Strategy is the overall approach and how it was grounded in the theory of holistic political economy – what has to happen.
The approach to strategy is to craft actions which are grounded in principles of action, themselves chosen because they most closely match means with ends in a way that is likely to create a change process that can move through the stages of initiation to maturity in small doable steps. The emphasis will be on developing those alternative sources of power that already exist and creating new ones. Definitions of holistic political economy are needed for all stages of maturity and will be worked out and refined in an ongoing open learning process.
Central to the argument I make is that there needs to be an integral relationship between what we know (our informed beliefs) and our actions – this is simply because what we do will cause a reaction by others and will be used to judge the veracity of what we profess Note: Being Judged by Your Actions . Having a set of guiding principles make this clear and helps with the creation of strategy and tactics.
Creating Change
When we compare the way that some companies embark on change and compare it to political practise, we see a contrast. Good businesses will paint a vision of the future, seek participation and engagement to win commitment. Politics gives us windy rhetoric, with insufficient detail and when in power does change to us, not with us. In the two party system initiatives that sound good are started and then run out of steam, are quietly dropped or have finding cut, or are reversed by the opposition when they come to power.
Using and developing power
Let’s use the framework of managed change at the initiation stage to see what sort of things we need to do to develop an alternative source of power that is capable of replacing exiting power structures.
- Political Activity and Mobilisation
- Ideas and Policy Formation
- Democratic Practice and Institutions
- Economic Change and Business Development
This section is all about what has to happen, I’ll get to some very specific proposals about how in Tactics
One more thing; the model of managed change requires that we define the measures (metrics) that will signify the end of one stage of development and the pre-conditions needed to start on the next – what do we use instead of GDP and growth, how many co-ops are there, what is the rate of formation…and on.