Strategy II: Tactics and Timeline
Work backwards from your campaign's strategic goal to sequence tactics and plan a campaign timeline.
Description
Continuing the scenario campaign introduced in Strategy I, this skill-building workshop teaches you how to translate a strategic goal and theory of change into action through tactical planning and campaign timeline development. You'll learn to distinguish between two essential types of tactics: organizing tactics that build power through relational work and recruitment (like 1:1 and house meetings) and mobilizing tactics that flex or deploy power for direct action (like rallies, marches, or boycotts). Through structured team practice, you'll brainstorm tactics based on your theory of change, evaluate them using key criteria (strategic use of resources, building organizational capacity, developing leadership), and then learn to "strategize backwards"—working from your strategic goal’s end-date to sequence your tactics into a series of building peaks on a campaign timeline. The finished campaign timeline follows a narrative arc: foundation period, crisp kickoff, successive building peaks, final climactic peak, and resolution. By the end of this session, your team will have developed a phased campaign timeline with clear peaks, and you'll visualize your kickoff tactic in concrete detail—when, where, who, how many, and what needs to happen between now and then to make it succeed.
See the Democracy Teams Participant Manual, pages 66-84