BU-06586     Nov. 1995

To Order

Reinventing Citizenship: The Practice of Public Work

Chapter Five Civic Organizing* : Practicing Citizen Politics

In this chapter:

• Reclaiming institutions and associations as places for public work is a key strategy in addressing the larger problem of a narrow and fragmented public life. This is an organizing problem.
  
  
• Civic organizing, or citizen politics, is an organizing framework that integrates citizenship into everyday environments for the purpose of developing leadership and the broad base necessary to govern in a democratic society. Civic organizing has three components: civic training, developing public leadership, and organizing.
  
  

This chapter provides a map, not a blueprint, of some of the strategies, processes, and practices useful in civic organizing.

*Peg Michels and Tony Massengale made particularly helpful contributions to this approach.

The Challenge

Problem-solving is the vehicle for developing the power of the citizen to govern.

Learning new concepts abstractly will not alter our practice of citizenship. To become effective public actors we have to develop the arts and skills of public life through our public work. To reclaim public work for citizens requires restructuring the settings and mediating institutions in which that work is done, making more public their behaviors, practices, and policies. This chapter looks at civic organizing and some particular strategies we can use to reinvent citizenship for ourselves and our everday environments.

Information packaged as services dominates the national imagination around public problem solving. Yet it determines narrow roles for citizens who are outside service systems, and limits the capacity of those within (professionals or experts) to identify and provide useful leadership in tackling the large problems we face. This has created an enormous crisis, especially if, as we believe, a democratic society depends upon an engaged, capable citizenry.

The crisis is commonly perceived as the failure to address social and economic problems effectively — from the federal government to communities. In the debate over what to do about it, citizens see themselves outside of the institutions that impact their daily lives. (Recall the taxpayer's lament in Chapter 2.) Even as members of work places, schools, churches, or professions, people increasingly place themselves outside the system of governance. Rather than taking on serious roles in the restructuring of our environments, we have separated ourselves from the power bases, those very settings needed to govern as serious participants.

Consequently, organizations support narrow strategies like down-sizing as the main way to restructure. Such strategies do not solve the larger problem of ineffectiveness. This situation provides an organizing opportunity to engage leaders, tied to organizations and groups yet aware of the narrowness of meaning and ineffectiveness of expertise, in the work of civic renewal.

A Question of Organizing

Restructuring the very fabric of our social and institutional life from the business sector to health, education, government, and community, is an organizing problem:

• What is our plan of action?
• How do we garner the resources and motivation to accomplish it?
• What capacities need to be developed, and which practices need to be changed?
• For what purpose(s) are we doing this?
• What are realistic goals and expectations to have?

Thus it is imperative that we understand the work of organizing in a modern information society. This will require learning the lessons from organizing traditions and applying those lessons to information-based systems. In a complex, information-rich society, questions of power and the need to develop capacity go well beyond the formula of the people versus a corporate elite. They also involve more than advocacy groups pressuring on narrow issues.

To organize means to develop. Its root word, organ, means "a tool or instrument" and in some definitions is directly linked to the concept of numbers and practice ("many at work"). The great contribution of organizing has been to unabashedly link the aspirations and practical work of "the people" to power. This linkage has allowed ordinary people to aspire to and claim serious roles in democratic governance without romanticizing the nature of that work. To do this in a world where power is tangible, yet unequally experienced, requires people to be prepared conceptually for the messy public world, and to develop their public capacities and skills to act with effect in that world. Organizing, then, is a practical concept tied to the work of developing people's capacity to structure and influence a broader world.

Organizing practice this century has given us important lessons to build on. Lessons we draw from organizing practice since World War II include:

Organizing needs to link people's lives, identities, and aspirations to commonly held public values such as citizenship. These values or concepts need to have a history, language, and institutional context that is or can be broadly shared and owned by diverse peoples.

The development of people's practical capacity to influence (to practice power) is central to the purpose of organizing. Power is not an abstraction but is embodied in people's ability to build and influence diverse and practical relationships.

Serious organizing recognizes the need to teach practical concepts that develop people's capacity and confidence to map out, analyze, and act within the various environments connected to their daily lives.

Leadership is developed within and across the groups and institutions that shape people' identities and value systems. Leaders need to own the work done within those institutions and link that work to a larger public world.

