Cascades

by Greg Satell

  Lean manufacturing was the keystone change for Wyeth, but factory changeovers were the keystone change that made the lean manufacturing transformation possible. The company exceeded its goals and saved $250 million from its operating budget.49

  In a similar vein, the rise of cloud architectures created a dilemma for big data giant Experian. For decades, it had built up a reliable data architecture to service large banks with credit data and built other data businesses on a similar infrastructure. Yet when Barry Libenson began his tenure as chief information officer, he saw that customers were demanding more access and flexibility that could only be achieved if the company moved from its traditional systems to the cloud. However, that was easier said than done.

  “There was a lot of concern that we were going to disrupt our own business and that we would lose control of our data,” he told me. “For years, Experian’s business model was based on a traditional architecture. There were also security concerns. So there were obviously lots of important questions that we needed to be sure to address.”

  Libenson set out to identify a keystone change. He started by developing APIs for internal use rather than going straight to customer-facing features. The effect of the initiative was subtle, but important because it got people working together and showed what was possible. Building the APIs required collaboration across the IT organization. Application developers found that they could access data more easily, business unit leaders were able to get new products out the door more quickly, and customers started to notice better service. It was a relatively small step, but got the ball rolling. “Once we developed some internal APIs, people could see that there was vast potential and we gained some momentum,” Libenson remembers.

  Much like with voting rights for women, the internal APIs and, in fact, the move to the cloud weren’t the end of the journey, but rather a concrete and tangible accomplishment that paved the way for future change. “I think the most impactful technology that’s emerging right now is machine learning,” Libenson told me. “For example, we’ve started using machine learning to help manage our infrastructure, predict problems, and suggest possible solutions. We have also begun using similar technologies for fraud detection, security, and to improve decision results. Having gone through this transformational process over the past three years and seeing concrete business results, we are much better positioned to adopt those technologies. We’ve made the changes in culture, our organizational structure, and skills to be able to adopt new technologies quickly, completely, and with better collaboration with our customers.”50

  Notice that none of these keystone changes are obvious. In every case, it took a great deal of deliberation—and often no small amount of trial and error—before they could be identified. What makes a keystone change so difficult to identify is that, while grievances are what drive the passion of some, a keystone change needs to resonate with those outside the early adopter group if it is going to spread. Movements, as the name implies, need to be kinetic. They start somewhere and need to end up somewhere else. So it’s never enough to just speak to the hopes and aspirations of the loyal and faithful. You need to speak to common values shared by those outside your movement for change to occur. Driving change is always about attracting, never overpowering.

  That’s why Martin Luther King Jr., who studied Gandhi closely, when he spoke to a mass meeting of protestors at the beginning of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, framed the struggle not in terms of a distinctly black experience, but that of America and Christianity. “If we are wrong,” he said, “the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Constitution of the United States is wrong. If we are wrong, God almighty is wrong. If we are wrong, Jesus of Nazareth was merely a utopian dreamer that never came down to earth.”51

  It was that appeal to common values that helped the movement for civil rights spread far beyond the black Americans who experienced discrimination personally. White liberals, mostly in the North, but also in the South, took up the cause as well. Eventually, the movement reached the politicians in Washington who had the power to effect change. As the civil rights leader John Lewis would remember in his autobiography, Walking with the Wind, at one point Robert Kennedy, Attorney General of the United States and brother to the president, would say to him, “John, the people, the young people of the SNCC, have educated me. You have changed me. Now I understand.”52

  That’s what really makes change happen. Not a strident call to the faithful, but the forging of a common cause among diverse constituencies. As we have seen, for any cascade to form, linkages need to be built to higher threshold groups, and that can only be done by reaching out and learning about the needs, desires, and fears of others. That was as true with Gandhi as it was with Gerstner, McChrystal, O’Neill, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, and Experian. In each case, it was the forging of shared purpose and shared consciousness through identifying keystone issues that made change possible.

  Just as building a clear sense of purpose is essential for a movement to succeed, the lack of a clear purpose can hobble one almost before it starts. While Occupy’s slogan of “We are the 99 percent” caught the imagination of millions, the activists were never really clear about what they actually wanted to be done. As columnist Joe Nocera noted in the New York Times, “they had plenty of grievances, aimed mainly at the ‘oppressive power of corporations,’ but never got beyond their own slogans.”53 Before long, everyone lost interest.

  Creating a clear sense of purpose and identifying a keystone issue that can achieve that purpose is absolutely essential to create transformative change. However, it is merely a first step. Once you figure out what the end game should look like, you need to develop a plan to get there.

  That is what we turn to next.

  CHAPTER 5

  Making a Plan

  When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind.

