Reflections around some of the challenges that Progressive Organizations are facing nowadays
In our instable, uncertain, and polarized political landscape, progressive organizations play a key role in our ability as humans to deal with the polycrisis and create more inclusive, fair, and healthy ways of living. But so far, it seems they are failing.
As part of our work as consultants, we support many different types of organizations. For years, we have supported Non-Profit Organizations and NGOs (large and small) to effectively deal with their organizational development challenges. In general, most organizations and businesses deal with the same type of challenges, that are centred around strategic, structural, or cultural challenges related to WHAT they do and HOW they do it. Of course, each organization has its individual challenges, and we make it our business to tailor-design our services to meet their specific pain points. Lately, we have been supporting several progressive NGOs and we have discovered that these organizations seem to have an extra layer of challenges due to the political dimension of the work they do.
What is a progressive organization?
The term ‘progressive’ encompasses diverse perspectives, making it challenging to provide an exact definition of what constitutes a progressive organization. Usually, progressive organizations align with the left side of the political spectrum and can be characterized as ‘liberal,’ ‘left-wing,’ or even ‘humanistic.’ A wide range of groups, including centrist environmental advocates, human right defenders, and socialist political parties, may identify themselves as progressive.
As it is implied in the definition, these progressive organizations are heavily politically active and involved and value themes such as economic equality, government intervention, social justice, collective responsibility, environmental stewardship, anti-war and peace advocacy, among others.
We have had the privilege of supporting several of these progressive organizations and while working with them, we have learned that even though they share the same set of values, each organization’s context is unique.
What are the challenges progressive organizations face?
Given each organization’s context, including their local environment, is unique, the majority of these organizations can thrive most when they act locally. But the thing is that nowadays, the problems they are trying to address and solve, transcend national fronters. We are facing what is called a ‘polycrisis’, characterized by a global situation characterized by the simultaneous occurrence of several fundamental crises and breakdowns (e.g. environmental, political, social). These “global” breakdowns can be diverse in nature and when they converge, their combined impact becomes even more dangerous than each individual crisis on its own. A clear example of this is climate change. Not a single country or organization can solve this problem. It needs the coordinated effort of many, many different stakeholders worldwide to make sense of it and be able to move towards solutions.
This is the first challenge that progressive organizations face. Normally, their reach and resources allow them to act locally while the problems they are trying to solve are better addressed globally. This means that if they want to be effective, they need to collaborate and form alliances with other progressive organizations in other parts of the world, and be able to influence decision-makers locally, regionally and globally.
A challenge that we have seen in this context is, that when progressive organizations form different parts of the world come together, each region, and country, have their own priorities, and windows of political opportunity. This means that even if they all agree that climate change is a problem, not all of them see it as a priority and not all of them are willing to act in a coordinated way. This creates a challenge when trying to create global movement towards a solution. This becomes an even bigger problem when instead of climate change, organizations are trying to jointly address very complex situations such as the conflict in the Middle East. Progressive organizations around the world take very different stances on the questions of Israel and Palestine and the acceptable solutions for this conflict. Their individual positions are grounded in their local and historical contexts, which mean they struggle to find common ground to act together.
The second challenge we have perceived is regarding internal and external coherence. What do I mean by that? Progressive organizations are so strongly attached to their ‘values’ (mentioned above) and to their ‘purpose’ which is to contribute to create a more inclusive, participatory, and healthy world. A clear example of the issues progressive organizations spearhead are human right organizations that work pro-democracy in countries where political participation is restricted. What we have seen is that many of the pro-democratic organizations internally function like an autocratic regime, where one person (often a male person) sits on top of a very stiff hierarchy and takes all the important decisions unilaterally. This basic incoherence between their democratic purpose and the autocratic practices has proven to be challenging. What we have seen, whilst working with progressive organizations, is that they are great at raising their voice against inequality and toxic power dynamics but struggle themselves to deal with toxic power dynamics and the inequality inside their structures (e.g. in their own teams, the way they set up their organization and their decision-making processes).
Taking these two challenges into consideration, where should progressive organizations focus to effectively deal with the (global) challenges they are facing? How can they effectively act locally while thinking globally? How can they conciliate their purpose and/or mission with their ways of working?
We have learned that collaboration, inner work, and a long-term vision will help progressive organizations thrive in challenging times. This means that progressive organizations can thrive in today’s politically polarized world if they:
· Strengthen resilience and inner work: Build organizational resilience by fostering a culture of adaptability, encouraging learning from setbacks, and promoting mental, emotional and spiritual well-being amongst staff. Speaking up for marginalized groups requires strong, healthy and purpose-led individuals, teams and organizations.
· Collaborate across regions: Progressive organizations need to learn how to work together across regions. Being open to find common causes and compromises is key for them to come together and come up with real solutions and alternatives to bring their progressive values forward.
· Collaborate across sectors: Breaking the bubble is key for these organizations to innovate, be agile and engage in meaningful dialogue. Progressive organizations can learn from other sectors and from the business world (e.g. technology, healthcare, etc.) to adopt innovative practices. Cross-sector partnerships can lead to fresh ideas and solutions.
· Do Scenario Planning: Develop multiple scenarios for potential future events. Progressive organizations should be able to anticipate various outcomes and have contingency plans in place, as well as designing clear alternatives to take care of the global challenges we are facing today.
In our instable, uncertain, and polarized political landscape, progressive organizations play a key role in our ability as humans to deal with the polycrisis and create a much more inclusive, fair, and healthy was of living. But in order for them to be able to contribute to the creation of a fairer, healthier and more inclusive world, they need to step up, learn how to come together and lead by example.
We at P+M are passionate about being a life-affirming organization and supporting organizations that have life-affirming purposes and missions. If you or someone you know, is working in /leading an organization that is inspired by a life-affirming purpose, and would like to know more about our experience, we would be open to talk about how we can support each other in this mission.
