so that he/she won’t end up sacking groceries, or some other purportedly inferior occupation.

Because, really, who would you rather have around in a crisis–someone who can pull you out of a ditch, or someone who digs for fossils? I mean to say, what makes the former a perfectly respectable job and the latter obviously not, despite the contributions that both make to our overall society?

I don’t want Sam learning the lessons he undoubtedly absorbs from these repeated exchanges, the idea that economic status confers societal legitimacy, and that pursuit of that stature should drive his life plans.

And, so, it was with great parental, as well as policy advocate, interest that I read the part of The Spirit Level that presented evidence that children are more likely to aspire to lower-skilled work in more equal societies, because those jobs are more adequately (and accurately) valued in societies with greater equality.

And, without the stigma that attaches to jobs disdained in our highly unequal economy, kids are free to choose the occupations that seem terrific to their yet-untainted-by-inequality minds.

Like driving a big truck that can carry around big cars.

Setting aside my parental angst, there are policy reasons to care about how the next generation views its work, especially because we’ll always need tow-truck drivers.

With many of the fastest-growing industries those with comparably low wages, we have to confront our ever-increasing demand for occupations that are poorly compensated. Are we content to be a society where those who take care of us are not taken care of? Will some of these most critical jobs, then, continue to be filled by those who couldn’t make it to the truly-valued (although not always as productive) upper echelons?

Or do we want an economy, and a society, where hard work and meaningful contributions are rewarded adequately?

If so, we know how to get there: robust protection of labor laws, strong unions, progressive tax policies to finance a vibrant safety net.

And then we need to stop teaching harmful lessons to children like Sam, especially since we all claim to wish that we had careers that we chose for sheer love of the job, like the way his eyes shine when he sees those strong cranes on the back of a tow truck.

Because you could do a lot worse than to have him come to your aid on the side of the road.

We all could.

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Quality of Life, and Building it for my Kids

Posted on May 14, 2012 by | Leave a comment

**I’m still catching up on posts about all of the reading that I did between Thanksgiving and the beginning of February–my most prolific reading period of the entire year, for sure–and slowly going through the pile of sticky notes that I accumulated as I processed what I read, and what it made me think.**

This week, I have three posts related to the really excellent book The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger. You should totally read the book, which is full of data that turns what we think we know about poverty, and wealth, and well-being, on its head.

But, as usual, this isn’t so much a traditional ‘review’ as it is my reflections on what a particular concept means for me, and, I hope, for us.

Every parent wants a good quality of life for her/his children, right? I mean, I know not just for my neighbors–here in this pretty affluent suburb–but also for the immigrant parents with whom I have the honor to work, it’s the hope that the future holds something promising, and secure, and healthy for one’s children that motivates much of what we do.

But thinking about what the evidence says about real quality of life, and about how to get it, must provoke a reconsideration of our pursuits. Because, increasingly, we know that having more doesn’t mean having it better.

In the United States, especially for those not in the lowest income tiers, we’re reading the limit of what increasing living standards can offer us, in terms of health and life expectancy and all-around wellness.

In fact, we know that, inequality matters a lot in determining how healthy people are, how much they learn, even how happy they feel, even controlling for income.

It matters even more than we want to admit, because acknowledging how important equality is in shaping our own well-being means that we have to spend more collective energy (and public resources) figuring out wealth distribution instead of trying to get as much as we can for ourselves, or even just adding to the total aggregate.

Mental illness rates are higher in societies with more inequality, with even health among higher-income populations affected by overall levels of inequality.

It’s not enough to have ‘enough’ for yourself.

You’re harmed, in some real, tangible ways, as well as some more subtle psychological ones, by the existence of others who have far less than enough.

And less than you.

We know that from data, but we know it from our lived and practice experience too, right?

I see the anxiety around me, from parents who put their 5-year-olds in tons of activities because they want to produce ‘well-rounded scholars’ (yes, they use that phrase) to neighbors who reluctantly acknowledge that they’re in deep debt because of out-of-control spending to couples whose marriages fall apart because of the strain of overwork. I see a harsh side of inequality in the smugness of those who accept mediocrity from our public school system, secure in the knowledge that it’s still better than what other kids get.

It’s not ‘cultural’, this stress and malaise and vindictiveness.

It’s born of the proximity of desperation, and the knowledge that we are but a few ‘failures’ away from the bottom rungs of the economic ladder, which seem like such a long way down. It’s exposed by the tattered safety net and the panicking realization that there’s very little to catch us if, or when, we fall.

