Strategizing

Key Concepts

We focus resources by strategizing in the context of a campaign.
We devise strategy by asking first, “who are our people and what is their problem?” before deciding on our goals.
Strategy is made up of nested goals: smaller, measurable goals that we achieve incrementally in order to meet our larger, mountaintop goal.
Power as a relationship between resources and interests is fundamental to strategizing.
Historical; Funder Facing A theory of change statement summarizes our strategy, and provides us with a strategic blueprint for how we plan on making change.
A leadership team increases its strategic capacity by having diverse knowledge and perspectives, well-developed learning processes and strong motivation.

Campaigns

As we walk through this section, we are doing it within the context of a campaign: work focussed towards achieving a particular change in the world. The word campaign isn’t unique to organizing: there are advertising campaigns, election campaigns, and so on. The thing each has in common is that they are focussing resources towards achieving a goal that represents some tangible change.

What is strategy and how does it work?

Simply put, strategy is turning what you have into what you need to get what you want.

What you have is your community’s resources: people, time, skills, money, experiences, relationships, credibility, your allies, supporters, your leadership.

What you need to achieve the change you want is power. Power is gained through tactics that can creatively turn your resources into the capacity you need to achieve your goal.

What you want is your goal. Your goal is a clear and measurable outcome that allows you to measure progress along the way.

To illustrate strategy, we will use a classic organizing example: the 1956 boycott of the bus system in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1956, as part of regional racial segregation policies, black passengers had to sit at the back of the bus and white passengers at the front. If the bus was full, black passengers were forced to give up their seats for white passengers. Demanding a change to these rules, black passengers boycotted the bus system, depriving the system of substantial revenue. 381 days after the boycott started, the bus system was desegregated.^[1]

Strategizing is motivated by an urgent challenge

We strategize in response to an urgent challenge or a unique opportunity to turn our vision into specific goals. We commit to the goal first, then develop how we will get there. Think of the Montgomery Bus Boycott – what challenge did the leadership of the boycott respond to? What was their motivating vision?

Strategizing is situated

Strategy unfolds within a specific context, the particularities of which really matter. The imaginative power of strategizing can be realized only when rooted within an understanding of the details of your campaign context as well as an understanding of the larger context your campaign is situated in. You need to understand the trees and the forest. During the bus boycott, the leadership team had to consider the finances of the local bus company and how withholding their bus fares would impact them, as well as the feasibility of all black residents in Montgomery using alternative transit for an indefinite period of time. They also had to understand how their local action would affect the national conversation on civil rights.

Strategizing is creative

Challenging the status quo requires making up for our lack of resources by using the resources we do have intentionally and creatively. During the bus boycott, the leadership turned the resources of their community (a bus fare) into power by mobilizing that resource collectively.

Strategizing is collaborative

Strategizing is most dynamic and effective when the group responsible for it brings diverse experience, background, and resources to the table. During the bus boycott, strategizing was undertaken collaboratively by national and local organizations representing black people, the the Women’s Political Council, representing black women, and white allies.

Strategizing is intentional

A strategy is a theory of how we can turn what we have (resources) into what we need (power) to get what we want (achieving goals). We call this a theory of change, and will discuss it later in this section.

Strategizing is a verb, and is an ongoing process

Strategizing is something we do, not something we have. Strategizing is not about creating a static strategic plan at the beginning of a campaign and implementing it. Rather, we continually strategize as we implement our strategic choices and change our strategy in response to what happens. In this way, we ‘act our way into new thinking’ rather than ‘think our way into new acting.’ At first, organizers in Montgomery pursued only a legal strategy, fighting segregation in the courts. It was only after the Women’s Political Council circulated a flyer calling for a boycott in solidarity with Rosa Parks being arrested for refusing to give up her seat, that a one-day boycott was agreed upon by the black community in Montgomery on December 5, 1955. It was not until organizers saw a successful one day boycott that they called on the community to boycott the buses until they had been desegregated.

How to strategize

When strategizing in organizing, we ask ourselves six questions:

Who are our PEOPLE?
What is the PROBLEM?
What is our GOAL?
What is our THEORY OF CHANGE?
What are our TACTICS?
What is our TIMELINE?

In this section, we will discuss the first four, and we will dig into the last two in the Taking Action section.

Step 1: Who are my people?

By starting with the question “Who are my people?” instead of “What is my issue?” we will ensure that we are designing a campaign that people will join. If we pick an issue or problem to work on first, then try to find the people later, we may find there is no one to join us. So we ask “Who are my people?” and then “What is the problem that they face?”.

Step 2: What is the problem?

Now we need to analyze the problem by asking three questions: What exactly is the problem we’re trying to solve? Why hasn’t it been solved? And what would it take to solve the problem?

What is the problem?

What problem are our people facing? To be most effective as an organizer, we should seek to enable your people to change an intolerable circumstance. By focussing our efforts on solving a problem that is emotionally resonant with our community, we know that it is important enough to them to organize until they win.

