Section 4. Developing Successful Strategies

• What is a strategy?

• What are the criteria for developing a good strategy?

• Why develop strategies?

• When should you develop strategies for your initiative?

• How do you develop strategies?

What is a strategy?

A strategy is a way of describing how you are going to get things done. It is less specific than an action plan, which tells the who-what-when; instead, it broadly answers the question, "How do we get there from here?" Different strategies represent different possible routes toward the same goal.

A good strategy takes into account existing barriers, assets, resources, opportunities, and community conditions. Resources may include people, money, relationships, knowledge, authority, materials, facilities, and other forms of support. Strategies should also remain consistent with the overall vision, mission, and objectives of the initiative. Often, an initiative will use several different strategies -- providing information, strengthening support, changing policies or systems, removing barriers, increasing access to resources, building partnerships, and others -- to achieve its goals.

Objectives outline the aims of an initiative -- what success would look like in achieving the vision and mission. By contrast, strategies suggest the broad paths the initiative will take to reach those objectives. Strategies help you connect your vision and objectives with the practical work required to create change.

What are the criteria for developing a good strategy?

Strategies for your community initiative should meet several criteria.

Does the strategy:

• Give overall direction? A strategy, such as strengthening skills and knowledge or increasing resources and opportunities, should identify the overall path without dictating one narrow program or activity.
• Fit available resources, evidence, and opportunities? A good strategy builds on existing community strengths and assets, such as people's willingness to act, trusted relationships, existing programs, local knowledge, or a tradition of community involvement. It should also respond to new opportunities, such as emerging public concern, new partnerships, funding, policy changes, or related work already underway.
• Address barriers, risks, and concerns? Important community efforts often encounter practical barriers, conflicting interests, or disagreement. A good strategy anticipates these issues, seeks to understand legitimate concerns, reduces avoidable barriers, and identifies ways to address disagreement responsibly rather than simply treating opposition as something to overcome.
• Reach and involve people affected by the issue? Strategies should connect the initiative with the people and communities whose circumstances, opportunities, services, or environments the effort is intended to improve. For example, if the mission is to improve access to stable employment, do the strategies address barriers faced by people seeking work as well as the availability and quality of jobs?
• Advance the mission? Taken together, are the strategies likely to contribute meaningfully to the mission and objectives? If the aim is to improve employment, do the strategies address enough of the important factors affecting employment opportunities? If the aim is to prevent substance-related harm, do the strategies address relevant protective factors, risk factors, access to support and treatment, community conditions, and other contributors to the issue?

Why develop strategies?

Developing strategies is a way to focus your efforts and determine how your organization will move from objectives to action. Doing so can provide several advantages:

• Taking advantage of community assets, resources, evidence, and emerging opportunities
• Responding effectively to barriers, changing conditions, concerns, and significant disagreement
• Making more efficient and coordinated use of time, energy, relationships, and resources

When should you develop strategies for your initiative?

Developing strategies is the fourth step in the VMOSA (Vision, Mission, Objectives, Strategies, and Action Plans) process outlined at the beginning of this chapter. Strategies provide the connection between identifying your objectives and developing the specific actions needed to reach them. It is usually helpful to develop an initial strategy before beginning major activities so that your actions are coordinated and connected to your objectives. At the same time, strategies should not be treated as fixed. Review and revise them as community conditions, evidence, resources, partnerships, opportunities, barriers, and concerns change and as you learn from implementation.

How do you develop strategies?

Once again, let's refer back to our friends at the fictional Reducing the Risk (RTR) Coalition, which hopes to reduce unintended adolescent pregnancy and support adolescent sexual and reproductive health in its community. We'll walk through the process of developing strategies with this group to better explain the who, what, and why of strategies.

As with the processes you used to write your vision and mission statements and set your objectives, developing strategies involves reviewing evidence, brainstorming, and listening to community members -- especially young people and others directly affected by the issue.

Organize a brainstorming meeting with members of your organization and members of the community

People are more likely to participate fully when meetings are welcoming, accessible, and well facilitated. You can help create that environment by:

• Making meetings a place where participants feel that their ideas are heard and respected and where constructive disagreement can be expressed. Shared meeting agreements may help. They might include:
  • Give people reasonable opportunities to speak and avoid talking over one another
  • Listen before responding and avoid unnecessary interruptions
  • Treat different ideas and experiences with respect, even when participants disagree
• Choosing a physically comfortable and accessible meeting space and providing remote participation or other accommodations when appropriate.
• Considering transportation, meeting times, lighting, parking, public transit, personal safety, and other practical issues that can affect whether people are able to participate.
• Providing refreshments when possible and considering participants' dietary needs and preferences.

