About Strategy

Kinds of non-strategy

There are various kinds of strategy, some of which are better called "non-strategies" because they don't really involve a thought-through plan.

Non-strategy "Loose confederation of independent workers"

Each team member makes up their own strategy, and there is no overall long-term plan, just short-term tactics. For example, one organization had three workers in the field, which they divided into three regions. They took one region each, then each one worked completely alone, making all their own decisions on approach, goals and implementation.

Non-strategy "Make it up as you go along will no overarching goal."

The "make it up as you go along" view has absolutely no planning or view into the future. Groups who use this approach are usually enthusiastic about some kind of vague vision.

Sometimes this approach takes a very funny form. A fieldworker was once feeling his way with no plan or goals. After several years, he made a plan based on what had already happened to explain what he had been doing, as if everything had been planned from the beginning.

Non-strategy: "Amalgamate"

Amalgamate with another organization. This isn't a strategy, but rather a decision to accept the strategy of another organization. Their staff would simply have to adapt to the strategy of the other organization.

Non-strategy: "As long as we survive"

In this non-strategy, the great hope is to defend what already exists. No plan for progress, and the modus operandi is "as long as we don't fold."

It sounds impossible, but workers will say, "Well I'm here and I'll be faithful forever. But it's very difficult here, and there's no hope of achieving anything. We have a few local people in our network, and I look after them, and make sure they don't break up with some kind of quarrel. A few dropped out, and a few joined the group by transferring from somewhere else, so I s'pose we're stable. That's it. What else could I hope for?"

This kind of hopelessness is shown in a maintenance philosophy that neglects progress, and usually discourages anybody who is enthusiastic for something better. There's no creativity or willingness to change, and the team becomes powerless.

The pessimism is often arises from either inadequate understanding local cultural mores (often through some kind of prejudice), and sometimes through a lack of proficiency in the local language

The signs of pessimism are:

• People don't realize that they are pessimistic.
• They tend to look at "the good old days" and complain about the current state of the world.
• Leaders want to get more strongly established in their positions, so new leaders don't arise.
• They start to keep to themselves and are unwilling to accept new people as equals. They create their own sub-culture and thought-forms that outsiders don't understand.
• They don't want to change from the methods of the "good old days", even though they are now unproductive. In fact they tend to glorify the method rather than look at the principles.
• They don't expect to be successful, because they presume that outsiders are unreceptive. In fact, they become blind to contemporary forms of receptivity.
• They see successful organizations as not being genuine.

Uniform strategy

The uniform strategy is the view that the same strategy will work in any place and situation. Examples are very easy to find:

• "To work with illiterate people, use voice recordings.
• "To work with ethnic peoples, start by translating materials into their own language.
• "Literature distribution is always successful.
• "Large meetings are always successful.
• "Small, local meetings are always successful.

This view of strategy has several strengths. The goals and the means are always clear, and they can apply lessons learnt from other places.

Still, the idea faces several problems:

1. Programs and methods are often inappropriate for very different situations and cultures.
2. The team thinks that the problems faced tend to always be the same, even if that is not the case
3. Staff presume that new target populations will understand their purpose and methods. For example, a Community Development group might use a "big meeting" approach, but some populations might dislike the style of meeting and may find it difficult to understand what is going on.
4. Local leaders who accept the "uniform method" may have difficulty replicating it with local resources. For example, if the "big meeting" approach were successful, would local staff have the expertise and financial resources of their own to continue it?

"Main goal with continual adjustment" strategy

Some teams follow an overarching purpose but make up the implementation as they go along. This differs from the similar "non-strategy," because it at least has a clear, key purpose.

For example, I've heard workers say, "Our main goal is clear. We don't bother with too much planning because we don't know what will happen in the future. It's better simply to adjust to any new situation when it comes."

This strategy has the strength of beginning with a brand new approach in completely unfamiliar situations.

It also has its weaknesses, especially if it goes too long without a concrete strategy.

