The Movement Compass and Worksheet

Introduction

Here is a movement cycle framework that can help organizers identify what they need to be doing right now, by understanding, and thinking strategically about, the life cycle that social movements tend to follow. The compass draws on Bill Moyer’s Movement Action Plan.

The Movement Compass helps organizers of people-powered movements understand the natural changes that a winning movement will often experience.

The Movement Cycle can help you avoid seeing each contraction as a personal or collective defeat, instead riding out the waves strategically so you can stay grounded during the highs and optimistic during the lows.

The Movement Cycle is especially useful for movement organizers and strategists who are not sure what their movement should be doing right now and who could benefit from guidance on figuring out their next steps.

The tool offers an insight into the pulse of movements and points organizers to particular tactics and strategies that may prove productive at a particular moment.

Every movement that survives repression, mild or severe, invariably commands respect, which is another name for success. – Mahatma Gandhi

Note: This article from Beautiful Trouble is available under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licence. A few minor editing changes have been made to the original resource.

Origins

As early as the 1960s, sociologist Herbert Blumer initiated attempts to understand the cyclical rise and fall of popular movements by identifying four stages of a social movement’s lifecycle. Bill Moyer’s Movement Action Plan (MAP) built on this, identifying eight key stages.

Today, Movement Netlab’s worksheet and the Movement Compass have been designed to support organizers in navigating through a simplified set of movement life phases.

The Movement Compass

One moment, your movement may be all that people can talk about; the next, you might be struggling to get anyone out to a meeting. Movements move. Things change. This can be incredibly disappointing, to see what you’ve built appear to crumble. But it’s the nature of social movements, like seasons, to rise and fall.

By identifying where in that cyclical movement you are at any given point, you can see much more clearly where it’s most useful to focus your energies and take strategic actions in support of your long term vision. This is the value of the Movement Cycle.

The Movement Cycle identifies six key phases that successful social movements tend to follow: an enduring crisis, an uprising, a peak, a contraction, an evolution, and new normal.

This cycle often repeats itself, and like any Netflix series, each season might be of better or worse quality than the last. And most importantly: each of these phases has its own collection of tools best suited for use in the moment.

The Movement Compass builds upon the work of Bill Moyer’s Movement Action Plan, Movement Netlab’s Movement Cycle Matrix, and a few years of painstaking research by movement anthropologist Isa Mayah Mukibi Benros and ActionAid Denmark.

6 Key Phases

1. Enduring Crisis: Growing Public Anger

Most cycles within movements and campaigns begin in conditions of escalating injustice and widespread frustration in which the movement infrastructure required to confront the crisis remains limited.

During this phase, it can be most useful to focus on building a group, establishing cooperation, raising consciousness, and strengthening relationships among the folks you’re seeking to organize.

Formulate your grievances and craft a narrative that will appeal to those you’re seeking to activate next. This will also help to create windows of opportunity.

2. Uprising: Heroic Phase

By identifying where in a cycle you are at any given point, you can see much more clearly where it’s most useful to focus your energies.

Usually the uprising phase begins with a trigger event, something tragic or unacceptable that spurs people to action. Organizers find themselves amid surprisingly massive mobilization. A renewed sense of purpose and heroism drives this surge, even if there is no strategic grounding for the long run.

3. Peak: Honeymoon

In the midst of growth and expansion, your cause has gone viral; all eyes and ears are on you. The future can be defined by your vision, and it feels like the power to influence change is in your grasp.

Stay steadfast on your message and focused on your goals. This is a good time to stay connected, onboard new recruits, re-fuel as needed, and gather more resources for what comes next.

4. Contraction: Disillusionment

After achieving a few victories, you may find that momentum stalls, backlash and repression increase, and internal divisions become more pronounced. People within your movement may speak of burnout and disillusionment, and personal and political conflicts may rise to the surface.

It’s time to turn to the tools that can help you foster wellbeing and safe spaces for emotional recovery. Help folks understand this phase as an expected turn, and an opportunity to analyze your progress and consolidate any wins.

5. Evolution: Learning and Reflection

After a period of movement fracture, you are rebuilding.

This is a phase of learning and reflection. Your movement is reorganizing with the inherited wisdom of past attempts and beginning to settle into a new configuration.

Nurturing new projects based on an analysis of what was effective, and experimenting with new groups and goals, can now give your movement new life.

6. New Normal: Re-growth

The movement has invested adequate energy in forming alliances, building infrastructure, and developing skills, knowledge, and relationships among members. Now is the time to go on the offensive, set society’s agenda, and take ambitious risks in anticipation of the next crisis and trigger event.

Potential Risks

Past social movements have occasionally fallen prey to a far too rigid understanding of history and how it works. Be careful not to make the same mistake and apply your understanding of the movement cycle too rigidly! Movements, by their nature, move—and not always in ways we can anticipate.

In the ancient wisdom of Sun Tzu, “Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.” In other words, it’s important to recognize that your situation can change quickly in ways you didn’t expect, and be ready to respond accordingly.

How to Use

1. Go to the Movement Compass tool.

2. Determine which phase of the cycle describes your movement presently.

3. Click on that phase for recommendations of what you and fellow organizers should be considering and doing now.

4. Measure these recommendations against your own hunches. For deeper consideration, check out the more specific notes outlined in the Movement Net Lab worksheet.

Watch Introductory Video

Intro to the Movement Compass by Beautiful Trouble.

Do Course

Learn more about the Movement Cycle through this free, online course called the Global Organising and Development Programme GOLD by Move The Global Social Movment Centre.

Listen to Podcast

Listen to related podcast – Understanding the Social Movement Cycle

The death of George Floyd and the uprisings that followed can seem like the birth of a new social movement — and a new host of possibilities: disbanding and defunding police departments. Commemorating Juneteenth. And addressing the systemic racism woven through the society in everything from voting rights to health care to urban planning. But, according to research from Movement Netlab, a social movement think-make-do tank, to better understand social movements — and better report on them — we should understand them as happening in cycles: from rising anger, to a trigger moment, to a heroic phase, honeymoon, disillusionment, learning and reflection, and re-growth. And repeat.

Allen Kwabena Frimpong is a former principal member of Movement Netlab and now a co-founder and managing partner with AdAstra Collective, which supports the growth of social movements. He talks to Bob about how we can situate the present moment in the movement cycle, and what we might expect next.

Explore Further

• Movements and Leaders have Seasons – it’s Important to Know which one you are in
• Surviving the Ups and Downs of Social Movements
• Bill Moyer’s Movement Action Plan and Four Roles of Activism
• Bill Moyer’s Movement Action Plan
• You’re not Failing, Social Change can Be Slow
• Frameworks for Winning Change
• Exploring Roles in Social Change Movements
• Movements and leaders have seasons – it’s important to know which one you are in
• What is a Social Movement? Social Movement Definitions
• Interactive, Self Paced Mini Courses on Organising: Global Organizing and Leadership Development GOLD
• Beautiful Trouble Resources