Tasty Tactics Recipe: A Workshop Activity for Campaigners

Contents

Introduction

A few years ago whilst I was working for the Australian Education Union we wanted to find a new way of designing tactics to break away from the usual stock standard tactics we might see all the time, like a morning tea or a meeting. Additionally we wanted to allow the union representativess a chance to design and drive their own tactics and develop their leadership at a local level.

I came up with the following session to shake things up a bit and encourage our team to tune into their creativity.

Session overview

This session can be run in around 90 min to 2 hours, depending on what time and space you have. It is best used when work has already been done to establish campaign goals and timelines, to give the tactics something to anchor to.

Where possible, I have used creative campaign tactics as case studies to help people get a sense of what it’s like to try new things. Each co-presenter was tasked with bringing one short case study and a photo to present in three minutes as part of their introduction to the session.

The session uses the Spiral Model of workshop design:

Start from experience
Notice patterns
Add new information
Practice and prepare for action

Process

Gather the Ingredients

Step 1: The Function of Tactics

Share with the group the three main functions that make tactics effective:

Be strategic – turn our resources into the power we need to achieve our goals.
Strengthen our organisation – motivate and strengthen our people. The best way to do this is to make tactics fun and inspiring, and build hope and solidarity.
Develop our leaders – bring in new people and develop the skills of our people through the process.

Step 2: Start with What they Know

Ask the group to think of the most fun and interesting tactics they have either been involved with or seen used in a campaign in their union or their community. We broke people into small groups. In this case it was in person so they just spoke with the people at their table. If working online you could put people into breakout rooms of 3-5 people depending on the overall group size. Ask someone to report back on their favourite tactics.

Step 3: Report Back

Gather feedback from each group using this table.

Tactic Briefly describe the tactic	Who The group or constituency of the tactic	What & How Describe the tactic and why it was effective	Who was the Target The decision maker they were targeting
Tactic 1
Tactic 2
Tactic 3
Tactic 4

The purpose of this activity is to break down the elements of tactics so the group understands them.

Step 4: Introduce some Tactics Theory

I have done this with both the Tactics Star and Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. You can introduce either framework or if you have time, use both.

a diagram called the tactic star - a sun with points and text

Option1: The Tactics Star

Walk them through each of the elements of the star to understand some practical considerations in Tactic design.

Strategy
How it links to the broader strategy of the campaign
Message
What message do you want the tactic to convey to potential supporters, allies and your target?
Tone
Do you want it to be fun and upbeat, angry, defiant, etc.
Consider how the tone will affect engagement with your potential supporters. E.g. if you block a major road, it is likely to put some people offside and has a trade-off.
Timing
Can you link it to a process or event? Is there a moment that you can leverage that impacts your opponent or target?
Audience
Who are you trying to reach with the tactic, what response do you want them to have?
This can be your target decision maker, or it could be supporters in your community.
Allies
Will the tactic help you grow your base of allies, or will it put them off?
Resources
How can you leverage your resources, how can you use them to maximise or grow your resources
Target
- What message are you trying to send to the target.
- What impact might it have on them?
- Are you trying to take a high road approach of trying to bring them on side or a low road approach and negatively impact them in some way?

Option 2: Rules for Radicals

Talk through the Rules and how they might apply in your campaign context.

The Rules

Power is not only when you have, but what your enemy thinks you have.
Never go outside the expertise of your people
Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy
Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules
Ridicule is the most potent weapon
A good tactic is one that your people enjoy
A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag
Keep the pressure on, never give up
The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself
The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition
If you push a negative hard enough, it will push through to become a position
The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative
Pick a target, freeze it, personalise it, and polarise it.

You can find more details here on the rules.

Step 5: Remind the group of the campaign context

If you have a campaign that you are already working on with a group it is a good idea to contextualise to your campaign so they have something to anchor their tactics to. Talk through:

Strategic goal of the campaign
Timeline
Target

Start Cooking

Step 6: Creating Tactic recipes

Send people back into their groups to design a tasty tactic for the campaign.

Title ' Building your recipes - activity'. Table with 3 boxes with text

Title
Give it a title that relates to your campaign and what you are trying to achieve
Ingredients
What resources will you need to make this tactic work
Method
What steps will you need to get this off the ground
What it will look like
Encourage them to draw a picture of what it might look like. We all know that you are more likely to make a recipe if there is a delicious looking image of the end product.
Target
In the same way cook books generally have a meal that you are making a recipe for eg starter, main, vego, fish, desert, soup etc you want to get clear on your target for your tactic.

Step 7: Peruse the menu

At the end of the break out session give each of the teams some bluetack and get them to put their recipes up on the wall. If you’re online, get them to write up their recipes on an interactive Google slide. Then give each team 2 minutes to outline their recipe, then allow 3 minutes to ask questions or invite feedback to the group to help enhance their recipe.

Step 8: Review the Meal

Debrief to consolidate lessons. Either in pairs or the large group ask participants to reflect on the activity and share:

What might you do differently in future when planning tactics?
What have you learnt about successful tactics that you would like to apply?
What would it take to try some of these in your context?

Step 9: Make a Cook Book

An optional extra: Take a photo of each tactic recipe designed in the workshop and then share it back with the group as a recipe book for future inspiration.

Final Notes

A big part of this training is sharing lots of inspirational and creative tactics that the facilitators have seen and been inspired by. It helps to be creative in the way you present the session too, to encourage people to be imaginative and go beyond ‘business as usual’. When I have done this in person I have brought in props to help get into recipe mode, such as an apron or bowl and spoon.

Sample Session Plan

Timings for this workshop might look like this:

Timing	Topic	Details
5 mins	Opening	Welcome, Acknowledgment of Country Share outline and purpose of the session.
5- 10 mins	Creative tactics intro	What makes a good tactic? 1. Strategic 2. Grows your movement 3. Develops leadership Facilitators share 2-3 creative tactics they have seen or been part of.
10-15 mins	1st Break out	Break out 1 Introduce yourselves to each other and talk about the most creative tactics you have seen or been a part of. Choose a favourite to share back in the big group.
10-15 min	Debrief	Draw up table on whiteboard or use a slide on a slide deck to take notes as groups feedback – – Target for tactic – Who was involved – What did they do that made it fun.
20 mins	Tactics theory overview	Introduce some basic tactics theory: – The Tactics Star and/or – Rules for Radicals and/or – Another theory
5 mins	Now a chance to design your own	Introduce the recipe card idea that tactics need ingredients, a method, a target and a idea of what it might look like. Use one of the tactics you walked through at the start as an example to break it down and model it.
20-30 mins	In groups to	Small groups working on designing a tactic using the recipe card prompts.If using Zoom break out rooms you might like to share a document with them in advance or give them a Google slide to type directly into.
10-15 mins	Gallery walk	If in person, get each team to put their recipe card on the wall. Allow everyone to browse the recipes and get each team to outline their tactic recipe. Include time for questions and feedback.
5-10 mins	Debreif	Debrief how they might approach tactic design in the future.

About the Author

Eleisha Mullane has 20+ years experience as a community organiser, campaigner, trainer and activist. She has worked in the union movement in Australia, United Kingdom and United States. Recent work in disability spaces has helped Eleisha realise that we don’t just have to put up with things anymore and it doesn’t take much to create spaces where everyone can be themselves! As a mum of two neuro divergent kids she is driven by making future workplaces, education spaces and community activism open to a whole range of people. This led to writing this guide to help others start to consider small changes that can make a big difference. Eleisha is making an exciting move into coaching and supporting leadership development in social movement spaces.

About

Explore

Filter