Organizing 4 Power & People, Power, Change – Comparative Reflections
Haruka Sano, Masha Burina
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Type
Articles
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Region
Global
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Practice
Team structure, Strategy, Action
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Language
English
In 2025, a few organizers and trainers in LCN community together took the Organizing for Power’s Core Fundamentals course to learn the organizing framework by Jane McAlevey. We reflected on the different strengths of McAlevey’s and Ganz’s frameworks, discussed how each framework can complement each other, and summarized them in this document, in conversation with O4P team members.
For at-a-glance comparison, see below chart.
For more explanation on the PPC, read this introduction.
For detailed explanation on the concepts of O4P, read the full 15-page document and access O4P’s Resources:
We also encourage us all to share with each other organizing tools that grow our capacities and possibilities, and welcome any feedback to and ways to build on this document. Please reach out to us at resources@leadingchangenetwork.org.
Category
Jane McAlevey Framework
Organizing 4 Power (O4P)
Marshall Ganz Framework
People, Power, Change (PPC)
Core focus
Build worker and community power through structure-based, mass organizing (place with defined membership, not self-selecting), to win the immediate, specific campaign.
Build people power through leadership development, in which people practice public narrative, relationship building, team structure, strategy, and action, to develop long-term capacity and win.
Leadership philosophy
Leaders* move people by teaching people to expect more from their employers, governments, and themselves, and to see power as something they can wield collectively.
*Leaders are distinguished from (cadre) lead organizers who plan the campaign and build organizations.
Leadership is accepting responsibility for enabling others to achieve shared purpose under conditions of uncertainty. Leaders build capacity through coaching and facilitation.
Leader identification
Identify organic leaders who may not yet support the campaign but have gained trust and influence in the community through their credibility and natural ability to take initiative, instead of leaders who are merely pro-issue. Effective leader identification is critical in scaling the campaign.
Identify leaders who demonstrate the courage or an ability to motivate others (heart), think strategically (head), and take effective action (hands), and can commit to taking responsibility for collective outcomes when facing uncertainty.
Leader recruitment
Center the agency of organic leaders to move them to join through 6-step structured conversations including agitation and inoculation, as well as specific semantics.
Connect with leaders through shared values. Public narrative enables others to access their emotional resources (e.g. hope) and act, creating the foundation of value-based relationships, which is key to building people power.
Structure
Build and measure power through structure tests, which are escalating collective actions that assess the readiness of the base and the effectiveness of the structure, while growing confidence and unity toward a supermajority action (e.g. strikes).
Enable decentralized, relational and participatory leadership through snowflake structures of tiered teams with visionary, strategic, and functional leadership roles, accountability, and localized expressions of the shared strategy.
Strategy
Win by getting a supermajority. Charting visualizes power by mapping the relationships between workers and their commitments in whole worker organizing where workers are not only seen as employees but also as members of communities capable of transforming both workplaces and society.
Develop a nested and motivating strategic goal and a theory of change by mapping stakeholders, analyzing power (Power is not relational and can shift based on the interests and resources), and figuring out how to combine people’s resources to shift the power (power with or power over).
Resource Information
- Year: 2026
- Author: Haruka Sano, Masha Burina
- Publisher: Leading Change Network
- Tags: —
- Access : Public
- Regions : Global
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