However, power based on knowledge has different dynamics from power based on scarce resources. The organizing model for today thus needs to reflect those differences, going beyond confrontation as the principal tool. The vehicle for gaining authority and civic capacity today is the public work of the institution as it engages with constituencies, in relationship to other citizens and broader public goals stretching across institutional and group boundaries. Professionals have to expand their identities in order to create a political link with the broader citizenry. Together, through organized efforts and the incentive of internal and external pressure, citizens inside different groups and outside the particular institution can restructure them to more effectively function.

A crucial distinction between civic organizing and traditional organizing is the placing of professionals within this birthright of the people. At a time when many people position themselves economically and socially through information and call themselves professional, it is crucial that they not be defined simply as the problem but that they rather are brought inside the work of organizing. The development and training of professionals as public actors, beyond the narrow category of expertise, is central to the work not only to create greater meaning in their lives but for the greater public purpose of rebuilding the institutional fabric of a democratic society. What would such an organizing framework look like in practice? Let's look at health care.

The role of health care professionals would be redefined around a broader and more meaningful definition of work that would recognize that professionals have a responsibility and stake in creating and maintaining groups and institutions that reflect and meet the expectations of the greater public. Nurse's aides, for example, would still be educated to perform therapeutic duties, but in this larger context. So they would also learn the public skills of governance and would be expected to be strategic around the larger social and political questions of health care: they would be educated as citizen professionals and everyday philosophers. (Recall the story in Chapter 3 about the health care class guided by larger public values.)

The questions of restructuring health care settings would not simply be answered by traditional policy makers. They would also be engaged by members of those groups, related professions, and the larger public.

Health care clients and consumers would be expected to play serious roles with health professionals in work around health-related problems, through associations or community-based organizations. This includes designing strategies that address the interrelated nature of health, accepting roles in those strategies, and being accountable for effective solutions. It would also require that communal groups (churches, associations, community-based organizations, for example) be restructured to provide the experience and learning needed for citizens to take on this larger civic role.

The same assumptions of expanded roles and functions around problem solving can be applied to diverse institutional settings, from community organizations and churches to professional associations and large-scale systems, to address the need for more effective organization of resources and problem solving.

Civic Organizing

The civic organizing model for public action and problem solving is based on the concepts of public work. What follows is an outline, not a definitive step-by-step guide, to the principles and practice of taking action to reclaim citizenship and public work in our mediating institutions.

Citizen politics is not like a program that can be added on to existing work without effect. It is an organizing framework. Citizen politics is a means to help reinvent democratic practices of citizenship and politics to more effectively govern and solve public problems. This requires changing how we do work.

Such change requires flexibility and time. Strategies will change in mid-stream. New leaders will emerge and old ones will fade. The environment you work in might be more engaged by the concept of public than the concept of citizenship. People — including you — will need time and space to practice public arts and develop strategic judgment. And changing any group requires time — even years — to develop leadership, educate, organize, and finally maintain the new practices. But along the way you will see a new language emerge, practices change, resources shift to support new approaches. It is hard, challenging work, but results in more effective work based on democratic values and creative, active citizenship.

Civic organizing includes multiple functions, which can't always be found in one person. It requires developing a leadership base that can carry out those functions and tap diverse resources: educators, organizers, people with access to different arenas, knowledge, and people. No one person can do it all, and each leaders' skills and resources will vary. We outline below three Key Areas of Civic Organizing:

civic training developing public leadership organizing

Civic organizing brings leaders into working relationships around a commonly held problem or task or opportunity. Civic organizing is an ongoing process guided by these three general goals, each having more or less emphasis as the work progresses. Consider the following example:

Civic Training

Civic organizing recognizes the need to teach everyday political or civic concepts that develop and sustain people's public capacity and confidence. Civic training is practical conceptual education explicitly aimed at taking action. It takes place formally and informally in settings specifically designated for such teaching as well as through example and practice.

Every person has the capacity to think and act effectively. That capacity is developed and expanded through education and practice. Civic training draws upon an individual's experience and knowledge, and links it to the practice of problem solving, in order to develop that capacity. Like the Citizenship Schools and the most successful community organizing, civic training teaches concepts and skills that help map out the political nature of all environments so that people can experience agency or develop capacity within them.

Teaching civic concepts formally and informally can affect the whole institution. Introduce them at conferences, in-service training, or other programs. In public spaces created for debate and discussion, you can practice and model democratic citizenship. Demonstrate these concepts through your work. Shape the institutional practices and programs you have control over around these concepts: meetings, performance reviews, the way you go about your work and deal with others inside and outside the institution. Pay particular attention to shaping staff development programs, a crucial source of leadership and institutional development.

