Seven things you can learn from the Black Panthers.…

Yes, you read that right: I’m asking you to consider adopting Best Practices (and avoiding Worst ones) from the Black Panthers, that revolutionary group of the late 1960s and early 1970s, to help your organization achieve unprecedented success. I’ll give you a minute to let this sink in….

I get it: most mainstream folks (read = whites and more than a few People of Color) don’t know much about the Black Panther Party (BPP) and what they do know isn’t good: they were, in their time a half-century ago, “the single greatest threat to the nation’s internal security” in the estimation of then FBI Commissioner J. Edgar Hoover, right? Well, yes, that’s what he said, but, like much that you think you may know about the BPP, it wasn’t true – or, to use historian Yohuru Williams’ phrase, this assessment was “wildly overstated” – nor, it turns out, is most of what’s been said and spread about the group truthful, either.

As one historian has noted, more than 70% of what appeared in the media about the BPP has been identified as having been written directly by or at the behest of the FBI by its affiliates. Yes, you read that right … which means that “The Real Story of the Black Panther Party” is very, very different and, thankfully, full of rich and positive contributions worthy of our notice, consideration and adoption.

Don’t get me wrong, they weren’t angels, but the real story of the Panthers is that their most significant contributions were the creation of community service programs that then became models eventually copied by the very government that vilified and destroyed them (i.e., both the Party and the programs). No, really: look up their Free Breakfast for Schoolchildren Program and you’ll begin to understand both the profundity of its innovation as well as its historical and practical significance….

I suspect that you’re still a little suspect, so, again, why should you even consider learning from this group and what, exactly, did they do that’s worthy of your consideration?

The ‘why’ is quite simple: within five years of their founding, the BPP went from a two-member protest group in Oakland, California, to an international organization with affiliates around the globe, including in Africa, Asia and even a network in India dedicated to the uplift of the Dalits (who’re still known to too many in the West as the Untouchables).

Am I suggesting that by following the Panthers’ process your business will blow up internationally in the next half-decade? No. But, faithfully pursued, several of their innovations could prove quite impactful both for your organization as well as those it serves.…

Here are five Best Practices and two Worst Practices that the BPP evidenced that’ll help you to guide your organization more impactfully if followed and avoided, respectively:

1. Client-Centricity
2. Service-driven Care
3. Passion and Admiration for the Work
4. Commitment to Mission
5. Competition via Collaboration

Yes, that’s right, the Black Panthers innovated in all the above ways and more, which is why their organization experienced such exponential early success. But, comprised of human beings as all organizations are, they were ultimately undone just as quickly by exhibiting two Worst Practices:

1. Failure to Invest for the Future
2. Failure to Maintain Unity of Purpose and Vision

Let’s address these in turn:

Client-Centricity

Oh, yes, it’s all the rage now, but what enabled the Black Panther Party to become an international phenomenon a half-century ago was its total commitment to its clients: the alienated and disenfranchised especially in America’s cities. As one young member described it, eventually, everything she did was “for the love of the people.” But the BPP didn’t just offer what it thought the people needed, as a matter of practice, it engaged with community members so that in conjunction with a programmatic offering, its members would seek feedback from those it served:

“‘Okay, let me hear from you guys, What do you want to see different in your community?’ … Then we would get the feedback, and then we would know how to concentrate our efforts.”

It’s a lot easier to offer products and services with huge market appeal when you truly listen to your clients and then build your entire organization around and develop and deploy your people to focus solely on delivering what they’ve requested.

Service-driven Care

The Black Panther Party was successful in significant part because of the near-total dedication of the core of its membership (who were, for the most part, rank-and-file “worker bees”) and not its high-profile leaders. Simply put, these young, idealistic community servants sought a transformation in the dreary and difficult lives of their constituents, which they described as pursuing a “revolutionause they were seeking such profound change, “we knew that it was going to make a difference, that people were going to be better off” for their efforts. This led to an almost fanatical devotion to service, which one member described as being “blinded by our love and devotion. I think that’s what revolution is.”

Are you and your colleagues seeking to help your clients foment a positive revolution in their lives? If you dedicate yourself wholly, holistically and successfully to their service, will your clients’ lives be transformed (as well as your own)? Given the Panthers’ example, I’d suggest that you give ample reflection to these questions and, hopefully, this will lead you to create an organization full of people who’re completely (and almost obsessively) dedicated to helping clients live their best possible lives.

