RETHINKING DAVID AND GOLIATH
THE WORLD OF traditional social organizing frequently calls upon the David versus Goliath paradigm. As we discussed in Chapter 3, most campaigns involve a decision-maker, a person or group of people that has the power to make the change you want. Decision-makers are usually elected officials or heads of organizations. It is common for activists to refer to the decision-makers they are trying to persuade as “targets” and to think about how to get those targets to agree to change through virtually any legal means necessary, including sometimes problematic tactics like “twitter bombing” that are specifically meant to shame and harass a decision-maker. I believe, however, that social organizers could benefit from a more collaborative approach that business leaders often use in an effort to get longer-term wins.
Instead of viewing people in power as targets and using any means at our disposal to get a short-term win, what if we see them as potential long-term partners? To build those long-term partnerships, we must choose tactics that encourage decision-makers to work more productively with us, both in the current campaign and in future ones. Some might suggest that’s not possible because decision-makers have so much power that it’s impossible for the “little people” to persuade them unless we fight fire with fire. I disagree. I believe that there is far more power in the collective mobilization of citizens than in any one given decision-maker, as long as we can find the right tools to communicate with each other.
For individuals, the key is in understanding our own strength. We have to know where our power lies and realize that when we work together effectively, it is nearly impossible for decision-makers not to listen. I’m not suggesting that people avoid traditional organizing tactics—strategies like peaceful demonstrations, petitions, boycotts, lawsuits, and even flooding decision-makers with emails, letters, phone calls, and social media can all be extremely effective ways to let them know that we are passionate about a given issue. I am suggesting that when we employ tactics like those, we consider doing them respectfully, leaving open the possibility of a positive interaction rather than shaming, harassing, or embarrassing someone.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent approach, based on the teachings of Gandhi, kept this core principle in mind. Dr. King’s six principles of nonviolence aren’t simply about not becoming violent. Rather, they’re about practicing love over hate and about seeking a path toward long-term understanding as a tool for justice. The third principle, “Nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice, not people,” recognizes that “evildoers are also victims and are not evil people.” By seeking to understand them, we can ultimately have a better chance at establishing justice long-term.
As we watch and respond to the rise of the “alt-right” and the growing confidence of hate groups around the world, the principles of nonviolence remain as relevant today as they were during the civil rights movement. And while the pillars of nonviolence provide useful guidelines for how to react in isolated incidents like counter-protests, they can also steer long-term strategy about how to work with decision-makers. After all, although they don’t always behave that way, nearly all decision-makers are in roles that are in service to people, whether their constituents, their employees, their students, their customers, or their shareholders. Remind them that it is in their best interest to actually serve.
While working to persuade decision-makers, remember that you have more power than you may think. While we commonly use the story of David and Goliath to describe a situation in which a seemingly weaker opponent faces a much stronger one, New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell suggests in his book David and Goliath that we may have the David and Goliath story all wrong. Gladwell writes that there is strength in being the underdog: “The fact of being an underdog can change people in ways that we often fail to appreciate. It can open doors and create opportunities and make possible what might otherwise have seemed unthinkable.”
In fact, we may have misinterpreted that story altogether, Gladwell argues, citing medical experts who believe that Goliath was so large due to a condition caused by a benign pituitary tumor. Despite his gargantuan size, the tumor may have blinded him and slowed him down, rendering him a significantly less threatening opponent. As Gladwell says, “What the Israelites saw, from high on the ridge, was an intimidating giant. In reality, the very thing that gave the giant his size was also the source of his greatest weakness. There is an important lesson in that for battles with all kinds of giants. The powerful and the strong are not always what they seem.”
We can make change happen by reframing decision-makers as potential long-term partners and trying to understand their motivations. If we remember that decision-makers, for the most part, are also good people whose actions are driven by their own incentives and sense of purpose, then it’s more effective to make change by helping both sides win. Finding ways to work collaboratively with a decision-maker today may lead to a much bigger long-term payoff, as that person will remain open to working with us again.
The social-organizing world often refers to a classic image of many small fish coming together to chase a big fish. I’m suggesting a twist: the many small fish still organize to show the power in numbers, but they first try to work with the big fish, chasing it only when it’s absolutely necessary. In many cases it may not be.
I realize this may seem naive to some, and I know there are certainly parts of the world where even peacefully speaking up can put people at risk of arrest or physical harm. And there are cases of extremely difficult decision-makers—fascist dictators, people who are prone to violence or not at all interested in dialogue or reason, etc.—with whom this type of approach may not work at all. But I believe that in more situations than you’d expect, a strategy that aligns the interests of apparent “opponents” gets superior results.
Current Organizing Model
Proposed Organizing Model
Most of us have the same core needs and emotions: the need for physical safety and financial security, the hunger for love and approval, the desire to do well at whatever we take on. That means that there is common ground between people who want to drive change and the decision-makers they depend on to do so. If each side tries to understand the motivations of the other, then as in any negotiation, the outcome will be better. And as someone who has been both “David” and “Goliath,” I know it is easier to listen and respond to people agitating for change when you feel you are being approached as a person rather than David to Goliath or “us against them.”
So yes, I believe we can get to a world where David and Goliath are both winners. There are already so many examples where this is the case, several of which are highlighted in this chapter. We can do it if we work with our voices, our conviction, and our power in numbers. We can do it if we express our purpose and vision from one human being to another and put away our slingshots rather than continue to hurl rocks at Goliath. (Okay, seemingly naive rant over.)
