[Part 7 of the Beyond the Underpants Gnomes series, a response to Bill McKibben]
Once you figured out where you are going to play, you need to figure out how you are going to play — your strategy for winning.
I asked a few of my organizer buddies the top tips more progressives should know about organizing strategy. They gave me a lot of great ideas. But when I started writing them up, I realized that the biggest problem folks like McKibben face boils down to one simple point — do what’s effective, not what’s easy or comfortable.
Take the post that got me to write this series. McKibben criticized Gore’s strategy:
Simply adding a few thousand more tons of scientific reports to the environmental side of the scale won’t tip the debate, not when Exxon can afford to buy the necessary coterie of Congress members.
McKibben is arguing that as a play on the board, publishing more scientific reports isn’t the right move to push Congress. But McKibben’s answer wasn’t much better.
The United States now holds a big key to unlock this process, and we need Obama and the U.S. Congress to turn that key–which is why many of the candlelight vigils will take place at U.S. senate offices, and at U.S. embassies and consulates around the world.
Does he really think Enviro candlelight vigils are going to move the Senate?
The problem isn’t the tactic, it’s the play. If tea baggers and Glenn Beck held candlelight vigils at Republican Senate offices, that would have some teeth. Why? Republican senators know that these folks — and even more importantly the folks who are part of their network — have the power to fire up the Republican base against them and cost them votes, or even field a challenger who has a real chance of winning. Ditto if union members held candlelight vigils against Senate Democrats in states where the senators know unions have the power to influence Democratic primaries. But Enviros? Give me a break.
That’s why organizers start by mapping out who are the players they need to move, and what realistically will it take to move them. It’s often called a Power Analysis:
Imagine a football game–the coach aids the team to determine the opposing team’s power as defined by its strengths and weaknesses. What kind of power and which players will it take to move the ball across the field to the goal line and victory? The coach is conducting a power analysis that will inform his design of a winning strategy. The power analysis is a process to determine what kind of power (quality) and how much power (quantity) is needed to move a target, the individual who can give you what you want, to accept the organization’s policy or proposal for resolving an issue. The process includes a systematic series of questions, investigative steps, information collection and refined knowledge of the players with power to deliver you closer to your goal. All with the purpose of moving the people with power to give you what you want or win your proposal.
Doing a power analysis is a lot of hard work. For example, here’s a standard list of questions you’d need to answer for each target to develop a target’s profile (courtesy of the Praxis Project and SCOPE LA):
1. What power does the decision-maker have to meet your goal/demands? By what authority?
2. What is the decision-maker’s background and history?
3. What is the decision-maker’s position on your issue/goal? Why?
4. What is the decision-maker’s self-interest?
5. What is the decision-maker’s history on the issue?
6. Who is the decision-maker’s boss?
7. What/Who is the decision-maker’s base and support?
8. Who are the decision-maker’s allies?
9. Who are the decision-maker’s opponents/enemies?
10. What other social forces influences the decision-maker?
As an organizer friend of mine said, “you can never know too much about your target.”
Then you pull together the information you’ve gotten from each of these profiles and figure out which players and other levers are most likely to move your target — often by creating a map like this.
Next, you create a strategy: where are you going to place your bets? How are you going to track your progress? How are you going to set goals and hold folks accountable for reaching them? What’s the best sequence to try to move people? And what resources we need to pull this off, and how do you get them?
Then comes the really hard part: you actually have to follow the plan. If your plan says knocking on doors and talking with voters — something that many folks find about as fun as dental surgery — that’s what you do. If it’s organizing lots of small group meetings with individual actors — which includes working out talking points that your power analysis & strategy says will move these actors to put pressure on your target, making sure everyone practiced the talking points , making sure everyone knows how to get to the meeting and has a ride, etc. — that’s what you do. And you keep doing it. And keep doing it. And revising your plan as you learn from hard experience what’s working and what’s not.
Whew! Is it any wonder that McKibben went for Senate vigils?
And that’s why the most important lesson is, do what’s effective, not what’s easy or comfortable. Some parts of playing to win are easy. Some parts are hard but fun. But you don’t win football games by doing just what’s easy or comfortable — and you don’t win social justice that way either.
Up next: Conclusion.
