Social media lessons from union organizers

We marketers can learn a lot from union organizers in our quest to get people more involved in our companies, especially as part of the Marketing 2.0 collaboration/participation movement.  Here are some  organizing lessons that I’ve gleaned from different unions’ “tool kits” — many of which could be useful when  developing customer communities or employee social networks.

1. Organize around issues people really care about: to get people involved you need to identify the things that people really want to change. The more important and emotional the issue, the more likely people will overcome their apathy and get involved to do something about it. Ideal organizing issues are:

• Be widely felt
• Be deeply felt
• Be winnable
• Result in real improvement
• Give people a sense of their own power
• Be easy to understand
• Increase the visibility of the organization
• Be non-divisive among members
• Send a message
• Build solidarity
  

2.  To uncover issues, ask good question, focusing on how people feel: Sometimes it’s easy to know what to organize around. Usually, it takes asking good questions to surface issues and find out if others feel the same way. The more comfortable you make people feel about expressing anger or frustration, the more people will tell you.  Questions include:

• What things make it hard doing this job?
• What would you change if you could?
• Do you think other people feel that way?
• Do you think people would be willing to try to do something to change that?

3. Overcome obstacles to getting people involved. Most people prefer to sit on the sidelines because they don’t think there’s value in getting involved or they fear getting involved. Union organizers overcome these obstacles with a techniques called Anger, Hope, Action:

• Anger overcomes fear: encouraging people to be angry about their own injustice helps them overcome their fears.
• Hope overcomes apathy: anger without hope creates frustration.  Educating members is the way to create hope — sharing how things are done in other organizations  shows that the goals are realistic.
• Action creates change: To get people to act, you have to show them how their action will change what they’re looking to change. Then, give people things to do as part of the cause so that they feel a sense of ownership. Start by asking people to contribute in small ways and then ask them to do more  as their confidence builds.

4. Keep people motivated and involved:

• Inclusion: give people a sense of being part of what’s going on
• Control: allow people to control the pace of their involvement and have influence over decision making
• Appreciation: recognize people for their efforts

While the anger, outrage and injustice strategy of unions may have little relevance to business communities, having a purpose that people feel strongly about certainly does. Why else get involved?