Kent State University, Ohio
The Council for Regional Equity &
Araiza Ownership Ventures, Inc.
The objectives of this paper were presented as two-fold—how COG should “get the ear” of the policy makers, and how we can make our 2002 policy conference a success.
What is the implicit message? We are starting with an assumption that broadened ownership is necessary. In addition, we believe we have the right policies for the policy-makers, and we want to implement them. We assume we have good ideas, and now we need some action. We want to have a tangible impact that will result in meaningful ownership for more people, and we think that the best way to launch that effort is with a policy conference. We assume there is merit here, and we believe that policy-makers should jump on board.
But lets take a step back for a moment and think about our assumptions, and how people and organizations outside this network will perceive ideas that we now take for granted. We have formulated our proposals largely without the input of the policy-makers whose support we now seek. What will it take to convince them that we have good ideas?
We may all have different motivations for coming to our conclusions about expanded ownership, different reasons why we are all here today. If we want to actually have an impact on policy and corporate practice, we need to understand the motivations and dynamics far beyond our own organizations and those we work with. We need an objective analysis of the numbers and influences on those whose opinions we mean to change, and we need to know what strategy and what tactics have successfully influenced our target decision-makers. In short, we need to employ the lessons of political communication.
Two individuals that I’ve had the pleasure to work with have given me a particular insight into the field of political communication—Cesar Chavez, Founder and former president of the United Farm Workers, and David Wilhelm, who (among his many achievements) ran Bill Clinton’s campaign for President in 1992. I worked with Cesar in the late eighties, and have worked with David for the last three years, helping to build venture capital and private equity vehicles for underserved populations. Both men come from vastly different backgrounds, yet both have had a fundamental commitment to broadening ownership and have demonstrated it over the years. Cesar emphasized organizing with message; David focuses on the message with organizing. Perhaps most relevant for the discussion at hand, however, is that both have/had an uncanny ability to connect with a broad range of people with a focused message to achieve a defined goal, whether that be electing a President, or eliminating the use of certain pesticides in corporate agribusiness.
Integral to their success at disseminating their messages has been an understanding of the power of the mainstream—a sometimes problematic concept. The word “mainstream” has the ring of compromise, of a distasteful cynicism, perhaps even selling out. We might feel that if we don’t believe in the direction that mainstream politics and culture has taken us, we certainly don’t want to identify with it. But the fact is that if we want to change policy, we need the mainstream—at least a good portion of it—and the mainstream needs us. At minimum, we must acknowledge that we need enough numbers behind us and/or the equivalent influence to rival the power that the mainstream voting public commands. I’m using “mainstream voting public” loosely here, to include those that vote economically with their purchasing power as well as with their ballots. Our task is about reaching a critical mass of support that we need to effect change.
In anticipation of the Policy Conference in 2002, I’d like to pose a series of questions and explore some ideas about how we can do just that—effect change. I am not going to address the relative merits of the specific proposals that have been developed throughout the COG discussions (which do indeed have merit), and I’m not going to talk about reaching the policy experts who will undoubtedly refine the details of each proposal as we move forward. In my view, we have incredible strengths in terms of reaching the policy “wonks,” as it were, and a core group who cares deeply about these issues. We already found COG; we don’t need to convince ourselves. Rather, I’d like to concentrate on the policy drivers, and the elusive public that doesn’t yet know we exist.
How can we maximize the impact of the conference so that we achieve real impact and build an army of supporters? Get some heavy-hitters there. How do we ensure they come? We must create a “buzz” so that they will want to be there. We have to make ownership the hot topic of the day, and reach those that can access and influence the political heavyweights and corporate decision-makers. So how do we do that? The answer is very simple....message, message, message. We need to become message machines. We need to become experts at formulating the right message, understanding the impact it will have on our constituencies and targets, and then get it out to the right people, and as many of them as possible. We need to organize, and build constituencies who will take our message and play it over and over and over until decision-makers listen.