It’s a special kind of insecurity that can only be mitigated by building a society where everyone has enough, because we can never hoard enough for ourselves to feel safe.

And that gets me to thinking about our kids, and to facing the awareness that I cannot protect them, as long as I’m only trying to protect them.

Because I want BETTER for my kids, not better like iPads for my 3-year-olds but better like believing that people take care of each other when it’s needed, that belonging to a society comes with certain guarantees, and that no one should have too much…or too little.

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Organization Culture, Advocacy, and “Free Spaces”

Posted on April 30, 2012 by | 4 Comments

These days, I have the luxury of existing somewhat apart from an organizational culture. As a consultant, I get to swoop in, sometimes, knowing that my mere presence will shake things up for the organization’s traditional way of operating, and that, within that dynamic, there are new opportunities for change.

I also get to observe different organizational cultures, which is a very valuable experience. I can often get a quick ‘feel’ that a particular organization is, for example, particularly receptive to an advocacy orientation, or especially concerned about appearances and protocol. In one organization I’ve done some work with, they even started a Transformation Council, to specifically look at how the organization itself needs to change, in order to more fully live its mission. The formation of that council, in turn, has created momentum for change, which is embedding itself now within the organization’s culture (in a way that openness to change begets more openness to change).

Since much of my work involves helping nonprofit social service organizations integrate advocacy and social change work into their direct service provision, I’ve been thinking about the role of organizational culture in helping institutions make this shift, and about how to use organizational culture as a lever for the kinds of alignments and redirections necessary for the organization to take on this advocacy function as a complement to their services.

As quoted in Switch, “organizational culture isn’t just part of the game; it is the game”, and I find that that’s no where more true than in trying to get an entrenched organization, and, more importantly, the stakeholders who are entrenched within it, to embrace a new way of seeing those they serve (as co-creators of social change), their services (as bridges to fundamental social transformation), their staff (as catalysts for empowering advocacy), and their organizations (as resources to be leveraged in pursuit of social justice).

Review of case studies of organizations that successfully tackle change find an important practice in common: the existence of small-scale gatherings where like-minded individuals can exchange ideas without surveillance from opposition, including internal opposition. These gatherings allow people to gain strength in unity, somewhat set apart, until they are ready to engage more openly. Applying what social workers know about groups, that’s how cohesion, and the norms that accompany it, set in, so that, in this case, before there is an effort to unleash the new ideas on the larger entity–the organization–they have rooted themselves within a part of it, demonstrating, of course, in the process, that the sky will not fall down.

Understanding the critical role of these ‘free spaces’ within organizations, and the role they play in successful organizational culture shifts, doesn’t necessarily tell us how to build them. Or, perhaps more accurately, how to permit them to grow, since there’s a certainly organic element implied. They are in some ways like the learning circles used in the Building Movement Project’s model, except that, here, there’s a greater willingness to let only those staff members enthused about social change cluster together initially. In some ways, because of the appearance of distance from the rest of the organizational apparatus, they have a sort of ‘cell’ quality, which means that organizations, and these actors within them, will have to get at least a little comfortable with tolerating some dissent and division on the road to a larger purpose.

Have you been part of a ‘free space’ within an organization? What did it look like and how did it function? Organizational leaders, what do you do to cultivate this learning circle approach, and what within your organizational culture supports or resists those efforts? And social service agency change agents, when have you attempted organizational transformation without the benefit of this ‘incubator’? How do you think it might have made a difference?

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Maybe SMART goals really aren’t

Posted on April 24, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Note: I’m going to get (briefly) a little ‘churchy’ here.

I was on a church committee once where there was a lot of frustration with the pastor, who had submitted a budget request that many church members felt was significantly beyond the church’s fiscal capacity. Several committee members expressed some iteration of the “it’s just not realistic” or “we have to live within our means” arguments, especially upset that she had recommended a huge increase in our local and international mission giving.

She listened and then said, “Ours is not a God confined to the realm of the feasible.”

I’ve always wanted to be able to command silence like that.

Back in the secular world, we have this same problem, right? A continual battle between what we think we can really do (truth be told: what we think we can really do without too much trouble) and what we know must be done.

We have this in our own practice, when we downgrade client goals a bit because what they aspire to just “doesn’t seem that likely.” We have it in our organizations, where we laboriously craft strategic plans that are all based on whether our goals are really measurable and attainable, even when what we know we need is a messy and improbable revolution.

