3 Strategic Tools Every Changemaker Needs In Their Toolbox

We tend to view revolutionary changes through iconic moments. We can envision Gandhi and his Salt March against the British Raj, Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lincoln Memorial, where he told the world about his dream, or Steve Jobs’ return to Apple and inspiring us all to Think Different. Those legendary change leaders provide inspiration to us all.

Yet those moments can also be incredibly misleading, because they only tell us how the story ended, not how it began. We see the triumphs, but none of the struggles, setbacks, disappointments and doubts that they had to overcome along the way. So what we end up with is a cartoonish view, not exactly a lie, but not the truth either.

One thing that I’ve discovered in two decades studying transformational change is that what makes the difference between revolutionary leaders and those poor souls who toiled for years with nothing to show for it was what they learned along the way. One advantage we have is that we don’t have to fail to benefit from their mistakes. Here are three tools to help you.

1. Creating A Contract

At any given moment, there are myriad paths forward and people with opinions about the merits and demerits of each. Those who defend the status quo can exploit this by sowing division among people, portraying the resulting confusion as justification for keeping things as they are. “Better the devil you know” is remarkably persuasive.

Authoritarian regimes facing fragmented opposition often favor this tactic. For example, in the aftermath of the Zajedno movement in Serbia, Slobodan Milošević managed to pit coalition parties against each other, enabling him to retain power despite an embarrassing defeat in the 1996 municipal elections. He seemed destined to be dictator for life.

Yet in the runup to the next election, the activist group Otpor created a “contract with the people” that bound each of the opposition parties to actions they would take after the election. By committing to this shared statement of values, there could be no confusion of ambiguity. They would either have to follow through or be exposed as hypocrites.

The “contract” trick has been proven effective time and time again. To bind together hundreds of disparate groups that opposed Apartheid, Nelson Mandela convened the 1955 Congress of The People, which produced the Freedom Charter that guided the movement for decades. John Lewis and Bernard Lafayette created 10 Rules of Conduct for sit-ins. Grover Norquist’s’ no-tax pledge has kept unity among conservative politicians for decades.

That’s why, when we work with an organization, one of our first steps is design a Genome of Values. Yet to be effective, people must commit to the values they share, which requires honest acknowledgment of the values they do not. Unfortunately, most change efforts skip this crucial step. Inevitably, unity breaks down and the effort fails.

2. The A Co-optable Resource

Great change leaders get results through empowering others. That’s what makes the difference between a movement and a top-down initiative. People didn’t flood the streets for the glory of Gandhi, King or Mandela, they were doing it for themselves, for their own reasons. In much the same way, people didn’t buy Apple products to help Steve Jobs, but to achieve their own goals.

You can achieve the same by designing a Co-optable Resource, a tool or platform that is both accessible and scalable that helps people achieve things they want to. Think about TEDx. Tens of thousands of people volunteer millions of hours each year organizing events that promote the TED brand, but they do it to fulfill their own ambitions and aspirations.

Co-optable Resources have been used in just about every context imaginable. When the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) wanted to spread quality practices in healthcare, it created “change kits” with how-to guides for partners to promote at their hospitals. When Experian’s CIO wanted to shift to a cloud-based model, he created an “API Center of Excellence” for those those who were already enthusiastic about the project.

The key to a successful Co-optable Resource is that you are not trying to convince anyone of anything, but giving people tools to achieve their own goals, to make them the heroes in their own story. Change isn’t about persuasion, but empowerment and the best way to empower is to give people resources with which they can pursue their own ambitions.

3. Dilemma Actions

A simple truth is that whenever we set out to make a significant impact, there will always be those who will work to undermine what we are trying to achieve in ways that are dishonest, underhanded and deceptive. Yet when that happens we need to be careful not to get sucked into direct conflict, which will surely take us off course and discredit what we’re trying to achieve. Instead, we need to learn to design dilemmas.

Dilemma actions have been used for at least a century—famous examples include Gandhi’s Salt March, King’s Birmingham Campaign and Alice Paul’s Silent Sentinels—but more recently codified by the global activist, Srdja Popović. More recent ones include the Siberian Lego Protest, Otpor’s Barrel Prank and the Snogging Protest in Turkey. They are just as effective in an organizational context, using an opponent’s resistance against them.

One of the great things about dilemma actions is that you approach them exactly the same way you approach building allies—by identifying a shared value. Once you do that, you can design a constructive act rooted in that shared value that advances your agenda. That forces your opponent to make a choice: they can either disrupt the act and violate the shared value or they can let it go forward and allow change to proceed.

For example, I was once running a transformation project that was being impeded by a sales director undermining her own staff by hogging the best accounts. Although it was agreed that she would distribute clients, she never got around to it. So I set up a meeting with a key account and one of our salespeople. When she tried to disrupt the meeting, she violated the shared value we had established and was dismissed. Everything fell into place after that.

What’s most important is to develop the discipline to focus on shared values and constructive acts. When we are confronted, we want to lash out and retaliate, which rarely ends well. When you feel the urge to create a conflict, take a moment to breathe, step back and redirect your energy into designing a dilemma instead.

Learning What Works

When I was researching my book, Cascades, I noticed that change movements all started out very differently. The activists in the 19th century and early 20th tended to be women, like Susan B. Anthony, Ida B. Wells, and Alice Paul. For most of the 20th century, they were mostly men in their 30s and older, like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela. In the 60s, student groups became more predominant.

Yet despite their differences, I noticed a consistent pattern over the past two centuries. A movement would start with a grassroots effort, begin to gain traction and then experience a tragic failure, such as the Women’s Suffrage Procession, Gandhi’s Himalayan Miscalculation and the massacre at Sharpeville. The successful movements learned from their experience and changed tactics. The unsuccessful movements never did.

To this rule, there was one major exception: The Civil Rights Movement in the United States and there is a clear reason why. They learned the successes and failures of those who came before them. Some, like James Lawson, travelled to India and studied directly under Gandhi’s disciples and then trained young activists, like John Lewis, Marion Barry, and Diane Nash who became leaders in their own right.

You can do the same. Every effort to drive change faces challenges in maintaining unity, but creating a “contract” that encourages people to explicitly commit to shared values is a proven way to build cohesion. Creating resources that others can co-opt to achieve their own goals allows initiatives to scale organically, while designing dilemmas offers a powerful strategy to discredit those working to sabotage and undermine your efforts.

These principles are just as effective for driving organizational change. One thing history has shown is that transformational change is possible in even the most difficult contexts. The key isn’t the righteousness of the cause of even the commitment of those working for change, but the ability to learn use the right tools with skill, discipline and wisdom.

Greg Satell is Co-Founder of ChangeOS, a transformation & change advisory, an international keynote speaker, host of the Changemaker Mindset podcast, bestselling author of Cascades: How to Create a Movement that Drives Transformational Change and Mapping Innovation, as well as over 50 articles in Harvard Business Review. You can learn more about Greg on his website, GregSatell.com, follow him on Twitter @DigitalTonto, his YouTube Channel and connect on LinkedIn.