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Selecting Sparkplugs is from an article titled "Sparkplugs for Renewal", by Jane W. Schautz and Harold S. Williams. It focuses on the stuff that makes an individual a Sparkplug. Check back next month for The Practice of Community Entrepreneurs. Enjoy!
 
Selecting Sparkplugs
You are a foundation officer or a county agent attending a series of community meetings to decide where to put your money or your time to prompt community renewal most effectively. You know that one or two key people will make all the difference. But who are they? Are they the persons who speak out most forcefully or frequently? Are they those who volunteer first? Are they the elected leaders? Are they those with the most experience in the project area or the most academic training?
 
The answer to all these questions is, not necessarily. The most forceful speakers may be blowhards and professional critics. The first to volunteer may be a great joiner and a lousy finisher. The elected official may try hard to appease everyone and be the worst of change agents. Those with the most experience or degrees may have the greatest socialization to patterns of behavior that must be changed, not reinforced.
 
We now turn to the question of defining the most critical factors which tend to prove essential for a person to possess. While this “right stuff” of entrepreneurialism is certainly not a fixed template, we have learned—over and over—that we ignore or explain away the absence of these factors at our peril.
 

Since not all sparkplugs work equally well in all engines, our need has been to decide what characteristics will most predict success for local projects in which intensive mobilization of volunteers is a key part of the picture. Our answer is that six factors are most critical:

 
1. Energy
2. A bias toward action
3. A result focus
4. Personal responsibility
5. Belief in a common good
6. Desire for teamwork
 
Here’s a detailed look at each factor as we have developed it. In each case, we think of the factor, not as a core personality trait, but simply as a general tendency or disposition that can be defined in behavioral terms with indicators to signify its presence. We also add a few cautions for each.
 
1. Energy. Energy in our terms is the scarce resource that brings a plan to life. It brings drive, motivation, work, and an ability to stay the course. Further, this is the commodity that not only “winds up” the leader but proves a galvanizing force to get and keep the involvement of others. Without strong human energy many projects will begin...but few will finish.
  Indicators of energy:
 
• Reasonable physical condition. The mind must be willing...but the body must also be able. This is not, however, a matter of brawn or even overall health. The question is the stamina needed for a given project.
• Enthusiasm, optimism, self-confidence. While pessimists occasionally have strong energy, theirs is devoted to criticizing and tolerating conditions, not changing them.
• Sense of humor. Humor is one basis for both renewal and for insight. We have in mind not the practical or bawdy jokester but the person who sees humor and irony in situations. Most especially they can laugh at themselves.
  Cautions:
 
• Energy can take quiet as well as frenetic forms. Remember “The Little Engine that Could.”
• Some forms of human energy remain dispersed and diffuse, as in “nervous energy.” We are looking for the person who can harness energy in a specific direction to achieve intensity and duration.
• Optimism should not be confused with boosterism. For our sparkplugs, it is less a matter that “all works out for the best” than that they are confident of achievement.
   
2. A Bias toward action. Many people are at heart critics, planners, or observers. Our sparkplugs are actors. They want to solve a problem, not bemoan or even fully define it. Further, they favor stopping the preparations at some early point in order to get underway. This orientation is required given the tendency of so many community projects to favor prolonged preparations. This is frequently encouraged by funders who want a detailed needs statement or a feasibility study as well as widespread “involvement” and letters of support.
  Indicators of the action bias:
 
• A focus on solving a problem rather than discussing it. Most people remain problem-centered.
• A sense of urgency. A person who believes that next year or even next month is as good a time as now to begin is unlikely to hold a strong action premise.
• A focus on opportunities. A person who sees opportunities as well as obstacles is more likely to be ready to act.
  Cautions:
 
• We are looking for the person who pivots from problem to solution, not for the person who simply shows the most impatience.
• We are looking for the sparkplug’s clarity on what should be done—not initially on whether we happen to agree with that proposed approach.
   
