by Greg Satell
Eventually, Milošević bowed to public opinion and to international pressure. On February 11, 1997, he agreed to honor the elections. Opposition officials took office all over Serbia, even in Belgrade, where Djindjić became mayor. It was an enormous triumph, but soon the coalition of parties that had coalesced during the elections, called Zajedno (“Together”), descended into infighting and fell apart, much like what would happen later in Ukraine after the Orange Revolution. One of the major opposition politicians in Serbia, Vuk Drašković, even entered the Milošević government as deputy prime minister.
As soon as the heat was off, Milošević began cracking down once again. Seeing that the universities and the media could be fervent hotbeds of protests, he passed laws to bring them into tighter government control, even going so far as to fire professors who would not pledge loyalty to the regime. He also played up nationalist sentiment, convincing Serbians that the world was against them and posing himself as their only protector, while at the same time he deftly played the opposition parties against each other—they were soon lambasting each other in the media. Before long, the Serbian strongman’s hold on power was greater than ever before.
Yet Popović and his friends were beginning to build a learning curve. In 1992, their protests looked much like the Occupy demonstrations that would spring up in 2011. They voiced grievances within the confines of their universities, but didn’t reach much further than that. Despite their initial failure, however, the Serbian students began to understand that if you want to really make a difference, instead of just making a point or “building awareness” for your cause, you need to create traction outside of your immediate context. In Serbia, it wasn’t enough to rile up some students in the major cities—you had to reach out into the rural, less educated masses from which the regime drew its strength. If you could take these away from Milošević, his power would be greatly diminished.
In 1996, the activists that went on to form Otpor learned the value of organization and unity to win elections. They also began to realize that if Milošević lost an election, he would attempt to steal it, and that could be a trigger for a mass mobilization of people from all walks of life. As Popović would later explain, “We began to understand that if we combine opposition unity, elections, large turnout, election fraud, and demonstrations, then we will get to victory. So this is when the formula was pretty much set.” They also learned the value that international pressure could have. In fact, when Milošević finally validated the results of the 1996 elections, he cited the authority of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) rather than any local constituency or authority.29
While Milošević was undertaking a successful counterattack against civil society, there were also increasing signals indicating that he intended to start a new war, this time in Kosovo, to rile up nationalist spirit and tighten his grip on power. The situation made Popović and his friends increasingly depressed. “It was smelling like a new war, with a very strong autocratic tendency, combined with a complete apathy in society and the opposition falling apart,” Popović remembers. “This was our ‘Rivendell’ moment, like in The Lord of the Rings—everybody is quarreling and Sauron [the villain in the story] is coming. Frodo Baggins steps in and says, ‘I will take the ring to Mordor, but I do not know the way.’”30 In the famous book, that’s how the “Fellowship of the Ring” that defeated the evil empire of Sauron was formed, and that’s how Popović and his friends saw themselves.
In the autumn of 1998, they met in a coffee shop and decided to start anew. “We wanted to create a replica of the student protests of 1996–1997, but we also came up with the idea that we would make it a little mysterious,”31 Popović told me. They wanted to build a strong brand and settled on the clenched fist design, patterned off of the World War II Serbian antifascist partisans, that evoked strong feelings among their fellow citizens. Their aim was to duplicate the cultural and political conditions of the student protests, but without an immediate political goal. Instead, they had a longer-term plan to build a network to fill the vacuum that the disintegration of the united opposition had left in its wake. They knew that a new election was coming in just two years, and if they could mobilize the populace and create a huge turnout, Milošević would try to steal the election and they would have a chance to create a massive uprising. That was the plan all along.
So they created a “vision of tomorrow” that encompassed three principles. The first was civil rights, such as freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, free and fair elections, independent universities, and an independent media. The second was peace with neighbors. Popović and his compatriots understood that whenever Milošević encountered a crisis at home, he would create a war abroad. Clearly, this was an unsustainable situation, and Serbia could never prosper as long as it persisted. The third was to adopt European values, such as economic liberalization and the rule of law.
Each of these was targeted at a different segment of the Spectrum of Allies, although the Otpor activists were not yet aware of the formal concept. The idea of civil rights resonated with their most active supporters, who would rally behind abstract concepts like freedom of expression. The second was targeted at the other side of the spectrum, specifically the military and Serbian veterans from failed wars in Croatia and Bosnia. If they could undermine the case for constant war among Milošević’s constituents, they would rob him of a crucial base of support. The third principle, economic liberalization and European values, was designed to gain traction among small businesses that were mostly in the neutral column. As a rule, these people were more conservative and not as politically active, but they understood how the kleptocracy Milošević had installed and the economic isolation it created was robbing them of their livelihood. They also understood how their counterparts in places like Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and the Baltic States were benefitting from EU ascension.
