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Blog: Move your allies: a new group exercise on strategy

Imagen de Philippe Duhamel
Post February 22nd, 2008 por Philippe Duhamel
move your allies task

So you've taken the time to survey your social landscape. Your organization has figured which constituencies are your natural friends and which are your opponents, and the various groups in between. You have run the Spectrum of Allies. Now what?


How do you decide what to do? How do you identify the key constituencies on which to focus your limited energies?  If winning means moving different segments in your general direction, however slightly, how can you collectively develop tailor-made arguments and tactics that target these particular slices of the social pie you want to pull over to your side?


Here's a recently developed workshop exercise, a shiny new strategy tool to help your gang define next steps in campaign design. It includes step-by-step instructions, so you can facilitate the tool with some confidence in your group.


Blog: Know your Allies: A Strategy Tool

Imagen de Philippe Duhamel
Post February 18th, 2008 por Philippe Duhamel

Spectrum of allies

Click for full view. Original graphic from Movement for New Society.

"It might have been prudent at the beginning to identify potential groups that would oppose the movement, and solicit their support, but we did not anticipate such opposition."

— Emile Short in Powerful Persuasion 

“The media”, I asked, “where should we put the media?”

“Somewere in the middle”, said someone in the group. “No, the media's more like a hostile neutral”, said another.

As I moved the marker across a crescent shape drawn on the flip chart, we settled on a wedge between Neutrals and Opponents.

Blog: Eight Powerful Persuasion Tactics

Imagen de Philippe Duhamel
Post October 13th, 2007 por Philippe Duhamel 
photo cc Dave Bezaire & Susi Havens-Bezairephoto cc Dave Bezaire & Susi Havens-Bezaire 

In his tactical notebook, Powerful Persuasion: Combating traditional practices that violate human rights, Emile Short describes a campaign that allowed many thousands of women and girls escape religious bondage. This being NewTactics, and a blog aimed at finding methods behind effective change, I latched on a few  techniques used in this campaign to engage allies and opponents alike in the successful challenge of an unjust practice.

Here are 8 potent persuasion tactics. I believe their use to be of almost universal value. See if you can apply these to your current work.

Blog: From Motivation to Solution: A Strategy Tool

Imagen de Philippe Duhamel
Post October 12th, 2007 por Philippe Duhamel
Motivation to solutionHow do you eradicate an age-old abusive practice so entrenched it has become woven into a people's identity?

What if the practice serves to assuage powerful, visceral fears? What if the practice also meets some real needs, such as for food, housework and sex?

Pretending for a minute you could even end the practice, how would you then prevent it from raising its ugly head again?

One of the leading promoters of human rights in Africa, Emile Francis Short must also be a master of strategy. In his tactical notebook entitled Powerful Persuasion: Combating traditional practices that violate human rights, you can study the 10-year campaign he led in Ghana to free thousands of women and girls from religious enslavement.

It is a riveting story. I am especially grateful to Mr. Short for letting us in on the sophisticated design of his highly successful campaign. Somewhere in there, I got a glimpse of a powerful strategizing tool that could be more widely used. I'll call it the Motivation to Solution Strategy Tool.