ORGANIZING NOTES
(2000)
Interpretation II:
Strategy, Analytics, Meetings
(#7)
INTRODUCTION
Last week we discussed how organizers develop shared understanding of why we should act – motivation, narrative, celebrations. This week we focus on how to develop a shared understanding of how we can act – strategy, anaytics, and meetings. Last week we discussed moving from passivity to participation, this week from reaction to initiative.
STRATEGY AND POWER
Strategy is how we exercise power. If we think of power as a balance between one actor and another based on interests and resources, as shown in Strategy Chart #2, one way to correct power imbalance is to find more resources. But more resources aren't always available. Another way to correct an imbalance is to move the fulcrum on which the balance rests to get more leverage out of the same resources. This is what good strategists learn to do - get more leverage from existing resources. Power is not only a matter of material resources, but also of imagination. And because organizers are often trying to change things, they have to rely on resourcefulness to compensate for lack of resources. In the selection from Samuel, do you think David was a good strategist? What role did motivation play? What resources did he rely on? How did he "recontextualize" the field of battle? How did he get more "power"?
STRATEGY AND TACTICS
Strategy is a way of imagining. It is the conceptual link leaders make between the places, times and ways they mobilize and deploy resources and the goals they hope to achieve. It is a way of framing specific choices within a broader framework of meaning. It is a way of defining context.
The word strategy comes from Greek for general -- strategos . When armies were about to clash on the plane below, the general (Strategy Chart #1) went up to the top of the hill and, with the goal of winning the battle, evaluated resources on both sides, reflected on opportunities and constraints imposed by the battle field, and chose how to deploy troops in ways most likely to achieve his goal. A good strategos not only had a good overview of the field. He also had intimate knowledge of the capacities of his men and those of his opponent, details of streams and bridges -- mastery of both the forest and the trees. Once the battle was underway, however, the best strategoi were often back on the battlefield where he could adjust the plan as conditions changed.
The taktikas were the individual ranks of soldiers with specific competencies whom the strategos deployed to take specific actions at specific times and places. Tactics are specific actions through which strategy is implemented. Tactics are no less important than strategy, but they are different. A strategos with an excellent overview, but who misjudges the competence of his takitakas would be lost. Getting results, taking initiative successfully, requires developing the capacity for good strategy and good tactics.
Strategic Action
Strategy is about turning "what you have" into "what you need" -- figuring out how to use the resources you have to achieve goals you must in light of constraints and opportunities within which you must work (Strategy Chart #1). Developing strategy is an ongoing activity, not simply a matter of making a "strategic plan" at the beginning of a project. A plan is useful to the extent it is a way those responsible for leading the organization can arrive at a common vision of where they want to go and how they hope to get there. But the real action in strategy is, as Alinsky put it, in the reaction - of other actors, of the opposition, of chance events. What makes it "strategy" and not "reaction" is that choices are made mindfully of where one wants to go and how one hopes to get there, like a potter at a wheel, as Mintzberg describes it.
Although strategy takes account of the future, it takes place in the present. It is about making choices in the present with an eye to consequences these choices may have. (Strategy Chart #1). When we strategize, we give a voice to the future in the present. We give the future claims on the present. When we don't strategize it is often not because we don't know how, but because it can be very difficult. When we must make choices about how to invest scarce resources, voices of our present constituencies speak most loudly, even though they were created by choices in the past. The voice of future constituencies is silent. Strategy is a task of leadership in part because it requires real courage -- a willingness to say no to current demands, while finding the faith to commit to an uncertain future. Our choices may turn out as we wish, but, then again, they may not. Trying to shape the future may require choices that could involve substantial risk in the present. The first step in shaping the future, however, is to imagine it. . . and then to find the courage to act on our imagination.
