Is movement building an art or a science?  This question could be more precisely asked: Is successful movement building guided by a set of universal rules, or is successful movement building guided by instinct, personal experience, and continual revision?

As is the case for many worthwhile questions, the answer is yes.  Movement building is both an art and a science.  There certainly are universal rules that increase your chances of successful movement building.  And those “artsy activities” — following instinct, learning from personal experience, and continually revising your strategy — are three of those (less specific than many scientists would like) rules. So what other rules are there for successful movement building?

Movement Building Tips

Movement building needs to be planned. There is a saying, “Failing to plan is just planning to fail.” This applies to movement building, too.  You always need to have a vision of where you’re going and a strategic plan for how you are going to get there.

Movement building requires revising your strategy. If the previous requirement for careful and thorough planning represents science, this rule represents art. Circumstances will change, opportunities will open, and obstacles will arise.  You need to be open to adjusting your movement building plan accordingly.

Movement building is momentum building . Building a movement is a continuous, ever-growing undertaking.  You need to use each achievement — each piece of media coverage, each event, even each word of mouth discussion — as the foundation for the next achievement.  Successful movement building means keeping that snowball rolling.

Movement building involves collaboration. Some would argue that collaboration is synonymous with movement building.  Including another organization in your effort — which brings its membership and its organizational capacity to the table — is a much faster way to grow than recruiting each of those individuals yourself.  Expanding your coalition will entail challenges such as more decision makers and divergent goals, but careful collaboration is a key to successful movement building.

Movement building requires patience and determination. As noted above, movement building is momentum building, and momentum building is not a once-and-done activity.  To succeed, you will need to be committed.  You are probably familiar with the concept of the long-tail in sales, but movement building has what I like to call the Wide Tail.  Your movement will grow in size and impact over time, and you will need to have the determination to stick in there through the growing process if you want to see your movement succeed.

There are many, many more tips for movement building, and I will be getting to them in future articles.  But for now, what are some of the other biggest ones that we should include?  Put them in the comments below.

Also, I wanted to let everyone know that to accommodate other projects the posting schedule for Movement Builders is going to change to Tuesday and Thursday of every week. As soon as the schedule permits, we will switch back to the Monday, Wednesday, Friday theme that you all know and love.