Crosby B.C., Bryson J.M. - Leadership for the Common Good (2005)(en)

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come. The organizers of the Vital Aging Website, for example, may need to develop an alternative strategy for reaching people who don’t have access to the Web.

Helpful Tools

An especially helpful visionary leadership tool is “future search,” developed by Marvin Weisbord and colleagues (see Resource E). Herbert Simons’s Persuasion in Society (2001) and Terry Pearce’s Leading Out Loud (1995) present useful advice for speech making and presentations. James Throgmorton (1991) presents elements of persuasive storytelling. You can also use Exercise 4.4 to assess the visionary leadership capacity of an individual, group, organization, or network.

Political Leadership

Leaders need visionary skills to develop shared understanding of public problems, build support for beneficial solutions, and develop commitment to collective action. They need political skills to turn a proposed solution into a specific policy, program, or project adopted and implemented by decision makers in executive, legislative, and administrative arenas. These are the main skills of political leadership:

•Mediating and shaping conflict within and among constituencies

•Building a winning, sustainable coalition to convince decision makers to consider the proposed changes, as well as implement them once they are adopted

•Overcoming bureaucratic resistance during implementation

•Adeptly designing and using formal and informal arenas

Mediate and Shape Conflict Within and Among Constituencies

Conflict is necessary and must be used carefully in a policy-making arena if policy makers are to consider multiple options for satisfying diverse constituencies (Burns, 1978; Nutt, 2002; Bryant, 2003); political leaders must possess transactional skills for dealing with individuals and groups with conflicting agendas. Political leaders

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Exercise 4.4. Assessing Visionary Leadership Capacity.

You may use this exercise to rate a group, an organization, or an interorganizational network. You may reword the questions to rate your own or another individual’s visionary capacity.

If the exercise is done by a group, each member should do the ratings individually; the ratings can then be pooled to produce a group rating.

Respond to the questions by checking one of the three boxes after each.

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Exercise 4.4. Assessing Visionary Leadership Capacity, Cont’d.

When you are done with the ratings:

For Working Alone

1.Develop a list of the visionary strengths of the individual, group, organization, or network on the basis of the items ranked Good/Well. Note a few of the reasons these items were ranked highly.

2.Develop a list of the visionary weaknesses of the group, organization, or network on the basis of the items ranked Poor/Poorly. Note a few of the reasons these items were given a low ranking.

3.Also note which aspects of the items rated OK/Acceptably need improving.

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Exercise 4.4. Assessing Visionary Leadership Capacity, Cont’d.

4.Identify specific actions you can take to build on the identified strengths and overcome identified weaknesses.

For Working in a Group

1.Develop a list of the visionary strengths of the group, organization, or network on the basis of the items that most group members rated Good/Well. Note a few of the reasons these items were ranked highly.

2.Develop a list of the visionary weaknesses of the group, organization, or network on the basis of the items that a majority of the group ranked Poor/Poorly. Note a few of the reasons these items were given a low ranking.

3.Identify and discuss aspects of other items that need improvement.

4.Agree on specific actions the group can take to build on the identified strengths and overcome identified weaknesses.

must bargain and negotiate, trading the things of value that they control for others’ support and developing advantageous positions. These leaders, notes James MacGregor Burns, “use conflict deliberately to protect decision-making options and power, and even more, . . . use conflict to structure the political environment so as to maximize ‘constructive’ dissonance, thus allowing for more informed decision making” (1978, p. 410). Although Burns is writing mainly about top political officials, his advice is useful for any leader trying to build and sustain an advocacy coalition to affect policy making and implementation. An effective advocacy coalition has multiple channels of access that allow members’ conflicts, tensions, and dilemmas to be aired and addressed on the way to full mobilization in support of policy decisions.

The trick is not to be immobilized by conflicting agendas and to maintain the integrity of the vision that is inspiring the proposed policy changes. Burns emphasizes that political leaders play a “marginal” role, avoiding complete assimilation by any one group in order to deal with conflicts outside as well as inside their constituencies: “Their marginality supplies them with a double

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leverage, since in their status as leaders they are expected by their followers and other leaders to deviate, to innovate, and to mediate between the claims of their group and those of others” (p. 39).

