6 THE SHEER WILL STRATEGY
Sometimes the most effective strategy is simply to be the last person standing. Whether it’s passing legislation, gaining a promotion, or working through a difficult time with a business or personal partner, sometimes you end up getting what you want because you didn’t give up when everyone around you did. I’m not advocating simply digging in your heels at the expense of everything else we’ve talked about so far. You still have to do the rest of the work: build deep relationships by developing common ground, putting aside differences, and developing an ask or value proposition that is meaningful and that you can stand behind. However, sometimes achieving success comes down to simply having more passion for the job at hand than anyone else and finding the ability to draw on that passion in a resourceful and creative way. It also requires an unconditional willingness to try again when you are met with defeat.
The sheer will to get something done when all around you have given up is a quality that can be fueled by your anger; in these moments we understand that anger truly is a gift. This energy force keeps us going but requires constant balance. What separates the people who give up from those who keep going is how they hold their anger. The ones who have the vision and see what’s in front of them can say, “I understand what it’s going to take, so let’s fasten our seat belts and get to work.” I call this the sheer will strategy. No matter what you want, there will always be obstacles in your way. Problems can arise from other people’s best intentions. The sheer will strategy is really about acknowledging these obstacles, accepting the fact that the only way forward is to overcome the complications, and finding the will to do just that despite your anger.
This strategy starts with an honest evaluation of what you want and what’s in your way. If you can assess obstacles correctly, you can develop a strategy for dealing with them one at a time. They might be resolved through compromise or simply by the passing of time. Or you might decide that the right thing for you to do is to not compromise, to not take less than you deserve. With patience and perseverance, you can outlast setbacks and move your agenda along.
THE FIGHT FOR MARRIAGE EQUALITY
Mary Bonauto was the first attorney to take on the legal challenges of marriage equality. She brought the case of Goodridge v. Department of Public Health to the Massachusetts courts in 2004. Mary was up against enormous odds; not only did she face opposition from those who were completely against marriage equality, she faced significant pushback from the LGBT community as well. At that time, the pervasive belief in the LGBT community was that the American public was not ready to see a marriage equality case brought to court. There was anxiety within the community that if Mary won the case, there would be a nationwide backlash against the LGBT community. Yet she had the will and the fortitude to go against the consensus.
Mary also had a visionary, long-term view, which ultimately proved to be the accurate one. Even though she agreed with the LGBT community’s prediction, she understood that the path before us would include soaring victories and devastating loss—three steps forward followed by two steps back. This is in fact the historic way that sweeping social change happened for LGBT equality. There wasn’t an easier way and there never would be. So she moved forward. Although there are many heroes and trailblazers in the fight for marriage equality, Mary’s sheer will, more than anything else, is what got us where we are today. I once heard her say: “I understand that this case and its aftermath will chart the course for marriage [equality] moving forward. There will be many setbacks, and it will certainly be a decade at least before all LGBT Americans experience full marriage equality.” I found this to be a useful way to put the fight into context.
During these early years, I frequently talked about the fact that we were in a marriage decade. The fight would indeed be long and hard, lasting more than ten years. I was surprised, however, when members of the LGBT community criticized this view, diagnosing it as a passive reaction. “Ten years?” was the common refrain. “There must be a better or a faster way forward.” As Mary Bonauto predicted, there was a backlash: immediately following the Massachusetts court’s decision, thirteen other states passed bans on same-sex marriage. In 2005 only 30 percent of Americans supported marriage equality. Within six years, similar bans were enacted in almost thirty states. For the next few years, the LGBT community was panic-stricken. Oh my god, this is terrible. What have we done? Even our allies told us that they were finding marriage equality to be the third rail of American politics. “It’s a horrible issue,” we heard from them. “It’s working against all the other great stuff you’ve been fighting for, and it’s making your allies lose elections.” The marriage bans were turning out historic numbers of anti-LGBT voters, who in turn voted against our allies.