The first priority must be to understand exactly what it is that we want. We have a vision, and many proposals for how to get there. Discussions on the virtual think tank will continue to bloom, and this open forum should continue to explore ideas without restriction. In terms of a focused impact for the organization, however—our “branding,” if you will—it is unlikely that we will be able to do everything all at once, so it would be useful to determine our list of priority goals. Our political analysis should reflect that selection; from there we would develop a strategy for executing a disciplined campaign to achieve that goal. I’ll speak to this strategy a bit later.
One might instinctively say that if we have such a focused goal, we should communicate exactly that. In fact, the opposite is true, especially in the initial phase of an effort like this. Our focus should remain on the vision that underlies our goals. We must communicate the big picture, and keep our eyes on the prize. The details will come. One of our strengths is that we indeed have proposals—that’s part of the message—but the details about their execution won’t create the general interest that we need. We certainly have to be ready to illustrate how we plan to achieve the vision, but during the period when we are trying to amass broad support, our detail may actually hurt us. Those who remember the fight for health care reform and Hilary Clinton’s 5000 page proposal will appreciate this point. The more minutia we provide, the more opponents will have to attack, and the more impatient the public will become. People connect with values and big ideas, not small facts. In it’s simplest form, our message is that “broadened ownership is good.” Stories help to communicate vision; we need personal accounts that can touch people.
I love the title of the compiled papers: “Ownership for All.” Who could argue with such an axiom?
Some will. The next step is to determine who—who will argue for us, and who will argue against us. Who is our target supporter or “stakeholder”, who is our target decision-maker, and, last but not least, our target opponent? Make no mistake, we will have opponents, and the more we can do to shape a message that will “self-select” who our detractors will be, the more control we will have over the dynamic of the communication and our eventual impact. We need to anticipate the arguments against us, and have our responses to each, ready to go.
The good news is that controversy sells. The media loves conflict and they’ll give the story more airtime if it’s personalized with a good contest. Framing the ownership discussion as a debate from the beginning will help us to know where we stand, to have a much better handle on the numbers delineating the ranks of our supporters, and will help us determine who truly influences the policy makers—both corporate and government—that can have a real impact. Debate doesn’t have to be rancorous; we should avoid that tone. The key is comparative advantage—positioning our recommendations relative to another contemporary viewpoint. What is our opponent saying and why is our proposal better? Why is distributed wealth more desirable than concentrated wealth? Determine our comparative advantage and drive it home. Figure out our comparative disadvantage and take steps to eliminate it. For example, in one of the Homestead summaries, the Alaska Permanent Fund is mentioned as an example of a “quid-pro-quo” type fund that had to overcome controversy and a Supreme Court challenge, but we don’t hear what the challenge was about. Detractors are likely to bring out these arguments, but they will carry less weight if we pre-empt their challenge with our response.
The planning and selection of allies (and potential detractors) must be done initially, in the message development phase, based on a detailed analysis of the votes it will take to win, and a map of the influences on our targets. I would recommend that we develop a customized power analysis for each proposal on our menu. The map will look very different if we are trying to institute a new corporate practice, or start an investment fund, or reach international trade administrators. If we want to pass national legislation, for example, how many Democrats do we need, how many Republicans, who are they, and who controls the parties and relevant committees? What are the priorities of the individuals that might swing for or against us? How might they connect with our issues? What should the debate look like? Will the notion of “economic democracy” be enough to move all of the people we need? If not, what other arguments can we offer?
In order to shape a message that our targets will hear, we must get into the hearts, minds, and pocketbooks of the decision-makers and determine their self-interest with regard to our project. Jeff Gates might call this “speaking into the listening.” What moves them? What constrains them? Are they operating within a legal framework that might even prohibit them from supporting such an idea? What is their background and how did they come to be in the position they are in today?
Perhaps most importantly, where can we influence those key leverage points? For some, an ideological commitment to economic democracy may be enough, but other targets may require a more market-based explanation, such as how lessening the wealth gap through broadened ownership will provide greater overall economic stability, or that employee ownership improves corporate performance. Market-based arguments may be our best approach. Remember Clinton’s “New Markets Initiative” and “poverty tour”? Think about the difference between framing the policy package “New Market opportunities” versus a government spending program for poor communities with complicated formulas. We need to translate our own numbers and arguments into real world effects that people can connect with, that they will want to hear more about and utilize.