IDENTIFY THE RIGHT DECISION-MAKER
PART OF DEVELOPING any good Theory of Change is understanding which specific person has the ability to make the change you want, no matter what it is. It could be launching a new program at your workplace or school, funding a new company you are starting, changing a policy or law in your city or country, or even just getting your first few influencers on board. Whatever you are trying to accomplish, there is usually a particular person or group of people that has the ability or the power to make that happen. This person or group is your decision-maker.
Before you think through the tactics to persuade your decision-maker, it’s critical to make sure you have in fact identified the right person or people. If you want to change the rules about parking tickets in your town, you don’t ask the president of the country. You’d be surprised how many petitions around almost any topic are directed at the president—truly amazing. Or sometimes people direct their campaigns to generic decision-makers, like “the people of earth.” Good luck getting the people of earth to coordinate on just about anything.
Being clear about whom you need to persuade is a key part of achieving your goal. Sometimes desired changes can be tackled from different angles that would each have a different decision-maker. For instance, if you want a particular grocery store to stop using plastic bags, you could identify the company itself as a decision-maker, or the legislature of that city or state to try to get them to pass a law that prevents the use of plastic bags, like several U.S. cities have done, or charges for single-use plastic bags the way the United Kingdom has done.
Once you identify the who—the right decision-maker—you’ll need to determine the what: a realistic ask for a decision-maker to agree to. The what needs to be something that person can actually do. If you are trying to get someone pardoned for a crime, if it is a federal crime, then the president could do it. If it is a state crime, the president could not do that, even if he or she wanted to. It’s not enough to just want change. You have to also find a pathway to change that is accessible to both sides. The real magic comes when you can find a way to make the change appealing to the decision-maker as well.
UNDERSTAND GOLIATH
ONE WAY TO break down the walls between you and Goliath and successfully persuade decision-makers to act is to try to understand them and learn what motivates them; Goliath has needs, too. This is similar to the technique we’ll discuss in Chapter 5, inspiring supporters—the better you understand what motivates people, the more easily you can inspire them to take action.
Gemma Mortensen, former chief global officer at Change.org and executive director at Crisis Action, had recently started in her role at Crisis Action when it helped organize an emergency response to the violent crackdown on Myanmar’s Buddhist monks in 2007. The country had seen enormous violence against peaceful protestors and the arrest of many political prisoners, and there was an eruption of spontaneous outrage and concern around the world. Crisis Action was able to bring together a coalition of NGOs, activists, trade unions, celebrities, and faith leaders to demonstrate the strength of public support for the issue. Their goal was to get the European Union to put in place economic sanctions and for the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) to take action on Myanmar, which had never happened before.
They knew that Gordon Brown, the prime minister of the United Kingdom at the time, cared greatly about Myanmar. Conversations with his key aides made it clear that he was ready to take real leadership of the crisis and push for action, creating an opportunity for activists and decision-makers to join forces. As Gemma explained to me, “Rather than seeing all those in power as the problem, we understood that if you engage in the right way, you can help shift political momentum much faster than if you are just antagonistic. Gordon Brown was prepared to show real leadership on this; he was prepared to do the right thing. So we said, ‘If we help people get out on the streets on this, what will you do?’ His team said he would come out personally and say, ‘I am going to the United Nations Security Council to say this must be the moment where finally we take action on Burma.’”
So on the morning of the global marches Crisis Action coordinated, they organized senior Burmese Buddhist monks, heads of the Trades Union Congress and Amnesty International, and former political prisoners from Myanmar who had extraordinary personal stories to meet the prime minister. It was a very moving meeting.
On October 6, 2007, as thousands of people marched through the streets of London, Gordon Brown spoke publicly, telling the delegation: “I want the EU to impose further sanctions on the regime to make it absolutely clear we will not tolerate the abuses that have taken place.
“I want all the other leaders of the world to work with us to achieve the progress that all of you here want . . . an end to abuse of human rights, we want the violence to stop against the people of Burma and we want to move forward with the process of democracy and reconciliation as soon as possible.”
For Gemma, who had been working to change the world most of her life, this was one of those incredible moments in which the path to progress became clear. If you understand your decision-maker, the political context in which they have to operate, and what motivates them, you can work collaboratively and effectively to solve a problem together.
And just a few days later, on October 11, the UNSC took its first ever action on Myanmar, issuing a presidential statement condemning the violence against peaceful demonstrators and calling for the early release of all political prisoners. On October 15, the European Union banned imports of timber, metals, and gems from Myanmar and threatened a ban on all new investment if the government did not enter into genuine dialogue with the democracy movement. These were big steps. And while it took time for major change to happen, this was a critical piece of the puzzle.
As Gemma made clear, no one organization or individual can claim credit for big developments in social change. It is always the collective effort of many people—whether activists, decision-makers, businesses, or others—who help make change. And it is often work that continues for many years; though Myanmar has undergone a dramatic political transition, activists are still striving to secure the protection of minorities, such as the Rohingya Muslim community, from violent persecution.
DRAW THE MAP
ORGANIZERS USE A technique called “power mapping” or “influence mapping” to formalize the process that Gemma outlines. It asks you to understand the spheres of relationships and motivators that influence your decision-maker. This is often a visual exercise in which people quite literally map out—draw, list, diagram—how they might be able to sway a decision-maker toward action. If you understand the people, institutions, and processes that motivate and influence someone, then you are better equipped to persuade them.