Passion and Admiration for the Work

“It was pretty magical in the early days because there was a lot of support and commitment and love and passion and admiration for the work that we were doing. … We worked a lot but it was good work, it was great work. Honestly, it was the best job I ever had.

We were passionate about it, and we were very much aware of the importance of what we were doing.”

If you were to ask the members of your organization how they feel about their work, would you hear something comparable to this? My intuition is that for most organizational leaders, the answer would be ‘no.’ But does it have to be this way?

I’ll start by asking questions, but, as I suspect that you suspect, they’re leading in a specific direction on purpose: Do your people perceive dignity and inherent value in the work with which they’re tasked? Do they understand how what they do every day feeds into creating a transformative outcome for the clients that you serve? And do you recognize and reward them for this?

In my experience, though every organization and role have parts that aren’t that fun or rewarding, even this grunt work can be joyfully engaged if the connection to the outcome that it produces is sufficiently clear and motivating. Further, the better job that you do as a leader to recognize and reward these contributions, the greater your associates’ commitment to and appreciation of the work will be, which, in turn, leads to an ever greater positive contribution to the lives of the clients you serve.

Ultimately, our goal – and role – as executive leaders is to create this kind of clarity and alignment, which tend to reinforce each other and create a virtuous cycle of contribution, growth and mutually beneficial and -reinforcing well-being.

Commitment to Mission

What is your organization’s Mission, exactly? What’s its Vision of the world as/when this is achieved? And what answers will I get to these questions if I were to ask your fellow executive leaders and, most importantly, your associates at all levels?

To state it plainly, if the responses don’t all align, this suggests an opportunity for reflection, dialogue, re-alignment and address. How can you expect your people to be totally committed to your cause if they don’t know what it is? Further, how can you expect them to contribute their discretionary best efforts consistently if they don’t understand why this matters, how it connects to the ultimate results that you seek and if they don’t perceive that you recognize and reward them appropriately for their contributions?

Some years ago, I was struck by the initial impression made by a receptionist that I met. She seemed to go out of her way to make sure that my experience was an exceptionally positive one. Now, in fairness, I was the new boss, so it’s possible that she was putting on a show for my benefit … but she wasn’t: upon further investigation, I found out that she routinely demonstrated such care for everyone who visited our organization, whether in person or by phone.

After a few weeks of observation, when I asked her why she provided such excellent service, she responded almost matter-of-factly that “I’m the first impression that you have of this company, so it’s important that when you meet me we have a very positive interaction. This sets the tone for what we’d like you to expect of us, and if we do it right it’ll make you want to be a client or colleague of ours.” Exactly.

This proved to be a Dickensian revelation: it turns out that hers was a uniquely service-oriented approach among the members of the staff, but the good news is that her example was so exceptional that a month later I hired her to be my assistant and we work together synergistically for more than a dozen years.

And, yes, it took a while to get the rest of the staff – and professionals – in that location and a few others to be as solicitous, but, eventually, we got there. Not everyone who started made the journey, but everyone who joined was similarly committed to providing excellent service to our clients whatever their role. There were a lot of meetings, many of which were pooh-poohed, but that gave me an opportunity to foment a dialogue that helped us uncover our shared Mission and Vision as well as the Values that we we’d reflect in our behavior as we pursued them.

It's important to note that this process of organizational renewal and transformation all started with that one outstanding leader-by-example whose incredibly powerfully positive initial impression has never left me in the decades since.

Competition via Collaboration

Here’s something you probably know about the Black Panther Party: all of its members weren’t Black, and, in fact, one of the things that made it most revolutionary was that, as Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar has noted, “They were open to coalition-building from inception.” So, while their primary focus may have been on the largely African-American communities in Oakland and other major cities around the country, truth be told, they collaborated synergistically with groups of all kinds, both domestically and internationally.

Not only did the BPP have chapters across America and in Africa, but they also spawned a branch in India dedicated to the uplift of the Dalits (whom too many in the West still know as the Untouchables). In other words, in fomenting the social revolution it sought, the Black Panther Party understood the power of competition through collaboration. In fact, this is what enabled it to become a global phenomenon in just five years or so.

Now, bringing this back to your organization: do you seek to be a one-stop solution for all of your clients’ needs or have you formed alliances with best-in-breed providers of complementary services that enables you to focus on what you’re best at?

