How would you know if you’ve got a great manifesto?
The best way is to check the real world and see if it made any difference.
This is useful after you’ve created and shared your manifesto. It’s not so useful during the creation phase.
Based on the Manifesto Manifesto and the principles of manifestos we created, here’s a way to score your manifesto: The more elements on this list you can include in your manifesto the more powerful it will be and the more points you’ll score.
Here’s three steps to scoring points for your manifesto…
Step 1: Create a Manifesto
You score one point for having a manifesto. This satisfies the first principle: Manifestos are primal.
Step 2: Deepen Your Manifesto
Then, you score one extra point for each of the next seven principles you have incorporated into your manifesto.
2. Manifestos terminate the past
3. Manifestos create new worlds
4. Manifestos trigger communities
5. Manifestos define us
6. Manifestos antagonise others
7. Manifestos inspire being
8. Manifestos provoke action
Step 3: Create a Campaign around your Manifesto
If you only had a manifesto, that would be a good start. However, the aim here is encourage you to translate your intention into some tangible change in your community.
Therefore, to fulfil on principle #9 (Manifestos crave presence) and score your final point create a campaign to bring your manifesto to life.
To create a campaign or project ask:
What would need to happen for me to be able to say ‘we did that’?
In other words, what’s the practical result that would fulfil your manifesto?
For example, to make 2011 The Year of the Manifesto, I set the goal of creating and also publishing 1000 manifestos. I reckon, if this was achieved, I could proudly say that it was indeed the Year of the Manifesto.
Total Score
Finally, add up your score out of a possible total of 9 – nine principles, nine points.
PS: We’ll be ranking a bunch of examples to show how this works in future posts.
Questions
How did you fare? What’s your manifesto score? Which principles could you add to improve your score?