And we forget.

We forget that we’ll never reach what we’re not reaching for.

We forget that we’re likely capable of things far larger than what our constrained (and strained) minds can imagine today.

We forget that we need aspiration for our motivation, and that no one ever changed the world without trying really, really hard.

Maybe those SMART goals that strategic planners like so much have their place. When everyone agrees on what the end game should be, and it’s something that’s a rather technical fix, instead of a struggle of ideas and ideals, then making sure that we all know who’s doing what, and when, and how we’re going to check that it’s done is a good thing.

But when what we really need is far from attainable at this moment, then what we need are goals that speak to people’s hearts, not their cautious minds. We need outlandish, wild, terrifically powerful goals that create vivid pictures in people’s minds about the world as it should be…because those are the kinds of goals that people will sacrifice and risk for.

We need goals that are intentionally unreasonable: end poverty, eradicate racism, cure cancer, prevent child abuse. It’s not about willfully disregarding the context in which these struggles will take place. We still need to know what we’re up against. It’s about building a vision that, while unrealistic, presents a compelling alternative around which people can rally.

Because reality is part of the problem.

So refusing to play by reality’s rules may not be SMART.

But it’s smart.

Because today’s dream is tomorrow’s fight is the next day’s victory.

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Make sure they know what to do: Clarity combats exhaustion, which can look like apathy

Posted on April 12, 2012 by | Leave a comment

My husband and I have a sort of running joke (well, several, but only one relevant here). Whenever he asks me what I’m doing, or what’s going on, I say “advocacy”.

See, the thing is, I talk about advocacy ALL THE TIME.

Shocking, I know.

My preoccupation with the term is evident from my job titles. I am an advocacy technical assistance provider. A public policy advocate. An advisor to the Advocacy Fellows.

And, of course, in my free time, just a regular ‘advocate’.

But the reason that it’s funny, too, is that it’s a word that doesn’t necessarily tell someone much. I mean, what’s ‘advocacy’ to me may not be ‘advocacy’ to someone else. So I can throw it around (and, guilty as charged, sometimes do) without having to really articulate what in the world it is that I mean by it.

And, you know, that’s not too helpful, not when we really want people to advocate.

And not when, by that, what we mean is “organize your friends and neighbors” or “call your legislator” or “write a letter to the editor” or “speak up at the next meeting”.

My favorite part of Switch is this section with studies about how having to make a lot of decisions actually exhausts us, to the point to which it can look like we don’t care. They say that explains why we’re so tired after going shopping (and here I thought it was just because I really don’t like to buy things).

That means that, sometimes, what looks like apathy can really just be exhaustion; people can be literally too tired to do what it is that we want/need them to do, after the effort of figuring out what it is that we want/need them to do, even if they really want/need to do it, too.

This is a big problem, especially since we’re much more likely to spend our energy trying to convince people that they should “advocate”, instead of explaining exactly what that means, what it will look like, and how they can do it.

When they don’t do anything, we call it resistance. Or apathy. Instead of fatigue. Because, to us, how can they be tired? They didn’t do anything! Except they really did–they tried to figure out what to do, and that effort can wear us out.

My favorite part within this favorite part, then, is an experiment where researchers identified those within a college dorm most likely to give to a food drive (they called them ‘saints’) and those least likely to give (‘jerks’). Then they asked both groups to give, except they gave the ‘jerks’ explicit instructions about what to take, and where, even with a map. The saints just got the appeal.

Who gave more?

Those who knew exactly what they needed to do.

And this, people, is really, really, really awesome news. Because, as the authors of Switch conclude, it means that we don’t need to spend our time searching for saints, or trying to cultivate saintliness from mere mortals.

We don’t necessarily need more saints, because jerks with maps will do just fine.

And we can do maps.

What would be super-clear look like in your work? Where can we replace ‘advocacy’ with something that means a whole lot more, to more people? How can we resist our temptation to call it apathy, instead of figuring out if people know exactly what we need them to do? And where do you see this in your own life? And, dare I say it, in your own advocacy?

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Shrink your bucket: maybe ours aren’t ‘people problems’

Posted on April 9, 2012 by | 3 Comments

Tomorrow’s post is about how, in the realm of advocacy and social action, we can’t rely on the same environmental changes that marketers and athletic trainers and others use to motivate people to take action more easily. Because, after all, if advocacy is so easy, doesn’t it lose some of its impact?

But that’s enough of a spoiler.

