7.2.2 Working through the APF tool

When it comes to doing the actual planning work, we offer the following six points of advice on different aspects of managing the process and team:

There is a recommended sequence to using the APF tool and iteration is essential to its effective use.

To get the most out of the APF planning process, we propose the following “sequence” of working through the elements in four steps:

• Step 1 is an initial consideration of the core strategic focus questions.
• Step 2 is detailed mapping and planning for the “way into the process” circle followed by a revisit to the “core strategic focus” questions in light of new insights gained.
• Step 3 is a move into detailed mapping and planning for “the messenger” circle followed by a revisit to the “core strategic focus” questions in light of new insights gained.
• Step 4 is detailed mapping and planning for the “message and activities” circle followed by a final revisit and consolidation of decisions regarding the “core strategic focus” questions.

The four steps are represented in the figure below.

As you can see, the proposed sequence includes multiple considerations of the core strategic focus questions throughout the planning process. The main purpose of this is to ensure, as you deepen your understanding of the opportunities and challenges through each stage of the planning process, that you continue to reflect on, adapt, and nuance your advocacy objective to make it more feasible and realistic. The process opens with an initial focus on this core strategic focus but it is important not to get stuck on these questions at the start, as there will be multiple opportunities to return to them throughout the planning process.

One of the basic tenets of this manual is that in advocacy, context is everything: hence, it is by design that we’ve put the “way into the process” at the top of the APF and it is the next element of the APF tool to tackle. Earlier in chapter 4, we discussed that this circle is the most important circle of the APF and the element where the most extensive mapping is conducted. The questions contained in this element of the tool are designed to ensure you move beyond considering your advocacy efforts solely from your own (research and interests) perspective, but rather are firmly grounded in the realities of the policymaking context you seek to influence. After this first stage, then go back to the strategic questions for a second time.

We then move onto “the messenger” and “message and activities” circles with a revisit to the core strategic focus questions after each one. Although we have represented it in a linear fashion above, the reality of the process should entail a much more looping and iterative experience. What this means in practice is that the decisions made in each circle are relevant for and impact on decisions made for the other elements, which ensures you design a coherent and comprehensive advocacy strategy.

Involve the team members who will play different roles in conducting the advocacy campaign.

Deciding who to involve in the process of working through the APF tool is crucial. Our overall advice is that the main people internal and (where possible) external to your organization should be involved in the planning process. To ensure that everyone is on the same wavelength, those in the team playing different advocacy roles should be included where possible, for example, the messenger(s), researchers, key coalition partners, other partners such as donors, as well as key staff of the organization itself. Only including people from your organization is limiting, and it is even more limiting to include only those who conducted the research. The experience of those engaged in advocacy planning shows that the process benefits greatly from the input of a range of perspectives in bringing fresh insights, depth of analysis, and moving the thinking outside the organization and research box and into the real policy context. In terms of numbers, between three and nine people is the common size of teams engaged in the APF planning process, with three being the minimum number to really negotiate and ensure no one person dominates.

As mentioned in Chapter 5, responsibility for advocacy planning (and even conducting advocacy activities) is often placed solely on the communications/public relations person in an organization. We hope you can see from this guide what a major fallacy that assumption is: advocacy is a team effort that will of course, include the communications person, but they are rarely in a position to achieve policy change on their own. In fact, there is a strong argument that in the planning process, the communications person should play a very interesting role¹ that may at first seem counterintuitive from an internal organizational perspective. Rather than working to assist other team members in developing advocacy messages and activities, the communications person should defend the interests, positions, and needs of target audiences who will oppose your ideas. We feel this is sage advice in ensuring planning is focused not only on presenting or defending the research, but rather is immediately grounded in targeting a specific policy change from a stakeholder perspective.

A final very important reason for involving all advocacy team members in the planning process is to build a shared understanding and ownership among all team members of the content, focus, main argument and main findings contained in the “takeaway messages.” A commonly used method of doing this is to incorporate into the planning process drafting and redrafting of messages through the development of advocacy communication tools, such as policy briefs. Members of the advocacy team do not need to have insight into all research details (researchers can be referred to for this), but they do need to be clear on the purpose and core of the message before the first wave of the advocacy campaign begins. This consistency and clarity will help avoid potential damage to the campaign and your organization’s reputation if different members of the team and messengers are saying different things and sending conflicting messages to target audiences

If possible, work together to complete all elements of the APF tool with the whole team.

It may seem intuitive to divide up the task of planning and mapping among team members by APF element for the sake of efficiency. However, given the interrelated and iterative nature of elements of the APF, the best-case scenario is for the whole team to complete the entire planning process contained in the tool. In that way, you are maximizing the opportunities for deepening the analysis and ensuring that decisions made in one circle of the APF feed into other elements. Factoring in how time-consuming and potentially unwieldy the process can be if many people are involved, we propose the following pragmatic process and division: all members of the team complete initial mapping of the core strategic focus questions and “way into the process” circle as a group. Thereafter, the mapping and planning for “the messenger” and “message and activities” may be divided out among groups if necessary.

The APF tool can be used in combination with other advocacy planning tools.

There are many other useful tools which combine well with the APF planning process; these commonly seek to get advocates to look at the planning process from one dimension of the obstacles that they face, for example, stakeholder analysis, influence analysis, force field analysis.² These are all useful approaches to looking deeper into the advocacy challenge and situating it; however, what is often missing is how to take the results of these analyses and put them back into broader strategic planning. Therefore, these tools can easily be used to complement and feed into the APF planning process; for example, any stakeholder analysis process would inform many parts of the mapping in the “way into the process” circle.

Consolidate the mapping to ensure you get the outcome you need from each element of the APF tool.

The mapping and planning process is an iterative process of building on layers of insight in order to make more nuanced decisions as you move through your planning process. It is the combined and cohesive decisions and details from each element of the APF that together will comprise your advocacy plan. Hence, a crucial aspect of using the APF tool is pulling together the analysis and mapping to give you the detailed decisions you have reached in each element.

To facilitate this process of consolidating decisions made for each element, we recommend putting things down on paper and recording the decisions made for each element as you go along, that is, use a range of materials and tools such as flip charts, post-its, matrices, and visuals. Remembering that decisions from one element feed into another, this will be a work in progress and decisions made will change and be refined as you go through the process of adding layers and nuance. This thoroughness also ensures you anticipate and consider factors before they surprise (or even wrong-foot) you during actual implementation of your advocacy campaign.

Give adequate time to working through all elements of the APF.

It is a common and understandable question to ask how much time you should give to working through the APF tool, but there is no easy answer. Looking at the qualitative nature and scope of the questions in the tool, it should not come as a surprise that completing this mapping process will take significant time and effort and you should be thorough in working through all its elements. However, time spent on the upfront planning stage can help avoid a lot of easily avoidable problems and pitfalls once you are in the implementation stage, ultimately requiring even more time! The main advice is to be comprehensive and thorough in working through all elements in a systematic manner and reflect after the planning process whether the time allocated was realistic. Giving time and attention to all aspects and revisiting the three core strategic focus questions after completing the mapping for each circle is crucial to effective planning and may help you see crucial openings, challenges, factors, and dimensions you might otherwise miss.