Yet had Mary Bonauto listened to the naysayers and not taken that first important step, the rest of what HRC and the LGBT community gained regarding marriage equality would never have happened, including the Supreme Court’s 2014 decision to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and ultimately its 2015 ruling that the denial of full marriage equality was in fact unconstitutional. Appropriately, Mary argued that final case before the Supreme Court; as the fate of the entire LGBT community rested on her shoulders, she drew on that same sheer will.
There were many similar stories over the course of the marriage decade. State by state we fought in the legislature, in the courts, and at the ballot box. We had victories and defeats. When the New York State Legislature first voted for marriage equality in 2009, we lost in a tragic way, only to win the second time around. The first vote occurred at a time when many legislators were unwilling to take a position on marriage equality. They weren’t quite for it or felt that to come out in support might be a political liability in their districts, yet they were also smart enough to recognize where public opinion was moving. Many legislators recognized that their legacies might suffer depending on their vote. Many of them said privately that although they were not inclined to support marriage equality, their children (or in some cases their grandchildren) were aghast at the possibility that they might vote against it.
The only solution, in the minds of these legislators, was to simply not bring this issue to a vote. One of the realities about voting in Congress or in a state legislature is that you never bring a vote to the floor without a solid understanding of the outcome. If you watch CSPAN, you’ll rarely see a vote taken where everyone is standing around, scratching their heads and saying, “I can’t believe we lost.” That never happens because the majority whip’s job is to know the vote count before they go to the floor. If the whip sees a vote going against the plan, he or she will pull it off the floor. In New York we were at a standoff, until Alan van Capelle, then head of the Empire State Pride Agenda (New York’s largest LGBT civil rights organization), and other New York activists agreed that it was time to push for a vote. Our only option was to roll the dice and hope that because of the power of the moment, the strength of the arguments, and the context of history, these legislators would step up and do the right thing.
Yet in December of 2009 we lost: we thought we were poised for a narrow victory, but the final vote count was 38 to 24. The margin of defeat probably would have been smaller, but as is often the case in these situations, once those on the fence see the bill headed for defeat, they see no reason to vote against the ultimate outcome. Either way, we ended up needing to change the vote of at least six senators to be successful the next time. It was heartbreaking. We saw that standing on the right side of history simply wasn’t enough. Although this moment might have been characterized as a failure, it was actually an inevitable step that forced the hands of the legislators and caused them to record for history where they stood. In addition, the actual vote provided us with a clear road map to victory next time.
After that vote in 2009, we held a big meeting of HRC supporters in New York. There were many questions about how we should move forward. My message was straightforward: “We lost by six votes. Change the minds of the legislators we think we can. And if we can’t, then we’ll replace them in the next election. If we do our jobs correctly, there will be another vote after the next election and this time we’ll win.” The first comment I heard was, “That’s the best thing you could come up with?” In other words, a fourth grader could have come up with the same strategy: if somebody doesn’t vote the right way, you replace them. The obstacles were in plain sight, but our supporters just couldn’t believe that this long-term plan was the only way. They were disappointed and heartbroken, and this path seemed so daunting. The younger volunteers were expecting something more revolutionary, as if there were a transformative speech to be given. But no other path would lead us to the outcome we sought. While expanded efforts coupled with inspirational and amazing speeches that gave people a renewed sense of hope would be necessary, they weren’t mutually exclusive to the work I had laid out.
Not surprisingly, there was a degree of anger following the 2009 defeat. I found myself becoming angry as well. The magic wand approach simply wasn’t realistic. You know, the one where I come to New York, wave around my magic wand, and voilà we have marriage equality. When I checked my own disappointment and fury, however, I knew that what the community needed was reassurance, a reminder that taking the long view would get us where we needed to go. One of the many unsung heroes in that New York fight was Patty Ellis, a member of the HRC steering committee from Long Island. In a quiet moment at the end of the meeting, when it was clear there was not much else to say, she rallied the troops. I can still hear Patty’s voice: “Okay. I think we’ve got it. We all know what we need to do. We have two years to do it; let’s go.”