Mapping the "arena" within which you hope to realize your goals first requires being as clear as you can about your goals. The more concrete, imaginable, and specific your goals, the more clearly you -- and others whom you engage -- can focus on pooling your efforts to achieve them. You then make judgements about the constraints and opportunities within your "arena" of action. Surveying the resources of your constituency and those of other actors who may play a role in the unfolding action, including any potential opposition, is another assessment which helps you understand your capacities. But resources are also not always obvious and good strategy often involves discovering resources in unexpected places. Strategic action is not a single event, but a process or a loop continuing throughout the life of a project (Strategy Chart #1d). We plan, we act, we evaluate the results of our action, we plan some more, we act, etc. We strategize as we implement, not prior to it. As Alinsky writes, and as the cases we read this week illustrate, much strategic action flows from generating reactions from others to which one must respond creatively and adaptively. In other words, good strategizing is an ongoing adaptive process which effective leaders learn to do.
So strategy requires choosing -- committing yourself and your resources to the course of action you believe most likely to yield the desired outcome. A laundry list of "what we are going to try" is not a strategy. Cesar Chavez used to say strategy is not so much about making the right decision as it is about making the decision you make the right decision.
Targeting
We can understand strategy better by breaking it down into three elements: targeting, timing and tactics (Strategy Chart #2). Targeting is figuring out how to focus limited resources on doing what is likely to yield the greatest result - especially in terms of constituency, issues, and opposition.
• One critical choice is deciding who exactly it is within the constituency on which you are focusing your initial effort.
• A second critical choice -- as people become more familiar with each other and their interests -- is about what problem they want to turn into an "issue" around which to mobilize. California organizer Mike Miller distinguishes between a "topic" such as education, a "problem" such as a lousy school, and an "issue" such as replacing this principal with another one. Topics become problems when they become real within people's experience. They become "issues" when a solution to the problem has been defined. The topic of racial discrimination, for example, becomes a problem when "I have to get on the bus at the front, pay my fare, get off, get on again at the back and sit (or stand) in the back even if there are empty seats in the 'white' section." A problem, in turn, becomes an issue when something very specific can be done about it by specific actors; e.g., telling the bus company to integrate the buses (a solution) or face a boycott. A good issue is achievable, yet significant.
• A third critical choice is about which decision-makers you will hold accountable for taking action on your issue.
Timing
Timing is about sequencing your activities to take the initiative and keep it, build momentum, and take advantage of particular moments of opportunity. You are wise to use initial tactics that yield resources to give you a greater capacity to succeed at your next steps. This is how momentum works -- like a snowball, each success contributes resources which makes the next success more achievable. Another timing concern is about when to "confront" the opposition -- or, if yours is a collaborative campaign, when to face the most difficult challenge you face. Alinsky also wrote that it was important never to seek a confrontation you cannot "win." Patiently building capacity you need to launch a credible challenge to the opposition may avoid the necessity of confrontation - if they become convinced of your power. You keep the initiative by never concluding one activity until it is clear how it will lead to the next one. You also keep the initiative by expecting that every action you take will produce a reaction to which you have already considered how to respond.
Tactics
Tactics are specific activities through which you implement your strategy - targeted in specific ways and carried out at specific times. Here are a few hints about good tactics. There are others in the readings by Bobo and Alinsky. They are consistent with your resources, but expose your opposition's lack of resources. They build on your strength and your opposition's weakness. They are inside the experience of your constituency, but outside the experience of your opposition. They unify your constituency, but divide the opposition. They are consistent with your goals. Violent tactics in pursuit of peaceful goals are dissonant, as are goals of "empowering" people that rely on mobilizing money. Good tactics are fun, motivational, and simple.
Strategic Organizing: Deliberation
As I show in my article, "Resources and Resourcefulness" good strategy is a creative process, a process of learning how to achieve one's goals by behaving adaptively in the face of constantly changing circumstances. It is the result of inputs from people with diverse experience - who have learned the "nitty-gritty" detail of the situation being strategized about, but who also have learned that there is more than one way to look at things. It takes people who have learned what there is to know about the trees, but can also picture the whole forest. It takes people whose life experience, networks, and understanding links them to the diversity of constituencies whose mobilization matters to the success of the enterprise. In civic associations a key element in developing good strategy is the deliberative -- or analytic -- process by which it is devised. The more people involved in making strategy, the more committed they will be to making it work. Although good strategy can be the fruit of a strategic genius, it is more often the result of a good strategy team that a good leader has put together.