3. A Results Orientation. Effective sparkplugs are those who believe that the outcome, not the process, is what matters most. They define and believe in achievement and are turned-on by the challenge of a finish line. In community activity, this orientation helps to overcome the emphasis on process—such as endless meetings and the belief that nothing should be done before total consensus is reached.
  Indicators of a results orientation:
 
• A sense of achievement. Many people have great needs for power or affiliation. Our sparkplugs have a strong need for achievement, which can only come when a goal is clearly defined.
• Some competitive instincts. In many instances achievement is defined as a competition, if not with what other communities or state government might attain then as internal competition to set the best target or get the best deal.
• Desire to keep score. Those preoccupied with setting and hitting a target will want a way to know where they stand.
  Cautions:
 
• A results focus is not necessarily “bean counting.” Many results have strong qualitative dimensions and most have some clear threshold of success rather than a range of results which must be measured.
• There is a profound difference between setting a target in advance of a project and defining achievement at the endpoint. Those with specific targets outperform those who pledge best efforts. We look not for those who say, “I’ll try hard,” but rather, “I’ll do it.”
   
4. Personal Responsibility. Most of us are great at accepting praise for success but are quick to blame outside forces—fate, luck, the weather, others—when things go wrong. Sparkplugs believe that people own the consequences of their own behavior in bad times as well as good ones. As a result, they are excellent learners who can make needed course corrections.
  Indicators of personal responsibility:
 
• Ability to acknowledge error and mistake as the essential basis for behavior change.
• A focus on personal as much as on group accountability. We look for people who have no inclination to let themselves or others hide their personal responsibilities within collective action.
• A belief that responsibility is not something that you are delegated by a group or organization but something that you assume whenever you can see how you can contribute.
  Cautions:
 
• There is a difference between taking responsibility and taking credit. Our sparkplugs tend to see victory as happening because a variety of people each take responsibility and share the credit.
• While effective community entrepreneurs focus on what everyone can do better, they are much less interested in blame or in full explanation than in improvement. To them, a well-documented failure is far less useful than an imperfectly understood success!
   
5. Belief in a common good. Many if not most people in communities remain solely fixated on what is good for themselves, their children, their close friends. When pressed, they believe that communities generally work by the give and take among self-interests. Our sparkplugs believe that there is a shared good that surpasses the co-existence of private goods. This belief helps them to see and set visions.
  Indicators of the common good belief:
 
• An inclination to consider any project’s impacts on those of lowest income or who are in other ways disadvantaged. More broadly, a tendency to talk about the distribution as well as the net level of results.
• An ability to see even small events from different perspectives and to avoid being excessively judgmental about who is right and who is wrong.
• A tendency to see a longer view in which short term gratifications need to be adjusted for longer term gains.
  Cautions:
 
• The ability to see a common good is not the equivalent of sainthood. Indeed, it does not make one any more selfless than others. Rather, this is a view that sees self and family enhancement as connected to community enrichment.
• The fact that one shows evidence of understanding other viewpoints does not mean that one agrees with them or avoids resolution about what to do until full harmony is at hand.
   
6. Desire for teamwork. While entrepreneurs in business may go it alone, those in communities have no such luxury. They are invariably dependent on other people and forces whose cooperation is critical. The concept of a team brings the full set of needed leadership skills, as well as the full complement of “people power” to get the job done.
  Indicators of teamwork focus:
 
• An ability to see clearly both personal weaknesses and strengths as well as to seek out other lead people who have different talents to compensate.
• A willingness to share information and influence, to give credit to others and to accept more than one’s share of blame.
• A tendency to see interdependence more than either independence or dependence in relationships with other people.
  Cautions:
 
• A team is not simply a group of people with a common interest. For our sparkplug, the team is the essential mechanism or means to the project’s end.
• The active team or group is generally quite different from the universe of all persons who will benefit from the improvement. The sparkplug tends to look for who is needed to achieve the result, not to achieve 100% participation.
 
That’s the picture we see. We have no wish to delve psychologically into the arcane reaches of personality or any other theory. We have no view on whether needs, motives and the like even exist. All we know is that certain tendencies that people bring to a wide variety of actions will prove important if not decisive in forecasting successful projects. We suspect that this kind of framework is also useful to those who size up potential innovators in organizations.
 
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