What determines whether a social movement will be a flash in the pan or a real catalyst for longterm change? Why did Occupy Wall Street subside in a matter of months, for instance, while the American Civil Rights Movement thrived, resulting in the passage of multiple laws?
Many people have called for REAL and SUBSTANTIAL CHANGE at USA GYMNASTICS. If we view the change necessary as a social movement we can identify common themes among social movements that don’t merely broadcast the need for a social change, but actually create long-term impact.
At this writing USA Gymnastics has yet to name a CEO/President. The new CEO/President will need a team behind them. People interested in making real change.
Every successful social movement features three distinct leadership roles:
the agitator,
the innovator,
the orchestrator.
Any successful pathway to real change in USAG will require all three.
Julie Battilana, a long-time scholar of institutional change explains, “If you look at the history of any successful social change movement, you’ll see there were moments of really effective agitation, innovation, and orchestration that led to the adoption of the change,” says Battilana, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and Professor of Social Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School, “Although history remembers some individual actors as highly influential, single leaders rarely change the course of society on their own.”
The Agitator stirs the pot by articulating and publicizing societal grievances, rallying an otherwise diverse group of people around a mutual desire for change.
“Effective agitators are able to draw attention to a problem and convince others that it requires both some corrective action and collective work to bring it about. To demonstrate that the status quo is not acceptable and to mobilize others, agitators thus need to communicate in a manner that ensures grievances are shared and collective and not seen as irrelevant.”
Take, for example, marine biologist Rachel Carson, who alerted the public to the dangers of pesticides in the 1950s; Donald Trump, who, throughout 2016, rallied citizens around the slogan “Make America Great Again;” or Teresa Snook, who launched the Women’s March on Washington after Trump’s presidential victory.
The Innovator develops a solution to address the grievances. That means anticipating roadblocks and coming up with alternative paths, as well as justifying those alternatives in appealing ways to engage individuals, groups, and organizations to support them.
“An innovator is likely someone who has studied, lived, or experienced something beyond the norms in a given environment and thus is able to create a vision of a different future that nonetheless makes sense to, and captivates, those living within the existing practices and conditions,”
Without leaders who can lay out a persuasive path of innovation, a movement will never make it past the agitation stage.
“If you do not innovate and have a solution to the problem you’ve identified, the movement will die,” she says. “I think that’s what happened with the Occupy Wall Street movement. There was an effective agitation; the movement came at the right time—a time when the world was screaming that we needed a different financial system. But there was a lack of innovation. And we ended up coming back to a system that is quite a bit like what we had before.”
The Orchestrator spreads the solution created by the innovator, continually strategizing how best to reach and work with people both within and outside the movement, as the movement for change grows in size and complexity.
“Orchestrators often need to tailor their message to the interests of the various constituencies they are trying to persuade to embrace the change,” Battilana writes. “However, in doing so, they need to strike a fine balance, as they also need to ensure that the overall message around change adoption remains coherent.”
Agitation without innovation means complaints without alternatives;
Innovation without orchestration means ideas without impact;
For USA Gymnastics each role requires a combination of communicating, organizing, and evaluating.
Agitators need to communicate the necessity of the change; innovators need to communicate the validity of their proposed solution; and orchestrators must be able to tailor information to different types of constituents—coaches, parents, gymnasts and the general audience- while still maintaining a cohesive message.
The next CEO must be able to leverage these various sources of power as they push for change. Effecting change does not guarantee glory. Behind any successful movement lies a great deal of thankless determination and sweat.
Change takes time, it takes a lot of work, and most of the time you’re not going to get a lot of recognition. Most movements are full of hidden heroes. No one may ever know about them. Some of them will have worked their entire career and not see the change. But lets make sure we do not ignore that they played key roles in agitation, orchestration, or innovation.
