This precis outlines 15-page Twelve Factors for Group Success, available on request. Note the Contact Author button below and email me.
Encountering a complicated challenge, we need to think differently -- here, how to form a movement substantial enough to address any need or reshape U.S. society. These factors present a shift from description or analysis to causality--who does what to achieve what. The twelve factors are in three parts-- Beginning, Developing, and Maintaining.
1. BEGINNING
Vision
Vision prioritizes effort. What's worth doing? It inspires us to greater self-giving, raising the significance of our effort. It's not only a concept affirmed periodically with speeches or signs, but directs our thinking.
Americans might want to implement the values in the Preamble to the Constitution--unity, justice, domestic tranquility, defense, general welfare, and liberty. The vision incorporates how to do that. These twelve factors present a mental framework. The ancient Samurai advised, First defeat your enemy in your own mind. For us, "It is a good thing to know what you are doing."
Asking
We all seek safe patterns for our life. We do around 90% of our activity because others want it. To change people's thoughts and actions, we must understand the causal sequence. Leaders ask others for effort that succeeds. Face to face requests generate every feature of an army's formation and effort. The strongest available influence for change is how others treat one in the moment. Leaders' concept governs outcomes, predicts success by what they ask. They offer the vision.
Marginal gains
Success arises from deciding what you want, determining its price, and paying the price. Improving 100 details about your effort by 1% each, you achieve a substantial overall improvement. The potential misdirection and waste of energy and resources is unlimited. Excellence is exacting--forming and applying energy perfectly.
Multiplying
Many organizations don't grow beyond their initial constituency. Nationwide outcomes depend on growing numbers nationwide. The most reliable means is face-to-face conversation, a measure reliably predicting sales in commerce. We can plot our effectiveness by monitoring the time we collectively conversing with others. A thousand who each obtain one more person per month and they do the same (doubling monthly) reach 65 million in eighteen months.
2. DEVELOPING
Learning
We need to learn how individuals change, and the social features inviting change. We intentionally simplify our mind, assigning people to roles and then becoming unable to understand what they do. The powerful can quietly manipulate systems for their benefit. Stalin advised, "If you want to steal a salami, do it slice by slice." We need to learn how to manage power. Learning together motivates people and generates deeper bonds.
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