Does this suggest that a one-stop approach is sub-optimal? No, just that it is much more challenging to get right and thus should only be considered if the appropriate organizational leadership, cultural and capacity resources are in place. In the case of the BPP, it understood that its best chance of achieving its goals was to focus on its primary competencies and to align with other organizations whose capabilities could complement its own. The point is that this should be a conscious choice after process of thoughtful deliberation rather than an organic outgrowth of the development of your organization to this point.

So now that we have a better understanding of some of the things that the Black Panther Party did very right and that enabled them to become a global phenomenon in a very short period of time, let’s consider two Worst Practices that they experienced – or, at least, couldn’t avoid – that ultimately proved their undoing:

Failure to Invest for the Future

As with any rapidly expanding and young organization, resource allocation is paramount, and this was certainly the case with the Black Panther Party. Simply put, not only did the Panthers have to figure out how to generate revenues to pay for their programs, but they also needed to allocate the net proceeds of these efforts carefully and strategically. Unfortunately, while they excelled at the former, their approach to the latter was, to be kind, sub-optimal.

Because of clarity of their vision and the passion that it induced in those who dedicated themselves to the organization, the BPP was able to go very far very fast. In addition to fundraising successfully via sales of its newspaper, the organization was also exceptionally successful at soliciting monetary and in-kind donations that enabled it to introduce and administer the Free Breakfast for Schoolchildren Program as well as People’s Free Medical Clinics in 13 cities across the United States, among many innovative programmatic efforts.

As you might suspect, such an operation needs both extensive logistical and financial systems and controls, which, unfortunately, the BPP did not have: like so many young, ambitious and fast-growing organizations, it focused virtually exclusively on expanding in the short term and therefore failed to invest in the development of its infrastructure and (operational) leadership sufficiently to enable it to sustain its growth without threatening the viability of the entire organization.

This is an important lesson for all organizations that experience exceptional growth and success: reaching the top requires one set of skills but staying there typically requires a very different one.

To use a perhaps surprisingly germane example, the Beatles, considered by many to be the greatest musical group of all time, were able to conquer the world and rise to the top of the global entertainment market in less than a decade, but they were only able to sustain themselves at this peak for a half-dozen years or so, before dissension within the band effectively ended it.

What does this have to do with the BPP, you ask? Two things:

First, did you know that the Beatles were actually what we would now call Social Justice warriors? In fact, they were, including as demonstrated by their refusal to play to segregated audiences in the American South, insisting instead on the integration of their multi-racial fans. (Feel free to read more about this here and here.)

Second, did you know that the Black Panthers once provided security to former Beatle John Lennon when he appeared at a benefit concert for the families of the victims of the Attica prison riot? In fact, they did, and, to thank his BPP bodyguards, Lennon even took them out to eat afterwards and insisted that they order full meals rather than the coffee and doughnut that they were trained to accept.

Which brings us back to the theme of failing to invest in the future of an organization: both the Beatles and the Black Panthers got this wrong and it proved to be their end, including because they both made a second mistake:

Failure to Maintain Unity of Purpose and Vision

As any fan of popular music knows, ultimately what ended the Beatles historic run at the top of the music world was their failure to maintain a unity of Purpose and Vision: they had all evolved into such different people during their journey to the zenith of the entertainment world, that they could no longer find the common ground to collaborate synergistically as they had during their ascent.

So, too, with the Black Panthers: just five years after their founding and at the height of their domestic influence and powerfully burgeoning international presence, a schism developed between two of their top leaders that soon thereafter plunged the entire organization into chaos and, eventually, into the dustbin of history.

Having started as an organization focused on inculcating the capacity for community members to protect themselves from excessive police brutality and predatory governmental action, the Panthers first gained notoriety for their para-military persona: who among us doesn’t envision African-American men in black pants, black leather jackets and black berets tilted to the side or that iconic photo of its cofounder Huey Newton sitting in a wicker fan chair holding both the rifle and a spear when we think of the BPP?

Except that within just two years of its founding, the organization added a huge additional mission: that of providing direct support to members of the communities that they served, which is how the breakfast programs, free medical clinics and other innovative service endeavors came to be. While the latter were profoundly beneficial – enough so that the school breakfast program became the model for the US Government’s national effort just a few years later – they were also quite costly in terms of organizational resources and capacity. This led to the development of a major difference in strategic organizational philosophy, pitting the revolutionaries against the community servers.

