Hello friends,
This week, my team and I are kicking off a deeper dive into power mapping. Power mapping is a way of working out who is aligned with the change you want to see in the world, who opposes it, and how much influence each entity can bring to bear. As with any strategy tool I can think of, there are a variety of different approaches, styles, and templates. Some are functionally interchangeable, while others create very different products and experiences. Sometimes I find such multiplicity to be more frustrating than useful, but of course there’s more than one way through the woods.
Still, revisiting the fundamentals is useful. I really enjoyed the chance to get into the weeds about precisely what we mean by “power over”, “power to”, “power with”, and “power within.” We can (and should!) debate how exactly how we operationalize this concept. But the abuse of power we’re experiencing right now is anything but academic.
This was Week 35. The stakes are terribly high: let’s face them.
At the top of this post, I wrote about the idea of “many paths through the woods.” A colleague introduced me to a technical word for this last week: equifinality is about achieving the same outcome from diverse trajectories or different starting spots.
I believe we need to pursue our own paths, using our own strengths, in our own contexts. I wish breaking things wasn’t so easy, I wish building them wasn’t so hard. I really wish shit-talking competitors just didn’t work. And oh how I wish the people with the most power would actually use it instead of scrabbling for cover. To quote Judith Butler, “It is important to refuse the notion that this is just how things are right now, invoking a feckless realpolitik that justifies complicity with a brutal and rising authoritarianism.”
So instead of railing against the ways I see us falling short, I’m going to hold tighter to the principle of equifinality. I’ll keep doing my level best to understand what different groups are trying to do, and to highlight the work that inspires me.
This week, I’m excited about the vision Stand Together for Higher Ed has for building a sector-wide response. Their diagnosis of our problems in higher ed includes the diminished power that faculty and staff have on their own campuses. Their vision of a national network of chapters is specifically grounded in labor organizing. I specifically like that they are calling on people on those whose citizenship status and tenure or relative job security give them more safety to take on more of the risk. I also like that they named community colleges in the same breath as big state schools and the Ivy League in our discussion. They’re recently launched, and their way isn’t the only way, but I think it’s a promising one. Maybe they’re what you’ve been looking for?
Whatever it is, I hope you find it, and then I hope you hold on to it, but not too tight. I hope you help others who’ve found a different way. Call it community, call it equifinality, or call it “Do not split” like the Hong Kong protestors did. It’s how we’ll find our way out of the woods.
Liz