This is a key point—connecting with people where they are now, not where we want them to be. That means we must use simple, clear language that anybody on the street should understand, and speak to what they care about, what they experience every day. Most people have heard the rule about the “eight second soundbite.” It’s true. Eight seconds is close to the retention limit of our short-term memories. If we want people to remember our ideas, we must keep it short, simple, and clear, and repeat, repeat, repeat. The shortening attention span and information overload of our culture requires it. If we can connect that short message to something that effects everyone in their daily lives, they might remember that expanded ownership is good, and that so-and-so heard about some event, or idea, or law, etc. They might pay attention next time they see a story, and if we have something easy for them to do, like write a letter or make a phone call, they just might take the time to do it.
Now we’ve decided what goal to focus on, we’ve done the power analysis and the research on our target decision-makers, and we’ve come up with a killer vision and eight-second soundbite that we believe will connect with Joe/anna voter (or worker, or consumer, etc.) on the street. So we go out to the media and the politicians and .... it backfires. Turns out that people aren’t ready for the end of private property after all. How do we avoid this scenario? Test the message. Know as much as possible about how the message will be received before putting it out in the public domain. Use polls, focus groups, formal and informal channels. Anybody who has been following the West Wing lately can tell you that the influence makers rely on polls to get their bearings and polish the message with exactly the right spin. (How will America react to President Bartlette’s M.S.?!?)
Polls can offer a wealth of information, and if they are well designed, they are usually worth the considerable expense. Questions that one would never consider will come up in the interviews. This kind of information gathering not only illustrates what will resonate best among your supporters, it also reveals how the issue will play among detractors, and maps out the patterns among both groups. What is the income range of our supporters? Are they predominantly male or female, urban or rural, in industry or e-commerce? Employed or unemployed? What other issues do they identify with? The wealth gap? Democracy? Productivity? The environment? Economic health? What key words do the majority respond to?
One current example of the power of polling comes from the Latino community and re-energized labor movement, who have been working toward reforming immigration laws to incorporate immigrant workers within the ranks of unions. The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is one of the organizations that has taken the lead in this campaign, and so they commissioned a poll to find out how the general public would react to the idea of immigration reform. One of the most striking results they found was the vast difference in the reactions to the word “Legalization” versus the word “Amnesty”. They learned that among non-immigrants, the word “amnesty” implied that the subjects had done something wrong and that they had to be forgiven. Whereas with “legalization,” reform was put in the context of remedying a bureaucratic mistake for hardworking, taxpaying people who are trying to integrate into the society. When the leadership of SEIU is planning local campaigns and giving interviews, one will notice the discipline with which they stick to the message of legalization. Legalization is a win-win message. Now we even see the politicians adopting their language—and it’s working. Congressman Luis Gutierrez has introduced legislation, the issue is getting airplay, and they are building support. The controversy still exists, but they know what sells, and they are driving the point home aggressively, with very tight discipline on that critical word in the message.
Once we’ve spent the money on a good poll, we can maximize its utility in many ways beyond just helping to refine the message. If it’s a good study, some conclusions will be newsworthy, such as “surprising” attitudes about the wealth gap, or broad stock ownership. How do these attitudes relate to the current recessionary trend? Releasing the results of a poll or study is a great way to get media play. I would highly recommend that COG commission a poll based on initial research and message development for the period leading up to the Policy Conference, so that we might release a study at the event itself. We would see the results ahead of time and utilize the message aspect for conference planning and communication purposes. Focus groups could help us refine the “talking points” so that our core network will function like a well-oiled message machine when the event actually takes place.
There are several parallel tracks to think about in terms of distributing the message: reaching our target decision-makers directly, reaching the “masses” with broad distribution and aggressive repetition, and reaching loyal new constituencies that we can call on to advocate and actively support a campaign.