A month later, the Otpor founders met with representatives of five major student organizations at the offices of a student newspaper called Buka (Noise), where they discussed the three principles and published a document, Declaration for the Future of Serbia, based on them. One of those in attendance, a student at the technical university, took the additional step of posting the document on the Internet, even though few in Serbia had access at the time. Later, as it turned out, it would help mobilize support among Serbian students studying abroad and become an important asset.
At the original coffee shop meeting there were only five people present. A day later, six of their friends joined them. Together they made up the 11 founders of Otpor. Each of them brought their own affiliations. They were from varied student groups and supported different parties. “But we made a decision that the party people go on the back bench,” Popović told me. They wanted to create something new that would be distinct from the history of infighting and failure that the political parties represented. “A lot of people wanted to act, but a lot of people didn’t have a relationship to the political parties,” he noted.
It was a move made out of desperation, but from a network perspective, it was a stroke of genius. By freeing themselves of party loyalties, but retaining their connections, the Otpor activists moved themselves to the center of the opposition movement, and, as we already know, the center of the network is where the true power lies. Moreover, because many of the university students were from rural towns, focusing on the student organizations also gave them crucial connections into the heart of Milošević’s most important constituencies.
With a core group on board, Otpor’s nascent movement began to act. Their first action was a graffiti campaign. They took stencils and began spray-painting the clenched-fist logo all over Belgrade. “Then, a miracle happened,” Popović remembers. “Four students were arrested for putting graffiti on the walls, which was unusual . . . I don’t even know why they arrested them.” The young activists were sentenced to 10 days in jail.32 It was a silly, brutish error and gave Otpor an enormous opening. That th
e regime made such a show of cracking down on such a small infraction gave Otpor a remarkable public relations coup.
In response, the largest opposition newspaper, Dnevni Telegraf, printed a copy of Otpor’s clenched-fist logo along with the mission statement that the activist group had printed out on its leaflets:
RESISTANCE IS THE ANSWER!
There will be no other way.
It will be too late
When someone you know starves to death,
When they start killing in the streets,
Turn off the last light
And poison the last water well . . .
It will be too late.
This is not the system,
This is a disease,
Bite the system!
Get yourself together,
Live
THE RESISTANCE!33
The newspaper was hit with a draconian fine. This, however, only fanned the flames further. Other media outlets actively reported the arrest of the four students, the manifesto, and the harsh penalty the newspaper endured for printing it. The movement, which only numbered about 30 at the time and didn’t even have an office, looked like a powerful new force on the political scene. That was the start, and it would end in Milošević’s downfall.
From there, Otpor followed the blueprint that Djindjić had supplied them with. Recruit-Train-Act. Street theater and pranks, like putting Milošević’s face on a barrel and supplying a stick to hit it with, gained attention and brought people in. They would be trained and given the opportunity to act. Those further actions attracted more people to join them, who they would train to undertake further actions and recruit more activists. The regime’s attempts to crack down would only create more unrest, leading to more recruitment and accelerating the cycle. As the links in the network metastasized, the process became self-perpetuating.
A splinter group, the Otpor Mothers, emerged to protest the harsh treatment of their sons and daughters in the movement. The regime’s harsh treatment of mothers, in turn, only undermined its support among the general populace and won even more support for Otpor. Because many of the university students had rural roots, the movement gained crucial footholds in even Milošević’s strongholds, the villages and towns far away from the sophisticated intellectualism of Belgrade. Abstract concepts like “freedom,” “independence,” and “economic liberalization” might lack emotional resonance, but the jailing of a student or the oppression of a mother is something that everyone can understand on a visceral level.
Otpor succeeded because it understood a few basic truths about networking a movement. To grow, you have to connect, and the more you connect, the more central you become. The more central you become, the more power you have. And with enough power, you can bring change about.
THE NEW ROLE OF LEADERS
* * *
When we think of great movements for change, we usually distill them down to the acts of a single charismatic leader. The Indian independence movement will always evoke images of Mahatma Gandhi, just like the civil rights movement will always be associated with Martin Luther King Jr. To a lesser extent, the corporate turnarounds at IBM and Alcoa are hard to separate from the leaders that drove them, Lou Gerstner and Paul O’Neill, respectively.
While it is true that these were all inspirational leaders that were indispensable to the incredible accomplishments that their movements achieved, we often mistake their effectiveness for control. We imagine them as chess masters, deftly moving pieces around the board, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, they were master weavers of networks, deftly managing coalitions and forging new connections.