All settings teach, through their practices if not through formal training. Civic training asks us to be conscious of those concepts, and to strategically shape learning environments and practices around civic concepts. Below are some questions to think about as you plan and do civic training.

What conceptions of public life are taught by the culture of your environment? By you? For example, are people encouraged to participate? Do they? How is power organized and is it acknowledged? Are your relationships more public or more private?

What types of in-service, continuing education, staff development or other educational processes exist in your institutional environment? How would you describe the nature of the learning in those settings, for example, conceptual, technical, quick fix? (see Knowledge chart in Chapter 2)

How can you strategically incorporate more conceptual, democratic, civic education into your work setting? Into formal training sessions?

Developing Public Leadership

Civic organizing, like serious community organizing, sees problem solving as the way to develop public leadership. The value of mentoring or developing people's public spirit and capacity is founded on a fierce commitment to people's right to be serious creators in the world. It is only through public creation and usefulness that we reach our full human potential. But for that capacity to be fully realized we need to be challenged and taught throughout our whole lifetime to claim public positions in the world as it is with all its imperfections and inequities. Taking on problems that directly affect you becomes the vehicle for developing that capacity and authorship. In this way, developing public leadership is strongly tied to civic training.

Civic organizing needs a leadership base that can carry out multiple functions: for example, educating, strategic thinking, recruiting other leadership, translating civic concepts into the language and practice of the institution, seeing the big picture, and getting the little things done.

In recruiting and developing leadership, and in carrying out your work, keep in mind two things.

1. In the strategic work of reclaiming environments, it is important to involve positional leadership—those within the hierarchical system who control resources, or direct your work, or have influence throughout the group or institution. Acknowledging their self-interest in the work protects the work; establishing such relationships may also directly affect how the organization runs, as the individual develops a stake in the work and the larger mission of developing public capacities and reclaiming the group for public work. The kind of relationship you develop with positional leaders will depend on their skills and interests, especially their interest in the problem and their interest in the larger mission.
   
   
2. It is also important to create relationships that cross internal and external boundaries: to work across departments or disciplines, and to engage leaders linked to, but outside, the group (e.g., clients, volunteers, funders, people in related professions or institutions). This builds strong support for the work, develops a broad leadership base, and provides a larger stage for civic training and actually changing practices.

Key political concepts that can be taught in the development of public leadership include: figuring out "diverse interests," realizing that not all interests are shared but can still be engaged around common problems, accepting the need to work with people without liking them or personalizing the situation, analyzing the power relations surrounding any endeavor, learning to be strategic in everyday work.

Use public spaces to learn and practice these concepts and skills. Public spaces might include meetings within your institution or with the leaders you are working with, conferences, one-on-one interviews, informal and formal spaces in which you do your work. Learning to draw the greatest insight from experience takes time. Experience enriches intellectual capacity and, in turn, conceptual categories more effectively direct the work. Time and space to think, reflect, and evaluate is the foundation of democratic governance and effective public work, and is absolutely necessary for developing leadership and acting strategically.

The key to successfully developing leadership is the practice of public relationships. Important principles of public relationships include keeping focused on the problem, being accountable, and evaluating your work together.

Developing Public Relationships

Public relationships develop capacities for leadership of all involved. They make the messy, contentious work of public problem solving more effective and meaningful.

It's all about people. Get to know them. Find out what they think. Be interested. If you don't develop relationships, all you've got is assumptions. It's easy to dismiss people when you don't know them. When there's a relationship, there's a chance for accountability. Anthony Massengale, CAN-DO/Public Strategies, 1994

• The public work to be accomplished is the reason for the relationship and is the larger goal to keep in mind as the work gets tough.
  
  
• Pay attention to self-interests: yours and the leader's. They will develop and change over time.
  
  
• Take time for conceptual development. Link civic concepts to prac tice. Wrestle together with the different meanings words have when they come out of a civic culture versus the particular institution's culture.
  
  
• Be accountable. If they cannot count on you, they will not be account able to the work either. Accountability is the foundation for building the trust required to do the hard work of problem solving.
  
  
• Develop a public relationship. Have clear boundaries. Respect their work and interests.
  
  
• Evaluate. Reflect on your work together. Evaluation provides time to learn from and correct mistakes. It leads to accountability. It is a public process: it is not about laying blame, but about doing more effective work.

Public Spaces

Leaders need to intentionally create public spaces where citizens gain the political skills necessary to govern. Such spaces are used for conceptual learning as well as strategic planning and learning skills, because conceptual understanding increases the ability to create and thus must be part of the everyday work of citizens.

