Design Leadership and Movements
What can social movements teach us about leadership as designers and creatives?
Preface by Marzia Aricò
I have known Antonio for over 10 years. We met in the circuit of the Global Service Jams initiated by Adam Lawrence and Markus Edgar Hormeß. We have both always believed in the power of design to grow meaningful change in an organisational context. Today, Antonio is based in Montreal and is the co-founder of Studio Wé. He is also pursuing a PhD at Concordia University, studying activist group processes and design leadership. I found his research fascinating and refreshing and invited him to share some of his insights in this blog post.
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Design leadership and Movements
by Antonio Starnino
Social Movements can provide a new lens to understand for design leaders as they often create change with little or no 'positional power’ but instead rely on collective power based on relationships, mobilizations, and organising around key strategies and messages. This is a common reality for design leaders, who are often in a role that requires them to enact wide-scale and systemic change far beyond the capabilities bestowed to them through their titles.
For this post, I wanted to draw upon my professional background as a senior service designer and studio co-founder and my academic pursuits as a PhD researcher studying activist group process and design.
Drawing on essential lessons from civil rights, feminist, and environmental movements of the 1960s & 70s, scholars, community organisers, and activists have developed a growing appreciation for social movement leadership. This is because social movements are perhaps one of the most extreme contexts to enact leadership – they are dynamic, voluntary, highly participatory, filled with tensions and alternative points of view, and there is a need to inspire and organise in a similar direction to effect change. They require that leadership is spread and shared so that they become *leaderful* rather than leaderless.
In my work, I have been inspired by Marshall Ganz, a senior lecturer, academic, and author whose work draws upon his 50 years of experience as an organiser, stretching back to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He defines leadership as "accepting responsibility to create conditions that enable others to achieve shared purpose in the face of uncertainty." In the next sections, I will break down this definition and explore its possible relevance to design leadership.
Accepting Responsibility
Drawing on Ganz's definition of leadership, the notion of 'accepting responsibility' is a powerful way to understand how leadership goes beyond position into actions.
In the 1970s, amid the growing male-led civil rights movements and white-female-led women's women, black feminist collectives, Combahee River Collective emerged as a part of recognition of the intersectional nature of oppression and the need to establish a voice for violence and oppression. The establishment of a collective became a form of shared leadership rooted in solidarity, producing a statement that would lay the foundations of authors and movements that came after them, such as the Black Lives Matter movement.
Design leaders take on greater responsibilities than ever before. This goes beyond business challenges towards also having to shape more equitable, environmentally responsible, and inclusive workplaces. Accepting responsibility always requires vulnerability and an ability to take risks. However, it also requires a focus on the 'relational work' required to transform individuals' interests, resources, and commitments into shared ones.
What does it mean for you to 'accept responsibility' as a design leader?
Creating Conditions
If we take the next part of Ganz's definition – "...to create conditions that enable others to achieve shared purpose," we recognize that the responsibility we accept is creating conditions. A key element of social movement leadership is developing new leaders and building relationships. In Ganz's work, he speaks to the need to identify who has leadership potential to build their capacity to eventually take agency and autonomy to bring change. As design leaders, it becomes a challenge to understand what these enabling conditions are and how we support others who might be part of our team to become leaders in their own right, helping build a sense of collective power in our organisations. Does this require that we become clear about our shared purpose and the way that it is communicated? Ganz's own work speaks heavily about the role of narrative. One of his methods has us define the story of me (who am I, what are my values), the story of us (who are we, what are we striving for), and the story of now (what is so deeply important about this moment, why is this urgent). These three areas can help us shape what Ganz calls a *public narrative* that inspires others.
What conditions do you need to create in your environment as a design leader to move towards your shared purpose?
Facing Uncertainty
The definition ends with naming that all this occurs "...in the face of uncertainty". Uncertainty is often spoken about as leadership literature, but my experience within KPI-driven, strategic, 5-year plan lead, and Gantt chart-based organisations often says otherwise. In social movements, uncertainty is the norm; we do not know who will join us, who will leave, and when we might gain a 'win' in the social change we aim to create. Acting in the face of this uncertainty and not being paralyzed by it gives movement leaders their collective power. Ganz calls these conditions 'strategic capacity,' the ability to shift strategies and approaches drawing upon motivation, iterative learning, and knowledge. He defines strategy and the ability to turn what we have into what we need to get what we want. The most effective social movement leaders transform uncertainty into a material for change by designing ways in which uncertainty forms part of the work.
What are the ways in which you are 'facing' uncertainty as a design leader?
Moving Forward
Perhaps most important to any social movement leader is the ability to catalyse action described as “translating intent into outcomes” (p. 28) in order to foster change. This is a particular challenge as membership in social movements is often fueled by a sense of motivation that can wane over time. Here Ganz talks about getting commitments as key to any social movement action, and aligning those commitments to key measurable outcomes and deadlines. Perhaps most interestingly he also talks about ways spaces (ie: a board in office space showing ‘wins’ and accomplishments), tasks, and roles can be designed to help inspire this commitment. This shows how design can become an essential role in shaping entities of change.
These points I highlighted above hold familiarity to any designer who draws upon storytelling, prototyping, and co-creation to create organisational change, only cementing the overlap between social movement and design leadership. My hope with this post was to plant a seed to help design leaders expand beyond their current literature to look towards social movements and the potential they hold to foster their growth as leaders and change agents.
Sources and further reading:
Ganz, Marshall. “Leading Change - Leadership, Organization and Social Movements.” Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice: A Harvard Business School Centennial Colloquium, 2010.
Ganz, Marshall. Organizing: People, Power, Change. The Commons: Social Change Library, 2014, https://commonslibrary.org/organizing-people-power-change/.
THE COMBAHEE RIVER COLLECTIVE: “The Combahee River Collective Statement,” 1978. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/combahee-river-collective-statement-1977/