Even in Peaceful Advocacy. Strike Hard.
“Given the same amount of intelligence, timidity will do a thousand times more damage than audacity.” Karl von Klausewitz
Any effort to create change should be seriously considered beforehand. At the NAMI Montana office, we regularly repeat the quote from Clare Boothe Luce, “No good deed goes unpunished.”
There are real negative personal consequences that can come with leading efforts to create long-term peaceful change. Leading those efforts can create serious challenges to your personal relationships, professional status, finances, mental health, etc.
Attacking the status quo can hurt, but it is worth doing if the problem matters enough for you.
Once you’ve made the decision to take action, look for an opportunity to move forward in your objective in really big way.
When it was time to publicly launch campaign for mental health screenings for returning National Guard members in Montana, I sent out out Op-Ed to every single paper in Montana and included the phone number to the Governor’s office in the article.
I could have just sent the Op-Ed to the Helena Independent Record which is the local paper in our state capitol. I didn’t have to put the Governor’s Office phone number in each of the articles.
But, that combination was powerful — orders of magnitude more powerful than an Op-Ed in a single paper that did not directly lead to the Governor’s office phone ringing off the hook.
It was loud, strong, and aggressive. It was also the best way to announce the campaign because we were coming out of nowhere to demand attention and change on this issue.
Subtlety was not going to lead to change.
The Benefit of Rolling Efforts
One of the interesting lessons of that initial series of Op-Ed submissions is the campaign was amplified because different newspapers published at different time.
That inadvertently stretched out the power of the Op-Ed over the course of a week. This was really powerful because it led to the citizens of one town to call on the day the article was published in their paper whereas the citizens of a town two hours away called a few days later when their paper published the Op-Ed. Then another town. Then another town.
Inadvertently, I learned that there is both power in a deluge and a slow drip. The best campaigns combine the strength of both.
Give Your Advocacy Campaign Room To Win
Every advocacy campaign comes down to asking a human being or group of human beings to make a change.
This requires an explanation describing what needs to be changed and why. It also requires a clear pitch to show them exactly what they can do to improve the situation.
This is a tough situation. You are shining a light on an issue that needs to be changed. That alone will make the people who have the ability to affect that decision uncomfortable.
While dialing up that level of uncomfortability is a necessary part of the process, you have to be really careful when planning your advocacy campaign not to demonize the person or people whose mind you are trying to change.
Don’t create a situation where making the right decision becomes a loss for them.
Otherwise, they just may decide that it is worth continuing to fight it out with you; because there is no upside for them. They would rather try to weather the storm and see if the issue blows over.
Consider Existing Relationships When You Plan Your Rollout
The success of your change initiatives depends strongly on your relationships. These relationships need to be considered as you plan your campaign rollout.
My family didn’t have any connections in the veterans’ mental health community when we launched the initiative to get the Governor of Montana to adopt in-person mental health screenings for Montana National Guard Members returning from deployment.
At that time, we didn’t have a relationship with the Governor, the highest leadership of the Montana National Guard, or the Montana Veterans Administration. There weren’t any bridges to worry about burning.
After the initial quiet efforts to change the system hit a standstill, there was nothing preventing us from launching a loud and aggressive campaign.
That is not the case anymore. Over fourteen years of working on this issue, I have worked with and against people from all over the country.
Each campaign now begins with the question:
How to push for change without hurting our relationships with people within or on top of the organizations that need to change?
It’s a difficult question, because effective pushes for change within an industry will definitely cause a response and that response can be pretty ugly.
- Be clear about why you’re pushing an issue, especially how this is not a personal attack.
- Give them the heads up that your advocacy effort is coming.
- Do whatever homework you can do to help them fully understand the problem and the solution you’re recommending.
Those relationships shouldn’t force you into accepting a status quo that isn’t working, but they don’t have to be destroyed when you challenge the status quo either.