As you go through this exercise, it’s important to clearly understand and denote any relationships between the people on your map. How many connections are there between key people, and how strong are those connections? How likely would each of those people or institutions be to support your idea? Are there primary and secondary decision-makers, and if so, how are they related? Are there any smaller asks you can start with that will help build to the bigger and final ask? This process will also help you clarify the order in which you approach people to get to the ultimate decision-maker, starting with the strongest connections and those most likely to support your idea.
To truly understand the effects of power mapping, consider this example. Throughout 2012, a campaign to end the Boy Scouts of America’s (BSA) ban on gay Scouts and gay Scout leaders built momentum on Change.org. In April 2012, Jennifer Tyrrell, who had served for a year as den leader of her son’s Cub Scout pack in Ohio, was removed from this position and had her BSA membership revoked because she was gay. Soon afterward, and with the support of GLAAD, she launched a petition on Change.org asking the BSA to end this discriminatory policy. She and her supporters knew that they were facing an uphill battle. The Boy Scouts of America is a century-old institution that is not known for changing its policies. So Jennifer and others in her movement began to look at other ways they might be able to persuade the BSA to change, beginning with a thorough review of the various people and institutions that had influence on the actions of the BSA.
They started with the BSA’s board of directors, which included a host of Fortune 500 CEOs, several of whom led companies like AT&T and Ernst & Young that were at the forefront of the fight for LGBTQ rights. Jennifer launched an additional petition directed to AT&T and Ernst & Young asking their CEOs to speak out in favor of changing the policy, and both of them did. Next, the team looked at corporations that had partnerships with the Boy Scouts of America. From there, they homed in on the companies that had the best record on LGBTQ rights according to the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index. That led to petitions asking companies like Intel, UPS, and others to speak out about the Boy Scouts’ ban on gay Scouts and leaders. All the companies did.
In addition to leveraging the voices of companies and corporate leaders, the team also asked famous celebrities, politicians, and other notable figures with ties to the Boy Scouts to speak out on social media in favor of changing the policy. They persuaded musicians like Carly Rae Jepsen and Train not to perform at a concert at the Boy Scout Jamboree, a very large national conference of Boy Scouts held every four years.
Lastly, they mapped out the national and local structure of the BSA. As they learned, the BSA is composed of a number of local Scout councils all throughout the United States. They leveraged every part of the power map by helping to launch 110 petitions on Change.org, urging the councils to ask the national organization to end their ban on gay Scouts and leaders. Each petition was started by someone who cared about this issue and had some personal connection to it—including gay people who themselves had been Scouts or leaders or who had gay parents who were Scout leaders—demonstrating the size and diversity of the community that cared about this issue.
All of these additional campaigns with smaller asks were directed toward people and institutions within the influence map of the BSA and helped to create an incredible wave of momentum and media attention. Finally, just over a year after the initial petition was launched, the BSA voted to end the ban on gay Scouts on May 23, 2013. And two years later, in July 2015, the BSA also lifted its ban on gay Scout leaders. In the end, no single campaign changed the minds of the BSA. Instead, the movement succeeded because of the coordinated efforts of more than one hundred smaller, related campaigns, each directed at people within the BSA’s spheres of influence. What had started as a single campaign directed at the BSA grew into a national movement with nearly 1.5 million supporters.
The movement created a win-win. It made sense for the BSA to listen to and engage with the people who were asking them for change, and in the end, the change they made was also likely better for the long-term success of their organization. Public opinion shifted dramatically in favor of gay rights during those years, followed by a wave of legal reforms as twenty-five states voted in favor of same-sex marriage in 2013 and 2014. In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that banning same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. Given this change in perspective, the BSA’s new policy ultimately put them on the side of public opinion as well, a positive outcome for their organization and for the people who were proposing the change.
ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF someone who deeply understands how to influence decision-makers is my friend Luanne Calvert, who spent five years as CMO of Virgin America airlines. Luanne is one of the most creative people I’ve ever met, and her talent has clearly contributed to her extremely successful career in advertising and marketing. During her time at Yahoo!, Google, Virgin, and several other companies, Luanne has been responsible for a lot of firsts—the first ever “buzz” or word-of-mouth marketing team, the first Internet-enabled taxis (before there was mobile Internet or Uber), and on and on—meaning that she has also become an incredible expert at persuading people to do things that they might at first be hesitant to do.
One of my favorite examples of a Luanne “first” is when she led the effort to create the now-famous musical safety video at Virgin America. She describes it as a “gut-wrenching” experience because, although people may not remember now, the previous safety video, which was a humorous animation, was beloved by Virgin America customers and very much served to define their brand. To come up with something that their passionate customers would like better, or even as much, was an enormously high bar to reach. Luanne needed to create a movement of her own within Virgin America—one that her colleagues would get behind, even if it was risky. Despite having done so many creative things in her career, she was scared to make this change. She didn’t want to be the person who ruined the brand, because everyone loved that animated video. Ultimately they had to make a change. The animation didn’t meet the standards for addressing the hearing-impaired audience, and the FAA was going to fine them if she didn’t change it.
So she took a leap, reached out to her colleagues at Virgin Produced, and told them she wanted to do something that “had never been done before”—one of Luanne’s favorite phrases. What they came up with was amazing and surprised even Luanne. “They said they wanted to do an homage to music, because Virgin has a history of music,” she told me, “and we want to do the first ever completely rhyming music safety video.” Luanne thought that idea sounded perfect. They hired Jon Chu, who had directed Justin Bieber’s documentary and Step Up 2, among other popular films, and got started.
