Being Human with Marshall Ganz

Marshall Ganz is a senior lecturer in public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School and one of the leading thinkers on leadership as collective action.

He began his career as a grassroots organizer during the civil rights era, working with Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and later with the United Farm Workers, where he helped build organizing capacity among farmworkers. That field experience became the foundation for his lifelong focus on leadership, organizing, and social movements.

Ganz later transitioned into academia, where he developed frameworks that bridge practice and theory. He is best known for his work on public narrative, organizing strategy, and leadership development through action. His teaching and research emphasize how leaders mobilize others by linking values to action, building relationships, and creating structures that enable collective effort.

He also played a key role in organizing the grassroots structure of the Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign, demonstrating how his principles could scale in a national political context.

His work continues to influence leaders across sectors, including politics, nonprofits, and increasingly, corporate environments.

A Couple of Quotes From This Episode

• “It’s not enough to have virtuous people. We have to have virtuous institutions.” 
• “Leadership is about accepting responsibility for enabling others to achieve shared purpose under conditions of uncertainty.” 

Resources

• Book: People, Power, Change: Organizing for Democratic Renewal by Ganz 
• Book: Dopamine Nation by Lembke

About The International Leadership Association (ILA)

• The ILA was created in 1999 to bring together professionals interested in studying, practicing, and teaching leadership. Attend The Global Conference in Toronto, October 28-31.

About  Scott J. Allen

• Website
• Weekly Newsletter: Practical Wisdom for Leaders

My Approach to Hosting

• The views of my guests do not constitute "truth." Nor do they reflect my personal views in some instances. However, they are views to consider, and I hope they help you clarify your perspective. Nothing can replace your reflection, research, and exploration of the topic.

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Transcript

audio1667756926

Scott Allen: [00:00:00] Okay, everybody. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you for checking in wherever you are in the world. Special guest today, Marshall Ganz, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School, and one of the leading thinkers on leadership as collective action. So many of you are very familiar with his work.

The full bio is in the show notes. Marshall, thank you so much for being with me today. I can't thank you enough. 

Marshall Ganz: Thank you for the invitation, Scott. Yeah, happy. Looking forward to the conversation. 

Scott Allen: So being human, tell me about this course that you are now teaching at the Kennedy School and I'm so excited and really I wanna take this conversation future forward.

There's a lot of links to your work in the show notes for listeners, but I'm so excited just to hear about what you're thinking about right now. 

Marshall Ganz: Sometimes you have been doing something for a long time, and then you realize, oh, [00:01:00] that's what I've been doing. Now, for me, a key discovery was about the work I was doing as an organizer and as an educator about leadership.

And it took me a while to wake up and said, "Oh, you know what I've been doing? I've been doing Hillel's three questions. 'If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I'm for myself alone, what am I? If not now, when?'" The relationship between self and other and action. Now, I'd been doing it for a long time before I realized, oh, that's really what I've been up to here, and it becomes very clarifying.

Now, having done a lot of work in that domain, about three years ago a colleague and I, who's a philosopher, who's also a gamer were having lunch and complaining about the state of dehumanization. 

So we said, "Okay. Why don't we, why don't, what if we did a class called Being [00:02:00] Human?" 

"

Marshall Ganz: Oh, that sounds cool.

All right." So that's what we did. And the first we did a co-curricular, we had 20 students. Then we did it for credit, and we had 40. And this year we had 90. And what we realized was we tapped into something really fundamental and for me, it's tapping into, in many ways, what's been als- deeper underneath the work I've been doing my whole life, which is about what it is to what it is to value ourselves and others as human beings.

And in a sense, all this work around organizing and public narrative, it's all about- let me put it this way. My mother was a teacher, but she called herself an educator because it comes from the Latin educere, which means to draw out, not to put in. And so it meant that it was much... For me, it's always been much more [00:03:00] about develop- It's been a developmental way of working with people because it's not, "Oh, here's a vacuum I need to fill."

It's much more "Here's a person with potential capability and so how do I facilitate their growth and development?" 

