Dave Goetschalk Planned Parenthood Analysis

Last week, Dave Goetschalk’s presentation on Planned Parenthood and the example of advocating for comprehensive sex education in Omaha Public Schools (OPS) pointed out a key debate in leadership studies – what role does leadership actually play in achieving desired outcomes? Many studies in private firms show that there is a weak relationship between leader behaviors and objective performance measures, suggesting that performance is highly contingent on other factors. However, leaders still need to influence organizational culture, manage organizational goals, and create value, especially in advocacy groups. Goetschalk started with showing us the traditional linear leadership model, where there is clearly one authority, and discussed potential
As a ‘grassroots’ way of organizing, this model begins by identifying leaders in the community and builds power from resources within to create change. It may look like a network, but there is a clear way to organize that produces shared values. First, you begin with building power by creating shared stories (purpose), shared commitment (participation), and shared structure (understanding); next, you use power by establishing a shared strategy (initiative) and shared action (change). Through building capacity, members in the ‘snowflake’ work together to achieve a collectively valued social outcome (in this case, comprehensive sexual education in
Obviously, capacity building and empowerment is important in community-based health programing. The ‘snowflake’ model seems to be an effective way to not only organize, but also potentially train community members to serve as sources of information and expertise for health promotion. Could the snowflake model be used as a programmatic approach to developing a community-based health promotion program? In other words, instead of me (expert) going into a community and saying, “you have an obesity problem”, could you start with asking people in the community to define their health stories to form a shared commitment and understanding of a health issue to build a health-promotion