Like any other moment of sweeping historic social change, mapping out a long-term plan comes with its own set of challenges. We live in a fast-paced, get-it-done-now, break-all-the-rules world. And sometimes this mind-set creates change. The challenge, though, is knowing which path to take depending on the situation. It’s much easier and certainly feels a lot better to follow the lead of the person who tells you that there is an easier, faster way. It’s never any fun to be the one who says, in this case, “Nope, there isn’t a faster way.” When it came to the fight for marriage equality and other measures of LGBT equality, bloggers and critics often latched onto my notion of “the marriage decade.” They yearned for someone to simply step forward and speak the words that would change everything: a gay Martin Luther King Jr. But the times were different and the diverse nature of the LGBT community was such that it was highly unlikely that a compelling single voice had the potential to be unifying. If that voice existed, we would have heard from him or her before.
The multitude of voices that mattered in the fight for marriage equality were the couples all across the country telling their stories, helping their friends, neighbors, and elected officials to understand just how important the right to full marriage equality was. Just as was the case in repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, the country had to hear from the brave men and women who were serving or had served in silence, and wanted nothing more than to continue to serve their country.
Looking back, the biggest mistake I made was the way I responded to my critics. Instead of responding to the complaints about how long marriage equality was taking, I tried to compel people to just do the work of making the fight take less time. For many, however, my plea was at odds with the anger and frustration they were justifiably feeling. Perhaps my rhetoric might have sounded too much like we were counseling people to be patient; I now understand this was the equivalent to that annoying friend who tells you when you’re upset to just relax, that everything will get better. People expected me to express my anger to make a point, to intensify the message to those who had failed us that we would not forget. I was so focused on the daunting path forward and laying out what the next steps would be. In retrospect, I should have shown my own anger more. Simply validating people’s passion, frustration, and disappointment could have helped them to understand that I felt it as well. Perhaps that could have had a healing effect and helped people move on to the work ahead.
Two years later, in June 2011, marriage equality prevailed in the New York State Legislature. This victory was one of the great stories of a diverse group of activists simply doing what needed to be done. Day after day they lobbied and campaigned, and slowly but surely they succeeded in changing the minds of legislators or replacing those who had refused to budge to our agenda. While this was one of the final victories I had the opportunity to celebrate during my tenure at the Human Rights Campaign, I’ve carried lessons from this experience with me in my personal and professional life. Whenever someone expresses anger over something deeply disappointing, and I have already moved on in my head to a solution, I now pause to acknowledge and validate their anger.
LETTING YOUR ANGER OUT
Many people have difficulty taking the long view, and if you are one of them, this strategy may not work for you. Our collective attention span is short. Everybody truly does have their own agenda, and sometimes when they’re faced with an obstacle, they may well turn away and say, “This project is too hard” or “I can’t figure out a way to get to the other side.” The truth is, there is no room for impatience in the sheer will strategy: any type of change takes time and lots of hard work. Sometimes there really is no another way to get what you want than to patiently plod along your course. Often the journey is not glamorous. There were plenty of times during the fight for LGBT equality when I had to send a team out into the field to knock on doors, pass out leaflets, organize lobby days, make phone calls, and do grassroots organizing. The victory parties were few and far between.
Sometimes, when you look at the obstacles in front of you—all the stuff that stands in the way of getting what you want, all the work it’s going to take—it’s hard not to think that there must be another way. That is completely understandable, because the path toward victory represents lots of boring, tedious, hard work. Accepting that path, and the work that goes with it, rolling up your sleeves and preparing to do the hard work with your head down for as long as it takes, does not mean that you lack creativity or a revolutionary approach. There will likely be some around you who want to take the course of “burning down the buildings,” as I like to call it. Sometimes making a lot of noise, blowing everything up and finding a faster, more out-of-the-box way will work, but usually it won’t. Even if that’s part of the strategy, it is almost never successful without the hard work that must be done alongside the burning buildings.
