by Greg Satell
Unlike McChrystal’s O&I forums, these were very low-tech affairs. Serbia is a small country, and even the farthest-flung village is no more than a three-hour drive away from Belgrade. So every two weeks, two or more representatives from each Otpor chapter would make the trip and meet either at the Otpor office or, more often, at a law office where Nenad Konstantinović, who coordinated the meetings, worked.
Networking meetings would begin with an overview and update of the strategy, so that everybody was informed on what was being done centrally, including what constraints were being imposed and what was being done with the major opposition parties. Then each chapter would begin its own updates. Everything was directed at comparing notes and building horizontal connections, rather than giving top-down orders. If one branch came with an idea that proved successful, the other branches would quickly adopt it. Srdja Popović called this practice “horizontal copy-paste.”
For example, in Niš, Serbia’s third-largest city, police arrested some activists for wearing Otpor T-shirts, which outraged the town because these were star pupils at the local high school. So the mayor of the town went to the police station in an Otpor T-shirt demanding that the students be released or that he be arrested for the same offense. Immediately upon hearing about it, other Otpor chapters decided to talk to their mayors and explain to them how they could win political points by doing the same.
In other cases, successful local initiatives could be adopted nationally. One of the challenges that Otpor faced was that the regime was portraying them as unpatriotic. An activist from Niš suggested that they take steps to position Otpor as the voice of true patriotism, and 100,000 posters declaring “Resistance Because I Love Serbia” were printed up and distributed around the country. It was to be one of Otpor’s largest and most successful mobilization campaigns. In many ways, it was very much the same as when one lone McDonald’s franchisee created the Big Mac, which eventually became emblematic of the organization as a whole.
Platforms for governance and cohesion like the O&I forum and Otpor’s network meetings transform decentralized chaos into a network for adaptation. A seemingly random event, when connected to similar events in other places, allows information to cascade, forms a trend, and gives the opportunity to take action far earlier than would otherwise be possible. It is this ability to adapt and evolve that often makes the difference between success and failure. As the challenges of the marketplace evolve, you need to continually empower change from within.
Participation matters. In fact, as Chenoweth and Stephan’s research shows, it is often decisive. That’s probably why every successful change effort I studied, whether it was 100Kin10’s movement to train 100,000 STEM teachers, the Institute for Health Improvement’s campaign to cut down on medical errors, or Wyeth Pharmaceuticals’ drive to implement lean manufacturing techniques across 16 production sites encompassing 20,000 employees, put serious thought and effort into designing effective platforms to build the participation, cohesion, and governance that allows information to cascade.
SCHWERPUNKT
* * *
In his efforts to reform the Pentagon, Colonel John Boyd emphasized the German Blitzkrieg concept of Schwerpunkt, or focus on action as both a military doctrine and a means of driving change. The idea is that instead of trying to defeat your enemy with overwhelming force generally, you want to deliver overwhelming force and win a decisive victory at a particular point of attack. Boyd’s prescription for uncovering the most favorable Schwerpunkt was the Observe-Orient-Decide-Act or OODA loop, which allows you to continually adapt to a changing environment.38
For example, Otpor’s barrel prank made good use of the Schwerpunkt because it focused on an unprotected, high-value target: a fashionable street where people somewhat sympathetic to the movement were concentrated. The Tea Party focused on the sparsely attended town halls held by Republican candidates, where they could fairly easily make up an overwhelming force.
Yet Schwerpunkt is a dynamic, not a static concept. A successful action or campaign shifts the battlefield and forces the opponent to adopt countermeasures. So the success of any particular action renders that action less powerful the next time around. That’s where the OODA loop comes in. You need to be constantly observing and reorienting yourself in order to make decisions and take actions that are best suited to current conditions. That’s why internal platforms like McChrystal’s O&I forum and Otpor’s networking meetings are so important. You need to continually use the reach of your network to allow information to cascade and be able to determine the next focus of your actions.
As sociologist Doug McAdam observed, during the civil rights movement activists continually innovated their tactics, first focusing on boycotts like the Montgomery Bus Strike to use the economic power of the black community to force change. Their opponents, however, soon learned to adapt to these actions, by intimidating and sometimes jailing participants as well as changing bus rules in such a way as to give the appearance of compliance but keeping the status quo intact. With the effect of economic boycotts nullified, sit-ins, which required far less participation, became preeminent. With just a few dozen activists, an entire commercial district could be disrupted. Yet the more sit-ins were successful, the more local communities learned to take them in stride. After that came “Freedom Rides,” community actions, mass marches, and so on.39 The power of any particular action or tactic diminishes over time, so you continually need to evolve.
What you want to avoid is getting locked into any particular Schwerpunkt, because its effect will soon be diminished and ultimately negated, as in the case of Occupy as well as similar movements like the Gezi Park protests in Istanbul. In both cases, activists failed to develop effective internal platforms of governance, cohesion, and coordination and soon found that their tactics were nullified by those who supported the status quo. In the end, it didn’t matter how effective they were at mobilizing supporters, whether that was through social media or elsewhere, because they were unable to observe, orient, decide, and act effectively.