To get the video up and running, though, Luanne had to get through a gauntlet of decision-makers who all had opinions. Rather than let that deter her, Luanne did something unusual. Instead of just thinking about primary decision-makers whose approval she required, like the CEO (her boss) and the FAA (who came to the video shoot to make sure everything was in compliance), she actually expanded her outreach to people whose input and buy-in would be helpful for her to get. This meant showing it to everyone—from other executives to flight attendants who would have to hear it every day to loyal frequent flyers.
One person whose input she had sought ended up being critical in the ultimate approval process. When Luanne met with the CEO, he was hesitant about the music, thinking it might get annoying to people over time. In that meeting, a new colleague of Luanne’s, their chief pilot and COO, Steve Forte, spoke up in favor of the video. He said, “I love it. The more you hear it, the more you love it.” Broadening the outreach to a wider set of initial decision-makers may have been the turning point in getting the ultimate approval. Reaching out to a broader set of people also helped ensure the video’s successful launch, because she was confident that customers would like it.
And in classic Luanne style, Virgin America launched the new safety video just as you would promote a new movie—Jon Chu went on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and they played the video in Times Square at an event with flight attendants. And it was a huge success, even more loved than the original animated video. So much so, in fact, that some of their flight attendants started dancing to it—and a passenger-filmed video went viral, creating even more attention for the brand.
Though it may seem like a small detail, the safety video had a massive impact on the movement that Virgin America was creating with their brand. (Note: Alaska Airlines acquired Virgin America in 2016 and may discontinue the Virgin America brand by 2019.) As Luanne told me, “What I love about it in the end is that it showed that you can take the most mundane things and create them into details that help to create a brand that people love.”
RELEVANT VOICES MATTER
TESSA HILL AND Lia Valente were no strangers to sexism and harassment, even at age thirteen. Growing up in Ontario, Canada, they had heard stories from their friends about catcalling and slut shaming in the hallways at school and on social media. They’d learned from older siblings and the media about “rape culture,” especially common on college campuses, where sexual assault is rarely punished and where survivors of all genders are often disregarded or even seen as at fault.
So when asked to choose a social justice topic they cared about for an eighth grade school project in 2014, they chose to tackle rape culture. Lia and Tessa started by filming their own documentary, Allegedly, which was not only viewed in their class but also featured on the Huffington Post and seen by nearly ten thousand people on YouTube. Then they created a Change.org petition called “We Give Consent” to fight for the concept of consent to be added to the sex education curriculum in their province, Ontario. More than forty thousand people signed the petition and left comments with their reasons for signing that ranged from their roles as parents to their perspectives as survivors to their admiration for Lia and Tessa. Though the reasons behind them differed, every signature and comment helped Tessa and Lia build meaningful support for their movement.
The passion and resolve of Tessa, Lia, and their forty thousand supporters garnered media coverage in outlets ranging from the Toronto Star to NPR to the major radio news show Metro Morning on CBC (the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). Local coverage snowballed into national interest and captured the attention of the Ontario government. In fact, after the young women were interviewed on Metro Morning, Kathleen Wynne, the premier of Ontario, tweeted at Tessa and Lia that she wanted to meet with them.
Premier Wynne was inspired by these two young women who took action to further a purpose they believed in. The fact that they were students who would be participating in the revised curriculum mattered a lot to her. Their voices carried extra weight. And because the concept of consent was so important to them as young people, it, too, carried extra weight. Premier Wynne even told Lia and Tessa when they met that they reminded her of her own activism as a young woman, when she successfully persuaded her high school to change the dress code to let girls wear pants. Premier Wynne did decide to include the concept of consent as part of a curriculum change for all Ontario schools—thanks to Tessa and Lia. If an issue matters to you in an area where your voice has extra relevance, don’t hesitate to speak up.
IF YOU DON’T ASK, YOU DON’T GET
SAIRA RAO AND Carey Albertine are the founders of In This Together Media, a company that creates children’s books that highlight diversity in terms of race, gender, class, sexual orientation, and experience. As they worked together to get the business off the ground, Saira remembered a phrase an ex-boyfriend of hers used to say: “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.” She described to me how they put that strategy to use effectively in the early days of growing their business, when they were launching their first book series in early 2012. The series was called Soccer Sisters, and the launch coincided with the 2012 Summer Olympics. Saira explained how they developed a great idea to get influencers on board, telling me, “Brandi Chastain was going to be working for NBC covering the Olympics, and we were sitting around a table laughing, ‘Oh my God, wouldn’t it great if Brandi Chastain or Mia Hamm would be the spokesperson for this series?’ We had no money. We had no track record. We had just started.”
Saira and Carey took a risk and e-mailed both women’s managers. Brandi’s manager responded quickly with a surprising answer: “Brandi normally charges quite a bit of money for this, but she loves what you’re doing so she’s going to do it for free.” Carey and Saira were thrilled. That first big risk led to appearances for Brandi on the Today show to discuss the books, and to their first foreign rights deals selling the books in Japan. Saira told me it made them completely rethink their strategy moving forward, making them realize that “whoever it is that we’re going to go after, we’re going to go after. And we’re not going to think about it. We’re just going to ask everybody we know to help, and people have really risen to the occasion. It’s been really encouraging.”
There are times when it makes sense to just go for it and not overthink your strategy. Sometimes persuading a decision-maker just takes a well-placed ask.
