Tactics

The strategies describe where we are going: lines of effort, each made of sub-goals. Tactics describe how we take each step. This is where most organizing either works or fails. A good strategy carried out with exhausting meetings and improvised actions still burns people out, and that hits the left’s centre of gravity, its active organizers, first. So the tactics below follow one rule above all: every action must be worth the time of the people who carry it out.

They draw on the same two sources as the strategies: joint planning doctrine (United States Government US Army, 2020) and the Vulnerability Assessment Method (Schnaubelt et al., 2014), translated from military planning to organizing.

From goals to tasks

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Joint planning doctrine connects the largest aims to the smallest actions in a single chain: an end state is reached through objectives, objectives through effects, and effects through tasks. The step people most often skip is the effect: the condition an action should create. Without it, tasks turn into busywork: a meeting, a flyer, a demonstration, done because it is what one does, not because it changes anything.

The doctrine also asks for undesired effects: conditions our own actions might create that would work against the goal. A faster meeting that shuts out members who struggle with written proposals has saved time and lost people.

Here is one chain from our goals down to tasks:

1. GoalG2
   What we want to achieve, in measurable terms.
   Reduce burnout and member turnover in left organizations.
2. Sub-goalSG2.4
   A decisive point on a line of effort: once reached, the goal is measurably closer.
   Streamline meetings and move work async.
3. Effects
   The conditions our actions should create — and those they must not.
   Desired: decisions take less meeting time. Undesired: members who can’t write long texts feel shut out of decisions.
4. Tasks
   What we actually do to create the desired effects and prevent the undesired ones.
   Time-box every meeting to 45 minutes; move proposals to writing; keep a short spoken round for anyone who prefers it.

Choosing how: options and tests

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There is almost always more than one way to reach a sub-goal. The doctrine’s advice is simple: develop more than one option, then test each one before committing time to it. An option that fails any of these five tests is dropped:

The tests are only as good as our imagination of what will happen. That is why the doctrine wargames every option. In its simplest form this is a conversation, not a game: we describe the action, the probable reaction, and our counteraction, and look for the point where the plan breaks. Half an hour of wargaming before a campaign is cheap; finding the weak point in the middle of it is not.

Briefing a task

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Once an option is chosen, someone has to carry it out, usually not the people who planned it. The Vulnerability Assessment Method recommends mission orders: short, simple briefs that state the mission, the intent, and the five Ws (who, what, when, where, why). The most important part is the intent: its purpose, the end state it should reach, and the risk we accept. Joint planning doctrine is explicit about why: a clear intent lets people act without further orders, even when things do not go as planned.

This is the opposite of micromanagement. People who know why a task matters can adapt it on the spot; people who only know what to do must ask, or wait. A brief for one of the tactics below looks like this:

Prepared spontaneity: protocols

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Not everything can be planned, but a lot can be prepared. In the FAQ we call this prepared spontaneity: reacting quickly to known and new situations, using protocols the group has worked out in advance. Joint planning doctrine provides the building blocks:

• Decision points: the latest moment a decision can still be made. Agreeing on it beforehand prevents both panic and endless debate.
• Branches: prepared alternatives for when the situation turns out differently than expected.
• Sequels: what follows once the immediate situation is over.

A protocol packages these into a simple form: if this happens, decide by then, then do this, and branch here if needed. Protocols take pressure off exactly when pressure is highest. Nobody has to invent a response at midnight, and the group’s energy goes into acting, not arguing.

Protocols are written by the group that uses them, and they are revised after every real use.

The tactics catalogue

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The catalogue collects the tactics we develop and test with partner organizations. Each one serves a sub-goal on the lines of effort (the SG badge links to it), names the effect it should create, and lists the steps, the time and the people it takes. Each card also names a measure of performance, which shows whether the tactic is actually used. Whether it has the desired effect is measured at the level of the goals: see assessing and adapting .

Like every part of the framework, the tactics are modular. A group can start with a single card, such as the 45-minute meeting or the after-action review, and take the next step once it works.

Keeping tactics honest

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Tactics are where the assessment loop from the strategies becomes concrete. After each use, the after-action review (T1.1) asks whether we did what we said we would, and whether it had the effect we wanted. A tactic that is used but changes nothing is dropped or rewritten. A tactic that works is written up as an exercise card (T1.2), tested by another group, and added to the open toolkit. That is how a group’s own experience becomes shared know-how, and how the catalogue grows.