Because of their inability to find common ground that would allow them to continue to collaborate synergistically, both of these constituencies – and, ultimately, the organization – lost out. So, within less than a decade of its founding and after less than a half-decade of international reach, the BPP was over because it couldn’t sustain a broadly shared sense of Purpose and Vision.

So, there you have it: seven lessons that you can learn from the Black Panther Party to make your organization not only more impactful in the short term but more sustainable in the long run. Yes, the BPP, a prototypical anti-capitalist protest organization, could be considered an unusual source of insight for our uber-capitalist business world, but, in fact, theirs is a history rich in lessons of all types for those who choose to explore it.

If you, too, have become more aware of the Social Justice issues that affect our society and believe that the business world and its leaders have a meaningful role to play in their address, then I encourage you to consider the foregoing carefully, both because the Black Panthers accomplished so much in so little time and because in failing to handle their success adeptly they ended up causing their own demise. Each of our organizations faces the same risks whether or not we are aware of and/or choose to acknowledge them.

In this spirit, then, I urge you to learn from this unusual and atypical source. After all, what the Black Panthers sought is exactly what we seek: to change the world in profoundly positive ways for those we’ve chosen to serve. Accordingly, let’s learn from what they did right and avoid making their mistakes so that our contributions to our chosen client constituencies can be ever more impactful and transformative.…

P.S. If you want to take this opportunity to learn more about this revolutionary organization – that’s also one of the most misunderstood and underappreciated in our nation’s history – then I urge you to check out two sources that can be especially revealing, edifying and inspiring: Bloom’s and Martin’s Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party and Shih’s and Williams’ The Black Panthers: Portraits From An Unfinished Revolution, from which is drawn most of the information presented above.

Finally, I encourage you to suspend your understandable disbelief at the prospect of this mostly vilified organization as being a source of insight and inspiration worthy of your greater research and understanding. If you’ve never really studied the Panthers, then, in all likelihood, what you may know of them from historic media reports is deeply flawed if not downright false.

Though it’s understandable that our government would feel compelled to take unprecedented measures to understand the sources of societal discontent and disruption that we experienced in the 1960s and 1970s, it’s surely one of the darkest chapters in our nation’s history because of the profoundly immoral and unlawful means employed therein.

The Panthers are, it turns out, a prime example of how our government actively conspired against lawful citizens whose revolutionary aims threatened it and made it fearful. It’s imperative, then, that we learn this lesson and not allow this to recur a half-century later as we experience the most discontent and disruption that we’ve ever had since. No, they weren’t angels, but, for the most part, the Panthers were the good guys. That they are not remembered this way is both evidence of our ahistorical shame and a cautionary reminder for us to be ever vigilant in seeking the truth, especially from those who presume to represent us and claim to serve us.…

(Photo credits: https://black-pantherparty.weebly.com/the-governments-response-and-reaction-to-the-bpp.html; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Panther_Party; https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/black-panther-partys-free-breakfast-program-1969-1980/; https://www.azquotes.com/quotes/topics/black-panther-party.html; https://thequotes.in/the-revolution-has-always-been-in-the-hands-of-the-young-the-young-always-inherit-the-revolution-huey-newton/; https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/inside-the-black-panthers-photographer-stephen-shames/11/; https://www.facebook.com/bobby.seale01/posts/ten-point-platform-program-the-formation-of-the-black-panther-partyblack-panther/10156295749219558/; https://www.workers.org/2016/03/24664/; https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/what-united-black-panthers-puerto-ricans-white-southerners-new-doc-n1119101; https://ifunny.co/picture/the-black-panther-movement-in-america-didn-t-just-influence-gqVkIrgn6; https://www.blackresearchcentral.com/articles/the-black-panther-partys-survival-programs-for-the-black-community; https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/inside-the-black-panthers-photographer-stephen-shames/19/; https://mubi.com/films/john-lennon-apollo-harlem-gig-december-17th-1971; https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/inside-the-black-panthers-photographer-stephen-shames/; https://nmaahc.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2011.58; https://beingwoke.wordpress.com/tag/work/; https://hariharian.wordpress.com/2017/02/28/power-to-the-people/; https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15722514-black-against-empire; https://www.amazon.com/Black-Panthers-Portraits-Unfinished-Revolution/dp/1568585551)