by Daniel Hunter
June 2005

The theory was sound. National organizations had used the theory -- critical path analysis -- to build effective campaigns. Local organizations had used it to place their work in a larger context. The ideas were definitely good ones.

But what were the experiential tools to teach the theory? To help people learn the theory facilitators needed more than lecturing about the theory -- experiential tools were needed. After all, people learn so much more when they're involved in their own learning!

What to do?

This was one of the challenges faced by one of Training for Change's trainers, Daniel Hunter, in Australia. He faced it while working with two Australian co-facilitators who had brought him to help increase their training skills in May 2005.

So what happened? Read on for more!

Getting Ready

The expression goes: Good things are worth the wait -- and this was a case of that. It took over two years of communication for The Change Agency to bring me to help coach their trainers on leading more effective strategy trainings. It's a big challenge getting schedules coordinated and workshops organized with the team split on exactly opposite sides of the globe -- but when we finally did it the workshops went great!

The Change Agency is small Australian nongovernmental organization, or NGO, with a mission similar to TFC -- providing training specifically for activists. It's two co-directors, James Whelan and Sam LaRocca, both have a history of activism in the environmentalist movement. For a long time James has increased skills for popular education in Australia through training and teaching. Sam is a young activist newer to training; she also has history working with other social movements. Both have contributed hugely to increasing the use and popularity of popular education in Australia.

The Change Agency itself is a fairly new organization. Sam and James founded it because they saw activists being able to win some specific campaigns or gains, but those groups were unable to share lessons on how to do that with each other. And without larger frameworks for social change, it was possible for people to win campaigns that didn't lead them anywhere. So they wanted to use training as a vehicle to increase long-term thinking and strategizing.

Even with their newness, they're already making a big impact on the Aussie activist scene: they've provided trainings for Greenpeace, The Wilderness Society, and mostly other environmental groups. What they were finding is that people were rapidly passing along training concepts and tools they were teaching. The informal networking of sharing meant that when they trained one group of people, they quickly found the ideas in that workshop being used around the country.

That sharing resulted in more effective actions by activists. And, it also meant a challenge for them to keep up with the learning curve of activists: now that activists know these tools, what next can we teach? And some tools were hard to teach experientially, which meant people were less able to internalize them and use them. How to increase their experiential repertoire? With those questions, they turned to Training for Change.

Originally Long-based trainer Kim Donahue was going with me as co-facilitatior to Australia. But organizing blocks on the Australian side made it impossible. Sam kept emphasizing, "There's nothing like this available for us! That makes it new and hard to organize!"

In May 2005, I finally arrived in Australia and co-facilitated with James & Sam several workshops in Australia: two 2-day trainings in Brisbane and Melbourne and an evening event in Melbourne. The trainings were open workshops on strategy -- with union leaders, environmentalists, and community organizers attending. Some participants even came from as far away as Perth (about 2,200 miles away!) -- a reminder to us that there wasn't a lot like this available in the land down under.

Feedback from the workshops was extremely positive. Several people said they found it the most growthful workshop they had ever attended; one said that he finally was able to develop a plan for his campaign -- after three years of trying! One of my favorite growth changes was from one participant who had been working solo for decades; he ended up identifying that pattern as one of his biggest hurdles. So during the course of the workshop when we invited people to do some solo work, he refused -- and instead reached out to someone else to help him out! One person who knew him well leaned over to me and said, "That might be the first time he's ever asked for help in his life!"

The series of workshops offered practical strategy tools and showed how effective groups develop strategy. We taught concepts and theories like Lakey's Five Stages for a Living Revolution. We built in flexibility for participants' personal goals, such as that of the man who wanted to give up being a loner.

I also spent hours before and after each workshop with Sam and James talking through design implications and training issues.

The Challenge: making theory experiential

A common challenge that trainers face is figuring out how to translate theory so that people can build on their own wisdom (rather than building only on an expert's wisdom, which is often culturally biased). Training for Change's direct education approach -- where the wisdom comes direct from the group -- represents a new paradigm of education and making that leap can be difficult. And critical path analysis presents a challenge on how to teach it experientially.

