This excerpt from Grassroots and Nonprofit Leadership explores the dilemma of growth in groups. In order to scale up and achieve social change goals groups need to transition from a primary to a secondary system of organisation.
Primary and Secondary Organisation Systems
| Small Activist Organisations/ Primary System | Larger Organisations/ Secondary System |
|---|---|
| SIMPLE | COMPLEX |
| Everyone accountable to the whole | Immediate accountability to a coordinator |
| Friendly, personal | Less personal, permission to be neutral |
| Emotional openness encouraged | Objectivity encouraged |
| Informal, few rules | More formal, clear rules and procedures |
| Appraisals, supervision casual | Appraisals formal, supervision specific |
| Membership through intention rather than achievement or requirement | Membership through specific criteria (eg contribution, service, skills) |
| Staff and volunteers learn by doing, experimenting | Formal learning and training complements learning by experience |
| Little formal planning, leadership is reactive | Planning and proactive leadership |
Table from page 62 of Grassroots and Nonprofit Leadership: A Guide for Organizations in Changing Times.
The “Golden Age”
Most activist organizations begin small. A few people mobilize around a crisis, an unmet need, or a moral outrage. The structure is simple; goals, roles, and authority are easily understood. Relationships are key, and most of the people involved are already friends or acquaintances. Some of the energy of the new organization comes from the joy that friends feel from working on a cause together. New members are often drawn into this informal circle of acquaintances who are caught by the urgency of the situation, trust each other, and are simple and direct. Some groups plan to remain small in order to do their task most effectively: research, video production, and training are functions that may be best organized as small teams rather than larger organizations. This chapter addresses organizations which need to grow to achieve their goals.
We call the first stage a primary system, because the activists’ relationships to each other are informal and direct, something like extended families or small schools or businesses. The group has an important task and is not simply for socializing, yet it has some of the camaraderie which comes with affinity. Since this is the usual way groups begin, organizations rarely start with cultural diversity. Our society is divided, so social circles reflect that. Overcoming cultural polarization means, therefore, being intentional—either right from the start or later.
In a primary system, group meetings provide the arena for the coordination of tasks and maintenance of morale. The organization doesn’t worry about policies and procedures. Instead, it decides most questions in terms of goals based on an unstated set of assumptions. The group may have formed around a leader, but the leadership is generally informal.
Every successful group includes at least one person thinking about the whole group. The person thinking about the whole group may or may not be called a leader. In fact, someone called the leader may be so occupied with strategy, the next demonstration, the media or relating to allies that she or he hardly ever thinks about the group as a whole. Someone thinking about the whole is constantly diagnosing the group. This process may be intuitive, or may include an explicit list. This entire book is, from this standpoint, a diagnostic list. In a primary system, there may be a number of individuals thinking consistently about the whole group, and in that sense sharing leadership. Even in an organization which seems to revolve initially around one leader, the leader may do more coaching, inspiring, and groundwork on the issue than operating in an authoritative manner with the other members of the group.
Most people find this way of working enormously appealing—the simplicity, directness, informality, and social connections—and want it to go on forever. Hence we call it the golden age.
When the new organization becomes known and more people join, a variety of complications and conflicts begin, which fortunately are predictable. What began as a simple and direct response to a problem can suddenly be mired in ill-defined authority, confusion of roles, lack of organization and planning, ineffective hiring, inadequate supervision, and poor communications. Accept the new reality brought by growth and time, and begin to let go of the golden age, replacing it with the secondary system—an alternative structure which can handle complexity and growth.
When organizations become bigger and more complex, they need to operate differently in order to be effective and to be perceived by those working for them as fair, just, and equitable. The informality and ruling by exception which is so frequent in primary organizations does not work as well with large numbers of people. The necessary result is agreement on rules, regulations, standards, and measurable criteria of accountability. Division of labor on a larger scale requires more coordination to keep the whole organization moving toward its goals. More coordination requires clarity about who coordinates what and who makes which decisions.
Why let go of the primary system? One reason is to achieve certain social change goals. A neighborhood group may need to attract sufficient members to be able to intervene powerfully in decisions about zoning and environmental planning. A seniors organization may need to become very large in order to lobby convincingly for policy changes at the state level.