The word for deliberation derives from "to liberate, to free from assumptions" and is often about challenging "frames" with which we interpret experience. Socrates, for example, challenged people to evaluate their experience against their frames by employing critical reason in the interrogatory "Socratic method." He also created so much tension that he was accused of impiety and made to drink the fatal hemlock. In more modern dress, Alinsky invokes use of "critical reason" to challenge existing frames or "rationalizations." Similarly Friere contrasts the "banking method" of teaching with his method of dialogic challenge. Although their styles are different, Alinsky and Freire go beyond Socrates in that they challenge people to act based on critical reflection on their experience. In this way, they create constructive "tension" that can lead to new action. This contrasts with "unreflective action" based on the unthinking acting out of norms, habits or patterns of behavior that serve the interests of others that Langer describes as "mindlessness." Strategic thinking is reflective, critical, and often occurs in interaction with others. It requires taking seriously people's ability to know, reflect, understand, and choose.
Deliberative tactics may come into play one-on-one, in small groups, or as meetings. The "one-on -one" model is employed by Socrates, Alinsky and Friere. It is a tension creating dialogue in which one party "agitates" the other. Its goal is not only the insight that the tension can produce, but choice, action, and commitment that leads to new experience. Of course new experiences generated in other ways can also stimulate deliberative understanding -- one reason why "debriefings" are so important after every action, meeting, etc. Collective deliberation takes place in larger groups and is most effective when those doing the talking also do the acting.
Meetings
The deliberative life of an organization is conducted in meetings. One way an organization comes to life is as a group of people in a room deliberating about what they can do together. An old organizer I once knew said meetings for an organizer were like mass for a priest -- it's where they do their business. That they are so important in the lives of our organizations, but that we manage them so poorly is a strange paradox.
It is not hard to hold good meetings. It requires answering six questions:
• Who is responsible for organizing the meeting?
• Who is responsible for managing the meeting?
• How do you make decisions in the meeting,
• How do you make certain everyone is heard from?
• Who is accountable for enacting decisions of the meeting?
• How will you close your meeting?
Who is responsible for organizing the meeting?
A good meeting happens only when someone is responsible for making it happen. Taking responsibility for making a meeting work requires clarity about the purposes of the meeting. We hold meetings to plan, to make decisions, and to evaluate - task which are often best accomplished in different meetings. Planning is reflective. We get perspective, go up on the hill, get broad overviews, and imagine. Taking everyone away for five days of planning is likely to "push responsibility down" more than the "leader" going "up on the mountain" and coming down with a "revealed" plan. Decision-making requires focus on clear choices within defined time limits. Decision-making can also be widely shared. When mobilizing an entire organization the decision to mobilize can itself be pushed down -- facilitating mobilization at the same time. In the UFW we sometimes pushed decisions down from the executive board to ranch committees, to crew representatives to individual crews so when we had to turn out several thousand members, they had all been parties to the decision to do so. Evaluation is more like planning, but contributes to accountability and learning when built into normal routines of an organization - like five minutes of evaluation at the end of each class.
Regardless of its general purpose, those responsible for the meeting should be clear about the outcome they hope to achieve. If you don't know the purpose of a meeting, it is better not to hold it. On the other hand, regular meetings can be important because they give an organization's work a predictable rhythm around which we can plan. As any other purposeful activity, a meeting should be planned strategically. The "agenda" is the strategy for the meeting. It is the plan for what will happen first, second, third, and when the meeting will conclude. Just like a "mini-campaign" a good meeting will tie together relational, interpretive and action elements. What are the relational elements in the meeting? What is the interpretive core of it? What are the actions you hope to achieve there? Because in the final analysis a meeting is about action to come out of it, it should be evaluated in motivational and strategic terms. A good meeting requires leadership responsible for its success. It may be an officer, an agenda committee, an executive group, an informal "cabal" -- but the buck has to stop somewhere. Being responsible for the meeting is not the same thing as "controlling" it. It simply means making sure the group has what it needs to do its work successfully.