These spaces are centered on problem solving that is recognized as important to a broader public. They are pragmatic, political, and diverse places for debate, conflict, and strategic thinking.

We bring democratic understanding of public work, self-interest, and power to public spaces. Everyone is seen as a stakeholder, as having a self-interest in the work that may differ from yours. Everyone is expected to contribute, to make crucial decisions, to be held accountable, to be recognized. Power in public spaces is understood relationally; while everyone does not have equal power, their authority based on experience, position, knowledge, or skills is recognized and used.

Examples of public spaces include staff meetings, conferences, a place and time set aside for debate or strategic planning. They occur on different levels, and vary in how public they are. A strategy team operates in a public space, although it may be less guarded a public space than a conference and may be more consciously framed by democratic principles.

Organizing

Organizing is central to public problem solving. Thus it is also a vehicle for developing leadership and teaching civic concepts, as well as the means of restructuring mediating institutions.

The charts on The Practice of Organizing that follow show different dimensions of organizing. Listed vertically are ongoing, regularly revisited elements of organizing:

• defining the problem from diverse perspectives;
• doing political analysis and political mapping;
• developing strategies that engage diverse players; and
• evaluating

The horizontal axis lays out steps for developing an institutional base with a civic purpose for taking action:

• assessing your base;
• building your base;
• designing and implementing strategies; and
• institutionalizing those policies and practices that solve the problem

All of this work is done keeping in mind the larger goal of reclaiming the setting as a civic institution.

Throughout your public work, it is important to regularly revisit and evaluate your problem definition and analysis, and strategies you develop and implement. You will define and redefine the problem as you assess self-interests, analyze the politics of the environment, engage other diverse citizens, develop strategies, and take action. Analyze and consider the changing politics of the environment and the self-interest of leaders, stakeholders and others along the way. Engage the broadest range of self-interests and link them to the largest possible problem or arena through your problem definition and strategies. Evaluate and re-evaluate the problem, strategies, players, goals, roles, and practices of yourself and your leadership team. Doing these things throughout your work will make your solutions more effective; but as importantly it will provide opportunities to develop critical public capacities and to practice democratic citizenship.

Taking action over time, keeping in mind the above elements of organizing and the larger goal of institutional change, involves four general steps briefly outlined as follows.

The Practice of Organizing Ongoing Elements (To be revisited often) Define Problem In relationship to larger civic issues Requires diverse perspectives to better understand and address problem's complexity Is an ongoing process as work is done (work done with diverse peoples alters our definition of a problem) Determines players and resources required in a broad institutional base to solve the problem. Do Political Analysis and Political Mapping Of the interests that surround a problem, the power relations between interests, and the politics of the environments in which the problem exists and through which it can be solved. Engage Diverse Players In defining the problem, developing and implementing strategies. This leads to a strong leadership base, a broader problem definition, more effective strategies and greater power base for taking action. Power is related to our ability to influence the diverse interests around a problem. Evaluate Keeps the work directed Develops public leaders and accountable public relationships Provides an opportunity to think strategically and conceptually © Project Public Life

The Practice of Organizing Developing an Institutional Base with a Civic Purpose

Assess Base	Build Base	Design/Implement Strategies	Institutionalize
Organize yourself Map out the environment, interests and leadership Define the problem as broadly as possible, linked to larger public arenas/issues	Develop leadership that reflects the base of diverse power sources Engage a wide range of leaders Aas you develop broad stategic initiatives	Break problem down into manageable and practical parts Develop leadership Organize work so particular steps lead toward larger purpose, institutional change	Use civic framework to integrate mission with allocation of resources, staffing, program development, the policies and practices of the institution

© Project Public Life

Assess the base

Self-interest grows out of the diversity and fluidity of public life.

You have an idea of the problem. You want to take action. So you need to do some groundwork: to find out what other people think the problem is; what resources are available to address the problem; where leadership might come from; and what the patterns of power surrounding the problem are. Get clear about your self-interest, why you want to be at the table. Determine the self-interests of others (how they define the problem, what role they might play in solving the problem) through one-on-one interviews.

Build a base for taking action

Develop a leadership base that can accomplish the challenging work of strategic planning and organizing action. Leaders will have different skills and resources, and will be connected to different institutional settings and departments. Building a base requires developing the capacities of individual leaders, pushing their commitment, advising on strategy as they work with their own power bases. The principles of public relationships apply here.