  —MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

  The March on Washington in 1963 remains a defining moment in American history. It was the brainchild of A. Philip Randolph who, at age 74, was considered to be an elder statesman of the civil rights movement. Randolph had been elected the president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in 1925 and quickly built a reputation as one of the most effective labor organizers in the country. In 1941, as America was gearing up for war, he had threatened a mass march on Washington, but President Roosevelt invited him to the White House and offered to issue an executive order forbidding discrimination in the defense industry if Randolph called it off. He did, and tens of thousands of black workers got good paying jobs.1

  By 1963 civil disobedience had won significant victories throughout the American South and exposed the ugliness of segregation in places like Birmingham and Montgomery. President Kennedy had announced that he planned to send a civil rights bill to Congress, but black leaders felt that he was getting cold feet due to resistance from southern politicians who felt things were moving too fast. Kennedy, for his part, felt that a march would endanger the legislation. So, much like his predecessor, he called black leaders to the White House to dissuade them from marching.2

  Yet 1963 was not 1941. Randolph was no longer a lone labor organizer, but the dean of a powerful movement that included the “Big Six” of Martin Luther King Jr. and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), John Lewis of the youth-driven Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Roy Wilkins of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and Whitney Young of the National Urban League (NUL). While the group acknowledged to President Kennedy that it was possible the march would cause him problems, they told him in no uncertain terms that they would have even bigger problems with their members, who had struggled and suffered for civil rights, if they did not march.3

  The march was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before. Over 100 organizations were represented, includ
ing not only black activist groups, but also organizations like the AFL-CIO and the American Jewish Congress—Randolph called it a “coalition of conscience”—and almost 250,000 people in all would attend.4 Anybody who expected to see a caucus of angry militants would be terribly disappointed. The protestors were well dressed, well behaved, and of all colors, creeds, and social classes.

  The highlight was Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. As in the remarks he gave eight years earlier at the start of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, King appealed not only to racial grievances but to quintessential American values, and invoked the founding documents of the republic. “In a sense, we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check,” King announced to the crowds in front of the Lincoln Monument. “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. . . . Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.”5

  The most memorable portion was, of course, when King talked about his dream, which envisioned a more inclusive, peaceful, and prosperous America that was true to the principles upon which the country was founded. “I still have a dream,” he declared. “It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed—we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.”6

  The “I Have A Dream” speech was an enormously powerful moment. For many, it encapsulates the struggle for civil rights, and it is widely credited with spurring the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Yet its significance is often misunderstood. Massive demonstrations have become de rigueur for modern-day movements seeking to make an impact. Today, with the wonders of digital technology and social media, it is far easier to mobilize large numbers, so it would seem that forging change has become easier. Yet that is largely a mirage.

  The March on Washington in 1963 did not create change because it attracted so many to join in. Its power was derived from the culmination of years of successful legal initiatives, sit-ins, bus strikes, and other actions. In effect, the civil rights movement didn’t become powerful because the March on Washington was successful; the March on Washington was successful because the civil rights movement had become powerful. It was part of the end game, not an opening move.

  As Clayborne Carson, who edited Martin Luther King Jr.’s posthumously published autobiography, wrote, “In assessing the summer’s events, some observers have tended to diminish the achievements by treating the demonstrations as an end in themselves. The heroism of the march, the drama of the confrontation, became in their minds the total accomplishment. It is true that these elements have meaning, but to ignore the concrete and specific gains in dismantling the structure of segregation is like noticing the beauty of the rain, but failing to see that it has enriched the soil. A social movement that only moves people is merely a revolt. A movement that changes both people and institutions is a revolution.”7

  All too often a moment is misunderstood to be a movement. As we saw in Chapter 3, a cascade ensues when an idea breaks through higher and higher thresholds of resistance. Ideally, that is because linkages have been built from the passionate early adopters into the mainstream through years of painstaking work to widen and deepen connections. Yet sometimes, a triggering event can reduce thresholds enough to produce the same cascading effect. The financial crisis brought out thousands to support Occupy’s message of “We are the 99%,” just as the election of Donald Trump brought out masses of people to march on Washington.8 Yet without a network in place and a unifying cause that forges shared purpose and shared consciousness, the moment passes and little changes.

  Modern communications technology and social media cuts both ways. It can help mobilize support, but it also may awaken opposition and spur a countermovement. That’s essentially the trap that modern-day change efforts like Occupy and Black Lives Matter fell into. They looked to gather maximum attention before doing crucial groundwork. Successful movements don’t start by rousing crowds, but by formulating a clear objective and building out from there. As with any journey, you start with where you want to end up and then figure out how you’re going to get there.

  That’s what a plan is.

