In the classic movie, “Back to the Future”, Marty McFly and his girlfriend Jennifer are sitting on a bench in the town square of Mill Valley discussing how they were going to go on a weekend trip after Marty’s dad George had wrecked the family car.
Just before they started to kiss, an older lady approached them and said, “Save the Clock Tower!” She followed up that proclamation with a flyer that described efforts to save and restore the historic clock tower that was part of the first town hall, built back in 1885 (as we learned in BTF 3).
The older lady was a community organizer attempting to recruit followers. But like with many efforts, Marty and Jennifer were not motivated to join in immediately. Anything worth pursuing takes time.
Jennifer took the flyer, wrote “I Love You” on the back, then gave it to Marty. That’s why Marty still had the flyer when he ended up at Doc Brown’s house when he travelled back to 1955. Remember? “But we never know when lightning will strike.”
During my days with the Main Street Program, my colleagues talked about how their local programs started. Quite a few Main Street programs started as a result of community organized efforts to save historic structures from demolition. “Save the Clock Tower” was a rallying cry to join the group and get something done.
What is your rallying cry?
Is your message strong enough to get people motivated to learn more?
Then after that, do you have a plan to actually get something done to answer that rallying cry?
This is a “chicken and egg” scenario. You don’t need to have a plan in place to recruit people to help you accomplish your goals. It’s more important for you to have the passion to invest the effort into the process of creating the plan. Group visioning requires some patience as sometimes the process can feel like it is bogging down. After all, as with most teams, the players come from different backgrounds, with different skill sets and motivations. These differences come out when the group is together discussing ways to address the rallying cry.
Leading the group is like organizing a greyhound race. As the dogs are brought out of the paddock onto the track for introduction, they all look different. Their trainers take special care to keep the dogs separated before the race. The dogs are loaded into their individual starting boxes. The mechanical rabbit starts to come around the track. The dogs start scratching at the bottom of their box in anticipation of the door opening so they can chase the rabbit. When the door opens, it is at this precise moment when the dogs are truly organized in a group effort to catch the rabbit. The dogs work like crazy to catch the rabbit, as they have been trained to do. After the race is concluded, the dogs have nothing to chase, and if the trainers don’t get to their dogs in time, the dogs will realize that they are different and start to scrap.
With a common goal, people from different backgrounds can come together to work like a team to accomplish great things. When you have people from different backgrounds working together to solve a group problem, the plan for change that emerges from this group effort is stronger, and has facets and features that will motivate the diverse group to keep pushing forward when the going gets tough.
The challenge is to keep the group engaged. Make the goal worth pursuing. Provide benchmarks along the way to provide reinforcement and reward success. As the group reaches the benchmarks, keep the group focused on the big picture, and be ready to pursue the next benchmark.
Community change is hard. It is complicated. But when successful, nothing is more rewarding. Imagine how proud you will be when you accomplish your goal.