At this point in the process we have already done our homework, and we know who are allies should be. They are our stakeholders. They will become our expanded core, and they have to believe that we are truly working on their behalf. We already know where we might find some of these constituencies—among labor, community economic development practitioners, social change organizations, socially responsible businesses and investors, and movements around globalization and trade, just to name a few. We should learn more about who our potential supporters are from the poll. We might be pleasantly surprised.
We should remember that we are also a constituency unto ourselves. The numbers of network participants and visitors to the COG website is impressive, and we should leverage that. The registration for network participants allows us to develop a formal mailing list, and we should be communicating with this group to strengthen our organizational infrastructure, and, I daresay, to raise money for COG.
Filling our ranks with other constituencies will depend on our ability to provide them what they need, to serve their agendas. We should always answer the self-interest question—“what’s in it for me”—regardless of whether we are talking about a local politician or a global movement for social change. Our retention of these supporters, our “stickiness,” if you will, will rest on how potent our offering truly is. We need real victories that will help our core supporters achieve their goals, and prove to them that working with us is worth their time. Whatever strategy we focus on for the COG “brand,” we must show that there is precedent for success. If we are targeting the anti-globalization movement, we need to demonstrate that we can measurably impact trade negotiations. If we are targeting government legislators, we need to prove that we can help our allies win campaigns. If we are targeting community economic development activists, we need to show how a focused ownership strategy can demonstrably improve local economic conditions, and put money into people’s hands.
While we are evaluating our proposals here, we should keep in mind how each proposal could serve our target constituencies in a tangible way, and use this as a key criteria in prioritizing our agenda. A mechanism that we would like to promote such as Mondragon-style Individual Capital Accounts or family “equity exchange” fund accounts could be easily connected to the community development constituency by sharing language and supporters with the movement for Individual Development Accounts (IDAs)—savings plans matched with government contributions—which achieved high visibility during the Clinton Administration. How could we help them by expanding their tool bag and bringing our core constituency to their campaigns, and how might we reach their audience in exchange? Sharing information openly with each other creates more messengers. When significant trust is built, we might share lists and even help each other fundraise, if possible.
At that point, the job becomes a matter of solid organizing techniques—easy actions for supporters to take, follow-up, repetition, and remind, remind, remind. Never underestimate the forgetfulness, boredom, and laziness of your worthy target—and I mean that in a good way! We’re all overloaded. There is no substitute for good, patient organizing techniques. The United Farm Workers taught me early on that that there are no shortcuts; I measure every other organization against their efficiency. The UFW is very effective with very few resources. Somebody has to make the calls and keep following up with everyone on the list. It requires organization, staff, time, and resources. I support the idea of paid staff for COG.
The job of accessing, organizing and communicating with our target groups raises the question of strategy, which follows from the power analysis. It all comes down to how we plan to win. The end game must be very clear from the beginning. We may want to approach key constituencies or policy makers with a different message at different times, depending on the target and the sequence of events. Do we want to emphasize access (the carrot) or coercion (the stick)? Is it a combination of both? Which comes first? What is it that we are really trying to achieve, and who can make it happen? A strategy based on access focuses on inside channels, building trust with the target decision-makers, and a clear exchange of value. Coercion includes tactics like protests, economic pressure, and negative pr, where targets acquiesce to demands out of a fear of the consequences. Both strategies can be useful in different arenas, but once you make the switch from access to coercion, it’s difficult to reverse.
The strategy and sequence of events may also regulate “when we go public” with a particular campaign or item. There is quiet movement building, and loud, visible movement building. I think everyone would agree that the movement against unfettered liberalized trade has become increasingly effective at being heard and seen all over the world. The issues are being discussed in the popular media like never before, and politicians are being “coerced” into acknowledging the protestors. But the movement has had a hard time promoting constructive proposals because the media has locked them into a visible margin. We must work to avoid that marginalization in order to achieve the win.
Getting the message out to the public will help us build name recognition among our supporters and target decision-makers. Good, slick materials are important, as are the techniques of political communication. David Wilhelm has several choice tips for communicating with the media and the public. Most relate to developing a disciplined communications plan, and sticking to it with repetition, repetition, repetition. “Broader ownership is good, broader ownership is good, broader ownership is good.”