The base for taking action will require different levels of leadership, from key strategic planners to those you'll keep informed and draw upon for particular purposes. Not every interest needs to be part of strategic planning; that particular leadership base needs to be able to get things done, yet stay in relationship with interests not represented.

Develop/implement strategies

Break a problem or task down into manageable and practical parts, while keeping in mind the larger issues and values connected to it. Organize the work so particular steps lead toward the larger purpose. Engaging diverse players in developing and implementing strategies will make them more effective, just as it makes the definition of the problem more complete. Never lose sight of the larger purpose of the work, developing citizenship and reclaiming your group or institution as a place for public work. Implementing strategies will require another level of organizing, beyond your leadership base, that will use the same principles and practices but involve a broader public.

Institutionalize

To really solve the problem, and to reclaim your institution or group, you need to have an impact on the institutional settings in which the problem takes place and/or can be solved by altering practices, policies, and resource allocation (like time, staff development, or money). This final step rests on all the previous work you have done: the leadership and base for action that's been developed and strategically positioned; the power and authority gained by effective problem definition and the organizing and implementation of solutions; the teaching of civic concepts through your practice and other formal and informal means; the firm understanding of the politics of the group.

It is most likely that this step will happen gradually, as people learn new behaviors, policies are changed to reflect public goals and the work convinces leaders that the approach is worth resources. And with repeated practice and conscious efforts to impact the environment as a whole these changes incrementally add up to affect policies and practices throughout the organization, not just around a particular issue or problem. Through this work you create a civic culture which can shape the development and implementation of the work, and guide the allocation of resources and policies and practices, from hiring procedures to evaluation processes.

Evaluation

Public evaluation is a key, multipurpose tool to use throughout civic organizing. It provides space for learning, strategic thinking, developing accountability. It is a public process; not for placing blame but for increasing the effectiveness of the work and deepening the civic learning process. It is useful for clarifying roles, avoiding misunderstandings, giving a sense of accomplishment, providing a clear direction for the work, and developing a public chronicle, or history, of what was accomplished and learned.

What is public evaluation?

The ability to pose a problem and assess how effective you have been in addressing it. It requires a conscious application of ideas to practice, and is a learned art. Public evaluation is intended to develop the civic confidence and capacities of citizens.

Why is the concept and practice of public evaluation important in a democratic society?

Public evaluation is an important part of making our public work, and the places associated with our work, schools for self-governance, or citizenship.

Evaluation usually means someone from the outside coming in to tell you what you did wrong! The evaluator is seen as being objective, or not having a stake in the outcome. Although outside assessments are often useful, evaluation is even more important as an art we learn to do ourselves in our work on a continuing basis.

Evaluation brings seriousness to public work. It directs our work toward larger goals or a mission. Without evaluation our work too often becomes a series of unrelated activities leading to failure or burnout.

Public evaluation is also a way of creating more democratic ownership of knowledge. In an age of information, what one knows, or the categories of knowledge with which one frames action, forms the basis of authority and validity in the larger world. Too often the framing of public work and the naming of lessons from it is left to experts at the top of the information hierarchy. Through a more democratic practice of evaluation, this knowledge can become a resource more broadly used. Public evaluation is one way citizens and citizen-professionals can work together to consciously create and name the categories or concepts that drive effective work.

When should we evaluate and who should be involved in evaluation? What format should evaluation take?

Evaluation is about consciously knowing what is happening, what has happened, and what should happen. Evaluation, then, should take place whenever you (as an individual or group) need to learn from your actions, or to redirect work to better accomplish a collective mission. In-depth evaluation is especially important for those most closely associated with the planning of an action or strategy, and those whose leadership is being developed. Evaluation can be used:

At the end of meetings. Did we accomplish our goals? What tasks were assigned to whom? What else needs to be done? What do we need to talk about next time?

After larger public meetings. Did we accomplish our goals? How well did we play our roles? What did we gain or lose in the event? What were the power dynamics? The self-interests? Did the event meet the self-interests of staff, key players? What needs to be done to followup?

To evaluate specific strategies (see questions, above) or
To evaluate the work as a whole at different stages. What were our purposes and goals? Did we meet them? Were they realistic? Did others become more important? What roles were we playing and how well have we played them? What could we do to improve our individual and collective work? What have we learned from the work?

Public actions involving significant individual or group energy, resources, or credibility, usually generate strong emotions as well. Emotions should be named because they are an important part of public work. But they should be separated from the analysis during evaluation.

What about evaluating individuals?

