Editing Strategizing (section)

== 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? ===
[[File:Mountaintop.png|thumb]]
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.

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===== Resources =====
<p>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.</p> </div>

=== 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.

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===== 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.
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=== Theory of Change Statement ===
{{Historical box|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:<blockquote>If we do (STRATEGY)

then (STRATEGIC GOAL)

Because (ASSUMPTION)</blockquote>In the Montgomery Bus Boycott example from earlier in this section, the theory of change could be written like this:<blockquote>'''''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.''</blockquote>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.