Organizing a good meeting requires (1) thinking through the goals, (2) designing an appropriate agenda, (3) selecting a good location (convenience, access), (4) seeing to the arrangements (room size, sound, seating, lighting), (5) turning people out (sending out reminders, doing reminder calls, one on one meetings, etc.) and (6) and assigning responsibilities for the work of the meeting. Each of these elements is important. I once organized a rally that was a big success because 500 people came, but the sound system was so worthless that no one knew what was going on. After that, I always made sure someone with a rock band took care of the sound.
Who is responsible for managing the meeting?
Meetings require management, leadership or, if you prefer, facilitation. A well designed meeting structures opportunities for participation so people can be heard, questions can be asked and answered, discussion can take place, decisions are arrived at, and the most important items are attended to. This doesn't just happen "spontaneously". People sometimes object to "formalizing" their deliberative process – why do we need an agenda, we don't need a facilitator, we'll just make it up as we go along, etc. Perhaps they fear "rules" will inhibit the creativity of the group. In fact, agreement about basic rules allows a group to become more creative than when it turns in on itself because it can't decide how to decide. They may think rules are "bureaucratic." They are, if someone else makes them. Civic association differs from bureaucratic ones not in whether or not there are rules, but in who makes them. Fear of "commitment" that compromises a person's individual choice may also be a concern. But an organization that doesn't entail obligations along with rights isn't much of an organization.
Opening a meeting separates "regular" time (our own time) from "community" time (time during which we occupy organizational roles). A meeting begins when it is "called to order" at the announced time. Meetings that start late, drag on forever, and end late are disrespectful of our "own time" and our "community time." The first few times it may be a little rough starting on time, but everyone will get the idea as they realize "this group is different" and takes "its time" and "their time" seriously. Call the meeting to order clearly and crisply -- not "well...gee....I guess maybe it might be....cough, cough...it might be about....time to start...I mean, if no one has an objections...but we can keep waiting if you want to......since so few people are here...." Welcome people to the meeting. Some groups have a short prayer. This sets off the "specialness" of community time, focuses everyone's attention, and brings silence to the room so the meeting can begin. When the ancient Greeks prepared to play music they made a loud noise that got everyone's attention and, as they put it, created the silence into which the music could flow. After welcoming people, review the agenda, explain the goals of the meeting, how the time will be used to achieve those goals, and what time the meeting will end. Rules of order should be reviewed. It may be important to ask the group for its consent to the agenda. Introductions may be appropriate depending on the size of the group, its familiarity with itself, and so on.
The person managing the meeting must move the agenda along, pay attention to the time, and see to participation of the group. Because one meeting can usually handle only one major item of business, it is very important not to spend all the time on the first item just because it is the first item -- like whether to serve chicken dogs or hot dogs at the annual bar-b-q. Focus on what you want to make happen at the meeting -- a choice about a program, election of an officer, or adoption of a program. Plan the meeting so this item is at the center of attention and that there is adequate time to discuss it. It is important the group feel something happened at the meeting -- that people's "emotional memory" of the meeting isn't that it was just a "big waste of time."
• How do you make decisions in the meeting?
Arriving at decisions requires agreement as to a "decision rule" -- voting, consensus, majority, no objections, or some other scheme. Decision rules appropriate in some situations may not be in others -- for example, consensus. Many people seem to prefer consensus because then "everyone agrees". The difficulty with this in civic associations is that everyone way not agree, but the work of the organization usually must still proceed. Requiring everyone to agree in fact can make dissent illegitimate by making it threatening to the ability to the group to get its work done. So consensus often turns into pressure on those who disagree to "get them to agree" in ways that can rob the process of integrity too. On the other hand, some groups thrive operating by consensus. The important thing is explicit agreement about how you will make decisions.
• How do you make certain everyone is heard from?
