What if your organization just isn’t strategic?

At a party last weekend, one of us stumbled into a conversation with the Communications Director of a major international organization about her frustrations with consultants. Her principal complaint was that consultants she’d worked with insisted on telling her the best, most strategic way to do things, without regard for whether the organization was capable being that smart at that moment.

It was a oddly stark articulation of a fairly common challenge: internal politics, operating procedures that prevent nimble decision-making, and leadership that’s slow to adapt to changing realities often stand in the way of charting a winning course. Often, being strategic is as much about winning the internal battles as it is about out-organizing or out-communicating opponents on the outside.

So, what’s a campaigner to do? Three ways we’ve worked with our client contacts to be as strategic as possible, given significant internal challenges:

1. Start from ideal and back up to doable.

Develop the best, most strategic plan you can, even if you know it’s not going to be the plan that you end up getting to implement. Then identify priorities. Knowing you’re not going to be able to do everything you want to do, triage your plan and decide what’s most important. Find opportunities in your plan to pilot and test the more strategic path. Are there one or two congressional districts that you can test a better targeting approach or message? Can you identify just one chapter that’s itching to try something new that you can work with to pilot a more integrated organizing approach?

Figure out what you’re willing to fight for, and what you’re willing to negotiate away in the process of getting from ideal to doable.

2. Line up validators.

If you’re fighting to change up a long-standing but not strategic practice at your organization, don’t go it alone. Be ready with validators to back you up, and examples of other organizations or campaigns that have tried it your way and won. As consultants, we’ve often played this role of outsider for our clients, and brought in experiences from other clients as proof points. Somehow, hearing it from someone outside the organization makes it true(er).

3. Develop a plan B to mitigate risk.

Thoroughly think through a plan B you can offer to help mitigate decision-makers’ sense of the risk of change. Your plan B should demonstrate how quickly you’ll be able to reverse course and go back to the tried-and-true if your awesome idea doesn’t do what you think it can do. Clearly, your plan B won’t be necessary, but having it handy can demonstrate that you’ve thought through the risks and are prepared to take some responsibility for the challenges inherent in changing the status quo.