One leader that exemplifies this approach is Talia Milgrom-Elcott, executive director of 100Kin10, an organization that was set up to train 100,000 STEM teachers in 10 years. As a program officer at Carnegie Corporation focused on education programs, she got a wake-up call when she set up a communications training session for grantees. While those who attended found the curriculum stimulating and valuable, they were most excited about the opportunity to meet each other, compare notes, and share ideas. “How was it that so many skilled professionals, working in the same field and on many of the same issues, in some cases for decades, had little prior contact with each other?” she thought. They were, essentially, islands unto themselves.34
So when she set up 100Kin10, she didn’t just establish yet another program with yet another approach, but rather a platform for collaboration for nearly 300 partner organizations. “Complex problems tend to have multiple interconnected roots that require multiple interconnected solutions and can benefit from a networked approach based on shared values.” Milgrom-Elcott told me. “We don’t offer our own ideas, we create opportunities for programs to connect with each other, share ideas, and learn together, so that a great idea in one place can cascade through the network and expand its impact.”35
In much the same way that Milgrom-Elcott is building an ecosystem to train STEM teachers, IBM is building one to support a futuristic technology, called quantum computing, through its Q Network. Although quantum computing is still years away from practical applications, the company is already building formal links to top research organizations like Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the University of Oxford, and others on one side and future developers and users of quantum applications like JPMorgan Chase and Daimler on the other.
It has also made some of its early prototypes available to the public through its “Quantum Experience” program. “There is already a research community around quantum computing, and they’re already working on things like basic quantum algorithms and quantum games,” IBM scientist Jerry Chow told me. “The Quantum Experience helps support those users, but also extends the community into those who are just getting to learn about quantum computing. We’re training a new generation.”36 When building a network for mobilization, it always pays to start early.
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement took a similar approach to its “100,000 Lives Campaign,” which sought to enlist 1,600 hospitals in its program to implement six evidence-based procedures that would reduce needless deaths through medical error. Knowing that they couldn’t train and indoctrinate that many facilities at once, the team set out to build a network approach. “We had to figure out how to support their learning. So we identified certain facilities that could act as nodes that could help support local initiatives for improvement. That’s how we built scale. It was less about broadcasting information and more about harvesting the good work that was going on,” Joe McCannon, who led the campaign, told me.37 Within 18 months, more than 3,100 hospitals joined the effort and well over 100,000 lives were estimated to have been saved.38
At Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, which sought to transform its operations through implementing lean manufacturing methods at 16 plants encompassing 20,000 employees, it was clear to leadership that a simple dictate from the top would not get the job done. So they planned to do it in stages, creating “mini-transformations” in two or three areas at eight of the plants and then using network effects to cascade early successes throughout the organization as a whole.
Michael Kamarck, then president of Wyeth’s manufacturing group, described the process this way:
We copied the way viruses infect. We started small. We infected groups, individual groups, but then we brought in people from the other sites, who hadn’t yet gotten started. We pulled them forward into the process, if you will. So, we made them part of the mini-transformation so that they could get infected and take the infection back. And so, first of all, we phased the 16 sites. We had early and late adopters, basically, and we used pull-forwards to seed the late sites, so they didn’t feel like they were left out. In fact, some of the people from the late sites made real contributions to the process in the early sites.39
By pursuing a strategy of small groups, loosely connected, but united by a common purpose, replicating, in many ways, Rick Warren’s prayer groups at Saddleback and the tent cities on Kreshchatyk in
Kyiv and other cities in Ukraine, Wyeth was able to transform its business.
In much the same way, Gandhi connected the Indian National Congress, mostly made up of elite Hindu nationalists, with other facets of Indian society, such as Muslims, Sikhs, and untouchables. As head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Martin Luther King Jr. was only one of the “Big Six” which included A. Philip Randolph, James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee SNCC, the National Urban League’s Whitney Young Jr., and Roy Wilkins of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Each of these had hundreds of individual chapters and affiliates. Nobody creates transformational change alone.
General Stanley McChrystal likens the role of leader to that of a gardener. During his time in Iraq, he learned that the role of leader can no longer be “that of a controlling puppet master, but that of an empathetic crafter of culture.” He goes on to say that he needed to shift his focus “from moving pieces on the board to shaping the ecosystem.”40 Srdja Popović and his comrades in Otpor came to a similar conclusion, realizing that if they were ever going to make a difference, they needed to reach into all aspects of society, not just fellow students at elite universities that were early adopters of their philosophy.
Strategy, in other words, is no longer a game of chess, but a matter of widening and deepening connections. Especially today, when the world is connected as never before, power no longer lies at the top of hierarchies, but at the center of networks. In a movement for change, the role of leaders is not merely to plan and direct action, but to inspire and empower belief. So to create positive change, movements need more than shared purpose; they also need shared values. As General McChrystal wrote, “An organization should empower its people, but only after it has done the heavy lifting of creating shared consciousness.”41