We need to recognize that many people seek or avoid public life as a reaction to their own personal history. Therefore public critique can be very emotionally jarring if it is not artfully done. In particular, the work, problem, event, or goals need to be the focus of critique, not the character of the person being evaluated. It can be enormously freeing for the individual to have public discussion of their actions so that unstated opinion does not become the operating mode of the group. Most importantly evaluation allows for public capacity development.

The Lazarus Project, an initiative of Project Public Life, has developed a set of rules for public evaluation of individuals:

• Make I statements. Always claim your thought/critique by saying, "I think/feel ...".
  
  
• State your critique within the framework of the larger outcome of the action. This keeps the focus upon public outcome rather than personal issues. The purpose of public evaluation is to be more effective in attaining your collective goals or mission. Personal critique is not the purpose of public evaluation.
  
  
• Be accountable for posing another option if you disagree with the one taken. This clarifies that your concern is the public outcome, and you are not responding from personal opinion. It also signals that you are accountable to the collective, public mission or goals of the organization/group.
  
  
• The person critiqued must acknowledge that he or she has heard.
  
  
• Remember that the purpose of evaluation is to learn from experience. It is not to affix blame.

Citizen politics is being integrated into the restructuring of the Minnesota Extension Service, a very large-scale institution that provides educational services to local communities. Professionals within the institution are redefining their role to include, along with their particular expertise, the ability to work with citizens outside of their organization in such a way that those citizens are challenged to contribute talent and other resources to the problems they face. In this way their work as citizens - for both the professionals and the volunteers and community members - takes on meaning and problems are addressed much more effectively. Asked to adapt to new demands in a changing world, extension staff applied political skills to reposition themselves in the system. Professionals at all levels of the hierarchy were expected to guard their interests while negotiating new roles. But it was clear that their interests included a civic outcome - building on the original, public mission of extension. Connecting their work to the concept of citizenship not only repositioned them within the mission of the organization but also linked them to the larger public. As professionals within extension changed their own roles, they also challenged the organizations' patterns of governance. Leaders learned to map in political terms the power within their organization. These leaders were all using the same concepts of power, politics, and citizenship. Because their efforts led to effective programming with public constituencies, their own internal work was seen as less self-serving. The shift in national mood from a focus on individuals and their rights for services to one in which citizens are challenged to contribute and participate in solving problems helped create the larger political tone necessary to move this work. "The historic approach has been to have all the answers," one extension educator commented. "Now we draw on community leaders and youth to define their needs. We work with people instead of for them." "The concepts of citizen politics are totally integrated into the organization," a program leader said. "How we conduct ourselves, develop plans for work in communities, involve citizens, the language used. When we run into difficulties we go back to citizen politics to identify the problem, bring people to the table, and evaluate." The program leader continued, "Learning the concepts is facilitated by practice. You don't attend a conference or Institute and get all the concepts. It's a process of growth and development. It's more depth than skill. Minnesota Extension Service Practices Politics Minnesota Extension Service Practices Politics by Peg Michels and Kathryn Stoff

"Stories are important resources throughout the process of civic organizing. In civic training and evaluation, stories can clarify and transmit lessons. In public meetings, a well-crafted story can bring to life the subject matter. In the problem definition process, storytelling allows individuals to name their own self-interest and how they perceive the problem, rather than having that assumed by others. When you use or elicit stories, make them clear and to the point. While many stories draw on personal information, the purpose of storytelling in public settings is to transmit information for public use. Create an outline of the information you want reflected in the stories, so all of the storytellers have a similar framework to use. For example, in defining a problem, you might ask the group to craft their stories including the following information: statement of the problem, as the individual sees it; her or his personal experience of the problem; personal benefits and public benefits of working on the problem with others. On newsprint or a chalkboard, make a public record of the stories (or at least their main points). Use the record to begin constructing a map of the interests, relationships, and power around the problem. Storytelling can be useful in evaluating public work experience, for example, at the beginning of a civic training workshop. Participants can pair up to answer the following questions, and then share them with the group; or if it's a smaller group, each person can address the whole. Each person could name which mode their public work falls into (see "Modes of Problem Solving in a Service Society," Chapter 3). Think of an important public event or activity you have participated in. What happened? What made you get involved? What were the barriers to your/your group's success? How did you (or would you) overcome them? What were your/your group's strengths? Who did you work with? Who might you have worked with? What did you learn from this? The Storytelling Craft