Another of David’s favorites is “be aggressive.” Stay on the offense, and off defense. Play to win, not to avoid losing. Bill Clinton was the master of this technique. Get out front. The corollary to this is rapid response—“when you’re bleeding, respond in a hurry.” Ideally, deal with your weaknesses before they deal with you. Bring them up and respond. Value the truth, and have a sense of humor. People want to be energized by ideas, not depressed. Energy spurs people to action.
I mentioned a couple of tricks related specifically to the media a bit earlier—things like the “eight second soundbite,” and the fact that controversy sells. It’s also critically important to build relationships with reporters, and be available for them so that you become the “go to” person on the issue. Reach out, make friends, build relationships. Know the rules of the game and give them correctly formatted press releases.
There are many other channels besides the traditional media that we can use to distribute our message, and some of them are mentioned in previous COG proposals—vehicles like academic and trade journals, and a book certainly wouldn’t hurt. The Internet deserves special mention because we are, after all, a “virtual think tank,” and we should leverage this special status to the hilt. I am personally a listserve addict, and I know there are others out there like me! We need to subscribe to, and contribute to, every relevant email listserve out there. My own subscriptions include “community development banking,” “coop-bus” (cooperative business), the Institute for Global Communications, and some global trade related discussions.
All of these strategies pave the way to create the “buzz” that we need for the conference, compelling the decision-makers to sit up and take notice. At the most mundane level, we must contact them with enough name recognition so that their office returns our phone calls. We must become players, or have some players on our side already. This is where access vs. coercion comes into play. We need access right now.
There are several ways to do this. First, many within the COG network already carry weight among business leaders and policy makers, and we should explore those relationships to formulate some very specific requests for those special people and institutions. How many degrees of separation separate us from our policy maker targets? I suggest we organize a “blue ribbon committee” and work with them to distribute our message in focused ways. I would imagine we already know whom we could add to this list. Names provide access to the decision-makers. Celebrities can be an enormous help (and sometimes they are even nice people!). Conference materials would benefit from a list of speakers and co-sponsors with a measure of star power.
The path of least resistance to reaching key people is to hire a public relations or government relations firm that specializes in such things. The firm must be chosen carefully, but there are plenty of folks out there (including armies of displaced Clinton officials) with relationships to sell. Like a good pollster, these consultants can be expensive, but the right one can be absolutely invaluable. Access is about trust, and trust takes time to build. Without access, we can’t build the trust, and vice versa—sometimes a paid consultant is the only way past this conundrum. An introduction from a trusted source can be worth a thousand phone calls and letters, and can sometimes be cheaper than a staff-driven effort alone. I recommend we hire a consultant for the relationships that we have little hope of accessing otherwise.
One note about the politicians—the best way to establish long term relationships based on trust is to work on their campaigns. Help them fundraise, volunteer, help with policy development, and make friends with campaign staff. Politicians remember their campaign friends. If your organization is a 501c3 non-profit, keep your activity non-partisan; call it “civic participation,” or do the work on your own time. If you can help candidates win and they know it, you’ve just saved yourself another thousand in long distance phone calls. Working on campaigns is also a good way to build trust with allies that carry institutional weight, like labor. To their credit, unions have focused significant resources on analyzing state and national races, identifying candidates, and helping them get elected. Participating in labor-driven races would be a great way to share resources, information, and agendas with a core constituency.
Campaigns are important vehicles for message distribution. Media follows them, and political consultants shape campaigns based on messages that they believe, with significant polling data behind them, will win. Those campaign managers must know about our issues and proposals, and we must help them to understand how this agenda will be good for their constituencies, and good for their campaigns. The “elevator pitch” soundbite is critical here, as is the win. Is an OTC tax credit part of a winning economic development strategy for the target candidate? Will the public “GET IT”? Will the candidate get it? Interviews with campaign managers should be a component of our survey and polling initiative.