MAKE IT EASY TO SAY YES
ONCE YOU UNDERSTAND who and what motivates your decision-makers, it also becomes easier to craft a plan that will get them to yes. One of the ways that people struggle most in working effectively with decision-makers is not knowing how to put the ask together in a way that makes it easy for them to agree. The advice I heard over and over again from activists and entrepreneurs I spoke to was how important it is to prepare carefully, do your research, and get ready for every potential scenario. Anticipating all the various reasons decision-makers might say no and what questions they might ask helps ensure that every possible base is covered when making your case.
One incredible example of getting people to yes is Amanda Nguyen, an astronaut-in-training and the founder of Rise, an organization that advocates for the legal protection of sexual assault survivors. Rise originated in Amanda’s traumatic personal story: when she was a twenty-two-year-old college student at Harvard, she was raped. Within twenty-four hours of the assault, she did exactly what she was supposed to do, going to the hospital to have a rape kit examination. Even though she took immediate action, there was no guarantee that the critical evidence would be preserved long enough to be of use. That’s because Massachusetts, where she was living at the time, keeps rape kits in evidence labs for only six months. What this means is that every six months, survivors have to fight to keep their critical evidence from the trash.
When Amanda took a closer look at the laws that aim to protect victims of sexual violence, she found a truly broken system. As she told me during a recent interview, “Fighting for the civil rights of rape survivors started from a very personal place. I remember walking out of the hospital and feeling so alone. People tell survivors to go to the criminal justice system, go get help. But when I went to try to get help, I was met with a legal labyrinth. It’s quite retraumatizing to have to go through this continually and to fight to hold on to critical evidence in a violent crime—in my own rape—when other crimes are not treated this way. That’s why it is a civil rights issue. Evidence for other crimes is stored indefinitely. You wouldn’t throw away evidence in a murder case; why would you destroy evidence in a rape case? That’s where I started researching what my rights were and decided to try to rewrite the law.”
Amanda realized that in addition to trying to preserve the evidence in her own case, she wanted to do something on a bigger scale to protect other women from having their untested rape kits destroyed. She knew that she’d need help, so she reached out to a diverse group of friends and colleagues. By gathering this diverse set of experts, she was able to effectively anticipate the potential concerns that lawmakers might have. Not only did they prepare for questions that might be asked by members of Congress, but they also drafted a version of the bill so that the required work would be done for them.
Her networks and her friends were young professionals and law students, so Amanda combined their expertise. They had working sessions where people from different professional backgrounds would sit together and do research. They untangled the complicated and patchwork laws to learn which rights exist in each state. And what they came up with was a list of best practices that were uncontroversial, had legal precedents, and worked across states. The Rise team also used financial metrics to show how effective the bill was, showing economic projections of how this would help districts not only morally but also fiscally. “By the time that we presented this to members of the U.S. Congress, we had a solid ask,” Amanda told me. “We had data behind it. And we had a prepared package of the bill. We had the bill language. Obviously it was amended as the process went on. But we came in with everything prepared. And any question that a Senator or member of Congress had, we would turn that memo around in a day because we were very solid on what our research was and what we were fighting for.”
And they won. They drafted a law called the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act (otherwise known as the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights). It passed first in Massachusetts, where survivors no longer have to worry that the valuable evidence in their rape kits will be destroyed after six months, and then unanimously in Congress on October 7, 2016. Let me repeat that—the House and Senate passed this law unanimously during one of the most polarized, partisan times in our history. Since 1989, only twenty-one bills—0.016 percent of all bills—have passed unanimously in both chambers of Congress. It’s an extremely rare occurrence and an exceptional accomplishment for anyone, not to mention a young woman in her twenties who is not a professional lobbyist.
BRING YOUR DATA (AND YOUR CAPE)
IN 2002, THREE years into my job at Yahoo!, I was given the opportunity to join a small “tiger team” of people working with Jeff Weiner (who later became the CEO of LinkedIn) to reinvent Yahoo! Search. We knew we were falling behind. In the early years, consumers had thought of Yahoo! as a search engine. But by 2002, most people saw Yahoo! as a “portal” and were using Google for search. My job was to lead marketing for Yahoo! Search, which meant first getting a deep understanding of consumer needs to inform product development, and then running a marketing campaign to tell people about the new product once it was ready, with the objective of increasing market share of people using Yahoo! Search.
It was a really exciting time. I vividly remember, after weeks of focus groups, having a conversation with Qi Lu (who then was head of engineering for Yahoo! Search and went on to top positions at Microsoft and Chinese search leader Baidu) in which I told him that we had a really clear view of what people wanted in search: to get the answers to their questions as quickly as possible, and without extra steps. They essentially wanted shortcuts. And in that moment, Qi looked at me and said, “Great, I can build that.” Right then and there we envisioned a new Yahoo! Search that would give people the answers to their questions right on the search page itself. Whether they searched for weather, sports scores, stock quotes, or movie times, if we had the information, we’d provide it directly on the page, in addition to letting people also click out to other sites if they preferred. So we set out to rebuild the product and develop a marketing campaign for the new Yahoo! Search, with the tagline “The Shortcut to What You Want.” (This change seems really obvious now because all search engines do it, but at the time, it was a big innovation.)
We began to develop different ideas for the marketing campaign, and we had what was considered to be a sizable budget by tech company standards (though it would seem very small to most consumer marketers). A lot of my time was spent running our findings and plans by executives because the strategy for Yahoo! Search was very important for the company.