The April 29, 1992, rebellion had a profound impact on Los Angeles's 64,000- member Korean community. The Korean Youth and Community Center (KYCC) found itself in a pivotal position as a major social service provider based in Korea Town. KYCC became a lead agency in assisting Korean families whose businesses were targeted in the riot. Crisis counseling, victim assistance, information clearinghouse, language translation, and other tasks were added to an already full plate. A large donation from Korea and numerous foundation grants helped to get the job done, but Bong Hwan Kim, KYCC's executive director, was worried that too few capable leaders in the Korean-American community had surfaced from this tragedy. Leadership development-Kim decided to invest in a long-term leadership development strategy to train the teenagers and young adults who had been looking for ways to direct their energy and interest in community betterment since the riot. Kim called on African-American organizer and educator Tony Massengale, founder of Community CANoDO Center for Civic Capacity Building. Massengale was teamed with Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission Consultant,Jai Lee Wong, an architect of the Black-Korean Alliance. They were assigned the task of developing a youth leadership program that might also introduce skills in organizing. An early conclusion reached by Massengale and Wong was that it would be nearly impossible for KYCC's staff to empower a new generation of youth until they had empowered themselves. They set out to design a comprehensive leadership development initiative not for young people, but for the managers and staff of KYCC. The trainers-Massengale and Wong drew on their collective knowledge and affiliation with effective leadership development programs, including Coro Foundation, Industrial Areas Foundation, Public Allies, and YouthBuild. They framed their experience with citizen politics, conceptualized by Project Public Life, directed by Harry Boyte. They also introduced civic organizing, co-conceptualized by Massengale and Peg Michels, former co-director of Project Public Life. The trainers were organizers first, an approach that always placed them into the power equation of what was going on rather than at a clinical distance. They were hands-on, not just facilitators; they were political and self-interested, not neutral. They aimed to agitate rather than rushing to find synthesis. Their approach was strategically aimed to generate the most intense personal and group responses and provide the opportunity for a cultural shift rather than merely an educative process of transferring information and insights. They used their own style of leadership to model and identify the leadership style of the managers. To those who were defensive, timid, or clinging to comfort zones, the trainers seemed to be destabilizing, disruptive, and difficult to avoid. To those ready to learn, they were teachers, trainers, mentors, and guides. Civic organizing-Drawing on Project Public Life's citizen politics themes, civic organizing focuses on revitalizing the civic mission and mediating role of public institutions and reclaiming the public work of the dedicated professionals and community leaders who work in those institutions. Civic organizing offers a conceptual framework for training and action that incorporates the lessons of good community organizing, but moves beyond the limits of issue-based direct action organizing and advocacy. It also avoids the traps of traditional organizational development consulting that seldom questions whether an institution's public work develops the capacity of its staff and the people receiving its services. An organizing approach is intentionally developmental and capacity building. Civic organizing features a cutting-edge analysis of our knowledge and information-based society and implications for hierarchical, service-based institutions and their professional staffs. It conceives of citizenship as doing politics inside and outside of those institutions - more than voting, or rights, or protest. It is the public work and responsibility of the citizen, not just politicians, to engage in practical public problem solving and democratic governance carried out in everyday settings where we live and work. Therefore civic organizing: Views citizenship not in legal terms but as the public contribution of members of a democratic society. Assesses the strengths and weaknesses of ethnic and cultural contexts, not romanticizing their significance. Examines the structural dimension of communities and service systems to focus on their institutional character. Maps institutional power, its rules, roles, and relationships. Surveys and identifies the self-interest of institutional stakeholders to establish a diverse public leadership base. Creates the public space to deliberate on and determine shared problem definitions and plans of action. Strategically leverages relational power to achieve institutional transformation and the potential for societal change. Civic training-The training intentionally challenged and developed leaders to become social change agents. It emphasized conceptual rather than technical skills and it approached leadership development as a political question to be answered with active citizenship and organizing. They argued against a narrowly defined grassroots activism based on issues, and called for a new civic organizing that links, balances, and integrates the paradoxes of modern public and private life. The new organizing builds on the legacy and learning of the best models of community organizing, exemplified by the Industrial Areas Foundation's balanced emphasis on direct action campaigns as a vehicle for developing leaders through intellectual and conceptual work. Civic organizing employs an organizing approach to the work of service providers, educators, community builders, and social change agents. It focuses on the institutional structure of society, and offers tools with which to map the political rules, roles, and relationships of institutions. It conceives of community not as a romantic, sentimental and amorphous entity, but as also constituted of institutions which have structure, values, and both a private and a public dimension. Community institutions, and the original mission of many public institutions, had a mediating role which helped families and individuals to stand, survive, develop, and ultimately make a contribution to the whole. Training topics included Citizenship, Citizen Politics, Cultural/Inter-cultural Context, Public Leadership, Personal Development, Self-Interest, Diversity, Relational Power, Power Mapping, Individual Meetings, Strategic Planning, Action Campaigns, Disciplined Reflection, Public Evaluation, and Accountability. The response-Critical individual changes took place as a result of the training and mentoring. The leadership concepts challenged certain basic assumptions and helped to position KYCC to participate in developing the next generation of Korean-American leadership in Los Angeles. Comments from the participants included: "I like the language, like power now. I use it all the time." "It was an incredible process. I received a lot of powerful tools. It taught me to think." "I realize I need to change. I was busy for doing's sake." "It challenged my work ... [and I realized the] limitation of the service delivery model." "I ... realized that in order to work in the Korean community, we need to work with [first generation leaders]." "I ... realize the importance of having a mentor." "I see myself as a coach now. I try not to manage all the time." Civic Training in Community Settings: The Korean Youth and Community Center of Los Angeles Civic Organizing in Community Settings by Anthony Massengale and Jai Lee Wong. Adapted from KYCC Leadership Development Project Report and Curriculum Guide, 1994.