And so that's been that was central to my organizing work when I learned in the South, central to to my teaching. And so then I realized, oh, it's really about being human.

It's really about w- the value, the re- and that being human is not a solo operation. 

It's in relationship with others, like Hillel. In other words, to be human is to also be in relationship, and it is to grow and to learn and to connect. And I don't know, it w- it's been a cool discovery.

And so then we began... this is all in real time, [00:04:00] but then we began cr- crafting how are we gonna do this. 

Scott Allen: So- That's a big question. 

Marshall Ganz: Yeah, so yeah. So we came up with an approach that we teach this in a it's 10 days over two week. It's a J-term class. In other words, in January, it's four hours a day for 10 days.

Scott Allen: Okay. 

Marshall Ganz: But what we came up with was a way to first of all, first of all, just enable people to see each other. The first class is each student shares their name what they do where they call home, what their parents did or do w- an experience that motivated them to come to this class, and what they understand human to be.

Scott Allen: Wow. 

Marshall Ganz: And so we had 90 voices. T- it was, like, 90 seconds per person. But anyth- it's the opposite of boring. It just became fascinating. [00:05:00]

Scott Allen: Wow. 

Marshall Ganz: And it got the highest rating of any class because they were experiencing being seen. 

Scott Allen: Yes. 

Marshall Ganz: Yes. You do not, you don't experience that here. And being seen and allowing others to allow you to see them whoa, wait a second here, this is something different.

And so that was just our first day was that. And then we go into a period we call the human animal, and this is about our development as, as physical, biological. But it winds up being about consciousness and about coming to consciousness, and that consciousness is not, it's not the result of increasing intellect.

It's a result of life. 

Scott Allen: In 

Marshall Ganz: other words, that consciousness is a, an evolution, evolutionary development that's associated with being a l- a living being in the [00:06:00] world, which is full of uncertainty, full of un- unpredictability. But which, And so but this awareness of self, the awareness of other and all that it's important to understand how we got here.

And Antonio Damasio does terrific work on this. His newest book on feeling... it's being, feeling, and knowing. 

How we move from amoebas to us sensing creatures, to feeling creatures, to knowing creatures, and that is important because in a place like this, there's no feeling and sensing.

What there is just knowing. 

And that's such a reductionist idea of what the real world is. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Marshall Ganz: It's a little bit like substituting a thermometer for heat, confusing a thermometer with heat. Oh, we have this conceptual stuff. Gee, that's the real thing. No, that's... What's real is heat, and we're arguing then about these abstractions [00:07:00] that essentially have no meaning because they're simply abstractions.

No real meaning. So it brings you back to the significance of lived experience- Yeah ... experience with one another. We have a game that Chris suggests. It's called The Mind game. 

Scott Allen: I don't know it. 

Marshall Ganz: Our students, first of all, they're organized in what we call learning teams.

Scott Allen: Okay. 

Marshall Ganz: We design these teams for maximum diversity, and their purpose is to facilitate each other's learning. They're not there to be the great star. They're there to facilitate each other's learning. Turns out to be a very... Then all the learning is relational, and then people become present, not as each other's judges, but as each other's teachers.

And so it, it creates a very different kind of experience, and a lot of it is experiential. Anyway, Mind game. Everybody gets a pack of cards. Get a card face down, look and see [00:08:00] what your card is. Now, the job of your team, five or six people, is to figure out how to display the cards in sequence from low to high.

Fine. But you cannot speak and you cannot gesture. 

Scott Allen: Okay. 

Marshall Ganz: Interesting. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Marshall Ganz: At first everybody fails. 

But then they start learning. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Marshall Ganz: And they start learning... They start paying attention to the presence of each other in ways that we just normally don't focus on or don't do, but are there. And and they learn.

They start to do this. In Japan, they have an expression, learning to read a person's air. Okay. It's... And what results is they're paying attention to each other in ways they never would otherwise. 

Scott Allen: Yes. 