The RTR Coalition held brainstorming sessions with organization members and invited adolescents, parents and caregivers, teachers, counselors, health professionals, faith communities, youth-serving organizations, and other community members to participate in listening sessions. These conversations helped the coalition identify strategies for reducing unintended adolescent pregnancy and improving adolescent sexual and reproductive health. Providing food and creating a welcoming setting helped support participation.

Review who is affected by the issue and who can help create change

• People and communities affected by the issue include those who experience the issue directly or whose opportunities, health, services, relationships, or environments may be affected by the initiative. For the RTR Coalition, adolescents themselves are essential participants in understanding the issue and developing strategies. Parents and caregivers, partners, families, and others may also be affected. Avoid treating people simply as "targets" whose behavior must change; consider the social, economic, environmental, institutional, and policy conditions that shape choices and outcomes.
• People and organizations that can help create change include those with relevant responsibilities, knowledge, relationships, authority, services, resources, or other capacity to contribute. For the RTR Coalition, this might include adolescents, parents and caregivers, teachers, counselors, health professionals, schools, youth-serving organizations, faith communities, policymakers, and other community partners.

Review your vision, mission, and objectives to keep you on the right track

Review your vision, mission, and objectives to make sure the strategies you are considering remain aligned with the goals expressed in your previous planning work.

Work together to brainstorm the best strategies for your initiative

The following questions can help guide discussion about which strategies may be most useful:

• What resources, assets, relationships, knowledge, and existing programs can help achieve the vision and mission? How can they be used effectively?
• What practical barriers, risks, concerns, or significant disagreements could affect the initiative? Which can be addressed through changes in design, communication, access, partnerships, policy, or other strategies?
• What can relevant people, organizations, and institutions realistically contribute to the mission, and what information or support would help them participate effectively?
• Which strategies should prevent problems before they occur, and which should address needs that already exist? For example, an adolescent sexual and reproductive health initiative might combine developmentally appropriate education and healthy relationship skills with access to appropriate health information and services for adolescents who need them.
• How will potential strategies reduce factors associated with poor outcomes and strengthen protective factors? For example, strategies might address sexual coercion and unhealthy power differences while strengthening supportive relationships, accurate information, communication skills, access to health services, and young people's ability to make informed decisions.
• What strategies address broader community conditions as well as individual needs? Connecting young people with supportive adults, strengthening schools and youth organizations, improving access to services, and creating safe opportunities for learning and development may benefit many young people. Complex issues usually require more than one strategy or setting.
• What strategies provide additional support where needs or barriers are greater? Appropriate screening, service data, community assessment, and input from affected people may help identify where additional resources are needed. Use this information to increase support and access without defining people by past difficulties or stigmatizing them as inherently "high risk."

Let's look at the strategies proposed by the members of the RTR Coalition to prevent unintended adolescent pregnancy and support adolescent sexual and reproductive health.

Example: The strategies of the RTR Coalition

We will pursue the following strategies to reach each of our objectives:

• Support parents and caregivers in having age-appropriate, accurate, and respectful conversations with young people about relationships, sexual health, values, and healthy decision-making, working with faith communities and other trusted community partners when appropriate;
• Support medically accurate, developmentally appropriate, evidence-informed sexual health education that helps students build knowledge and skills related to healthy relationships, abstinence and other risk-reduction choices, contraception, STI prevention, communication, and informed decision-making at appropriate ages;
• Strengthen training and support for educators and youth-serving adults and develop appropriate peer-support or peer-education opportunities;
• Assess and report on student knowledge, experiences, access to information and services, and relevant health behaviors using appropriate privacy, consent or assent, confidentiality, and data-protection practices;
• Improve access to appropriate, youth-friendly sexual and reproductive health information and services, including contraception where appropriate;
• Organize a school and community partnership to strengthen mentoring, positive youth development, supervised after-school activities, supportive relationships, and other opportunities for young people.

Things to note about the RTR strategies:

• They give overall direction without dictating a single specific program or curriculum.
• They build on local resources and relationships, including young people, parents and caregivers, educators, health professionals, faith communities, youth-serving organizations, and other community partners.
• Some strategies focus on preventing unintended pregnancy and related risks before they occur, while others improve access to information, support, and services for young people who need them now.
• The strategies involve different parts of the community, including groups that may hold different perspectives on sexual health education and services. Involving these groups early can help clarify concerns, identify genuine areas of agreement or disagreement, and improve implementation without allowing any one group to speak for the entire community.
• The strategies address both risk and protective factors, including access to accurate information and appropriate health services, supportive relationships with parents, caregivers and other trusted adults, healthy decision-making skills, protection from coercion, and opportunities for positive youth development.

Check your proposed strategies for completeness, accuracy, and whether they contribute to the vision, mission, and objectives