The history of the United States is marked by countless fights for social change to expand the rights of marginalized groups. In each of these fights, there have been equal measures of civil discourse and civil disobedience. While both are necessary, the fight won’t succeed unless those advancing each effort recognizes the importance of the other. In the fight to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, for example, the final months of work in front of us seemed endless. We had a president who was poised to sign the legislation, had passed the bill successfully through the U.S. House, but faced a Senate where we were six votes short. All of our efforts needed to be focused on these six individuals. This meant endless lobby visits by the brave service members who had selflessly volunteered to do whatever it took. It meant coordinating mass phone calls into congressional offices, writing op-eds in home newspapers, raising money to place ads on television and on the radio. Essentially, we were doing whatever we needed to change these six Senate “no” votes to “yes.” We followed the lead of our allies on Capitol Hill and took the direction and cues from the Senators who supported our cause, as they had the greatest insight into what it would take to move their reluctant fellow Senators.
Understandably, many in the LGBT community were nervous and frustrated. The work of repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell had essentially been going on since the measure had been implemented during President Bill Clinton’s first year in office. To many, the work that we had mapped out seemed unremarkable and hinged on closed-door meetings between Senators, a small group of activists, and the White House. Some activists felt that the strategy wasn’t transparent enough for the whole community to participate. Yet if we were going to be successful, these tactics mattered; they were central to getting to the vote count we needed. A familiar refrain was: “There must be another, easier way, or one that at the very least makes us all feel better about what we’re doing.”
Lieutenant Dan Choi, an infantry officer in the U.S. Army, felt strongly that there was another way. A grassroots activist, he had become involved with an organization called Get Equal. They felt strongly that the only way to get us over the finish line in repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was to engage in civil disobedience. While I agreed with their overarching argument, I initially felt that big parts of their strategy were misplaced. On separate occasions, Dan and fellow veterans chained themselves to the White House fence, sending a clear message to the president that he wasn’t doing enough. The president and our allies in the White House were, quite frankly, confused and annoyed. We were all working together around the clock trying to move six senators, and they couldn’t understand why the focus of Dan’s actions wasn’t instead directed at one of these senators. While Dan’s actions got the cause—and himself—a lot of attention, they ultimately caused other challenges. The civil disobedience didn’t help us with our allies in the military either; they felt that Dan’s behavior, in uniform, was disrespectful. But I also understood that there were so many in the LGBT community who thought, I don’t know if it’s a good idea or not, but Dan Choi is making me feel better because he’s doing it.
Over the course of the LGBT rights movement, when we have undertaken civil disobedience that has been well thought out and strategically centered, it has often been the single most important source of progress. During the height of the AIDS epidemic, for example, acts of civil disobedience were used by groups like ACT UP to raise awareness and bring attention to the fact that people were dying and no one was doing anything about it. President Ronald Reagan infamously (and shamefully) refused to say the word “AIDS.” Funding for research and care in Congress was non-existent at the time, except for funds that some heroic gay Capitol Hill staff members were able to secretly sneak into bills. Hospitals were turning away dying men. So standing hand in hand across the Brooklyn Bridge, stopping traffic and forcing people to actually see what AIDS looked like was the best and most important thing to do at the time. The actions of ACT UP often looked like chaos from the outside, but there was an unbelievably important strategic center to the organization.
So, yes, sometimes burning down the buildings does work, when it’s the right place and the right time. But this strategy rarely stands on its own; it is most successful when it honors and coordinates with all of the important (but perhaps less dramatic) work that goes into creating lasting social and legislative change. There’s a big difference between civil disobedience and the search for a quick fix. We would have been happy if any of our battles could have been resolved with a quick fix, but that opportunity never presented itself. For instance, the small victory of getting some religious leaders to leave hateful antigay rhetoric out of their sermons took nearly a decade. We had to map out a broad strategy to reverse discrimination on a micro scale by attacking discrimination in general, with the long-term aim of shifting people’s attitudes about gay marriage. Each of these small steps were easier than tackling the large problem and helped illustrate the roadmap to achieving full equality to the LGBT community until we could get everything we wanted.