Marshall Ganz: And as a team, and not just as individuals. And so they come out... The [00:09:00]bonding that occurs through this half hour is really powerful, 'cause they're really paying attention to each other.

Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Marshall Ganz: And not just with the head, with the heart, with the body, with the feelings. And so the human animal part is about that development, how we go from being amoebas to being conscious beings. And and we bring in like Arrival. You know the movie Arrival? 

Scott Allen: Yes. Oh, yes. Great 

Marshall Ganz: film.

About what language constitutes meaning. And there's a book we sometimes use called The Mountain in the Sea. It's about when octopus achieve consciousness. So it, it's it's very rich. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Marshall Ganz: Now, so then we move from the human a- animal to the cultural human. 

Scott Allen: Okay. 

Marshall Ganz: And so the cultural human, this is the world we create, not that we have been create...

In other words, it's a world we've [00:10:00] created and continue to create, and are created by. And so that's storytelling.

Scott Allen: Okay. 

Marshall Ganz: That's music. That's visual arts. That's dance. That's all of the dimensions of what we call the arts, but which have been ways in which we learn to construct a world with others. And that has been a real revelation, I think, for everybody.

Scott Allen: Wow. 

Marshall Ganz: With stories, it's a little more familiar because it is a form of emotional communication about how we can confront disruption with hope or fear with hope. But music- now this year we were blessed with Yo-Yo Ma came for an hour. And and and so he's a wonderful teacher. And so then we discovered, oh, we had cellists and violin- we had all these musicians in the class that nobody would have ever spoken of or [00:11:00] mentioned.

And so now... And then I don't know if you remember when they sent the Voyager out in space. 

Scott Allen: Oh, yes. Yes. 

Marshall Ganz: The gold- the golden disc. 

Scott Allen: Exactly, the record. 

Marshall Ganz: A third of which was Bach. 

We had our students share a song that, that made them w- when they experienced it as being human. 

Scott Allen: Wow. 

Marshall Ganz: And so we got songs from all over the world, and that became our playlist for the class.

And so people listen differently because they say, "Oh, this is somebody's expression of feeling human." 

Scott Allen: Wow. 

Marshall Ganz: And and then the visual arts, this, slow looking they call it. Interacting with a visual representation emotionally, not just oh, what's the perspective and all that.

And then dance. A guy from the div school teaches people. We had... And it's not like now we're gonna learn tango. [00:12:00] It's like you have a partner. Okay, follow your partner's moves. And it winds up being all about how we communicate with our bodies- Wow ... and all that. And then w- when we move to dehumanization, the assignment is that they have to do a piece of art that can communicate to others how they felt when they felt dehumanized.

Scott Allen: Wow. 

Marshall Ganz: And the next morning we had a gallery of i- images constructions, pictures, all these ways of communicating that they couldn't do through words, that they did much mo- more effectively in this way. 

Scott Allen: That had to have been incredibly powerful. 

Marshall Ganz: It was incredibly powerful. And as you can see from my enthusiasm, sustained discovery.

Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Marshall Ganz: Sustained discovery, and for all of us, for me and Chris, and for everybody. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Marshall Ganz: And then we go to dehumanization, [00:13:00] and that's both interpersonal and systemic. Everything from There's a, what is it? Making monsters. It's like the creation of the subordinate which is also alien. That's one kind.

The other kind is just turning people into objects. Wow. And that's the dominant... that's all over the place now. And so we looked at Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin's movie from 1936. 'Cause we're looking at it both individually and collectively, and they experience it all the time in their classes.

They ex- if they're physicians, they experience all the time in healthcare this sys- systemic effort to reduce humans to objects or to symbols of humans, and it's everywhere. And then we go to re-humanization, and that's how do we recover this sense of humanity- 

Scott Allen: Wow ... 

Marshall Ganz: personally and systemically.

Scott Allen: Yes. 

Marshall Ganz: And [00:14:00] Isabel Wilkerson's book, Caste, terrific for that. 

