Policy. Process. Politics.
When I rattle off those three P’s of successful advocacy, how do you rate your ability to both understand and balance all three? From my view, most people can look to the list and say they’re confident about one of the three. Some people can balance two of the three. Only a handful are actively working to master both understanding and balancing the demands of all three.
It’s that last group who find themselves most consistently in moments of opportunity to advance their agendas – to move the needle on the issues important to them. But with so many of us coming up short on achieving that mastery and balance, the question must be: how do we get better? How do we, as volunteer advocates, grow and improve?
Well, first off, we have to acknowledge what we’re really talking about:
Policy
In all of our own lives, we see clear problems and straightforward solutions. But to be clear, what we mean when we say things like “common sense” solutions, we really mean “common sense solutions to people who think like me.” We all know the life and experience immediately in front of us. Shaped by our community, our environment, our career, we become highly confident in our own approaches to solving problems. But those solutions fit that highly localized experience. In the world of advocacy, we are forced into the friction points where our solutions meet other people’s experiences.
It’s bound to happen at every level of society. Even in small communities, spats arise between local elected officials, and their supporters, because of fundamental differences in how we think problems should be solved. Want proof? Go to a local zoning committee meeting – or better yet a local school board meeting.
Good mastery of policy development depends on our ability to evolve our policy solutions to the time and place of the broader debate. This means that, fundamentally, compromise cannot be a dirty word in our work. Principles and goals can guide us, but we have to be willing to accept incremental wins that move us closer to the goal line. Being strong in this P doesn’t require achieving perfection, it requires flexibility.
Process
If understanding our own solutions is where many feel confident, I’d say the process of public policy is where most folks feel the ground shifting beneath their feet. Let’s face it, we don’t do a good job getting the average person informed on how public policy happens beyond the Schoolhouse Rock song. Sadly, that song leaves out a great deal of the detail – and we all know the devil is in the details.
Better understanding the process of public policy is how we get better at timing. Understanding the process helps us keep our powder dry for the moments that really matter. It’s how we time calls to action to our networks that allow us to maximize the impact of the public voice. It’s how we avoid wasting our volunteers’ time and causing them to burnout on the churn of public issues.
But individuals aren’t in a position to track and ultimately master the process. We have our own lives to tend to after all. We have our own businesses, our own families, our own challenges. That’s where the power of advocacy communities comes in to play. When we align ourselves with others committed to the same policy solution goals, we fill a critical competency gap for ourselves. Those organizations – trade associations, non-profits, etc. – become force multipliers for advancing the causes that really matter to us. They help us navigate the details – details like the committee process that so often gums up the works. They help us engage with decision makers at the right moment. And they help us maintain our endurance to stay in the fight.
Politics
What if I told you that it wasn’t just about conservative vs. liberal, or Democrat vs. Republican?
Politics is the debate or conflict among individuals or parties jockeying to achieve power. That distinction is important. Often times, the process by which we achieve authority sharing within public institutions depends a lot less on our preferred political party, and a great deal more on the relationships between individuals within those institutions.
Within leadership teams in legislatures (both state and federal), within committees, within caucuses these personal relationship dynamics drive aspects of the process. Those with the gavel can both accelerate or stymie the process. Those out of power can create points of contention on major issues that force tangential debates and derail progress. Politics within public advocacy is really the dynamic of people within public advocacy.
We as individual advocates are pressed to understand these interpersonal dynamics. We’re challenged to learn the who’s who and the who hates who of it all. Again, this is where surrounding ourselves with an advocacy team makes all the difference.
How do we get it right?
I hope this short piece reminded you of the intricacies of advocating for our causes. Each one of the three P’s – while easy to understand on the surface – reveals layers of complexity. We get our work in advocacy right by embracing that complexity as what it really is: an art, not a science. We can’t easily measure our impact, our progress, or our output. It’s more than just “passed a bill.” That metric can leave you in the lurch for a long while. We get it right by sussing out the necessary evolutions of our policy proposals, navigating the shifting sands of the process, and keeping our finger on the pulse of interpersonal relationships.
Getting advocacy right looks a lot more like flowing between each of these three pillars and finding where we are lacking in a given moment. It looks a lot more like surrounding ourselves with people who think differently than we do. And it looks a lot more like adjusting our strategies in real time as we continually receive feedback from the process. The best way to do all of those is simple: don’t go it alone. Find the individuals and organizations working to navigate it all together, and you’ll find yourself getting better along the way.
Part of the Possible 