Thus a public official like Stenglein or public manager like Cunningham must encourage numerous constituencies to supply them with their views of what’s important, what their needs are, with whom they can work and with whom they can’t, and what they can contribute to the change efforts. In working together to improve outcomes for young African American men, they can trade access to Hennepin County’s policy-making process for resources (information, expertise, votes, connections to other groups, endorsements) that other individuals and groups control. As a member of the County Board, Stenglein also has a vote on all matters before the board that he can use as leverage to obtain concessions or support from other commissioners. As the head of a county department, Cunningham can direct staff to organize meetings or studies that community groups request.

Bargaining and negotiating have two main desirable outcomes: compromise and copromotion. In compromise, each participant gives up some of his or her desires in exchange for achieving the remainder; everyone, in a sense, loses something but also gains something. In copromotion, or what Leigh Thompson (2001) calls “integrative negotiation,” the participants find ways to help each other achieve all or most of each other’s aims, and possibly go beyond the parties’ initial aims. Copromotion has obvious advantages, but compromise is usually needed too. In its final report, the Steering Committee of the African American Men Project emphasized copromotion as the way forward, rather than setting up a win-lose struggle between ethnic groups. Obviously, some compromise was made as project events and publications were put together, but the overarching approach is copromotion. Of course, total victory by one side is also possible, though hardly advisable because losers may feel so mistreated that they will be more determined and more vicious in future conflict.

Political leaders know that conflict in an arena can generate a lot of heat; policy making at its most basic level is about who gets what, how, how much, when, and where. The what can be money,

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services, contracts, access to opportunity, status and recognition, or campaign contributions; it can also be protection from competing entrepreneurs, corruptors, criminals, and others. Political leaders should never underestimate the ferocity of competition in an arena; those who benefit from the status quo will fight hard to keep and enhance their privileges and those who don’t will fight hard for equity.

Political leaders must also be prepared to deal with opponents who reject any gain-gain approach and pursue a win-lose strategy. In such cases, political leaders should develop their own strategies for winning and for returning to a gain-gain strategy at the earliest opportunity. They need to use the resources they have (including credible threats such as leaving the negotiation) to protect their interests (see Bolman and Deal, 2003).

Leaders may have to magnify the voices of a group that is typically ignored or excluded from policy discussion. They must nurture citizen engagement, or what Harry Boyte and Nancy Kari (1996) call “public work.” Too frequently, citizens view political conflict as an ugly and unseemly battle over narrow interests, and certainly they have many causes to do so. In a democratic system, however, political conflict is also a means of producing policies that meet a broad array of needs and strengthen community. Citizens cannot leave policy making and implementation to elected and appointed officials and expect this to happen. We would all do well to heed former Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey’s call for citizen action: “Quit sitting on the sidelines, whistling and jeering at the people down on the playing field. Get out there and get roughed up a bit and see what it’s like to live in this world of reality” (Connell, 1983).

Build a Winning, Sustainable Coalition

The foundation for marshaling a coalition to support a proposed policy change is laid by visionary leadership (see, for example, Hall, 1996). The individuals and groups included in forums focusing on problem definitions and solutions are the potential members of an advocacy coalition (Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith, 1993) that will press policy makers to adopt and implement spe-

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cific proposals emerging from the forums. If the forums have been well designed and wisely used, key stakeholders will contribute to crafting the problem definition, choosing optimal solutions, and shaping the animating vision for change. They help shape the specific proposals that are to be introduced into the policy-making arenas. As attention shifts to arenas, leaders may seek to formalize the coalition. A formal network with a name and identifiable membership can be an attractor for other interested parties. It can make support for the proposed change seem more formidable than it is, and it amounts to a coordination tool through the signaling and attention that a name provides.

Thus, as WBCSD President Björn Stigson and his colleagues prepared for the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, they joined the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in organizing Business Action for Sustainable Development (BASD), a coalition of WBSCD and ICC organizations (both of which are themselves coalitions). BASD then became “the single voice of business at the summit,” organizing a Business Day and a virtual exhibit area at the summit (World Business Council for Sustainable Development, 2003, p. 2).