Scott Allen: Powerful read. Powerful read. 

Marshall Ganz: Now, all the way through, each morning they're writing short pieces of reflection on the reading preparing for that day, but it's shared, and they can comment on each other. And so they develop this other conversation a reflective conversation on what they're experiencing.

I'm going into the weeds there, but boy, it really, It's a different kind of experience. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Marshall Ganz: And at the div school now they have their weekly humans lunch. So if you are a human, if you're a human, you come and have this. Or... No it's it's funny. It, because it be- it becomes a real experience in reclamation of value.

And so we're- we wanna share that. We wanna figure out how to grow that, because it feels like a real discovery. And there's a book that our students [00:15:00] really like by the German philosopher, sociologist Hartmut Rosa, and it's called The Uncontrollability of the World. And basically he's arguing that the world is fundamentally uncontrollable, in reality.

And so then when we try to control, it's aggressive and it's inherently repressive. 

Because we can't con- ul- we c- it's a thing we can't do. So he argues for resonance as a more meaningful way of understanding our interaction with each other and the world. And our students love this. Because everybody's into control.

Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Marshall Ganz: And you can't. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Marshall Ganz: It's not only arrogant, it's futile. 

Scott Allen: And it sounds at least something that I'm taking from this, and please push back if I'm not reading it correctly, but in some ways it's challenging the students to pause, slow down- Be present- 

Marshall Ganz: That's right ... 

Scott Allen: and be [00:16:00] human.

Yeah, 

Marshall Ganz: and be present to... That's- no, exactly. 

Scott Allen: Yes. 

Marshall Ganz: I'm having this new 

Scott Allen: experience. A human being versus a human doing interview. You know what I mean? Like- 

Marshall Ganz: Right. That's- no, and, Tim- I don't know if I mentioned Tim Berners-Lee. Yeah, I think we mentioned 

Scott Allen: him. Yes. Yeah. 

Marshall Ganz: Because recognizing that AI is a calcu- it's a calculating device.

I- look, I have Claude, I have ChatGPT. I love working with them, but I know that they're not human. They're, they are machines, and we are capable of so much more. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Marshall Ganz: So we're busy ending humanities departments and turning everybody into as close as we can to AIs. Boy, talk about self-destructive. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Marshall Ganz: We need to be cultivating, it's called humanities, cultivating that which makes us human.

Scott Allen: Yeah. I'm hearing when [00:17:00] you- aspects of being human, at least some things that I heard from you, relationship with others, to grow, to learn, to connect, being seen. Are there other things that maybe because of the experience have emerged as critical elements of being human that come to mind for you through this experience?

Marshall Ganz: I think one, one is you are human in relationship. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Marshall Ganz: You are not human as an isolated entity. We're not, we- n- we're not born that way. We don't die that way. We don't love that way. That it's understanding our deep relationality and need for it. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Marshall Ganz: And then you look at at people being transformed, not even- people being transformed to digital images.

There's another book we use called The Extinction of Experience. 

It's arguing that when two people are present to one another, there's all kinds [00:18:00] of experience going. It's experiential. Now, once you reduce it to a phone call, now it's all depends on sound but sound can express emotion.

Then reduce it to a piece of text, all of a sudden it's not experience at all. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Marshall Ganz: It's information about experience, but that is radically different from experience. That's the thermometer versus heat. And so it's trying to reclaim what it is to be present to one another- 

... 

Marshall Ganz: A- and what presence means.

And, A- again, it's another way to try to put this digital universe that we're operating in to appreciate how dehumanizing it can be- 

Scott Allen: Yes ... 

Marshall Ganz: often is. And then we wonder about loneliness, and then we wonder about... come on. That's what we're- our market system creates that. Yeah. Our politics, unfortunately, create it the way it's done.

[00:19:00] And so it's come back to what you were saying earlier before about how do we build community with one another in ways that are real? 

Scott Allen: Yes. 

Marshall Ganz: And And how do we construct s- how do we create structures that facilitate rather than counter? 