SETTING GOALS WITH A LONG-TERM VIEW
Where you want to end up, in your career and in your personal life, are your long-term goals. Reaching these milestones requires an honest assessment of what it is going to take to get there as well as a willingness to stick to your plan. When we talk about long-term career and personal goals that can take years or even decades, the sheer will to stay with your plan can be daunting. There will be times when you’ll be tempted to switch to an easier path or adjust your sails to what you may feel is a more attainable goal. That will be your decision to make. Quality of life, work-life balance, and how your priorities change over the course of your life may absolutely justify changing your goals. Getting where you want to go simply takes a long time. It requires more steps than you may have initially thought, but do not be deterred. Your greatest regret later in life, if you find yourself in a significantly different place than where you thought you would be, facing the realization that you have not reached your goals, could be because you took what seemed at the time to be a shortcut.
When I worked at EMILY’s List, one of my responsibilities was to travel around the country and talk to women about their desire to run for congressional office. These women were business leaders, teachers, lawyers, county commissioners, and small town mayors. My job was to help them formulate a political career path. I would remind them that there were typically two kinds of people who consider a run for political office: those who want the title and those who care about the issues (better schools, the environment, and so on). I found that those who were looking for ways to advance their cause, searching for a bigger platform from which to do this work, were much more likely to be elected than those who simply wanted a political title, even though that goal was much more clearly defined. In other words, people seeking public office are generally much more successful when their goal is to do something rather than to be something.
For those who expressed a desire to hold public office, I would challenge them on their motivation. I would help them determine what issues they were passionate about and try to tease out a catalyst for their candidacy. Sometimes I was successful and sometimes I wasn’t. Inevitably, the candidacies that never got off the ground were the ones who took a look at the timeline and concluded that the time and effort was simply too much. Those who were already committed to doing good work in the name of public service were not afraid of hard work or the difficult path. Although it may have taken ten or twenty years to get there, some of these women—like Claire McCaskill from Missouri and Debbie Stabenow from Michigan—serve in the U.S. Senate today.
The temptations to be driven by what you want to be, how much money you want to make, or which office you want to end up sitting in are a natural part of the human condition. But to be motivated by your passions and what you want to accomplish is not only a more authentic way to pursue your goals, it’s also a more successful path. I went to Kansas in 1994 to meet with that state’s insurance commissioner, Kathleen Sebelius. She was a dynamic leader, dedicated to public service, well liked and universally respected. There was a lot of talk in national political circles about her running for higher office. I remember talking to Kathleen about a run either for the Senate or for governor of Kansas. Her personal interest was in improving access to healthcare and in the health and welfare of the people of her state. She would run when the time was right, she told me, and would choose the race that offered her the best opportunity to advance her agenda. It wasn’t until 2002 that she ran for governor of Kansas—and won. This was no small task for a pro-choice Democratic woman in a state like Kansas. President Obama ultimately chose Kathleen to be his first secretary of Health and Human Services; she served in this role from 2009 to 2014 and was a crucial part of the fight to pass the historic Affordable Care Act.
TAKING THE LONG VIEW OF LIFE
It’s human nature to hope for a different, easier path toward advancement in the workplace, but more often than not, there just isn’t another way forward. We live in a world where time, information, and career opportunities seem to fly by at a much faster pace, but don’t let that reality derail you from the authentic, long-term path you may need to be on. If your goal is to be part of the decision-making inner circle, wherever your inner circle exists, it’s going to take time. You’ll be included when you have the right level of experience. Looking around your office may offer clues about when that might be. If the inner circle is comprised of people who have been at the company for ten years, that’s how long it’s going to take. If you’ve been there for only two years, don’t be offended if you are not invited to those meetings any time soon.