A theory we especially wrestled with is called "critical path analysis." Critical path analysis essentially states that campaigns win not through a series of tactics placed together, but through the achievements of specific outcomes. That in and of itself is a major shift of paradigm for many groups, who operate mainly by a reliance on this tactic and then this tactic and then hoping they win. Instead, critical path analysis has people coming up with the longer-term goals the group wants to accomplish and then identifying the key steps to making that happen.

The way to do that is to have people write down the goals and then identify outcome-based stepping-stones along the way. Some of those are fairly within the organization's control (like getting 2,000 members) while others are not (like oil prices reach all-time highs). It's tricky to keep the outcomes real outcomes -- not just a list of tactics. Then those steps need to be ordered -- lines get drawn that connect them to each other -- and a plan begins to emerge. That plan becomes the basis of the group's strategy.

In the workshop in Brisbane, James presented the critical path analysis. Mainly, he explained how it's done, some of its benefits, theory on what makes for good objectives/outcomes, and then walked participants through some examples. That whole process takes about one hour or one hour and a half.

After the first workshop where it was led, James, Sam and I put our heads together about other ways to present it. While people could get the value of critical path analysis in theory, they didn't come out of that hour in Brisbane with a lot of new skills for doing it -- just new ideas. Would it be possible to increase the amount that people retained and could actually use? And would it be possible to help people more deeply internalize that jump from a tactic-based approach to an outcome-based approach which critical-path analysis represents?

To create the new tool, I thought back on lessons from the Creative Workshop Design, which encouraged using props to design new tools. When there's a metaphor at work -- like stepping stones -- physically representing the metaphor can often help people more deeply understand the concept. Eureka! And a new tool was born: the "Paper Plate Challenge." We tried it out in the following workshop in Melbourne.

Each participant clustered in a small group and was handed six or seven paper plates. In the middle of the room a bowl of fruit was placed, which represented each person's goal. It's what folks are working towards - their specific (as opposed to broad) campaign goals.

Each participant, turning to their group when they needed help, placed paper plates starting from where they are now to their goals (the bowl of fruit), putting outcomes that are important "stepping stones" to that vision on the plates. On each paper plate participants wrote their specific outcomes.

Mid-way through the exercise, people took a break to debrief about what made for effective outcomes. Rather than a one-way conversation about smart objectives, people had their own experience ready to discuss. A conversation ensued that helped push people deeper into stepping-stones that were outcomes -- not merely tactics. And because people were already engaged and thinking, they rapidly starting applying that conversation to their work.

By the end, people had made sketches of large campaign plans -- using the stepping-stones as guidelines -- with very specific outcomes. Their confidence was increased (because they were all successful) and they had done the hard thinking they needed to do. And all in an hour -- less time than to do a full lecture!

Based on what we saw (people deeply engaged in their own learning) and the feedback we got (several mentioned it as a highpoint for their learning) we could say the tool worked. As for our working together, The Change Agency and Training for Change are planning more collaboration: the sharing of literature and more tools and possibly a return trip to Australia in a couple of years to lead longer training of trainers.

Consistent with the Strategy Project

These experiential tools to increase strategizing skills, like the Paper Plate Challenge, are at the heart of Training for Change's Strategy Project. Over the past year, Training for Change's Strategy Project has been researching new tools and techniques for teaching strategy to activists. The trainings in Australia were part of TFC sharing lessons from that project widely.

One of TFC's core beliefs is that empowerment needs to be at the heart of strategy. So while it is great to learn from history and others' experiences, people need to be actively engaged in accessing their own wisdom and own understanding. After all, if people are always looking to others for smart strategy, how is that different than traditional education, which encourages dependency on others about what they should believe?

Working with activists in Australia, and especially trainers who will continue to proliferate those tools, is part of that overall sharing of information. To continue to share those tools, Training for Change is constantly adding more strategy tools to its growing list of training tools onto its website: www.TrainingForChange.org. We've developed a new strategy workshop called "Strategy is Possible" which has been led three times in North America (next workshop is Nov 19-20).

To learn more or bring strategy workshops to your organization or area, contact us:

Training for Change
web: www.TrainingForChange.org
e-mail: peacelearn@igc.org
phone: 612-827-7323