There was one senior executive who was not in favor of our doing brand marketing. It wasn’t that he disagreed with the specifics of the creative or the copy—he just didn’t believe we needed to market it at all. He thought that while common in consumer goods, most tech companies didn’t use brand marketing techniques and didn’t need to. (Note: That was truer in the early days of the Internet, though Yahoo! was an exception even then, running TV ads with the iconic yodel that helped cement the brand. Today traditional marketing campaigns are common in tech, and everyone from Google to Amazon does classic brand marketing.) Given what I knew was his strong disapproval, I was scared to present to him. Looking back, it seems silly to have been scared, but I was. I had seen him sometimes be critical or condescending to people in meetings, and I couldn’t help thinking about how he would react.
Several months later, after we had run the full campaign, including print, digital, and television ads, I needed to present the results of our marketing efforts to him. As I was preparing for it over the weekend, I visited my parents and saw my father’s cousin Bill Oberfield, who was also in town and who happens to be a psychiatrist. When Bill asked me how work was going, I explained how nervous I was about the looming presentation.
What he said next stayed with me: “What if you imagined yourself as a superhero in an action movie. Imagine that there’s a crowd of people and they’re all right behind you, cheering you on. When you walk into that meeting, imagine you’re wearing a superhero cape. If he says something that knocks you off guard, take a deep breath, imagine your cape, and imagine the audience rooting for you.”
At the time I thought it was a super-cheesy suggestion, but you bet I went to that meeting wearing bright red, thinking: “I’m going into this meeting like a superhero badass, and I’m imagining my cape. Whatever he says, I’ll just take a deep breath and keep going.”
I walked into the meeting, and before I could start the presentation, he opened the conversation by saying, “I don’t know what you’re about to present, but all I know is we spent way too much money on this campaign; it didn’t work and I’ll never do it again.”
Talk about a rough way to start a meeting.
It was a damn good thing I had brought that imaginary cape. And I brought one other key item to that meeting—indisputable data. Turns out that’s pretty powerful as well. So as I’d been coached, I took a deep breath and said, “Okay, I understand that you feel that way. Why don’t I take you through the data anyway?”
As we started going through the deck, something dramatic happened. It became clear that our data was irrefutable. One slide in particular showed a clear representation of the market share of Yahoo! Search before our ad campaign started and immediately after our ad campaign ran. We had gained a full point of market share, which was worth many tens of millions of dollars to the company. It was clear that, regardless of anyone’s opinion, the data told the truth. We went through the rest of the deck, and at the end of the presentation, he looked me in the eye and said, “You know what? You have the data and you showed me that I was wrong; this was actually a good campaign.” It was a complete turnaround.
I realized two key things in that moment. First, I had more power than I thought, and data can be a meaningful equalizer. The combination of hard facts and more confidence in myself meant that I was able to be on a level playing field with someone I previously saw as intimidating. Second, I didn’t need to see us as hero and antagonist (or David and Goliath) at all. Ultimately, we were on the same team (and in this case, we were literally on the same team—working for the same company and with the same objective). It was so early in my career that I didn’t understand what it feels like to sit in the decision-maker seat—the one who has to make the calls about what to approve and not approve in the budget, risking the company’s resources for things that may or may not work. Now that I do that on a regular basis, I realize how much pressure it is. And if I had tried to understand that more at the time, I might have been able to arm him with more information to feel better about the decision to begin with, or to admit that I also saw potential risks in the approach so we could try to work through them together.
We ultimately built a good relationship over time based on mutual respect, and we are still in touch. And while that experience taught me a lot about better preparing the decision-makers I work with for big decisions I am asking them to make, I also learned about the courage it takes as a decision-maker to admit when you are wrong about something. I admire him for that and try to remember the benefits of doing that myself.
Clear data can help to persuade even the most skeptical decision-makers and can help you build a relationship up front so that you can empower them to have the information they need to make a good decision and to see where it might benefit them. Data gives you power. And if you can’t get far enough with just the data, you might want to throw on your cape.
TAKE THE LONG VIEW
ONE THING TO keep in mind is how long some of these movements can take—even when the idea has a tremendous amount of support at the outset—and how having patience with the process can really pay off. It took eight years for a group of concerned parents from the Down Syndrome Association of Northern Virginia who talked around a kitchen table in 2006 about the need for individuals with disabilities and their families to plan for their financial futures. Their advocacy, with the help of Sara Weir, the president of the National Down Syndrome Society (NDSS), and an extraordinary young woman with Down syndrome herself, Sara Wolff, the campaign’s spokeswoman, would lead to the creation of the Achieving a Better Life Experience (ABLE) Act of 2013. ABLE accounts are tax-advantaged savings accounts that allow people with disabilities to save up to $100,000 without risking their eligibility for government programs like Social Security and Medicare or Medicaid. (The previous savings limit was only $2,000, which made it extremely difficult for people with disabilities or their families to save for their future.) The ABLE Act is considered the broadest piece of public policy legislation benefiting disabled Americans since the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). It acknowledges and provides assistance to 58 million people, helping them afford accessible housing and transportation, assistive technology, and additional health-care services not covered by insurance.
Sara Weir related to me the many steps and stages involved in pushing the bill forward—which took over eight years and spanned five U.S. Congresses. She and her supporters set up an ambassador program that was made up of advocates whose phone calls, e-mails, and personal stories helped get the attention of Washington lawmakers; they created a bipartisan collaborative approach to congressional leaders that resulted in an unprecedented 380 members of Congress cosponsoring the bill. (That is particularly unusual for a spending bill like this one.) Although the initial process was slow, taking the time to build up these relationships and make sure legislators really understood the issue benefited NDSS enormously.