The success of the conference will depend largely on the execution of our communications and organizing strategies over the coming year. We have a lot to do. Being solvent always helps. We should be utilizing every tool at our disposal to raise money, including fundraising requests to our registered network participants, and to institutions that are heavily utilizing our information. The more money we can raise now, the easier our conference planning and communication will be. The more consultants we can hire, the more we can focus on what this network does best—developing real ideas for closing the wealth gap and expanding ownership. Input from our target constituencies, from the poll, and from our blue-ribbon committees will give us tremendous feedback for formulating the content, speakers, tracks, and co-sponsorships that we need for the conference.
As mentioned earlier, mainstream heavy weights and celebrities (not necessarily in the Hollywood sense) will help us draw interest, and early alliances should reflect our intention to attract the decision-makers that we need. For starters, I would suggest getting early buy-in from successful businesses with successful ESOPs, as well as the leadership of unions that represent employee owners. Their lobbyists should be invited as well. Initial targeting of policy makers should focus on those who have already demonstrated some commitment to expanded and LOCAL ownership in their own jurisdictions. We should pay close attention to those who have supported Clinton’s New Markets Initiative, and various related state initiatives. I would also suggest an early alliance or co-sponsorship with one of Washington’s leading think tanks, like the Brookings Institution or the Urban Institute. These institutions often become landing sites for former administration officials. Their input would be useful in designing research, developing political contacts, and getting media play.
In closing, I believe that our communications strategy and its effective implementation will be the key to our long-term sustainability and impact. While easier said than done, we will not remain true to our mission without attention and resources paid to this critical task. We emerged from last year’s strategy meeting with some excellent suggestions based on the original goals defined by COG; yet the majority of our work over this past year still seems focused on the initial policy papers and discussions. These are tremendously valuable, but our outreach has not received the attention it deserves. Five of the goals created by the original COG participants relate to our communications strategy:
1)
Broadly
disseminate information supporting our mission.
2)
Find out what
the public knows and cares about concerning capital concentration, the problems
it generates, and the public’s perception of broad ownership schemes as a
potential solution.
3)
Find out what
opinion makers know and care about concerning capital concentration, the
problems it generates, and the opinion makers’ perceptions of broad ownership
schemes as a potential solutions
4)
Build a broad
coalition supporting our mission.
5)
Provide
solid data and policy proposals supporting our mission to policy makers,
opinion makers, the media and the general public.
6)
Create and
enhance examples and models of co-ordinate broad ownership systems.
I suggest we come back to our roots and remember that we must be thinking about our impact simultaneous to the development of our proposals. I’ll end here with the following list summarizing the recommendations from this paper:
Summary of proposals for COG
impact and communications plan:
¨ Develop a coherent communications plan and
STICK TO IT
¨ Prioritize
goals for first victories
¨ Which proposal to push initially for a win
¨ Include
measures to evaluate usefulness for target constituencies
¨ Conduct
a power analysis, how to achieve the “win”
¨ Establish
comparative advantage relative to other current viewpoints
¨ Develop
soundbites and short communications pieces
¨ Based
on vision
¨ Targeted
to decision makers and target constituencies
¨ Commission
a poll/survey/focus groups to refine the message, include campaigns
¨ Determine sequence of events for winning strategy (access vs. coercion)
¨ Develop good materials and employ the techniques of political communication
¨ Be
aggressive: play to win, not to avoid losing
¨
Repeat repeat
repeat
¨ Rapid response to bad news
¨ Don’t be a downer; have a sense of humor
¨ Be available; develop relationships
¨ Direct
communication with constituencies to involve in campaign
¨ Organizing
techniques
¨ Simple
actions
¨ Build a blue ribbon committee with star power for:
¨ Access to decision-makers, and
¨ Co-sponsorships
for conference
¨ Speakers
for the conference
¨ Explore
hiring consultant for access to key decision makers that we need, help with
heavy hitter speakers
¨ Identify
key political races and get the ownership issue on the campaign agenda. Interview campaign managers for
understanding of ownership issues.
¨ RAISE
MONEY
¨ For more COG staff to organize outreach
¨ To
commission surveys, polls, focus groups
¨ To
hire consultants for access to heavy-hitters
¨
To produce slick materials