Progressives' Truth Problem

Progressive organisations have a particular, and ironic, problem. The very values that make them good at external campaigns and advocacy make internal truth-telling much more difficult. The core tension is that progressive organisations are built around participation, voice, and inclusion as values. Which, all well and good. But those same values create a specific internal dynamic that makes honest conversation and generative conflict harder.

Because of this, things go unsaid. People and systems are not held accountable, which means leaders and their staff are not supported to do their best work. So leaders end up isolated with the real problem. They can't tell the board what they actually think. They can't tell staff. They can't tell peer organisations without it becoming political. The conversation they need to have has nowhere to go.

There are three factors that typify progressive organisations that lead to this unique dynamic. These factors exist in different configurations in all organisations, but they seem to co-exist uniquely in advocacy and change-making organisations.

Consensus culture

When consensus is the goal, dissent becomes a problem to manage rather than information to consider, interrogate, and potentially use to improve things. Leaders learn to read the room before they speak, and proposals get softened before they're floated. The unspoken rule is that you don't bring something up unless you're reasonably confident it'll land. So, a difficult idea, an honest assessment, or the uncomfortable truth never quite makes it to the team. It arrives pre-compromised, sanitised, to avoid conflict.

Flat structures

Progressive organisations love to talk about the evils of hierarchy (that is, until some leaders decide to pull rank out of nowhere and then suddenly hierarchy is ok, but I digress…). But hierarchy - predictable, structural - clarifies who is responsible for the hard call. In flat structures, accountability gets diffuse. Nobody wants to be the person who overrode the group. So decisions that should be made clearly are workshopped indefinitely, or the leader makes them quietly and then has to pretend they emerged collectively. Neither is honest. Everyone feels it.

Mission alignment as identity

This is a doozy. People join organisations because they believe in the cause, they are values aligned, and they want to work to fulfil the mission. But what can happen is that their identity gets tied up in that mission. This means criticism of the organisation's strategy or culture can feel like an attack on who they are. Leaders feel this too. Saying "we're not doing this well" can feel like a betrayal of the mission rather than a brave act of stewardship. So they don't say it, or they say it so carefully it loses its meaning. And when someone is brave enough to say it, that person is shunned and excluded. Not great.

There is a great book by Amanda Litman called When We’re in Charge, that gets into this dynamic in more detail, especially in political and issue-based organisations. I highly recommend it.

The effect compounds

All three of these factors reinforce each other. A leader who sees a real problem or opportunity not only has to navigate consensus norms, but also diffuse and shifting accountability, and a culture where honesty can read as disloyalty. So they hold it and carry it. They maybe mention it quietly to a peer at a conference or over a beer. But it never gets the clear-eyed examination it really needs.

This structural and cultural inability to have real conversations, with care and truth, is a real problem in progressive organisations and movements.