It has very little in the way of clear goals, with the following consequences:

• the overarching goal can become increasingly unclear over time
• every team member has their own different interpretation of the overarching goal and may be in conflict with other team members.
• there can be a lot of "making it up as you go along."

(In Christian work, there is sometimes the feeling that we "went how God led us at the time" so they either measure their work as successful not matter how badly they failed, or say that any apparent failure is God's problem.)

Short term strategies

Teams prepare short-tem goals and periodically revise them. It's a step by step approach.

Its weakness is that the team only sees the next step and anything else is business for later on. Its strengths and weaknesses are the same as the "make it up as you go along" view.

Unique strategies

Teams make a unique strategy for their own situation that exactly matches their needs. It brings the challenge of doing a firm analysis of the local context.

• Its strength is that it fits every situation, no matter how unique.
• Its weakness is that it tends not to notice similarities between strategies and contexts that are nearly the same.

Cyclical strategies

Cyclical strategies are flexible and can always be revised. They have good overall goals, intermediate goals and methods and are based on a sound situational analysis

The key is the difference between ends and means. If people say that their methods are what they aim to do, they in fact have no real goals.

If the situation changes, the overall goals usually stays the same but it is interpreted according the the new situation. It's similar to a military commander who must always keep his plans under review depending on what the enemy does. He looks at what the enemy might do and plans appropriately, and responds to what the enemy actually does. He knows that plans must sometimes be changed, so he often has contingency plans in place.

After revising the interpretation of the overall goal, the intermediate goals and methods can be adapted accordingly.

Differentiating between overall and intermediate goals creates a mentality of using overall goals to evaluate progress.

This kind of strategy is a cycle. The team:

1. starts by surveying and analyzing the context,
2. sets an overall goal,
3. arranges intermediate goals to reach it,
4. choose methods that implement the intermediate goals,
5. implements the whole plan over a reasonably long period of time, making any necessary in-course adjustments,
6. evaluates the implementation based on whether it reached the overall and intermediate goals, and what changes are happing in the context, and
7. goes back to the first step and starts again, using the results of the evaluation to do better planning.

Strengths

Its strength is its flexibility; it always sees many way to reach the overall goal. The overall goals is not dead and static; the team can better understand it and its implications based on their experience in the field.

Besides, the concept of the strategy is a useful mental model for implementing any kind of project.

Weaknesses

On the other hand, it does have several weaknesses, although they tend to be limitations or qualifications rather than built-in mistakes.

• If you start implementing a strategy, its weaknesses soon appear. Besides, you might find that your goals are too ambitious or not ambitious enough. Either way, you need to make mid-course changes. This is a good thing, but it goes against the idea of long-term goals. Besides,
• Short cycles can become too flexible and de-stabilize the project; teams too often change to some new kind of strategy. Possible consequences are:
  • Destabilization naturally impacts on team morale
  • The meaning of the goals continually shifts
  • The choice of methods continually changes.
  • The team might wind up closing down good programs that can only be effective in the mid to long term.
• Teams that are overly focused on overall goals can become unable to evaluate implementation. They see what is happening through only one set of eyes.
• The hoped-for goal and the actual goal reached might be different. For example, a Community Development team might be disappointed at their progress in a new area. However, they might have been very successful in understanding unique local difficulties that will enable them to develop a different strategy in the future.

This kind of strategy is still very significant, but seldom stands completely alone. It needs to work in tandem with one of the other kinds of strategies.

Questions

1. Which of these strategies could be amalgamated?
2. Which of these strategies have you ever used? How did they go?
3. Considering the weaknesses of each viewpoint, which is caused by the conceptual nature of the strategy? Which is caused by the temperaments of the people implementing them?
4. What kind of difficulties might be experienced by a staff worker moving teams to a different kind of strategy. (E.g. if you've only ever made it up as you go along, how would you view an organization that had very clear goals and methods?)
5. In your view, what is the best kind of strategy?