Though it took eight years to get the initial bill passed into law, it took only seven more months to get related ABLE laws passed in forty-seven of fifty states. Because they took the long view, they were able to work productively with members from both sides of the aisle in achieving the outcome they wanted: “I don’t think at any point in time during this decade-long journey did we ever take a contentious approach to anything related to the ABLE Act,” she told me. “Our greatest challenge in getting to as many elected officials as we could was to really educate them—because when you say that somebody with a disability can’t have more than $2,000, chins hit the table. Eyes get wide. People ask, ‘How is that possible? How is that even a reality? And why hasn’t that changed over the course of the last almost sixty years?’” The team at NDSS worked to get to so many individual offices in Congress by building up a coalition of Sara Wolff’s grassroots army and a group of professional experts who knew the ins and outs of the legislation, the bill text, and how the legislation would affect an individual with a disability.
If you keep the long term in mind, even slow-building relationships with decision-makers can be hugely productive over time. And with movements as potentially powerful as the one behind the ABLE Act, a few extra years to make sure the act was drafted well so it would be passed into law quickly was well worth it for the tens of millions of people with disabilities.
THE FIVE STAGES OF ENGAGEMENT
WHILE AT CHANGE.ORG, I got a unique perspective into the world of decision-makers because of the more than one thousand campaigns started every day on the site asking people and institutions for change. From the data, I’ve seen that there are a series of predictable stages decision-makers tend to go through as they react to campaigns that are directed at them. I call them the Five Stages of Engagement: denial, listening, acceptance, embracing, and empowering. Not all decision-makers go through each of the five stages, but we do see each of these stages play out on a regular basis.
Understanding the stages can help you be more effective in persuading decision-makers that you are working to influence. In particular, helping decision-makers see the risks that come from denial and the benefits that come from listening and then acting can help you make your own case more persuasive. For the purposes of describing each stage briefly below, I’ve referenced petitions to corporate decision-makers, since they take place in a shorter time frame and clearly demonstrate each stage. Nevertheless, these stories illustrate the way decision-makers of all types react to appeals for change.
1. DENIAL
The first stage in this process, as with the five stages of grief, is denial. Some decision-makers would prefer to stick to business as usual and act as if nothing is changing around them. A good example here is SeaWorld—a well-regarded business that came under intense pressure after a 2013 documentary called Blackfish criticized the treatment of orcas held in captivity at water parks, including their properties. There was major public outcry, expressed in part through dozens of campaigns on Change.org. Although SeaWorld initially tried to actively fight the criticism, even running a pro-orca SeaWorld advertising campaign, partners started to pull away and business receded dramatically as public dissent grew. Eventually, they were forced to take action. In March 2016, SeaWorld decided to stop orca breeding as well as orca shows, instead redirecting its focus to educational programs.
Surprisingly, after years of denying the issue, the move turned out to be better for their business in the end. According to New York magazine, “The existential battle they had been so desperately fighting was over something that people didn’t even want anymore. . . . [A] survey of 2,400 people across the country, found that . . . SeaWorld’s favorability score would rise 11 to 27 points.” If they had been able to move from denial faster, SeaWorld could have spared itself the huge hit to its reputation and saved tens of millions of dollars. If you can help decision-makers understand that taking action may not only protect their reputation but also be better for their business, you’ll have a better chance of getting the outcome you want.
2. LISTENING
The second stage is listening, when decision-makers can’t or aren’t yet ready to do what is being asked of them, but want to engage and have a dialogue to show they are willing to hear feedback. Sometimes just being heard, knowing that your voice matters, and starting a dialogue can be huge steps in driving your movement forward. An initial request for just a meeting or a conversation may be a less threatening way to start a relationship with a decision-maker—and it may lead to further action.
At the end of 2014, Renee Posey, an Old Navy customer, started a campaign on Change.org. She was frustrated that Old Navy charged more for plus-size clothing for women, whereas plus-size men’s clothing wasn’t priced at a premium. Renee’s petition gained nearly 100,000 signatures. National media including Good Morning America picked up the story, leading to a fair amount of backlash for Old Navy. But then the company decided to meet with Renee and listen to what she had to say. Renee wasn’t a critic of Old Navy; she was a customer. And she loved the brand; she just wanted to see fair treatment between men and women. In an interview with the Huffington Post, Renee explained that during a conference call with three executives from Old Navy and its parent company, Gap Inc., she asked that they start thinking about a plan to address consumer concerns—namely, to eliminate the differential in plus-size clothing prices, make a larger selection of new plus-size styles available, and change their return policy so that online plus-size purchases could be exchanged in stores.
Instead of getting defensive, the executives made it clear to Renee that they understood her concerns and intended to do something about them. Though they didn’t agree to all of her asks right away, they did agree to take some important immediate steps. They began accepting plus-size returns in stores and put together an advisory group of plus-size women, including Renee, to better understand that part of their customer base. While she didn’t get everything she’d wanted all at once, and some of the signers of her petition were upset by that, Renee was so happy that Old Navy listened and took action that she marked the campaign a victory and wrote an update to the signers praising Old Navy and Gap Inc. for their initial steps.