Because I’m still thinking through this whole “how much do we focus on motivating the individual to change, versus change the context in which the change needs to occur” question. And I’m thinking that, in social policy, there’s a pretty good argument to be made for bucket-shrinking, and that social workers would be well-served to shift some of our advocacy efforts towards those policy solutions that focus on the size of the bucket, and not the decisions people make in response.

See, there’s this popcorn bucket study in Switch that is pretty compelling–essentially, researchers found that they could make people eat more, or less, popcorn just by changing the size of the bucket.

Just the bucket. That’s all that was different.

There are all kinds of applications for this bucket shrinking in the social policy world, some of which are among our greatest policy successes. What if we made cars safer, so that even really bad driving isn’t as likely to kill anyone? What if we made food safer, so that fewer people contracted foodborne illnesses? What if we built highways everywhere and defunded public transportation, so that people learned to think that they need to drive themselves everywhere? (OK, I know, but that last one WAS successful, if that had been our goal!)

What if we applied this bucket-shrinking approach to the social policy realm?

What if Election Day was a holiday, so people would be more likely to vote (especially if they didn’t have to register in advance)? What if we gave everyone time off work to participate in their kids’ schools, instead of complaining that “parents aren’t involved”? What if we co-located services, so that it is easier for parents to, say, stay up on their kids’ immunizations and get their own cholesterol checked? What if insurance paid for mental health check-ups every year, just like physicals? What if credit cards weren’t so easy to use, and debt not so hard to avoid? What if every child in poverty knew that college was paid for?

What if, instead of just telling people over and over again, with exhortations and graphic warnings and shiny social marketing, that they should really, really eat less popcorn…we just made the buckets smaller?

Where, in the social policy issues you care about, is there a need for a different bucket size? How would changing the incentives, and the costs, make a difference? What are the limits of these contextual modifications, and what kinds of policy approaches would test those? How do social workers ensure that individuals’ right to self-determination is protected, without confusing true self-determination with the unnecessary divorce of context and behavior? Why do we focus so much on the individual, scratching our heads and wondering “what is WRONG with ‘these people’, that they eat SO MUCH popcorn”…instead of just making the buckets smaller?

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Assessing where you sit–the question of network centrality

Posted on March 13, 2012 by | Leave a comment

One of the challenges in evaluating advocacy is really just a variation on a universal bane of researchers: the contamination by extraneous variables.

In advocacy, after all, there are so many different things that can impact the ‘success’ or ‘failure’ of an initiative, only some of which are remotely within the control of the entity being evaluated. Evaluators, then, are hesitant to ascribe too much of a given victory or defeat to the actions wielded by the organization/advocate, because, in so doing, they could be inadvertently inflating or deflating the true impact of the effort.

One of the most promising approaches to getting around the pesky reality that advocacy can’t happen in an isolated lab is the idea of network centrality.

Network centrality means measuring advocates, rather than the discrete advocacy effort–essentially looking at one angle of the adaptive capacity question. It requires determining the reputation of an advocate or organization within the network of allies and targets it needs to influence–today or over time–if it is to prevail in an advocacy campaign. It’s not necessarily easier to collect these assessments than measures of controlled cause-and-effect, and it’s as relatively subjective as most everything in the social sciences, but it’s tremendously valuable in predicting how one will be able to move within the advocacy context. It’s designed to work in real life and real time.

And you can use it to sort of self-assess, too.

Have you ever tabulated the policymaker targets with whom you have a close relationship–the ones that routinely ask you for information and turn to you for policy guidance? What about those who may not approach you, but who are very receptive when you initiate the exchange? What about looking at your coalition relationships–with which organizations are you in relationship, and how often do others look to you to lead an advocacy effort? How many entities within your community are aware of your policy priorities? How many would report that you are a trusted source on policy issues? How many visit your website to check out action alerts? How frequently do media contacts rely on you?

Have you asked?

Understanding how we move within the orbit that is our advocacy network, where we sit, and how others see us can give us valuable insights into how we can maneuver effectively within our context. It can reveal why we feel marginalized in some debates, point out where we need to invest more relational energy, and guide us towards new tactics to build our reputation with key stakeholders.

It’s not egotistical to want the power we need to get the changes we want for the people we serve. It’s not self-serving to spend time analyzing how we connect to those with whom we need to have influence, so that we can figure out how to better wield that influence in pursuit of justice.

It’s not about trying to make ourselves the sun.

It’s about making sure that we are in a position to shine.

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