Self-interest grows out of the diversity and fluidity of public life. It brings people to the public world. Self-interest is one's motivations, background, hopes; it's what matters to someone. Self-interest locates the individual within their histories, families, beliefs, and practices. In a particular problem-solving context, it is your connection to the problem and your reason for working with diverse others to solve it. The concept of everyone having an interest sounds simple, but it's difficult to practice because it means coming to recognize that others don't have your self-interest as their first concern, that their self-interest is probably different from yours, and that their and your self-interests will change over time. You can discover other people's self-interests by informally listening to and watching them. Think about what they say and how they say it; what their body language says; what they are willing to do; what engages or bores them. Discovering other people's interests happens in stages. You may watch a person first to gauge her or his interests, or you may be referred by someone else who knows the individual's interests well. Once you have decided that person might be useful to the problem-solving work you are doing, you will want to find out more about them and to engage them in the work. Interviewing Interviewing, or doing a one-on-one is another, more formal way of finding out their interests. One-on-ones happen in the context of problem solving: the problem is the reason for your interest in the other person, and you want to find out her or his interests in relationship to that problem. The interview is guided by that larger purpose, it is not haphazard. Interviewing is a way to gain information about the problem (problem definition), about the culture and power surrounding the problem (power mapping), and about potential leaders and strategies for addressing the problem. With some people you may only do one interview. Others - like potential leaders - might require several meetings to engage their interests in the work. The key to interviewing is to listen. You are there to find out what that person knows about the problem, how much, and why they care about it, whether they would be useful to or interested in providing leadership around a problem-solving effort. While you want to be clear about your interest in the problem, you do not want to dominate the conversation. You may not be able to find all this out in one interview. And your meetings should not be marathon sessions, but rather begin with 20 to 30 minutes. Set up another time if you need to. Using information from interviews and other sources, assess the power relationships and the political cultures of the environments you will be working in through political mapping. The self-interests, the power map, and the definition of the problem will change over time and need to be evaluated regularly. Power Mapping Mapping the power relations and interests surrounding your problem: provides a broader understanding of the problem by connecting it to the arenas and communities affecting and affected by it; provides a good foundation for strategizing because it clarifies the possible allies, problem sources, and other players, and their interests and relationships; and should be done early on and reviewed regularly as the work progresses, because your understanding of the problem, power relationships, and interests change over time. A map of the interests around a problem becomes a power map when simple categories become people with names, interests, responsibilities, and relationships to others. Start by naming interest categories around the problem, as we've done here. Then, to the best of your ability, name them and their interests in relationship to the problem, if they have a direct effect on the problem, and whether they are an ally, problem source, opponent, etc.. Think about who you need to meet with to discover or enlist their self-interest. Mark who the key players are in your strategy, and who they affect and are affected by. For example, the principal might think his energy is better spent on other problems, but he has influence with other school staff, teachers, students, and parents; parents in the neighborhood could influence him. The scope of your strategy will determine who you want to work with or target. Interests will change, as will positions as allies and opponents. Review the map regularly as your strategies are designed, implemented, and changed. Discovering Self-Interest: One-on-One Interviews

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