Objectives:
- Develop the actions and timeline to carry out your selected tactics to achieve advocacy outcomes.
- Determine roles, responsibilities, and resources for the plan.
- Review your plan of action to address risks, challenges and opportunities to make adjustments.
It is important to assess the information your team has gathered through the previous steps. This helps you confirm your collective information to develop your action plan. See these Tips to Create Your Action Plan.
Each step of the Strategic Effectiveness Method is a critical part of your plan. This includes the knowledge of yourself, your opponent and the terrain of human relationships surrounding your problem. Each step helps you develop a plan to achieve your strategic human rights goal.
- Step 1 – Identify the Problem
Take this opportunity for your team to confirm your problem statement. It is not unusual for teams to make changes to their problem statement. You and your team might make changes at each step in using the method. As you gain more information, you become even more clear about the problem. Your action plan seeks to make evident changes to this problem. You want to be sure your action plan will in fact address the problem.
- Step 2: Create a Vision
Consider how your vision statement can provide positive messaging. This is the community or world you want to create. Sharing the common values from your vision statement can advance your advocacy campaign or effort.
- Step 3 – Mapping the Terrain
Be sure to add or make corrections to relationships you have identified in your terrain. You may need to change the position of a target or “actor” on your spectrum of allies. This kind of change is very important to choose appropriate and effective tactics. Use the online Tactical Mapping Tool to track your current and new relationships as you carry out your plan.
- Step 4 – Explore Tactics
Confirm your human rights-based tactical aim. If you and your team identify more than one aim, create an action plan for each aim. For example, you may decide that you want to focus on both intervention and restorative aims. As you intervene in a long-standing abuse, you also want to provide restorative help to the victims. In such a case, determine medium to longer-term goals for each. And then determine your short or immediate term goals. This will help your team to better assess your resources. Different allies may help carry out effective action plans to advance these aims. Confirm your immediate goals. It will be very difficult to work effectively as a team if there is no agreement on goals. This is an opportunity to ensure that the group has clearly defined short-term or immediate goals. For example, each team member may agree to take responsibility for the outcome of an action area. One may have experience with conducting research. One may be a good leader to oversee the internal capacity building to carry out the plan. Another may have strong connections with allies for mobilization. And another is skilled in engaging decision makers.
Targets: This is a reminder to focus on targets that will most likely help you reach your goals. Your target might be an individual. It might be a group or organization. It might be a governmental institution. If you are focused on a group or institution, you have more work to do. You will need to consider who you can approach in that group or institution. Use your spectrum of allies. You do not want to overlook a target that can best help reach your goal or desired outcome.
- Step 5 – Take Action
This is the time to develop your action plan!
You and your team will need to identify specific tasks to complete each tactic. Your action plan helps you identify what you need to succeed.