If you let decision-makers know that you are open to starting with a conversation in which all parties can express their perspectives, it can serve as a starting point to prompt potential action. There may be alternative solutions to a problem that can only be discovered by listening to each other.
3. ACCEPTANCE
Stage three is acceptance: decision-makers listen to the people asking them for change, agree that what they are asking for makes sense, and then decide to do what is being asked of them. It is just “acceptance,” though, because while they agree to make the change, they don’t go any further to more deeply engage with their customers or constituents around it, or promote it to make it a core part of their platform or brand.
A survivor of workplace sexual assault started a petition in 2013 asking LinkedIn to create a blocking feature. She had quit her job but was stalked by her harasser on LinkedIn. She used two techniques we already know are effective: she shared her personal story to make the problem more visceral, and used data to make her case more persuasive, noting that all other major social networks already had a blocking feature, except for LinkedIn. Her campaign was effective: LinkedIn did launch a blocking feature, and Paul Rockwell, head of trust and safety at LinkedIn, posted a decision-maker response and said, “We know members have requested a blocking feature on LinkedIn. I come to you today to assure you that your concerns were heard loud and clear. We built this feature not only because it was a feature our members requested, but because we also knew it was the right thing to do.” The reaction from their customers was very positive, and they got some reasonable press coverage from it as well, mainly from people happy to hear that the feature was finally available. You are in good shape if you can persuade a decision-maker to get all the way to the acceptance stage.
4. EMBRACING
The fourth stage of engagement is embracing, when decision-makers actively embrace the requests from the people who are asking them for change. They make changes that go beyond what movement leaders ask for, and potentially promote the changes that they are making in order to cultivate an even more loyal and excited set of customers or constituents. When Laura Coryton from London, England, learned in 2015 that tampons and other sanitary products were assessed an extra 5 percent value-added tax (VAT) that is typically assigned to “luxury” items such as helicopters and exotic meats like alligator, she was shocked. So she launched a campaign called #EndTamponTax, gathered 320,000 signatures, and persuaded the British government to pass a law confirming that sanitary products are essential, not luxury items, and to abolish the tax. It has since become a massive movement, spawning sister campaigns in other countries that tax sanitary products as luxury items, like France, Germany, Australia, and Malaysia.
TESCO offers to pay the tampon tax for their customers.
ALICE GRAY
However, although the law was passed in 2016, the actual tax will still be in effect until 2018. In mid-2017, Tesco, one of the largest supermarkets in the UK, stepped forward to engage with their customers around this issue. Instead of just waiting for the tax to go away, they decided to lower the price by 5 percent on nearly one hundred sanitary products to make up for the 5 percent tax. This was a huge win for their brand and extremely well received by their customers. Furthermore, it will likely be a financial win as customers flock to Tesco for its lower prices. Laura now has an active petition asking other supermarkets and pharmacies to follow Tesco’s lead.
5. EMPOWERING
The final stage of the engagement is empowering, and this is where the process flips upside down. In this final stage, decision-makers actually empower their consumers or their constituents to act on their behalf and to become advocates in support of the causes the decision-makers care about. In effect, the decision-maker has now become the movement starter. Some companies, like Airbnb, Lyft, and Uber, have begun to empower their customers (or potential customers) to advocate on the brands’ behalf with local legislators to allow their services in various cities.
Luanne Calvert, then CMO of Virgin America and mastermind behind their viral safety video, had already helped to build the airline into a movement. She knew that Virgin had customers so passionate that they would get behind the brand if they were asked. When it came time to negotiate with the Dallas airport authority to try to get access to two gates that were becoming available at Dallas Love Field airport, Virgin America went straight to its customers. Virgin rallied its loyal supporters by starting a Change.org petition asking people to sign if they supported the idea of Virgin America getting the two gates at the Dallas airport. Virgin called the campaign “Free Love Field”—and won. With 27,000 signatures in two weeks, Virgin secured the two gates and created a huge business win and victory for its brand.
I RECENTLY SPOKE at a health-care conference attended by the heads of many large insurance companies and other major health-care stakeholders. They were concerned about how to handle the increasing amount of pressure from their own customers now that people can so easily spread messages on social media. And they were especially worried whether they would set untenable precedents by agreeing to cover previously uncovered drugs or procedures. I sympathize with the feeling of being caught between a rock and a hard place. But if they and other decision-makers could start to think of themselves as building a movement that their own customers could support—like the movements that brands from Plum Organics to Virgin have built—then they could work with their own customers to get them out of the bind. Their customers could help fight challenging regulations set by lawmakers or put pressure on drug companies to lower prices. If the people who may appear to have the least power can effectively start movements for change—survivors of crime, teenagers, the elderly, the voiceless—then shouldn’t the most powerful companies be able to do the same thing?
The most effective and respected decision-makers will be the ones that move up this ladder of engagement quickly and see that there are actually economic incentives for being responsive—as well as the incentive to do what’s right. Those who choose not to engage in the near term will likely be forced to in the long term as incentives change and power continues to shift toward citizens and customers. So, as a movement starter, ask decision-makers: “Do you want to lead, or do you want to follow?” Helping decision-makers understand the benefit of being in the vanguard of change can be one of the most effective persuasion tools.
ONCE YOU’VE MOVED through the steps necessary to achieving your vision—creating a Theory of Change, getting early supporters on board, and working effectively with decision-makers—to help your movement maintain momentum, you’ll need to think about ways to get the most out of the team of people supporting your cause. The more you can motivate your supporters to take action, the more successful your movement will be.