Another reason to let go of the primary system is to include people who want to participate. The amiable disorder in a new, informal organization becomes stressful over time for members who, after dropping things to respond to the crisis, need to catch up with the rest of their lives and still want to participate in the cause. Initially, excitement and urgency can carry us through six hour meetings, but at some point family, career, and personal needs (like rest!) move up the agenda. At that point some members are willing for a steering committee to make more decisions, for division of labor to grow, and for information to be organized formally (through minutes, for example). This is a point in group development when it can lose members beyond normal turnover. If the core group resists the needs of other members, individuals drop out when they realize the only way to stay involved is to sacrifice their other needs. The group also has trouble recruiting new members who aren’t willing to make the sacrifice or who aren’t looking for a new subculture to join.
A third reason to let go of the primary system is that it often leads to sectarianism. Over time, individuals meet their social needs in the group, deepen their friendships and find their lovers there, and lose some connection with the rest of the world. Individuals lose perspective and become victims of a closed circle of assumptions and beliefs, which over time distances members from how other people see reality.
The golden age, in summary, can be prolonged beyond its usefulness.
Insisting on the informal primary system can prevent growth that enables accomplishment of some goals. Hanging on to the good old days can prevent the participation of people who want to participate but can’t give the hours and spontaneity that are required to stay in the loop. A primary system can even lead to the group becoming a sect, unable to relate effectively even to its natural allies.
Reflections on the pros and cons of primary system organisations
I don’t see many of you here who were with us in the old days. It was great. There were just a few of us in that small suite of offices over the supermarket. We knew every-body, and what everybody was doing, and there was such great spirit, and we all got off on each others’ victories. Now we’re this big organization and I don’t know half the people I see in the halls, much less know what they’re doing. It’s just not the same. – from a staff discussion in a national environmental organization
At first I thought the socialist group whose meetings I checked out when was in college wasn’t for me because I was working class and they were middle-class professionals. They constantly argued about ideas I didn’t know much about, and a lot of the ideas seemed to be more about other countries than this country anyway, and I just didn’t have anything to say and when would I ever have time to read all those books they quoted? But now I’ve looked in on a lot of radical groups and I can see it’s not just that they had the middle class obsession with words. A lot of radical groups mainly talk to themselves. Maybe they once in a while talk to a taxi driver, but I’ll bet they don’t listen. So if they just talk to each other, how would they know what’s on the minds of the rest of us? – an activist in his fifties, reflecting on his political journey
The Secondary System
When you notice growing pains, start to invent your own secondary system. Set up a task force to research various structures; feel free to adapt one that fits your mission and constituency. We have suggested characteristics to assist you in thinking about your situation in terms of organizational operations. By bringing these features to the conscious level, you may start to invent options for your own organization. When you have options, your group can then choose a structure that will meet its needs for a secondary system.
Many groups start in a protest or in an urgent desire to meet overwhelming need, but with little hope that they can accomplish changes they want. With the growth of the organization comes a possibility of achieving the goal, and a corresponding incentive to strategize and to manage human and financial resources wisely. The organization is ready for skill development in strategizing and managing. A secondary system differentiates among functions, and links them to skills, training, and formal ways of maintain accountability.
In primary systems people tend to feel connected strongly to each other and the group. In effective secondary systems people tend to know their roles, what’s expected, and what success is. Both forms can be highly effective in what they do. Tensions and problems are greatest in organizations caught between the two. What used to work is difficult. Some drop the ball in communicating. Others are not accountable. Relationships are breaking down. Differences in roles and power are becoming apparent yet are not agreed upon, leading to personalization, gossip, confusion, and uncertainty. Anger and frustration increase, yet open conflict may be avoided because of a history of friendship.
Tensions are inevitable if an organization grows or persists over time.
It is impossible to keep all of the advantages of the primary system and still grow. Although previous experiences we’ve had with insensitive bureaucracies may make us determined not to let our movement groups fall into that trap, if an organization wants to grow, the choice is not whether or not to become a secondary system: the choice is what kind of secondary system to become. The next chapter describes a variety of options.
Prompts for reflection and discussion
- Which attributes of a primary system and a secondary system does your organisation have?
- Does your organisation have any tensions related to being caught between the two systems?
- What does it feel like could be lost by consolidating a secondary system? What does it feel like is being missed out on by holding on to aspects of a primary system?
About the book
Grassroots and Nonprofit Leadership: A Guide for Organizations in Changing Times by Berit Lakey, George Lakey, Rod Napier, Janice Robinson.
This book is for everyone who cares about the health of their organisations, especially if their organisations work for social change. It draws on the experience of a variety of effective organisational development professionals, community organisers and leaders of non-profit organisations, teaching a proactive approach to organisational life — an indispensable sourcebook for all leaders and active members of change organisations.