Successful movements for change understand that you can’t simply create change because you don’t like things as they are. They are based on values, not on any particular demographics or issues. That’s why they are always focused on pushing outward, not simply catering to a base of impassioned supporters. Every action is focused on mobilizing a Spectrum of Allies in order to influence Pillars of Support. Perhaps most important, they recognize that none of this is an end in itself, but a means to an end. It is preparation for victory, not victory itself.
Every successful movement for change has three phases. The first is an emergent phase, in which a keystone change is identified, constituencies on the Spectrum of Allies are mapped out, and institutions within the Pillars of Power are determined. The second phase, or the engagement phase, is when tactics are designed to target particular constituencies and institutions for mobilization. The last phase, or the victory phase, is typically triggered by an outside event, which lowers resistance thresholds and sets a cascade in motion.40 An election is falsified, a regime’s brutality is exposed, a new technology is introduced into the market, a chief executive fires a well-liked employee (or an FBI director) without cause, or maybe crucial intelligence is acquired on a key terrorist.
Sometimes the trigger is planned in advance. In the case of Otpor, the activists knew, from their experience after the 1996 elections, that if they mobilized a high turnout for the 2000 elections, Milošević would cheat and try to steal a victory and that would be their trigger. Similarly, Paul O’Neill knew that his safety program at Alcoa would, once it was taken seriously, be itself a trigger for creating operational excellence in the once sclerotic firm. On the other hand, the LGBT movement was initially crushed by the passage of Proposition 8 in California. Only later was it realized how it galvanized supporters and that the subsequent lawsuits would lower resistance thresholds and become a trigger to change public opinion.
If mobilization builds nu
mbers and pulls in the needed constituencies and institutions, linkages are built between disparate groups, and a genome of values keeps the network focused on the vision of tomorrow, a cascade will ensue. The existing regime defending the status quo usually doesn’t even see it coming. They, embedded in their own networks and ecosystems, usually fail to notice that the Spectrum of Allies and the Pillars of Support have shifted away from them until it’s too late.
Yet final victory, as I and so many others have found, can still be elusive, because every revolution inspires a counterrevolution. The vanquished will not simply disappear, but will immediately begin plotting their return. This too must be part of the plan, as we will see in the next chapter.
CHAPTER 9
Surviving Victory
I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.
NELSON MANDELA
I remember sitting in the living room of my Kyiv apartment one night early in 2005, drinking whiskey with my friend and colleague Vitaliy Sych. As the editor in chief of Korrespondent, Ukraine’s most popular newsmagazine, Vitaliy was one of the most prominent journalists in the country and one of the best people to talk to if you wanted to get a sense of the zeitgeist of the nation.
We had developed a great working relationship in the office, but what I really treasured was to get a few quiet hours to sit and talk with my friend. Apparently, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman felt the same way, because upon meeting Vitaliy in 2014, his next column focused largely on him.1 Vitaliy has that effect on people. Straightforward and direct, while at the same time thoughtful and insightful, he is someone that immediately commands attention in his own quiet way.
On this particular night we were still basking in the afterglow of the Orange Revolution. The old order had been defeated and a new era was dawning. Korrespondent’s sales were soaring, and the future seemed to be ripe with opportunity. We talked and poured some whiskey and then talked some more. Eventually, after we had drunk the requisite amount of whiskey to broach the subject in earnest, we got around to discussing what the future might hold for Ukraine.
As both an outsider and someone who had lived in Poland during its intense years of reform, Vitaliy was interested in my opinion. I told him that I thought EU and NATO ascension would be key to securing the country’s future. It was only through external structures such as these, I thought, that the necessary reforms could be accomplished. Vitaliy had other ideas. He favored a more “Finnish-style” solution in which Ukraine was neither in the Russian camp nor part of NATO or the EU. He just wanted his homeland to be left to find its own way.
As usual, Vitaliy captured the mood of the country. Ukrainians had just taken to the streets to stand up to injustice, and they had won. Now, they just wanted to be able live normal lives once again. It was to be a terrible mistake. What came next should have been predictable, but as best as I can recall, nobody saw it coming. I certainly didn’t.
What happened first was a breakdown of the political alliance between Viktor Yushchenko, now President of Ukraine, and Yulia Tymoshenko, the Prime Minister. Yanukovych’s Party of Regions regrouped and obstructed all that they could. The Russians cut off the gas supply, and infighting soon broke out between the various ruling factions. There was a scandal involving Yushchenko’s son, increasingly erratic behavior from Tymoshenko, and before long we all felt betrayed by those we had gone through such pain and privation to support.
