Day Traders and Campaign Plans

March 5, 2010 - 4:33pm — Marty
Creation of political will and policy change are an outcome. Changes in political will and policy are not irreversible. It seems increasingly like they are reverse by courts, new politicians and switching party control that long-term shifts will be increasingly elusive if we stay on our current path. The key challenges to fostering long-term change which protect policy gains and multiply the power of political will are. A. Generating deep cultural interest in the issues, problems and solutions. B. Distributing ownership of the effort to fix the problem. Short term policy activities that do not secure long-term solutions are not a solution for fixing deep systemic problems. Passing lots of policy that is far beyond where the culture is ready go begs for backlash, the reversal of political gains and waste organizing effort and resources. Focusing on shifting culture and distributing ownership of the effort to create change secures sustainable gains. Here are three examples.... 1. Gay marriage = Culture has shifted. Political will and policy are tumbling now to align with the culture. In the past gains have been easily rolled back in political and policy context while culture has grown more mature and accepting. 2. Climate Change =...

Do You Care about Communicating with Each Other?

February 17, 2010 - 10:33pm — Marty
I was asking the twitterverse about the use of online tools (yammer) and adoption rates and Howard Rheingold flipped back this nugget. Latest: RT @hrheingold: "Success depends on ppl involved care about communicating w/ each other" great metric for network building too. via twitter.com I am inspired to think about lots of the work of network building and creating advocacy networks. Is it possible to nudge people to care about each other? What does that mean? Communicating involves exchanges and listening. It involves connection and sharing of ideas and information. If you are building a network how do you make it easy to make people "care about communicating with each other"? To varying degrees, face to face, meetings, community spaces, get people involved because they lower the "care" threshold among people that might not normally care to communicate with each other. If it takes little effort then I only need to care a little to communicate. If it takes lots of effort to communicate, then I need to care lots. Do emails, twitter, facebook, status updates etc create "care"? Do they lower the threshold so much that they are so easy to use that people that don't normally communicate start...

What information do you like to pick up before starting an online organizing project?

February 3, 2010 - 10:02pm — Marty
I started to think about all the campaign meetings and discussions I have been in over the years. Groups are great and they share lots of data including proposals, plans, budgets, etc. However, I am usually very hungry to sit down with the campaign team to talk about the vision and where things are going. What am I looking for during these meetings? Why does most the literature and information in proposals not give online organizers enough to chew on? What do I really want before I can sit down and develop the best advocacy network strategy for a group or client? These are not in order. Here is a list of things I like to get my head around before I get into thinking about the online strategy. Most of these are obvious but some are driven by what makes a network function. What is the campaign trying to do? What is success? How do the policy team/ campaign team think it will be done? Who is the target audience? Who are the influencers that the online strategy must engage to succeed? What services would be most valuable to them in their own work? Where are the turf wars...

by not having "contol" of brand maybe we become better brands rather than better at spin.

January 29, 2010 - 6:58pm — Marty
This is an interesting. I like the riff on transparency and the clash that transparency will inspire us to be better as reviewers, readers and brands. This transparency vs. control and history and trends vs. spin is interesting. Echo Creator Khris Loux on the Ties That Bind the Real-Time Web from ReadWriteWeb on Vimeo.

Individuals Cannot Avoid Jumping to Conclusions

January 19, 2010 - 7:44pm — Marty
Here is a good article unpacking the fallout of group think. It is also a nice set of questions for any campaign planning and campaign strategists. The original article is about CIA and failures of intelligence. Our allies often get what we ask for but not what we want. My sense is that the failure of many of our investments and strategies is because we don’t do enough of the following…. 1. Challenge Authority. Challenge Tradition. 2. Probe the Assumptions 3. Look for Indicators. What details could change your mind? 4. Brainstorm the likely responses from opponents. Here is the section from the original article that hit me… What our intelligence system really needs is ways to avoid becoming trapped by the natural tendency to leap to conclusions and stick with them. This is true in other fields as well, which is why so much of professional and scientific training is designed to reduce the errors made by fallible people using weak information. If individuals cannot avoid jumping to conclusions, there are ways for organizations to make up for this. They can systematically solicit the views of people with different perspectives, for example, or use devil’s advocates who will challenge...
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