How do we build a movement?

The need for public sector reform is clearer than ever, with the current government committed to driving it forward. But how about the energy to make it happen and create lasting change?

The language of social movements is once again coming to the fore. For instance, the £100m Test, Learn and Grow programme, that has been described as part of "galvanising a wider movement that works with place-based thinking, human learning systems, and relational practice".

I've been part of two national campaigns that sought to create a social movement around patient safety and influence safety culture. Throughout the most recent (2014-2019) our work nationally focused on enabling and supporting local empowerment and improvement, and we took a relational and complexity-informed approach. Through both I learned a lot about what was and wasn't a social movement. We also understood common scepticism that needs to be seen and checked when a national body of any kind seeks to create one. I thought it may be useful to share here what we learned, to help others start from further down the learning road than we had to...

(The below is taken from a presentation we created during Sign up to Safety to support the progress of work then happening in Wales, having worked with social movement methodology for six or so years by that point across two campaigns. We were inspired and informed by experts including Marshall Ganz, Liz McKenna, Aldon Morris, and Suzanne Staggenborg).

What are we talking about?

• A social movement is an emergent, creative phenomenon – usually from those that feel deprived in some way who seek something better for themselves or their peers and for whom current approaches have not made a difference.

• Often decentralised and unpredictable, requiring agile response and a distributed leadership rather than a concentrated strategy team that is removed from the frontline implementation.

• Leaders of movements often have to try to effect change in institutions without wealth, status, and power.

The power of one - the power of many

• Change is about releasing energy and should be self directing where possible.

• It is about moving people.

• Peer to peer influence.

• It ultimately requires driving in order to sustain.

Most movements rely on:

• People providing voluntary resources (a lot of patient safety and quality improvement in the NHS does the same but pretends otherwise).

• Learning how to secure sustained commitment.

• Asking people to take action.

• Using the different skills of organising and mobilising.

  • To use the skill of organising in order to mobilise and deploy resources in a way that not only harnesses outrage but actually transforms people's capabilities, turning people who feel injustice into groups working with each other to create the kind of flexibility and strategic capacity they need to make the change that they want – turning a spark into a movement.

Type of organising and leadership

• Structure and authority should not be conflated with leadership.

• People who wield formal authority may or may not exercise the type of leadership that enables others to work together in the effective pursuit of a shared purpose.

• Without organising there is chaos, opaque decision making and a lack of follow through.

• Too much of it and you get a highly militarised structure that centralises all strategising in the hands of a few commanders – leading to an incapacity to respond to internal and external threats and opportunities alike.

Structure

• Well designed independent ‘leadership teams’ are one way to avoid chaos and/or the fragility and narrowness of relying on a single person who holds all authority.

• Working hard to create the shared purpose and values helps prevent groups acting incoherently, in isolation or at cross purposes.

• Pre existing networks of people have a key role to play – people are much more likely to engage if their colleagues, friends and peers are already doing so.

Communications

• Mobilisation – people need to be personally moved (what’s in it for me) or mobilised towards a shared purpose or goal – they need to want to join in.

• Framing the messaging, tone, language and style – create strong, positive emotions to drive the movement forward and speak to different motivations.

• Use authentic messages and messengers.

• Build a community of people who want the same thing.

Sustaining a movement

• Once people have joined, their personal experiences of participation will play an important role in determining how long and how much they contribute.

• It needs to reinforce their values and add value to them.

So what?

• A lot of people say things like ‘I want to create a movement’.

• You cant ‘create movements’ they emerge mainly out of distress or anger (and they can't be nationally mandated...).

• What people actually mean is ‘I want to create change that spreads like wildfire so that everyone gets involved and is energised to change’ – this needs to be treated more like a campaign.

• A social movement campaign uses social movement thinking to help change something in a different way.

• A fundamental skill of social movements involves organising.

Leadership

• Leadership is central to movements at individual, communal and institutional level.

• The most significant measure of social movement impact is less about short term campaign outcomes than in the long term development of the leadership and collective capacity required to achieve institutional change.

• Leaders need to combine the knowledge of the entire system with specific context.

• They need to motivate, have access to diverse sources of salient knowledge and a commitment to help people learn.

Relationship building

• A foundational social movement leadership practice is recruiting individuals by building relationships with them.

• Goes beyond mobilising individuals to join through transactions of resources and interest.

• Requires commitment to future engagement rooted in shared values.

• Strong relationships facilitate trust, motivation and commitment; weak relationships stimulate a desire for information, skills and learning.

• Collective capacity can be built from the trust, learning and solidarity which grows and flourishes out of horizontal relationships.

Narrative and framing

• Movements and movement leaders develop narrative as a way to create an emotional link to the shared values.

• A good narrative confronts the challenges – helps people be courageous, and resilient.

• A good narrative which ends with a call to act is best told in story form which links the reader to the author.

• A good narrative must have hope – the world as it should be and how to get there.

Strategic approach

• You need to respond with intent.

• Turn the resources you have in to the ‘power’ you need to get what you want.

• It is ongoing and highly adaptive in social movements and not everyone can do this or is suited to it.

Taking action

• To transform individual resources into collective power it is not enough to build relationships, tell stories, devise strategy and enact structure.

• Time, money (if you have any) and commitment must be mobilised to a common effort (cause, purpose).

• These should then be deployed through diverse tactics including but not limited to mass mobilisation.

• For any movement, tactical action must be strategic, focused and well executed.

• It must have action at its heart, and be forward thinking to create a sense of momentum

• Keeping people informed and involved helps to keep them close to what you’re doing.

People probably don't want advice from someone not getting their hands dirty just now, but if I was asked? The movements being sought in 2025 and beyond will need ongoing organising beyond the lifetime of programmatic funding to be sustainable, and need to impact on 'work as done' for the wider system - this needs to be thought about from the earliest days. E.g. What are the processes for sharing learning and affecting how work happens for those sitting outside of the programme itself, but drawn from the learning being experienced there? Is there absorptive capacity within the wider system to make use of this learning, and is there time being spent reflecting on what it all means to them?

Given that public sector reform needs to relate to all parts of the public sector, it is useful to bear in mind that in some parts (e.g. areas of the NHS) the idea of a 'social movement' has in the past been co-opted by national players in ways that can feel insincere - perhaps even in place of sustained funding and rigorous process and system design. Reaching out to those people, hearing and listening, and showing understanding will help galvanise more than the already converted.