It is the conceptual link we make among the places, the times and the activities with which we mobilize and deploy resources and goals we hope to achieve. It is how we can frame specific choices within a broader framework of purpose.
In the third week of the class we introduced organizing strategy by asking three questions: Who are my people (constituency)? What change do they need (goal? How could they use their resources to build the power they need to achieve that change (theory of change)? Although the answers to these questions, especially the second and third, are developed in dialogue with your constituency, and much of it may change, unless you develop an initial road map of where you want to go and how you hope to get there, a hypothesis, your journey cannot begin.
Strategy is about turning “what you have” into “what you need” to get "what you want" – how to use resources you have to achieve your goals, given constraints and opportunities. It is an ongoing activity, not making a "strategic plan" at the beginning of a campaign that others will implement. Planning (getting an overview of the plan) can help those responsible for a campaign arrive at a common vision of where they want to go, how they hope to get there, and clarify the choices that must be made to begin. But the real action in strategy is, as Alinsky put it, in the reaction – by other actors, the opposition, and the challenges and opportunities that emerge along the way. What makes it "strategy" and not "reaction" is the mindfulness we can bring to bear on our choices relative to what we want to achieve, like a potter interacting with the clay on the wheel, as Mintzberg describes it.1 Although our goal remains clear, strategy requires constant adaptation to new information. Something worked better than we expected it to? Something did not work for unforeseen reasons. Things changed. Some people are opposing our efforts so we have to respond to their action. The launching of a strategic campaign is only the beginning of the work of strategizing. This is one reason it is so important to have a leadership team that reflects the full diversity of skills, information and interested needed to achieve your goal. We call this “strategic capacity.” (2)So strategizing is not a single event, but a process or a loop con-tinuing throughout the life of a project (Strategy Chart #3). We plan, we act, we evaluate the results of our action, we plan some more, we act further, etc. We strategize, as we implement, not prior to it.