Your meetings will be more successful if everyone who has something to say has a real opportunity to say it. The views of participants based on their experience are one of the most valuable resources the group has to draw on – especially if it is a group with some genuine diversity. People don't speak up in meetings for many reasons, including fear of being rejected by the group, believing they have nothing to contribute, thinking others will not take them seriously, and so forth. A skillful facilitator will be proactive in asking people for their views, especially those who don't always have their hands up. The members of the group can help by doing the same. You may also want to have a time in your meeting when you go around the room and get everyone's opinion (if it's not a meeting of 500 people). Again, it doesn't matter so much how you do it, as that you do it.
Who is accountable for enacting the decisions of the meeting?
The most awkward point in a meeting is when the question of who will do what arrives. The most wonderful, creative, wise decisions mean nothing if no one accepts the responsibility for implementing them, for carrying them out. Again, there is no one way to do this. A chair may appointment people. A person may volunteer? People may be chosen by the group. As with delegation, there are many elements to consider – who is most skilled at what is required, who is most motivated, who has relationships with the appropriate people, whom does the group trust, who will learn the most from doing it, who's turn is it to do it, etc. Again, there is no one way to do this, but if you do not do it, you just wasted most of your time in the meeting.
How will you close your meeting?
Meetings should end on time. Before closing, conduct a brief evaluation, repeat follow-up announcements, and set the time and place for the next meeting. Some groups have closing prayers or songs that mark the return to "personal time." Once the meeting is formally adjourned, everyone can return to normal time, exit their formal "meeting roles" and interact with each other in less formal ways. It may be important to facilitate this with refreshments and some music, perhaps. Proof of a good meeting is a "meeting after the meeting" -- people hang out, energized, wanting to talk more about what just happened. Meetings that just kind of fade away are evidence of an organization that is fading away.
Conclusion
Story and Strategy
There is tension inherent in the fact that our experience shapes what we think, but what we think shapes our experience. Are we wiser trying to alter our experience or how we think about our experience? Is it more effective to make new experience accessible in terms of people's existing frames (frame alignment) or to change people's frames to reinterpret their experience (frame transformation)? What is the link between "reinterpreting" the world and "changing" the world?
Organizing is not only about changing the world, nor is it only about changing what people think about the world -- it is about the connection between the two. Organizers argue taking people on a weeklong "reframing" retreat will change very little if they return to the same "structural" setting they left behind. On the other hand, organizers also argue that changing a "structural" setting without changing the people who operate within that setting, will also change very little. Organizers link these modes of change together insofar as people change they may begin to acquire the power to change their circumstances -- and as people acquire the power to change their circumstances, they begin to change. This is one reason this course is called "people, power, and change."
On the one hand, organizers challenge people to interpret their experience differently. This is the value of the "outsider's" perspective. Organizers don't just provide "information" but challenge people to reframe their understanding of themselves and their experience through relationships, new stories (frame transformation), deliberative processes, and action tactics. On the other hand, organizers must also make the world accessible in terms of the frames people have (frame amplification, frame bridging, frame extension). This is the value of the "insider's perspective. Outsiders don't "frame" things as insiders do. This is why "reframing" is based not on one party doing a "snow job" on the other, but on a dialogic process between and among them. The work of turning "problems" into "issues" (reframing a problem as actionable) lies between the two. Much of the interpretive work of organizing involves finding ways to put new wine into old bottles. If people find they like it, they may decide to rebottle it.
Although story telling is primarily motivational and strategy is primarily analytic, a "credible strategy" plays an important part in a hopeful narrative. Devising a credible strategy and telling a motivational story go together. Most effective campaigns have a complementary "story" and "plan." How we can build from resources we have, how we can take advantage of opportunities, why the constraints will not overwhelm us, how each step leads to the next -- all of these are elements in a plausible strategy. Just as good strategy gives individual tactics meaning, transforming them from isolated events into steps on the road to our goal, a good story gives our actions meaning, transforming us into participants in a powerful narrative. Analytics can also help us "deconstruct" an old story, on the way to learning to tell a new one. In organizing, a strategy and story are not only how we persuade ourselves that a particular course of action is worth the risk but also how we mobilize others without whose participation there will be no action at all.
©Marshall Ganz, Kennedy School, 2000