magic hatJoel at AnimalBlawg recently wrote a post calling for a strong, nonhierarchal veg movement in DC. This has sparked a lot of thinking for me about the need to have conversations about strategy, tactics, and other aspects of effective change, so I’ll be putting together a series of posts to help spark those conversations.

Today, I want to talk a bit about strategic planning. Too often, I see groups spending a lot of time organizing events, raising money, and so forth without taking the time to really think about what affect all the time and energy spent will actually accomplish. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of the “fake it ’til you make it” mantra and am happy to see people organizing themselves in any way that shows they are tired of complacency, but that doesn’t mean we can’t move past that stage with some healthy dialog. After all, if we are going to be in this for the long haul, then we can’t keep setting ourselves up for constant action with no tangible results.

That brings us to our first step in the planning process: define the short and long term goals. How you set these goals is up to the folks with whom you are working. I like to set one really big goal and then to define shorter term, more easily obtainable goals as markers in the path to the long term goal. When setting short term goals, I like to be able to have some sort of victory at least every few months. This keeps the momentum going and keeps people active and excited. If your campaign isn’t able to produce a lot of smaller victories, try setting other milestones that you celebrate once you meet them. These can’t be arbitrary milestones, but things that keep you on the path to your next goal. For example, if you are trying to bring a community together to, say, ban circuses with animals, an early milestone might be something like getting interviewed in the media. Sure, it didn’t really accomplish any real results for the animals, but it did help raise awareness about the issues and hopefully you used it as a tool to recruit more people to the campaign. The key, however, is to focus on the goals, not the milestones. Remember, this is about creating real change in animals’ lives, not just feeling good about ourselves.

The next thing you’ll need to to is figure out your organizational strengths and weaknesses. Do you have members with experience in copy writing, public relations, construction, animal care, event planning, what? Do an assessment of your organizations talents to figure out what role your organization will best play in the campaign and to help map out some short term goals and milestones. Once you have a list of strengths, move on to weaknesses. Are you missing good public speakers, writers, etc? Once you know your weaknesses, you’ll know what holes you have to fill in order to better accomplish your goals. These holes can be filled through training, recruitment or coalition building.

Which brings us to our next question: who cares about this problem? I encourage people to think creatively about this. Brainstorm and mind-map ideas of who would care enough to get involved at any level. Once you have a list of groups of people (and individuals) who care about the problem, you’ll know who to target, where to target them, and how to target them. This is key to getting more volunteers and bringing in coalition members.

Along with knowing your allies, you’ll want to list out your opponents. This will help provide a list of potential targets, but will be even more effective in helping you to prepare for a response from those opposed to your goals. It will also help you in later research when figuring out your opponents strengths and weaknesses.

Now we need to ask who has the power to give you what we want? This is broken up into two categories, first is your primary target. This is the person or people who have the power to give you what you want. If its banning the circus, city council would be your likely target. Next is your secondary target: the people who have power over the people who can give you what you want. If its city council, one secondary target might be their large campaign financiers. Remember that targets always have faces and names. An institution itself doesn’t make decision, the people in control of that institution do. Once you have your targets, you need to ask what power you have over them. This is when you really start to realize just how much power you have and may not be fully utilizing.

The last part of today’s post is regarding tactics. I’m going to leave this one open ended because I plan on making it the topic of another post in the near future. But we need to ask ourselves, what tactics can we use to apply our power and make it felt by those who can give you what you want. I’ll give you a hint as to what my post will be about; we need to accept that a true diversity of tactics and not a tactical standstill is what will move us forward in our longer term goals.

Please give me feedback. And thanks to the Midwest Academy for instilling these strategic planning tips into my brain nearly a decade ago.