A self-aware individual can take that information and think strategically: Okay, fair enough. My stature at work is not a commentary on me; it’s that the value proposition necessary to get into that inner circle is length of service. So while you might not be willing to sit around for ten years, you can reset your goal to be in a leadership position in six years instead of eight. In the meantime, you will have to double down and work as diligently as you can. Sometimes it feels like the oldest person in the room is almost always the boss. So if you’re the youngest person in the room and feeling like the upward path is all about age and length of service, the road ahead of you may seem daunting. The challenge is to balance when you simply accept that fact and when you challenge it. You can successfully challenge the status quo with innovative ideas and a fresh approach to problem solving, not by reminding those above you that the world is changing and being taken over by young people. While that may be true in the most progressive settings, this sentiment is probably not true where you currently find yourself drawing a paycheck.
You may be rolling your eyes as you read this, thinking: Of course he thinks that way; Joe is one of those old guys. But I’m going to beat the system. I say go for it. Some millennials may ask, “Why should we be constrained by the nine-to-five work day? Aren’t we more creative and more productive when we can be fluid and come and go when we want?” The one who succeeds is always the one who responds: “You’re probably right, but if the boss believes that the work day should be 8:30 to 6:00, I’m going to play her game. At least for now.” There is a power infrastructure in every office, and it will serve you well to understand it and play by its rules. Get to know the decision makers, then distinguish yourself from the pack. By aligning yourself with the corporate culture, you’ll have an easier time making it into the inner circle.
Respect the fact that the forty-five-year-old woman who makes ten times as much money as you do, and is in the position of determining your fate, is never going to say, “Wow. I’m a dope. These young kids in the office are all smarter than me.” That’s just not how the world works. In fact, the opposite may be true. The older person above you may have his or her own set of insecurities and uncertainties about age and job security; he or she may double down in unflattering views of younger workers based on those insecurities. So why not play the game and follow the guiding philosophy of your boss, even if it appears old-fashioned: be at your desk first thing in the morning, be polite and available, understand what needs to be done to find common ground, and so on. Trust me, when everyone else is railing against these “quaint” constraints of conventional workplace policies, the employee who sees it as a way to find common ground with the boss will be the likely one to advance. However, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t also try to be innovative and come up with the best solutions to problems.
At HRC I was the boss; when an important issue came up, I would call in the staff members I felt were best suited to the discussion, without regard for titles or hierarchy. They were my kitchen cabinet. Yet I would hear from people all the time: “There was a manager’s meeting and you forgot to invite me.” Their disappointment was revelatory to me. Bosses never forget who is supposed to be included. These are deliberate decisions. Figuring out what’s expected of you, and understanding what’s important to the workplace, is how you get ahead. Your job is to make sure that when people above you are thinking about those values and qualities they think about you. If the company places a lot of importance on the internal workplace environment, including your interpersonal skills and how you function within a team, and you can demonstrate that those skills are a core and important value to you, you will have branded yourself as someone who is a good fit for any company.
Brand yourself as someone who fits the corporate values by actually exhibiting those specific values. Do it in a way that really shows you’re competent in these areas. If it’s about being a good team player, then actually be a good team player. The rules may be different if you work in a highly creative or hightech environment. For example, if you work at a slick startup PR firm, where the work is much more individualized and there’s much less importance placed on internal hierarchy, the person who advances is typically the one who is most innovative. If that’s the case, that’s how you want to brand yourself. If you are the one person in the office the boss goes to if there is a difficult problem that needs to be solved, your branding takes care of itself.
Along with having the sheer will to see an action through, there will be times when your intuition is telling you to walk away or at least come up with a different plan. These are the times when you’ll need to explore the strategic advantages of compromise and sacrifice. Chapter 7 explores these realities.