My Life. My neighborhood. Our world.

There is both art and skill in being a successful grassroots organizer. The right mix of passion and delivery, a keen understanding of the Big Picture, and a clear identification of all the stakeholders are key ingredients for success. Gaining support from diverse individuals and groups who do not share common ground is a challenging and complex social process. And, trying to move a stalwart opponent to become a supporter can be highly contentious and terribly frustrating.

There are different strategies and tactics you can use in grassroots organizing. Below is a particularly successful process for influencing others when you have no power, money or prestige. As my blog unrolls over the next few weeks, I'll add more about this process, and describe more fully the 18 steps and how to do them.

A Win-Win Community-Focused Organizing Process

Phase One. Choose an Issue, Define Your Agenda

1. Identify issues of greatest interest and potential for success
2. Select one key issue that inspires passion
3. Research the issue fully to understand the big picture
4. Map the issue space to identify related issues and to focus your agenda

Phase Two. Identify Network Resources, Determine Support

5. Map the social network of people related to the issue
6. Map the social networks of group members' personal connections
7. Determine who to approach for support
8. Approach each person as a potential ally
9. Discover the "currencies" of each potential ally
10. Identify the natural advantages and assets of every member of your group

Phase Three. Propose your Agenda

11. Develop a plan of strategies and tactics
12. Present your agenda as a win-win exchange
13. Frame your message to generate interest

Phase Four. Expand Your Network

14. Use all media channels to promote your agenda
15. Expand resources by helping others accomplish their agendas
16. Build credibility through hard work and incremental success
17. Develop a Plan A, and alternative Plans B, C…
18. Learn from others

Although presented as a step-by-step approach, the actual process involves four general phases:

• Choosing
• Identifying
• Proposing
• Expanding

Each phase has a particular set of steps, but you really do not march from step 1 to step 18 in any kind of straight line, checking off a step and calling it "done." As you organize your agenda, develop a plan, and try various strategies and tactics, you will go back and forth between the steps recommended in this grassroots process. Use the 18 steps as a guide.

There is no "one right way" to accomplish your grassroots goals. The trial and error of your boots on the grass will help refine the strategies and tactics that move your agenda forward. But how you operate is as important to your overall success as to what you accomplish at the end. The means you use to accomplish your agenda can have long term positive or negative effect.

The "influence without authority" (IWA) process is very much a Win-Win rather than a Win-Lose process. As a grassroots process always in search of WIN-WIN Solutions organizers focus on:

• Dialog versus Demand
• Listening versus Assuming
• Facts versus Opinions
• Education versus Confrontation
• Alliance versus Competition
• Collaboration versus Compromise
• Innovating outside the box versus new ways to be inside
• Many paths versus one “right way”
• Daring to be different versus don’t make waves

The IWA Win-Win Process may appear to be too soft for activists who believe that power and money must be met with confrontation and demand. For others, the process may appear too rigorous for working at the grassroots level where seat-of-the-pants activism may appear to need less planning and just a lot more doing. In reality it is a very powerful process that can increase your chances of success and significantly shorten the time it takes to reach your agenda goals.

The ability to influence others to support our own agendas becomes much more compelling if we can show our adversaries and potential allies that we are not looking for a Win-Lose solution. Rather. we are always looking for that Win-Win sweet spot where nobody Loses and everybody Wins.

"How in the heck can we do that?" you ask. Stay tuned to this blog space - we'll be walking through the process together -- step by step. :-)

The Win-Win grassroots advocacy process can be used on any agenda, at any level of activity, anywhere in the world. To see how it is being used to influence wind power agendas, click here to go to the Wind Project Community Organizing blog site.