Five minutes later, the committee files in: several priests, a nun, and two church laypeople. Larkin, a second trainer, and Cortés (when he arrives) are there to help the committee figure out how to organize a millennial celebration that will focus on diversity -- an issue that the church is struggling with as its congregations become increasingly Hispanic. Ten minutes into the meeting, Cortés arrives. He's dressed in a jacket and pants (of varying shades of gray) and a maroon tie. Once Cortés takes his seat, the others start addressing their questions to him, rather than to the whole group. He deflects each request for an opinion with a question: "What do you think?" or "What are you trying to accomplish?" By the end of the meeting, he has helped the committee to make decisions by stepping back and allowing members to lead themselves.

Larkin says that the meeting is typical of Cortés's style of leadership: He forces people to push the limits of their abilities, to do more than what is comfortable. He was the one who convinced her, 20 years ago, that it was possible for a shy, soft-spoken nun to become a briefcase-carrying, cell-phone-toting, powerful organizer. "I've never thought of myself as an assertive person," she says. "And as we started to talk about what kind of role I might take on, I saw that in public I was going to have to act in ways that I had always thought I was too shy and polite to act. But Ernie was interested in more than the limits that I placed on myself. He helped me find the self that I had to become to do this work. That's what I love about what I do -- helping others discover that in themselves."

The Organizer on Campus

Cortés plans to push the limits of community organizing as well. He envisions a nation of cities filled with ornery, invigorating public discourse fueled by IAF groups. Right now, he is working in Los Angeles to launch the kind of revolution that he helped bring about in Texas. He is in the early stages of organizing in Los Angeles, and his work is rewarding but slow. Some skeptics wonder whether Cortés's model will fall short of his lofty goals. At the end of his public-policy class, Professor Dreier asks Cortés, "Don't you think that some problems are too big for groups like yours to tackle? That some problems have to be solved on a national level, not just in LA?"

Cortés thinks for a minute. "I'm not sure I believe that," he says. "I believe that there is a lot of power here. If you could figure out how to get at the power of LA's people, then you could do a lot. We hope that within five years, we'll have 25 schools that will have been touched by our efforts -- places where the culture has changed, where teachers are excited, and where students are excited. We hope that we'll make progress on health-care issues and workers' rights. Right now, we're just trying to recruit and develop, to get the organizers, leaders, and institutions that we need to pull off that kind of massive change. And I think that we can do that.

"But who knows? Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe in two years someone will ask you, 'Where's that Ernie Cortés guy?' And you'll say, 'Oh, he was run out of town.' " Then that Ernie Cortés guy smiles grandly, and there's not one person in the room who believes him.

Cheryl Dahle (cdahle@fastcompany.com) is a senior writer at Fast Company. learn more about communities organized for public service on the Web (http://iisd.ca/50comm/commdb/list/c19.htm).

Sidebar: What's Fast

Community organizer Ernesto Cortés views democracy as the single most effective way to develop people -- and to get things done -- both in society and inside companies. He offers this advice on creating coalitions and on becoming a truly democratic leader.

There are no permanent enemies or permanent allies -- only permanent interests.

In politics and in business, there are situations in which the people you care about are going to be your adversaries. I am capable of working with business leaders on issues like education and long-term training, even if those leaders completely disagree with my strategies pertaining to living wages or union organizing. In order to succeed, you have to be able to have those kinds of complex relationships. You have to realize that this is not a war. It's not about destroying people. It's about negotiating settlements.

Never do for people what they can do for themselves.

Smart leaders know that what they're trying to do is develop people's capacity to act. Mentoring has got to be about getting them to understand their own interests and to develop a habit of inquiry so that they can move from being your protégés to being people who can be your mentors.

Don't lead -- develop other leaders.

What I'm trying to do is build something that is beyond anything that I can do as one person or as one leader. So the moment that I start leading an organization myself, that's my cue to walk away -- or else I'd become just another executive director. My job is to get out of the center of things. Because if I'm the one with all of the relationships, then once I go away, the organization collapses. I'm not here to serve as a charismatic leader. I'm an organizer.

Encourage confrontation.

The best managers understand that if everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking.