I2M's blog

I have the privilege to collaborate with smart clients. As I help them achieve their highest priority grassroots and PAC outcomes, I have observed certain habits and work practices of my more successful clients. I’m not a rocket scientist, but I am adept at observation, detecting patterns, and problem solving based on those observations.

Some of the most delight-inducing observations are the success patterns among high-achieving grassroots and PAC leaders. These “immutable truths” are a reflection of what I have observed.

Probably not, according to a survey by the Congressional Management Foundation. Most Congressional staffers polled – 75 percent – said they believe the cookie-cutter e-mails from constituents are sent without the constituents’ knowledge.

The staffers’ skepticism over the e-mails may be related to findings from another CMF survey. That survey found that the number of letters and e-mails received by Congress has quadrupled in the past 10 years. Meanwhile, the number of people hired to read them has stayed the same.

So how do you start to build a relationship with someone you actively oppose? First, you have to get out and about. Many sincere grassroots influencers want to remain comfortable. That’s a problem, because you can’t build the kind of relationships that powerful people require from behind your computer. They want to see you in person.

In a previous post, I talked about social loafing. Now I’m going to talk about how we change the social loafing dynamic.

Identify Contributions

Identify team member contributions. What have coalition members done to advance the cause? Be specific, and enumerate contributions that you want duplicated. Are the contributions distributed to the coalition members or posted on an easily accessible Web site?

Well, I admit to being an extremely biased observer, but here are some of my “keeper” observations from the 2009 confab, followed by comments from the conference attendees.

First, the people who attend I2M truly are “different.” They don’t engage in butt-covering conversations, they are secure enough to be candid and openly discuss what’s working and what’s not, they are willing to challenge each other, think differently, and take prudent risks to move forward (not that I feel strongly about that or anything).

The results of the following research have been featured in many of my advocacy workshops, as well as various national and regional publications.

In our initial research review, we saw that the specific word “grassroots” was the second highest response as one of the habits of an effective advocacy group. However, upon further review of the responses, we noted that there were numerous responses such as: “active membership,” “lots of members”, and “regular people” that refer to grassroots.