“As I have had more experience in shaping the strategy of an organization, it has become clearer to me that the more we understand about tactics, the more flexibility we have to set new strategic directions. [...] Tactical development enriches strategic thought.”
“The skillful tactician may be likened to a snake that is found in the ChUng mountains. Strike at its head, and you will be attacked by its tail; strike at its tail, and you will be attacked by its head; strike at its middle, and you will be attacked by head and tail both.”
— Sun Tzu
Second in a three-part series on moving from activity, to tactics, to strategy.
So what makes a good tactician? In today’s piece, I’ll tell you some features of a good tactical mind and provide a couple analogies about areas where you, as a learning tactician, can concentrate your skills. But let me start with a little story.
A tactical success
I once organized a nonviolent direct action where groups of people were blocking all entrances to a building where corporate leaders were to discuss economic globalization, and a secret trade and investment treaty. The blockade worked. Nobody could enter the building. After an hour or so, the police started to gather at the end of one of the streets around the building. A friend of mine, who I know has a great sense for tactics, came up to me and told me what he thought the police intended to do.
He told me the police were going to block the street at both ends, and arrest everyone in the middle. This would clear one of the entrances to the building. Then, he told me, they would bring in the waiting corporate leaders. First, they would lead them through a bank, two streets over from the blocked building. They would walk them across the bank to exit on the now emptied street. The conference centre could then be accessed through the cleared doorway.
The police plan was foiled when, as he suggested, we started a secondary blockade to the bank the next street over. This helped the blockade last a few extra hours — which delayed the globalization conference. Our action felt (and was) successful thanks to a great tactician who could think ahead, anticipate police moves, and come up with a revised tactical plan.
So what skills-sets help someone be a good tactician?
The good tactician
A good tactician is like a good coach. A good tactician knows the importance of participant training and preparation. A good tactician knows how to bring out the best motivations in players, and boost morale. In a the heat of the game, a good tactician is skilled at deploying people and resources in the field. There’s a game plan, many backups, and quick, in the moment decisions. A good tactician will be able to react with quick, effective moves to the opponent’s strategy, in real-time or even better, in pre-emptive anticipation.
A good tactician is like a good cook, someone who has read and prepared such a wide range of recipes that a sense of food chemistry has developed. They know what goes together, and what doesn’t, the food prep techniques and cooking methods that bring the best taste and texture. This helps structure creativity and tasteful refinement. The good tactician, like the good cook shows great “make-do” adaptability to missing ingredients or unexpected outcomes. Like the chef, a good tactician knows how to put the little actions together in the right order to reach the most tasty results, and, thanks to a keen sense of timing, just in time for dinner!
A good tactician is like a good mechanic: someone with a large toolbox who’s good at preventive maintenance and fixing malfunction. A good tactician will make sure the vehicle can rev up sucessfully, the weather be hot and sunny, or cold and damp. A good tactician will make your operation run smoothly; each component doing its part, generating the most power for the amount of fuel (efficiency).
The low-down
So if you want to become someone who’s good at crafting clever tactics
1. Train for and attend lots of “games” (events and such)
2. Read lots of cookbooks (like the New Tactics notebooks)
3. And fill up that big, expanding toolbox
— Philippe Duhamel, interTactica.org
What else do good tacticians do? How would you go about building the coaching, cooking, mechanical skills you need? Tell us in the comments.
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Cooking, fixing, and coaching
These are great skills for a good tactican to have. In my experience it can take a frustrating amount of time to build them up, though. The the problem comes when you need to maintain your own skill set AND teach other tacticans what you know. Being a good coach is a big investment of time, and you can't drop any of the other balls you have in the air as you coach people.
What are some of the best ways to share your skills with other activists? I've found that focusing newer people on one specific task can bes the best way to start. If you give people a lot to do in a lot of different areas they might get overwhelmed. Start of by coaching them through one task, maybe?
Also, one thing that took me a couple of years to learn was that there is no limit to how muh one can learn about being a good tactican. I try to make sure that I always look at every situation and every person as an opportunity to learn. Just like cooks must share secrets, coaches need assistants, and mechanics trouble shoot for one another, tacticans must learn from each other constantly.
Finally, thanks for sharing your story about the successful blockade you participated in, Philippe. It shows that sometimes being a good tactican is even cooler than being James Bond.
Keeping Tactics Aligned with Strategy
If we want world peace, we've got to avoid making enemies. Our stagegies should be designed to give everyone, especially those who think they are our opponents, space to follow their own true values. We must respect their humanity and demand they respect ours.