In the Montgomery Bus Boycott example, the people were black residents of Montgomery, and their intolerable circumstance was a system of racist segregation policies.

Why hasn’t the problem been solved?

Who has the resources to solve the problem? Why haven’t they used them to solve the problem? Do we know how to solve it, but just lack the necessary resources? Or do we need to first figure out how to solve the problem?

It’s important to look at the history of this problem to understand what has been tried (if anything), what failed, and why.

What would it take to solve the problem?

If the problem were to go away, what would need to be different in the world? What would you have to build, who would you need to elect, what law would need to be changed, what program would need to be funded? As you start to answer this question, you’ll start to set your strategic goal.

Step 3: What is the goal?

Every organizing campaign should have a clear strategic goal. Choosing a strategic goal is often the most important choice we make in designing a campaign.

No one strategic goal can solve everything. In order to put our resources to work solving our problems, we have to decide where to focus. We must ask ourselves: what goal can we work toward that may not solve the whole problem, but will get us tangibly closer to solving the problem? Unless we choose a goal to focus on, we’ll risk wasting our resources in ways that just won’t add up.

Strategy is nested; our campaign’s ultimate goal, or the “mountain top” goal, is likely not achievable in one attempt. Instead of chasing after the mountain top goal all the time, we can set smaller, nested strategic goals that help measure incremental progress throughout the campaign. Nested goals may take place over time (e.g. a local campaign for a municipal living wage policy may start with electing supportive council candidates before moving on to pushing for an actual bylaw), or over a geographic area (e.g. an election campaign will have a nested goal for each of the ridings in needs to win in order to win the election).

Each time we accomplish a nested goal, we have moved a step closer to achieving or mountaintop goal, while also having built the power of our community, making it easier for us to achieve our next nested goal.

An effective strategic goal:

Creates a measurable change in the world, often by tangibly improving the lives of the people who are organizing.
Focuses resources on a single strategic outcome.
Builds the capacity of our community.
Uses a point of leverage: our community’s strength or our opposition’s weakness.
Focuses on a motivational issue that is visible and significant to our community.

A effective strategic goal is not:

Solely about raising awareness without another outcome.
Implementing a tactic such as a rally (we’ll cover this in more depth in the next section).

Step 4: What is the Theory of Change?

Once we know what our strategic goal is, we need to decide how we will achieve it. A theory of change sums up how what we do will result in the change that we want. In community organizing, the theory of change is based on power relationships, and in this context, power is not something that you have by virtue of the position you hold in an organization. Instead, organizers understand power as the influence created by the relationship between interests and resources.

We assume that the world is the way it is because some people benefit. Often these people currently have more power than us and are therefore able to maintain the status quo. Community organizing, then, focuses on power: who has it, who does not, and how to build enough of it to shift the power relationship. That shift is what makes change.

In organizing, we can conceptualize two kinds of power: power with and power over. Understanding which types of power is involved in the problem we are facing helps us decide how to approach the problem.

Power with vs. Power Over

Power with: Sometimes we can create the change we need just by organizing our resources with others, creating power with them and without shifting power relationships with actors outside your community. For instance, creating a community credit union or a community run day care are examples of power with community organizing.

Power over: Sometimes others hold power over decisions or resources that we need in order to create change. In cases like these, we have to organize our power with others first in order to make a claim on the resources or decisions that will fulfill our interests.

Note: All organizing involves power with to some extent. Even when there is a problem involving power over your people, you will still need to create power with by organizing your community’s resources.

When we have to engage those who have power over us in order to create change, we can ask ourselves five questions:

What is our goal?
What person or organization has the power to realize our goal?
What is that person or organization’s interests and vulnerabilities?
What resources do we have at our disposal (or can get)?
What strategies can we use to leverage those resources, and target their vulnerabilities, to achieve our goal?

Once we have answered these questions, we’re one step closer to deciding on our strategy, which we can articulate in a theory of change statement.

Resources

Regardless of whether the problem is a power with or power over situation, identifying our community’s resources is key. For example, assume our people are local families whose problem is not being able to bring refugee relatives to Canada. Their resources include: their relationships in the community, volunteer time, their homes, their votes in elections, money, knowledge of the immigration system, stories about their family, contacts in government, and artistic skills. This community could use their money, time, relationships, knowledge of the immigration system and stories to fundraise money to sponsor their relatives through the immigration system. They could use artistic skills and stories to hold media stunts to shame government into making immigration policies more accessible. They could use their time, relationships and contacts in government to lobby the government to make changes to the laws. This community has many strategic options to pursue, but each is dependent on their resources and how they use them. As a result, knowing what their resources are is critical in identifying their theory of change.

Three Faces of Power

When strategizing, we can think about 3 distinct ways in which we can bring about change: direct political involvement, structural changes, and shifts in worldviews. Ideally, we can set goals and theories of change that work on all three faces of power simultaneously.

