Let others speak through you

Let's talk about a cool trick I learned in organizing, which can be also reused in daily social life.

Sometimes in organizing you have to have conversations or exchanges that are difficult, challenging, or even just annoying. It might be something you don't want to deal with, or you think you're not the right person to do the job, because it's not your vibe, you don't have the right emotional tools, or, most likely, you're just afraid of exposing yourself.

You have an idea about yourself that doesn't match the person you need to be in such a conversation. Behaving in a certain way would make you feel vulnerable, or perhaps fake.

The solution is: don't be that person, but be somebody else. Think of another person that would be great at handling the situation and let them speak through your mouth. We all know that person who is always upbeat and great at motivating others. We also know one or two authoritative and reliable mates who can give vision and clarity. Or maybe a caring grandparent can do the job.

Think of what would they say. How would they approach the subject? Even the tone of voice and the body language matter. Let their words flow.

Regardless, being "possessed" by others when dealing with difficult situations can ease the burden, especially in organizing where this is a regular occurrence, and the group will benefit from it more than you would as an individual.

If you practice this technique, come back to this message and comment with your experience.

#orgschool

“Part of the world has resolutely turned in the direction of the service of goods, thereby rejecting everything that has to do with the relationship of man to desire – it is what is known as the post-revolutionary perspective.

The only things to be said is that people don’t seem to have realised that, by formulating things in this way, one is simply perpetuating the eternal tradition of power, namely, ‘Let’s keep on working, and as far as desire is concerned, come back later’.”

Jacques Lacan, Seminar VII, The Ethics of Psychoanalysis, page 318

Intermezzo musicale (just in case)

https://youtu.be/-stFNU1wv_c

Communes are the idea of community of people who never had a community. It's like how Bing Bang Theory is how stupid people imagine intelligent people to be.

Communes are just families but bigger, and family is the only community most modern people have experienced, so it's the only one they aim to reproduce.

Unions not having their own dark rooms like clubs do is a failure of the Imagination

Train the trainers

Any organization, of any kind, that aims to be effective and sustainable on the long run must have a clear path to train their members. Organizational theory in the last few decades has been increasingly moving the learning process towards the core of organizational models, because it's the best tool to address complexity and achieve decentralization.

What does it mean in practice? It means that a conspicuous part of the resources of the organization are spent expanding the skills of its members, so that they don't need to depend on other parts of the organization to do their tasks. Give an organizers a fish and they will eat for one day and bla bla bla.

Now, when you enter a political organization, even a small one, ask how learning is thought about and acted upon. Do they have a standardized base training? Do they do onboardings? How often? Are there resource lists to study independently? Are processes documented? What practices do they transfer with direct practice? Do they do shadowing? Do they have a 1-on-1 coaching system to pair newcomers to veterans?

The true marker of an organization, a movement or a political ecosystem that can have a chance at having impact on scaling is not just having a good training program, but to "train the trainers". When an organization is concerned with making its knowledge diffused and reproducible at an increasingly broader scale, you understand you're in the right place. Just training people is not enough, because the existing trainers will eventually become the bottleneck.

On the other side, when you're participating in some political training, workshop, or lecture, always think: would I be able to teach this on my own? What would I need? What am I missing? What would I do differently? Would the teacher be open to me reaching out for support?

#orgschool

Can che abbaia non dorme