The financial crisis hit at the end of 2008. The hryvnia, Ukraine’s currency, plummeted by 45 percent, and GDP fell by 20 percent. It was the final straw. When the presidential elections came around in 2010, Viktor Yanukovych was politically reborn. His image and message newly polished by the American political consultant Paul Manafort, he seemed to many Ukrainians a more stable choice than his scandal-ridden opponent, Yulia Tymoshenko, despite her well-earned reputation for competence. He seemed to many just the man to make Ukraine great again. He wasn’t. And soon the country would descend into turmoil once again.
THE DANGERS OF VICTORY
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The events that unfolded in Ukraine after the Orange Revolution are far from uncommon. As we have seen, the Zajedno coalition of Serbian opposition parties that won elections in 1996 collapsed soon after their victory, and Milošević only tightened his grip on power. After Hosni Mubarak was ousted in Egypt during the Arab Spring, the Muslim Brotherhood rather than the pro-democracy protestors took power. Their leader, Mohamed Morsi, was then overthrown in a military coup and was replaced by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. The Egyptian government today remains at least as repressive as it ever was. The incredible triumph of Barack Obama in 2008 gave way in 2016 to Donald Trump’s successful campaign, which vowed to reverse many of his policies. His strident actions and rhetoric, in turn, led to a Democratic wave in the 2018 midterms and broke his party’s almost decade long dominance of the House of Representatives. Power today, as Moisés Naím put it, does seem to be easier to get but harder to use or keep.
As we have also seen, the backlash from San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s initiative to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies at City Hall led to Proposition 8, which constitutionally banned gay marriage. The law was so harsh, however, that it led to renewed efforts among LGBT activists that led the US Supreme Court to rule that such marriage bans were unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. John Antioco’s digital initiatives at Blockbuster Video led his successor to retrench the company in physical retail. Countless change efforts, in every sphere, fail almost as soon as they attain their initial objectives, precisely because they awaken and embolden the forces supporting the status quo. The victory phase, Srdja Popović stressed to me, is often the most dangerous phase of any movement.2
As Saul Alinsky has noted, every revolution inspires a counterrevolution. Yet Alinsky also points out that anticipating this challenge is the key to overcoming it. “Once we accept and learn to anticipate the inevitable counterrevolution, we may then alter the historical pattern of revolution and counterrevolution from the traditional slow advance of two steps forward and one step backward to minimizing the latter.”3
If Black Lives Matter had anticipated that their opponents would paint them as anti-police anarchists, they could have built alliances with law enforcement institutions sympathetic to their cause. In much the same way, if John Antioco had taken into greater account the backlash against his digital initiatives from the franchisees and shareholders, he might have sought to make inroads with them sooner, and his “Total Access” initiative and nascent efforts to build an online video streaming service could have won the day.
Yet all too often, we have our minds so set on what we need to win that we neglect to think about what comes the day after the victory we seek. We are so focused on beating our opponents into submission that we fail to realize that they will eventually rise up again, learn the lessons of their failure, and return to the fight with renewed vigor. That’s why we so often succeed in making our point, but fail to make a difference.
The problem is not that the world is too corrupt or that the status quo is too ingrained, as we have seen positive change often can and does prevail, even against seemingly insurmountable odds. Rather, you must take responsibility for the change you want to see if you want to truly make a difference and not just score debate points. As Gandhi is often quoted as saying, “If you want to change the world, start with yourself.”
BECOMING THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE
* * *
By 2000, when the endgame against Milošević was approaching, the Serbian activists had learned from earlier mistakes. They understood that democratic reformers, once in power, could soon be corrupted. Yet they also had learned the importance of values. “It’s about the vision, not persona,” Srdja Popović would later tell me. “It was not about bringing down Milošević, but bringing about democracy, free and fair elections, European Union, and open economy in Serbia. That means we won’t stop until we make the new government to
deliver. . . . You don’t proclaim the game over when the immediate goal has been achieved. You build till your values become a permanent change. That means you not only plan your strategy for your initial victory, you plan to make your victory permanent.”4
So as soon as the new government in Serbia took power, hundreds of billboards went up around Belgrade that read, “We are watching you!” and others warned, “There are 4,500 bulldozers in Serbia and about 4 million potential drivers.”5 Srdja Popović and other activists entered the parliament to begin the long, hard task of reform far away from crowds and excitement. When he did, his old friends in the Otpor movement gave him hell whenever they felt that his efforts didn’t meet their expectations.
“Stable democracy is about strong institutions, but also about people keeping those institutions accountable,” Popović told me. The goal of a movement, as he sees it, is not to preserve the excitement of the heady days of struggle, but to become mainstream, to be mundane and ordinary. If you are successful it should be difficult to explain what was won because the previous order seems so unbelievable.6
The one thing Srdja constantly stressed to me is the importance of values for surviving victory. That’s why in the run-up to the victory phase in Serbia, opposition politicians were pushed to sign a “contract with the people” that bound them to actions they were to take after the election. “It created a sense of obligation among the new leaders,” he said, “and a sense of ownership among the people.” The idea was to show to the new leaders that whatever mandate they had was only borrowed and that they were expected to live up to their promises. Otpor made the transition from a revolutionary movement to a watchdog group.