Scott Allen: Yes. 

Marshall Ganz: It's not enough to have virtuous people.

We have to have virtuous institutions. 

Scott Allen: Yes. 

Marshall Ganz: And we've eviscerated our political commonality here. I- it's just, it's all advertising. It's all marketing. We're the only liberal democracy that has done that. 

We've created this electoral industrial complex that is a result of a Supreme Court decision in 1976, Buckley v.

Valeo, which said that money is speech. The guy... I studied with a guy named Sid Verba, who's an expert on electoral stuff. He was- he said, "Liberal democracy is an experiment to see if equality of voice [00:20:00] can balance inequality of wealth- 

... 

Marshall Ganz: Equality of resource." And when you make voice dependent on wealth as well- 

Scott Allen: Yes

Marshall Ganz: you undermine the whole project. 

Scott Allen: Yep. 

Marshall Ganz: And that's what's been going on since the '70s. You create this infinite demand, then you create an industry to feed that demand. And then guess what? It goes up every year more, more, 'cause everybody's making money off that, and the politics get more and more removed.

Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Marshall Ganz: Here at the Kennedy School, after the general election, they have a thing where the campaign management for both team, both campaigns come together for a day and a half. 

Scott Allen: Oh, wow.

Marshall Ganz: So I s- I spent a day and a half in a room with the Trump people and the Harris people, and that was interesting.

But one of the things that was so clear was the Harris campaign, they were trying to tell people how they ought to feel. They were not hearing, listening, seeing how people felt. [00:21:00]

Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Marshall Ganz: It's living in this digital world of abstract polls and all this stuff, and you're not in touch with people. That's where Zoran Mamdani's campaign is so refreshing.

'

Marshall Ganz: Cause he s- they so got it right. 

Such a contrast that I think it's really important for people to appreciate the lessons of that campaign. 

Scott Allen: It's just a breath of fresh air. This conversation, this course, the it's almost as if you are a counterpoint to what we are living and experiencing, and it's an opportunity to slow down, again, be present, and just exist with other human beings in a way that I don't know we're being driven toward, right?

You and I were talking a little bit about religion and its role in our, in our- 

Marshall Ganz: Crucial. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. It's 

Marshall Ganz: crucial. Yeah. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. As just a very important piece of humans connecting, humans reflecting, humans [00:22:00] recentering into what's important to them. And I think... I often wonder, and as I said to you, I don't exactly know what my faith is, but...

And of course, that has been abused, w- yes. However- 

Marshall Ganz: It's human ... 

Scott Allen: yeah, the h- humans being, right? Yeah. Yeah. You've got a faction- That's 

Marshall Ganz: another part, 

Scott Allen: yeah ... that are not acting well, yes. That's right. ... Of attorneys, physicians, just go down the list of humans being. But by and large, you could say on Sundays or Saturdays or whatever day of the week it was or whatever time of day it was, if you were praying, th- there's a moment of pause, reflection, presence, and recentering and reorienting.

And as you said so beautifully before we started recording, there's an opportunity to be in community with others. 

Marshall Ganz: Yeah. 

Scott Allen: And, what is that? And so that structure, that system, what is that for us today? I'm reading the book Dopamine Nation, which is an [00:23:00] incredible read for listeners if you have not heard of it.

But yes, w- capitalism run amok, and of course, we've got gambling you can turn to, and pornography you can turn to, and alcohol, and THC. And there's all of these things that in a capitalistic society are being heavily marketed and heavily- ... heavily placed upon the population. And, a- and that's our news as well.

It's all about the dopamine and the agitation and the frustration and the anger and the... it's a multi-billion dollar industry keeping us a little bit off-kilter. 

Marshall Ganz: Oh, boy. Big off ki- They make a lot of money. 

Scott Allen: They- Exactly. 

Marshall Ganz: It's a- They think they're gonna live forever ... 

Scott Allen: it's a multi- 

Marshall Ganz: They, it's, 

Scott Allen: multi-billion dollar industry. 

