Strategy versus Tactics

This week the UK celebrated the 100th anniversary of the day when some women got the right to vote. Discussion about the difference between suffragists and suffragettes got plenty of airtime. I heard nothing about why the movement needed, at a strategic level, both approaches. Discussion was always about differences in tactics between the two categories and the consequences of those tactics.

Whether you are running a business, leading a non-profit or social change organization, or serving in government, understanding how strategy and tactics interplay is essential. The campaign to gain votes for women in the UK is a stellar example. On panels, women asked each other “Which would you have been?” with an unspoken hint that the answer could be right or wrong.

Suffragists strove to work within the constraints of the system even though the system was designed to squelch their voices. Suffragettes undertook more dramatic actions, sometimes breaking existing laws. Many suffragettes were imprisoned for their protests. In prison, some went on hunger strikes and were force-fed in a brutal manner that physically ruined their voices, not to mention the psychological aftereffects of such repeated trauma. A few protests were fatal for the protesters.

BBC Radio 4 went to some pains to point out that there was no wall between suffragists and suffragettes. They attended each other’s events and in many other ways supported each other. But on the air there seemed to be a lack of understanding about why anyone would ever have been a suffragette, breaking laws and suffering such horrible consequences.

Although some suffragists felt the tactics of the suffragettes did more harm for the cause than good, a hard look at social change movements argues that both approaches were needed.

In the early stages of any push for major societal change, the majority cannot understand what the fuss is about. Things are the way they’ve always been. What could possibly be the matter about that? Being polite and staying within the boundaries of a broken system rarely breaks through. It’s human nature to simply carry on in the usual way unless something happens that is alarming enough, extreme enough, to pierce the blur of routine and force a glimpse of what is wrong and why it should change.

This isn’t unique to social change movements. It also happens in business and government. If you have a marvelous idea that can transform your part of the market, at first nobody can understand what the fuss is about… so they can’t understand why they should buy your product or support your program. Before you can transform anything, you have to get people’s attention and convince them to want the transformation.

But let’s get back to our example. What about the other part of the movement? We’ve looked at why the suffragettes and their militant tactics were necessary to get the public’s attention and “make the case” for granting the vote to women. Why, at the strategic level, were the suffragists also necessary for the movement to succeed? Their tactics were too mild to budge the system.

The suffragettes kept raising the discomfort level for the public and for people in power. They kept doing things extreme enough to make news in upsetting ways. It was imperative for them to do this and not slack off, even though they caused some backlash. Eventually the discomfort expected if the system changed began to look less distressing than the prospect of having the suffragettes continue their campaign.

The suffragists needed to be in place, diligently working within the system, with a record of stability and persistence and determination, so the system could turn to them as “the reasonable ones” who could negotiate a way to end the campaign. It wasn’t a perfect win. Only some women won the vote, and at the time only some men had the vote. Universal suffrage had to wait for another day. But it was an immense gain and set British society on the path to universal suffrage.

Both sets of tactics were needed and came together under one strategic umbrella.

For a movement like that, history often does not record whether anyone consciously put together and shepherded such a strategy. Usually, most people in a movement or business or organization don’t know about and don’t need to know about the strategy at the top. Someone should in order to make sure none of the tactical elements go astray. If you’re the boss, that someone is you.

With apologies to the women to strove to gain the vote in the UK for such a brief, surface-level look at their work, we’ve only skimmed the surface of strategy versus tactics here. But just from that example you can see how much you can do if you think it through and have a strategy to keep your tactics (your actions) moving toward your goal. Let’s all use that lesson from those awesome women.