A coalition may be less formal. In the African American men case, a steering committee of community leaders along with Hennepin County commissioners and staff, academic researchers, and community organizations collaborated on the African American Men Project. This formal group acted as an informal coalition that developed the recommendation for a permanent African American Men Commission, consisting of “African American men and community, business, religious, academic, nonprofit, and government leaders.” The board was to “provide leadership and advice to policy makers, foundations, nonprofit, organizations and the overall community on issues, programs and policies that impact the lives of young African American men” (Hennepin County, 2002, p. 75). It could be expected to be an attractor for individuals, groups, and organizations supporting particular initiatives that it recommends. It is often easier for public officials or public managers to be part of such an informal coalition since they must emphasize their concern for a multitude of constituencies.

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Leaders in a formal coalition should help members develop one or more agreements:

•What each will contribute in the way of information, funds, staff and member energies, and connections

•What each will receive from involvement in the coalition

•General time frame for the coalition’s work

•Decision making and coordination methods

•General strategies

One challenge for coalition leaders is to keep the coalition intact or growing once the initial burst of enthusiasm for a campaign or project wears off. Among the applicable strategies are regular, wellrun meetings or work sessions, continuous progress reports, periodic conferences and other public events, and sustaining media coverage of the effort to win proposal adoption. To the extent possible, coalition members should be actively involved in the campaign, either by attempting to influence policy makers or by implementing what can be done without policy makers’ approval. Once a new policy or program is adopted, coalition members may decide it’s time to declare victory and move onto something else, but astute political leaders know that more battles lie ahead in the implementation process. Therefore they try to involve coalition members, whether directly in implementing the policy or indirectly through monitoring and assessing how well implementation is carried out.

The steering committee of the African American Men Project basically ensured continuation and expansion of the project coalition by successfully recommending to the Hennepin County Board that a successor group, the African American Men Commission, should be set up and $500,000 in seed money provided for the next phase of the project. The entire 130-member commission meets quarterly, and an executive committee meets monthly. Additionally, all members are expected to take part on active committees and participate in biweekly training sessions.

More guidance on the care and feeding of coalitions is in Chapter Ten. You may also want to use Exercise 4.5 to help an initial group of change advocates develop a plan for building and sustaining an advocacy coalition to tackle the public problem that concerns you.

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Exercise 4.5. Laying the Groundwork

for a Winning Coalition.

1.Return to the list of stakeholders generated for Exercise 4.2. For each one, fill out this worksheet. In doing so, the group should pay attention to perspectives and needs differing by gender, ethnicity, physical ability, age, religious preference, and other characteristics as relevant. (This is essentially the same worksheet used in Exercise 3.3. If worksheets from that exercise are relevant, simply review and revise as needed for this exercise.)

Stakeholder Worksheet

Stakeholder:

How do they influence us?

What do we need from them?

How important are they?

Extremely

Reasonably

Not very

Not at all

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Exercise 4.5. Laying the Groundwork

for a Winning Coalition, Cont’d.

2.From the worksheets and the power-versus-interest grid produced in Exercise 4.2, generate a list of potential coalition members. For each, answer these questions:

•What can the stakeholder contribute to the coalition?

•What might the stakeholder get from the coalition?

3.Use insights about problem framing from Exercise 4.3 to generate ideas for persuading stakeholders to join the coalition.

4.Develop strategies for organizing the coalition and keeping it intact or growing.

•How will we deal with power differences among coalition members?

•Which person or organization can coordinate the coalition?

•How can we keep members informed and engaged in ongoing activities?

Based in part on Bryson, J. M., and Alston, F. Creating and Implementing Your Strategic Plan: A Workbook for Public and Nonprofit Organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2004.

Overcome Bureaucratic Resistance During Implementation

Implementation of major policy change usually requires the cooperation of bureaucratic institutions. Bureaucracies have intricate rules and procedures and entrenched personnel who may hamper any change. A prime mover in one of the cases featured in this book noted, “There are three women in charge of the budget stuff, who compete with each other to protect [the top decision maker] from the risk of making any decision that might result in an expenditure. They are protecting the importance of their jobs. . . .”

Political leaders must constantly find ways to enlist bureaucrats in their cause—for example, by appealing to a shared vision or goals (Behn, 1999). George Frederickson suggests that civil servants may respond favorably to such appeals, since they are more concerned about social justice than the general population is (Frederickson, 1997).

Institutional rules, procedures, and personnel may have to be changed, or new parallel or auxiliary organizations created as part