Organic & Strategic Change in the Climate Movement, Part Two

Olympian Fields of Action Series Post #9.2

As a movement we want our actions to make a difference; we want them to help achieve our purpose. We are not posers or prophetic narcissists; this is not a vanity exercise. We are not just about checking boxes to make ourselves feel better. Busy-work that gets us nowhere is no friend of hope or victory. All of our Movement Values propel us to our final value, success. Achieving success requires us to be strategic enough.

We want our actions to matter. We cannot mumble, bumble, and stumble our way to success. Aimless meandering, no matter how well-intentioned, will not have us arriving at our destination in time to make a difference. Passion without a plan for victory is the wasting of a precious resource as we flounder in futility.

Thus, we want our Movement to be strategic. But not just strategic.

We want to be both organic and strategic enough, our fifth characteristic, imperative, and Movement-building goal, so we can make the impossible possible and the possible actual and the actual beautiful and our future come faster.

At the same time, being strategic is not an end in itself; it is a means to the end of what we are being strategic for. We must not get so lost in coming up with strategic plans or so rigid in their implementation that we fail to have them become a reality.

Seeing how we can achieve our vision most effectively, having a plan and actions steps and tangible milestones, these things can inspire us and give us hope, a hope that becomes reality as we achieve our vision on all of our Olympian Fields of Action. As Climate Action Artist-Athletes we must have a plan for how our teams can win a Gold Medal.

Simply put: we must be strategic to overcome climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything. We must be strategic to stop bad stuff, set wrong right, and make things better on all of our Fields of Action. We must be strategic to become what we were meant to be and make our future come faster. To be successful, our Tenth Movement Value, we must be strategic.

By strategic I mean developing and implementing a plan where we deploy our resources at targeted times and places to maximize our gains towards achieving our purpose and goals. Our resources include ourselves, our time, our energy, our influence, our relationships, our moral standing, our values, our money, our numbers.

Part of being strategic is identifying the Fields of Action where we must engage. Once we have, we must then identify the decision-makers of the societal entities within which they are embedded so we know who we must persuade. Then we must marshal the Climate Movement’s resources on each Olympian Field of Action at the precise moments when victory can be achieved.

Being efficient and effective with our resources are hallmarks of being strategic.

But this must live in creative tension with the creative, nonlinear, passionate, messy nature of movements. Successful movements are both organic and strategic — they find creative ways to grow and thrive that are not always in straight lines.

Strategic thinking can have a bent towards the tried and true, sometimes at the expense of the creative and new. Strategic thinking can lay a grid on top of reality. Organic creativity springs from and works out of our natural reality. Seeking the sunshine doesn’t necessarily mean growing in a straight line.

The strategic-minded among us must allow room for movements to breathe, to flow from the creative expressions of our Member-Artist-Athletes; such creativity may not fit in the original plan, but it just might be the key to achieving our vision — and thus become the most strategic offering of them all.

As new people come into the movement and create groups and Olympian Fields of Action that best fit who they are, our current plans will not have been designed with them in mind. We must always be pragmatic (our seventh movement value) and open to change in adapting to new possibilities. Wisdom (our sixth movement value) is knowing when to be pragmatic with new approaches in order to be strategic.

But for a movement, creativity is also not an end in itself; when it does come, it must be viewed from a strategic lens as well so that we see how it can help us achieve our vision.

We must employ wisdom so that passion, freedom, creativity, and strategic thinking work together to make us the most effective we can be. We must transform the tension between them into fuel for achieving our vision, purpose, and Major Goal. Our plans must be open to new and better ways that we had not foreseen when we first made them. At the same time, our creative impulses must be channeled into strategic action to achieve their full potential.

To help us think strategically, here are some questions to ask when creating and working on a particular Olympian Field of Action:

o What does this particular Field of Action look like?

o What are our measurable goals?

o What should we be doing in this particular Field of Action?

o Who should we be working with? Who are our allies?

o Who should we be trying to recruit?

o Who should we be trying to persuade?

o How can we get our message out?

o Who are our opponents? Thinking strategically, do we engage them? Ignore them? Utilize their opposition to our advantage?

o What’s our timeline?

o What are our resources?

o How does this tie in with the vision, purpose and Major Goal of the Climate Movement?

o Where is this particular Field of Action situated in relation to the two larger Fields we all are called to: growing and improving the movement, and; persuading policymakers?

o Where does this particular Field of Action overlap with other Fields of Action? How can we help one another?

o How does a new Field of Action relate to current plans? How can it help with existing plans? Does it call for adapting our plan, or even a wholesale rethinking of our current plan?

o Have we left room for our Movement Values of creativity and beauty, for every one of us to be Artist-Athletes, hope-makers and beauty-creators?

o How should we be combining organic and strategic change on our Field of Action?

We won’t become the greatest and most long-lasting social change movement in the history of the world, we won’t overcome climate change by creating a just and prosperous sustainability that enhances wellbeing for everyone and everything, we won’t make the impossible possible and the possible actual and the actual beautiful and our future come faster, if we aren’t strategic.

Strategic creates hope. Hope creates the future. Join us!

If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, as well as the other posts in the Olympian Fields of Action Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.