Decision: Direct Political Involvement

With direct political involvement, we work to influence decisions within the systems and structures that are already in place. This type of strategy buys time for the long-term change that is desired, and is often (though not always) insufficient to bring about sustained change. It can involve direct actions like civil disobedience, boycotts, blockades, and other forms of refusal. It can also involve trying to impact elections, change laws, and affect political and economic decisions. For example, a campaign working for the rights of transgender people might work to develop trans-inclusion policies at local school boards or city councils.

Structures: Structural Change

Structural change involves shifting the structures that are preventing change from occurring by actively building capacity in the organizations, groups and communities that are working towards the desired change, and shifting control over the structures working against our interests. It involves building up a sustained membership, organizing people for collective action, and developing leaders who can guide these organizations through the desired change. For example, a campaign working for the rights of transgender people might work to develop a lobby group for trans rights or identify trans leaders to run for public office themselves in order to develop power structures to advocate for their community in the long term.

Systems: Shifts in Worldviews

By shifting worldviews, the oppressive values that lead to injustice are changed, while the values that will allow change to survive are developed. In order to develop these values, we draw upon existing cultural beliefs, norms, traditions, histories and practices that shape political meaning. We can do this by taking the values and stories of the change we are trying to create, and connecting those to the values and stories of the people whose worldview we are trying to shift. In this way, telling compelling stories is key to many strategies trying to shift worldviews. For example, a campaign working for rights of transgender people might share stories of the oppression experienced by trans people in public spaces and the media in order to shift the worldviews and values of decision makers and the general public.

Challenging All Three Faces of Power

When setting strategic goals and theories of change, we can challenge systems, structures and key decisions simultaneously. In the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the organizers created tangible change for their community by engaging in direct action (a boycott) to desegregate the buses. They shifted structures by building capacity in the black community in Montgomery, developing leaders, and creating new organizations to fight segregation more broadly. And they dragged systemic racism into view by creating a conflict in the other two faces of power, which allowed them to raise awareness of how systemic racism was unacceptably rooted in their community.

Goal and Theory of Change: Chicken and Egg

You can’t know what your theory of change is until you know what goal you are trying to achieve. And sometimes you don’t want to set a goal until you have a sense of what theories of change you stand a chance of succeeding at. As you develop your goal you can have an eye to what’s possible, and as you develop your theory of change you may go back and revise your goal based on your best path to success.

Theory of Change Statement

Historical note: Theory of Change is best oriented towards evaluators (funders) rather than directly used for strategic planning

A theory of change statement is a tool to understand our strategy and how (or if) it will work. Writing out a theory of change statement is an opportunity to expose weak assumptions, and can be a useful tool to compare several possible strategies for achieving the same goal. It can also force refinement and tough conversations: being able to put your strategy into words requires you to understand it well. The process of coming to a consensus amongst your leadership team on a theory of change statement ensures that everyone is in agreement on what strategy is being pursued and why. A theory of change statement uses this format:

If we do (STRATEGY)
then (STRATEGIC GOAL)
Because (ASSUMPTION)

In the Montgomery Bus Boycott example from earlier in this section, the theory of change could be written like this:

If we put financial pressure on the bus company
then the bus company will desegregate the buses

because the bus company values profit more than their racist values.

The strategy is to put financial pressure on the bus company, with the goal of desegregating the buses. The “because” portion of the statement, that the bus company values profit over their racist values, is the assumption that has to be true for the strategy to work. When we draft a theory of change statement, the “because” portion of the statement is an opportunity to expose the weak points in our strategy. If the weakest assumption in our strategy seems true, then we have a pretty good chance of succeeding.

A theory of change is just that, a theory. It is a hypothesis about how we will achieve the change we want. We then test our theory of change by implementing it through tactics, which we will cover in the Taking Action section.

Strategic Capacity

Strategic capacity, the ability to create effective strategy, is best developed by a leadership team, rather than in the head of a single individual. As our leadership team strategizes, these three factors increase its capacity to strategize.

Diverse Knowledge and Perspectives

When a leadership team has a diversity of life experience and knowledge, it can facilitate innovative and creative thinking. With a diverse group comes access to a wide-range of knowledge for strategizing in your specific context, which can be used to strategize multiple different solutions to choose from to achieve the desired outcome. The leadership team can then choose the solution that will be most effective.

Learning Processes

Since strategizing is an ongoing process, learning processes are key to developing strategic capacity. Leadership teams should listen and seek out feedback to their strategy, gauge success or failure, and adapt accordingly. These learning processes can feed into changes that will be reflected in an updated strategy or strategies.

Motivation

Motivated individuals are more driven to do the hard work that is required to learn the knowledge and skills needed to achieve a desired outcome. Motivation also influences creativity because it affects the focus towards one’s work, ability to concentrate for long periods of time, persistence, willingness to take risks, and the ability to sustain high levels of energy.

In closing, strategy is simply turning what you have into what you need to get what you want. Thinking through – Who are our people? What is our problem? What is our goal? And what is our theory of change? – is critical to effective community organizing.