Marshall Ganz: No, it's, No, that's that's really the case. And wait, I had a thought that- It flew away 

Scott Allen: Yeah, keep it 'cause y- we can edit this little pause. Okay. So if you wanna think about it for a second. Yeah. Yeah. It was dopamine nation our news, our food industry, [00:24:00] tobacco, THC, alcohol.

Just go down the list of kind of what we are bombarded with and heavily from a marketing standpoint. 

Marshall Ganz: Yeah. Very heavily. 

Scott Allen: No wonder we're sick and agitated and scared and worried and- 

Marshall Ganz: Oh, I remembered now. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. So just start with what you would have said. 

Marshall Ganz: Okay. No, I think that there's a Jewish story about a rabbi story about the fact that we are each given a jacket, and in the jacket there are two pockets, and in each pocket there's a note.

And in one pocket the note says, "For you the world was created." In the other pocket the note says, "You are dust and ashes and to dust you'll return." 

Now, question: How do you hold those two together? And that humility and transcendence, and that's what faith traditions work at. It's yes I have a limited existence [00:25:00] here.

I have a amazing gift of life and... But it's that connection with both the hu- the genuine humility, and a connection with that which is transcendent. And whether we call it God or whether we call it whatever we call it, it's a critical need that we have. And with... in the absence of, in the absence of faith experiences...

people say, "I'm spiritual. I don't believe in religion. I'm spiritual." It's a yearning for this. And and I'm really grateful for Pope Leo. 

I... Here in Cambridge I was going to a book party, and I pass a house and there's a sign, there's a flag for the Vatican out front. Huh. I was saying, "Vatican flag in Cambridge?

What are you talking about?" And then below it was this quote from Pope Leo standing up to Trump. 

And it was like, whoa, this has some real meaning. 

And then there were the 22 bishops that came out and supported [00:26:00] him. And so it's a kind of, I don't know, an effort to, within the Catholic Church, an effort to re- reconnect with what the real mission is.

And it's very interesting what's going on there. 

I just finished another book on the church from John XXIII- To Pope Francis and the way in which the American Catholic Church literally was taken over by the Republicans and the right wing. 

And it's not fantastical.

It's a beautiful book, and the guy has really done the research. And his name is Gehring, G-E-R-G-E-H-R-I-N-G, who's been in that world and writes about it, and it was very sobering. And then right when Leo starts taking on Trump, yeah, about time. It's, Well- ... it's refreshing and needed.

Scott Allen: And I think to recenter us on relationships with others, [00:27:00] growing, learning, connecting, being seen, right? How do we recenter? How do institutions, how do we as just i- in our communities, I... and truly be present and I can just... as you told the story of your students telling the story of themselves, just imagine the embodied feelings that people had in that learning experience.

They will... or as they are moving around the room and- ... looking at these pieces of art. The- Yeah ... the embodied learning, regardless of your your perspective on the world, your lived history, your orientation. It had to have been just such a powerful experience, and d- for you to be creating that learning experience and that space for exploration, because I think you used the word wonder, right?

Yeah. Yeah. We create a community where wonder exists. I think that's another incredible element of being human, right? Absolutely. Curiosity and wonder [00:28:00] and, advancement in that way. Well- It's- Ugh ... 

Marshall Ganz: it is, yeah. The world is a place of exploration. 

This place of experimentation, of learning.

It's a serious place. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Marshall Ganz: But it's also capable of joy. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Marshall Ganz: And I don't know. It's, 'Cause, from, when, in teaching organizing and leadership, one of the core dimensions of it is a head and heart approach, that there's concept but there's feeling and there's a skill. 

Scott Allen: Yes. 

Marshall Ganz: And so we don't believe in models.

We teach practices because models are abstractions that try to put people in boxes. My mom used to talk about Procrustes, the Greek pir- pirate king,

Scott Allen: I don't.

Marshall Ganz: When he captured prisoners, they bring him back, and he had this plank, and if you were too short for the plank, you got stretched, and if you were too long for the plank, you got chopped.