  THE SPECTRUM OF ALLIES

  * * *

  There are two tools that nascent movements can use to develop plans to make change happen. The first is called the Spectrum of Allies (Figure 5.1), which outlines the groups from which you can expect active or passive support, neutrality, and active or passive opposition. As Srdja Popović of Otpor and CANVAS put it to me, “Sun Tzu wrote ‘know yourself, know your enemy and know the terrain.’ The Spectrum of Allies is the terrain.”9

  FIGURE 5.1 The Spectrum of Allies

  * * *

  Just as a military strategist studies maps to understand how the battle will flow, where his own forces’ strengths lie, and how to exploit the enemy’s weaknesses, the Spectrum of Allies marks the path of the cascade that a movement will have to take if it is to attain its objectives. It is only through understanding where the thresholds of resistance lie that you forge the connections you need to push through them.

  We’ve already seen how Gandhi navigated the spectrum of allies in the struggle for Indian independence. While he played an active part in the Indian National Congress and helped mobilize its base of active allies, he also did much to bring those Indians, such as the peasant and non-Hindu population, who were passive and neutral into the fold. Yet some of his most fervent efforts were made toward the British themselves. The essence of Satyagraha was not to defeat your opponent, but to show him the error of his ways. That may seem like a terribly naive approach, but Gandhi proved that it can work time after time.

  Consider the remarks of General Jan Smuts, who was Gandhi’s chief adversary in his South Africa Satyagraha. After it was over, he said, “It was my fate to be the antagonist of a man for whom even then I had the highest respect. . . . For me—the defender of law and order—there was the usual trying situation, the odium of carrying out the law, which had not strong popular support.” Smuts had not only been defeated; he had been won over and lost any rationale to keep fighting.10 In a similar fashion, after Gandhi’s death, the Mahatma was mourned all over the world, but especially in Great Britain, the empire he had fought so long and hard against.

  Now, Gandhi was unique, and it wouldn’t be realistic to expect the most ardent defenders of the status quo to all of a sudden see the light and join your ranks. However, you should act in such a way that they have the option to do so, because while victory does not require you to win over all of those who resist change, you do need to erode the support of your opposition. Smuts, it must be said, was a vigorous and sometimes brutal antagonist, but in the end he had to choose between giving in to Gandhi’s demands, which in the final analysis not only cost him little but actually raised his stature, or lonely intransigence.

  That’s why plans that are focused solely on rallying the faithful are doomed to fail. The only thing you will accomplish is to harden the support of those who oppose your vision of change. So when you see change as a zero-sum game, you are mobilizing your opponent’s forces as much as you are your own. Nobody wants to lose, but everybody wants a better tomorrow.

  “You are not trying to impose your vision,” Srdja Popović told me. “You are sharing it, you are listening, and you are respectful to those who don’t hold the same views as you. But above all, you are clear and everybody knows where you stand.”11 A struggle for change is not a debate. You don’t have to win every argument. What you do need to do is win support from those who don’t necessarily agree with you from the start.

  Make no mistake, you will not win everybody over, but it is also a grave misapprehension to see your opponents as monolithic or to dehumanize them. I remember after the Orange Revolution when Viktor Pinchuk, the son-in-law of President Kuchma and a powerful ol
igarch in his own right, was asked what he thought about the protests. He said he was worried about violence, because his own children were down on the Maidan. In the final analysis, nobody, except a true sociopath, wishes to do evil. They may rationalize the situation and see themselves as just being “practical,” or, in some cases, view the situation as a classic prisoner’s dilemma and believe that it is best to look after their own interests. Yet none of that makes them evil, blind to reason, or impervious to persuasion.

  It doesn’t mean that your opponents will give in willingly, either. As we saw in Chapter 1, while Ukraine’s Orange Revolution ended peacefully, the Euromaidan protests in 2014 were met with a much more forceful and deadly response. First, Interior Ministry troops were sent to beat the protestors. Activists were kidnapped from their homes, taken out to the woods, and tortured. In some cases, they were killed. Finally, the Yanukovych regime ordered snipers to open fire on the protestors. In the end, nearly a hundred people were left dead.

  Yet these harsh actions did little more than weaken the government’s hand. In fact, Mustafa Nayyem, a key leader of the Euromaidan protests and later a member of the Ukrainian Parliament, told me that the regime’s brutality against peaceful protestors was its biggest mistake, and not only because it bolstered support for the protestors within the country.12 International condemnation quickly followed, and the United States threatened sanctions that would have isolated the oligarchs allied with President Yanukovych from the international financial system. Anybody who was seen to be supporting the regime’s heinous acts would lose their right to buy luxury villas abroad and send their children to prestigious schools in the West.13

  The intense international pressure forced the Yanukovych regime to come to the negotiating table. He agreed to hold free and fair elections later that year, but things never got that far. The night before the agreement was to be signed, his allies in the Party of Regions met in the Rada, Ukraine’s parliament. After seeing their citizens slaughtered on the street and Ukraine being treated as a pariah nation, they too had had enough. They wanted Yanukovych out of their lives.14