To determine your strategy as a group, the first step is to agree to a strategic process. This requires determining the steps you will need to complete to come to an effective strategy. The hub recommends the following steps be included in a strategic process:
1. Get your group to agree on the strategy process
2. Agree on a theory of change
3. Make an asset map
4. Make a power map
5. Decide on a timeframe and goal
6. Evaluate your strategy by comparing with other case studies
7. Set moments and milestones
A theory of change is "a strategic process by which we identify a winning approach to achieving positive change, and the specific milestones and tactics that are required to effect that change." - Ella Baker School of Organizing
An example of a theory of change might be...
If we put public pressure on the banks
then they will be forced to divest from fossil fuels
because they care what customers, especially young ones, think and their reputation will be threatened.
Asset mapping is "the general process of identifying and providing information about a community [or group's] assets, or the status, condition, behavior, knowledge, or skills that a person, group, or entity possesses, which serves as a support, resource, or source of strength to one’s self and others in the community [or group]." - Healthy City
Examples of questions that could be asked when developing an asset map are:
- How much time do we have?
- How many people are ready to move with us?
- How much money or other resources do we have?
- Relationships to leverage to get to influencers-decision makers? (journalists, politicians, community leaders etc.)
So which should come first?
The answer will probably depend on your group and its needs.
If you're just starting off as a new group, or are starting from scratch in your strategic direction, we recommend starting with your theory of change first. This will ensure you know what you want to achieve before you dig into what you'll need and what's available to achieve it. Of course, you can always go back and revisit your theory of change if it's unrealistic based on your asset map. Typically, a theory of change should serve as a vision for your goals, where an asset map helps to build the objectives which describe how exactly change can be achieved. A reminder that the hub's recommended order for completing the strategic process is: 1. Theory of change, 2. Asset mapping, 3. Power and systems mapping, 4. Moments and milestones and 5. Comparable cases.
If your group has been active and is looking to modify an existing strategy or take a new strategic direction, it could be helpful to work backwards. The steps as recommended by the hub to include in your strategic process, working backwards, would be: 6. Moments and milestones, 5. Comparable cases, 4. Timeline and goal-setting, 3. Power and systems mapping, 2. asset mapping and 1. theory of change. If we want to work backwards, beginning with setting 'moments and milestones' (shorter timelines for what you want to achieve) based on a comparable strategy your group agreed with might help your team plan based on where your capacities are at. Continuing with the idea of working backwards, comparable case studies of campaigns working towards similar goals can act as a starting point for strategies your team hasn't yet considered or tried. Next, you could set some nested goals and a timeline for what you'd like the proposed strategy to achieve. Revisiting a power and systems map next could support describing who your targets could be and what leverage points are available. From here, you can take your comparable strategy, milestones and power considerations into an asset map which would define what you have available to make the final step, your theory of change, happen. This final step should come quite easily if you've described the targets and resources involved in your strategy.
Truly, there is no 'correct' order for completing the strategic process. 'Both newer and older groups could benefit from working forwards, backwards, or mixing up the order of the steps. The order you take will largely depend on factors such as whether you have established specific practices of organizing and engaging in action, whether you already have a defined target, where your communities needs lie etc. For those with academic backgrounds, you may recall that many research studies are performed by following a traditional process whereby a hypothesis (a prediction of what the result will be) is formed after gathering some previously reported knowledge and before performing a study to test it. However, grounded theory uses a different method whereby the construction of a hypothesis is done throughout the entire collection and analysis of data. The approach to use is dependent on the specific context of the study, just like the order you use to form a strategy will depend on the context of your group.
Overall, our recommendation is that if you have never completed the strategic process before, follow the steps as described. You can always go back and revisit a step, and it's a lot easier to go to big and revisit than to go to small and add ideas after. If your group has a bit more experience or knowledge to run with already, perhaps working backwards or jumbling the steps will help to uncover new insights. The key is to get your whole group to agree on the steps and how you'd like to go about completing them.
Emily Thiessen (Climate Justice Victoria and Our Time Vancouver)
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"When we did [our strategy process], we ended up just skipping Theory of Change entirely because we had to cut something (and it was fine) but if we did do it the plan was to set goals for the year first and then come up with a theory of change *for* each goal. I've found before that things get mushy and vague when we've *started* with Theory of Change. We did:
1. agree on the process
2. asset mapping
3. power mapping
4. campaign goals
5. timeline."'
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Caitlin Chan (Climate Justice Montreal)
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"The general strategy for Theory of Change first is that filtering out is easier than adding in after. Perhaps, depending on the group situation, maybe starting in a specific root (goal) and sprouting out makes more sense."
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