That's what we do with models. Okay. The economics [00:29:00] profession for 70 years been doing that because then we say, "That's reality. Now, this human lived experience over here there's... it's anecdotal or whatever." But it's- but it's not. It's trying to force reality into this conceptual box invented through a process of abstraction that does real damage.

And so we teach practices much more like Alasdair MacIntyre understands practice. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Marshall Ganz: It's dynamic. It's ongoing. It involves values. It involves concepts. It involves skills. And it's never done. It's just never done- ... because change is never done. Change is with us. So unless learning is with us all the time too, then we lose the line, lose the thread if that makes sense.

Scott Allen: Yes. Yeah. 

Marshall Ganz: So when we t- when we teach leadership we... There's the head part, but learning to [00:30:00] speak the language of emotion is critically important. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Marshall Ganz: And that's what we do through narrative a- as a means. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Marshall Ganz: And it's also gotta translate into doing something- 

Scott Allen: Yes ... 

Marshall Ganz: because that creates the world.

Scott Allen: Yep. 

Marshall Ganz: And I don't know. As you can see, it's very exciting stuff and and we also find it works across cultures. We have students from all over the world and, when I was developing public narrative as a part of the teaching I've been doing, public narrative a- in organizing it starts with telling a story of self.

But it's not a CV. It's what are the experiences in which you learn to care. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Marshall Ganz: What are the experiences in which you learn to hope? So it's experiential. It's like Charles Taylor i- in effort to articulate moral sources, but experientially and so it communicates emotionally, and that's that's a critical dimension of [00:31:00] all this.

Scott Allen: Yeah. 

Marshall Ganz: And so the definition we use for leadership is that it's about accepting responsibility for enabling others to achieve shared purpose under conditions of uncertainty. 

Scott Allen: Yep. 

Marshall Ganz: And uncertainty is fundamental, yeah. It's fundamental. 

Scott Allen: Yep. 

Marshall Ganz: Which means there's... We don't know what's gonna happen, but it also means- Anything could happen.

Scott Allen: Yes. 

Marshall Ganz: There's a sense of possible associated with that, not just the probable. 

Scott Allen: I hope you will come back and we can discuss public narrative, organizing versus mobilizing. Yes. We can talk about emotion. I hope that you will consider doing that because I have loved this conversation, so much fun.

As we begin to wind down our time, what would you say is the practical wisdom for listeners? What... As you reflect on the conversation we've just had, what's the practical wisdom for listeners?

Marshall Ganz: [00:32:00] I think part of it is to trust your own heart. You can't plan your way to something. It's more what moves you to engage with whatever you're engaging with. 

In other words it's making a 30-year plan is useless. Somebody interviewed Eisenhower after D-Day, and "Oh, your plan must have been really important."

He said planning's important, but plans are useless." That is the reality because the world is it's uncer- it's unpredictable. So rather than trying to control through prediction, it's rather trying to equip ourselves with the capabilities of engaging uncertainty creatively and with hopefulness and not fear.

Now, we're all capable of that. Every faith tradition tries to address this question in one way or another. 

And but it starts with trusting your [00:33:00] own heart- 

Scott Allen: Yeah ...

Marshall Ganz: I think. 

Scott Allen: Yeah. Sir, a perfect way to end my week, and- Thank 

Marshall Ganz: you, Scott ... 

Scott Allen: I'm just so thankful for you, thankful for y- the work that you've done, that you continue to do, the exploration that you continue to engage in.

It's admirable, and I do hope you will consider coming back. I'd love to continue the conversation. 

Marshall Ganz: Yeah, me too. Thanks, Scott. Thank 

Scott Allen: you. 

Marshall Ganz: And thanks for a chance to share about being human. 'Cause we haven't shared that so much, but boy, it turns out to be the real fundamental of the whole thing.

Oh. So thank 

Scott Allen: you. Oh, I love it. Okay. Be well, sir. 

Marshall Ganz: Yeah. Take care. Bye.