The Four Pivots

For fans of Emergent Strategy and Dare to Lead, an activist’s road map to long-term social justice impact through four simple shifts.

We need a fundamental shift in our values – a pivot in how we think, act, work, and connect. Despite what we’ve been told, the most critical mainspring of social change isn’t coalition building or problem analysis. It’s healing: deep, whole, and systemic, inside and out.

Here, Shawn Ginwright, PhD, breaks down the common myths of social movements – a set of deeply ingrained beliefs that actually hold us back from healing and achieving sustainable systemic change. He shows us why these frames don’t work, proposing instead four revolutionary pivots for better activism and collective leadership:

Awareness: from lens to mirror

Connection: from transactional to transformative relationships

Vision: from problem-fixing to possibility-creating

Presence: from hustle to flow

Supplemented with reflections, prompts, cutting-edge research, and the author’s own insights and lived experience as an African American social scientist, professor, and movement builder, The Four Pivots helps us uncover our blind spots. It shows us how to discover new lenses and boldly assert our need for connection, transformation, trust, wholeness, and healing. It gives us permission to create a better future – to acknowledge that a broken system has been predefining our dreams and limiting what we allow ourselves to imagine, but that it doesn’t have to be that way at all. Are you ready to pivot?