During the International March for Peace & Justice in Central America, we had a three day stand-off with the Cobra Battalion on the Honduras-Nicaragua border. We knew these guys had been directly involved in the murder of civilians. They looked mighty intimidating lined across the border pointing M-16s with grenade launchers straight at us. Their gas masks made them look like giant evil insects.
On the third day, several of the international groups staged dramatic presentations, many holding up their passports and requesting entry into Honduras. Our peacekeeping team decided we would set our sights lower. We merely wanted to establish real human contact with our "enemies." So we staged a quick skit making light of the events of the last few days. When the soldiers began to laugh, we felt we could walk away successful.
I've still never been to Honduras, but I honestly believe I took part in something that helped to make that country more peaceful. That belief has empowed me to continue devoting my life toward peace.
---------------------------------------------+ | __o CONTINENTAL CRITICAL MASS | _`\;,_ plan to ride from home | (*)/ (*) CONVERGE ON WASHINGTON, DC | 22 SEPT - World Car-Free Day
Re: Keeping Tactics Aligned with Strategy
Establishing Human Contact
You are absolutely right! Fostering human connections and an understanding of the “other” is of paramount importance in our endeavor to achieve peace. For this reason, a group of law students at Syracuse University, under the direction of the former Chief Prosecutor for the Special Court of Sierra Leone Professor David Crane, developed Impunity Watch.
Impunity Watch is an interactive blog and innovative law journal that reports daily on instances of impunity taking place around the world. Its staff is dedicated to presenting a neutral view by investigating and discussing the many perspectives connected with a single issue. Our hope is that the readers of Impunity Watch will better understand the complexities associated with protecting human rights, and thereby, have an increased understanding of their ‘enemy’.
In addition to the daily reports, Impunity Watch also publishes scholarly articles written by academics, professionals, and students on this and similar topics. Yet, our greatest asset and most treasured tool is our message board where we encourage the modern-day “Anne Frank” to tell the world her story in real-time. By giving a voice to the voiceless, we hope to reduce tensions and shed light on the experiences of many.
If you are interested in fostering greater understanding and peace, please feel free to visit our site (www.impunitywatch.net), comment on our posts, start a new discussion, or submit a paper.
Thank you all for sharing your experiences and continuing forward in the battle for positive change.
Etablishing human contact
Thank you Impunity Watch for sharing the great resource that Impunity Watch offers with our New Tactics community. It's great to see the wide variety of tools and mechanisms that are available to share different aspects of our work in human rights. Your site is an especially good place for human rights advocates to highlight current human rights events.
Nancy Pearson, New Tactics Program Manager
skits
To Vernon Huffman:
I am very interested to know what was in your skit. How did you make light of the events? And did they need to hear dialogue or was it all nonvierbal?
I am new to this forum and am not sure how to get your answer, but I will try.
Tricia
Keeping Tactics Aligned with Strategy
Vernon,
This is indeed a very inspiring example of choosing tactics that are aligned with your strategic goal, also shows the importance of tactical flexibility, but at the base models the values and world we're trying to create.
Your example of how you tried to communicate respect to the "others" can provide ideas for creatively engaging those we may see as "enemies".
In the "Unarmed Accompaniment" dialogue, a community member commented in her blog post Preparing for working "on the ground" stated, "Communicating with empathy and honesty and respectful of the people that I work and engage with has saved many situations and has enabled me to create meaningful connections with people there."
Your examples really emphasize how important it is to conduct ourselves with respect for self and others
Nancy Pearson, New Tactics Program Manager
Humanity as our biggest strength
I love that other people are talking about the importance of humanity and honest communication amongst all people - 'enemies' and colleagues alike.
I've long believed that honest communication with anyone can help a whole lot more than other more forceful means (hence the reason why experts agree that things like torture are ineffective means of gathering information). I've wondered sometimes if this is a naive way of thinking, or too idealistic a notion to really believe in. Admittedly it does seem like an entirely soft tactic. But the examples listed above make me think that despite any notions people may have, relating to one another's humanity is the best way to make progress.
Moreover, it seems that failing to recognize other people's humanity is the first (and fastest moving) indication of trouble and human rights abuses looming on the horizon. Look at any major genocide and it seems clear that the atrocities occured because perpetrators didn't see victims as being human. With all this in mind, it seems as though humanity is definitely our biggest strength.