What is SSS?

A SSS workshop is typically a 2-3 day workshop to seed a campaign with a specific constituency. It is designed to help the team articulate the story of why this campaign matters, develop strategic objectives, design campaign structure, and develop deeper understanding of the issues around the challenge. It is useful because it starts with the story of self, and then dives into the strategy, which enables them to see what is possible and gives them hope. While the SSS workshop resembles an organizing workshop in following the five leadership practices of community organizing, the objective is to launch a team/campaign or relaunch an existing team/campaign, so the campaign strategy and decisions are real. The output of a SSS workshop is a campaign document.

When do you need a SSS workshop?
(vs. Organizing workshop focused on learning)

In a SSS workshop, crafting a realistic and agreed upon strategy is the utmost priority, while in an organizing workshop, it is for practice purposes only. An organizing workshop focuses on learning organizing, while in a SSS workshop, learning happens as part of the process.
A SSS workshop is suited when:

• A newly emerging/formed team wants to launch a real campaign under conditions of uncertainties
• An existing team already working together on a movement/campaign needs an opportunity to revitalize their narrative and strategy
• The team is working with a clear specific constituency
• The team is invested in building their people power in a long term organizing project

What do you get out of a SSS workshop?

A campaign document is an output of the SSS workshop and a documentation of what the core team has agreed on or discussed with regard to:

• Campaign story: How did this group come together? What motivates them to belong to this campaign? What’s their challenge now? How will they deal with it? The aim is to document the values of the campaign leadership and own the narrative of who we are and what is our problem.
• Campaign strategy: In this part, we document the vision, strategic objectives to reach the vision, the specific objective which will be targeted through their campaign, and their theories of change to achieve it.
• Campaign structure: What kind of teams will the campaign recruit and build and why?
• Campaign timeline which shows the various milestones of the campaign.

Sharing the common language as a result of the SSS workshop enables the team to function well as a team after the workshop.

What do you do before a SSS workshop?

Before a SSS workshop, it is important to get to the right people and build relationships among them. In addition to engaging the allies and champions in the team so that they understand organizing first, it is also critical to spend the time to understand the issue and the context, define what success looks like, and clarify what the team wants to change.
For a newly formed group:

• Desk research on the issue (Read the latest reports, watch the news, research)
• Conversations with experts in the field
• Conversations to set criteria for participants recruitment: Who are our people?
• Listening drive with selected and shortlisted groups, through 1:1s and group listening conversations
• Agenda design: Assign documenters for the campaign document

For an existing group/campaign/movement/organization:

• Desk research on the group/movement/organization, review of previous campaign narrative, strategy and structure
• Conversations with experts in the field
• Conversations with core team to identify historical team, narrative and strategy challenges
• Listening drive with key stakeholders and existing members to understand successes, challenges, and dynamics
• Agenda design: Assign documenters for the campaign document

Additionally, training participants in the story of self before a SSS workshop can be helpful in setting up the space for the SSS workshop and enabling the leaders to see themselves as leaders.

How do you design a SSS workshop?

Here is a SSS workshop sample agenda that you can modify for your SSS workshop. At the same time, allowing flexibility with time in a SSS workshop is important, as the iterative process of strategy comes to life. In a SSS workshop in Ghana in 2024, strategy took a day and a half.
A SSS workshop should be designed to leverage the organization’s power and move “power with” into “power over” campaign. The initial generality organically moves into specificity as the work moves forward.
For a newly formed group, include:

• Story of self
• Strategy
  • Probing the participants to share the cultural contexts is helpful in understanding the power dynamics and shape the strategy
• Structure
• Team formation

For an existing group/campaign/movement/organization, include:

• Story of us
  • Identifying shared moments throughout the history of the organization can be a great bonding activity. You can draw a timeline with years/months and ask the team to write down the shared highlights above the line and lowlights below the line, and then create a space for people to narrate those moments to build the story of us. Part of this “us” is also about “When did I join the group?” – the self weaved into the us.
• Evaluation of existing strategy and restrategizing
• Evaluation of existing structure (its success and challenges)
• Reflection on our culture of work (naming what is implicit explicit and agreeing which parts of it we want to keep vs. change)

It is also helpful to model celebration in the SSS workshop for it to be in the DNA of the campaign 🎉
Oftentimes in a SSS workshop, a lot of teams get stuck in the “planning” and “perfecting” the strategy before launching their tactics on the ground. In one SSS workshop case, breaking the SSS into small sessions and spreading them over several weeks helped such a team to really ride the bike. Between each session, the team would have “missions” to complete, involving going on the ground and actually starting. Here is a sample timeline:

• Session 0 – Presentation / Intro to CO
• Session 1 – Story / Problem / Relationship (on ground mission post session: having 1-1 + beginning of listening campaign)
• Session 2 – Power mapping / Strategic objective (on ground mission post session: continue listening campaign + research on the decision maker)
• Session 3 – Finalizing Strategy 1 / Structure (on ground mission post session: have the first team meeting to review what’s been done so far + beginning of the personalized coaching of the team coordinator)
• Session 4 – Strategy 2 (on ground mission post session: team meeting to review and finalize timeline and action plan toward first peak)

What do you do after a SSS workshop?

After a SSS workshop, the actual development of the team’s campaign and snowflake requires a long-term investment in providing coaching and support and in building the leadership ladder and scaffolding for the community. It is important to design the SSS workshop with the post-workshop phase in mind, as a critical extension of the workshop itself and not an add-on.

• Finalizing loose ends on campaign document, name of campaign and anything else needed to be finalized
• Supporting team stability, commitment, and momentum towards agreed upon launch and peaks
• Creating space to empower members to be good facilitators themselves
  • As they plan on recruiting new leaders, test their leadership, practice 1:1s, and provide feedback on facilitating team meetings
  • Skill practice sessions can also be effective

A SSS workshop as a part of the journey

A SSS workshop, as you can see above, is not the beginning nor the end but is a journey, which includes listening and recruiting before the workshop and providing coaching and support after the workshop.
An example timeline from a SSS workshop in Childminding Campaign in Singapore by Daughters of Tomorrow and CLinked:

• Pre-SSS
  • August 2017
    • 90 minutes: Organizing Orientation meeting with DOT staff
  • October 2017
    • 60 minutes: Pre-SSS story of self model training
    • SSS questionnaires for participants
• Full day SSS in October 2017
• Post-SSS
  • November 2017
    • Leadership team training (public narrative)
  • December 2017
    • Leadership team training (relationship building)
  • January 2018
    • Full day coach training (4 coaches)
    • 2-day organizing workshop (24 people)
  • February- October 2018
    • 90 minutes monthly coaching session with leadership team
    • Attend bi-weekly leadership team meeting as observer
    • Action workshop

CLinked shadow coached and built capacity of the “organizer” in the campaign. And the “organizer” worked with the 5 teams and developed the second tier leadership in the January 2018 workshop.

Lessons learned from planning SSS workshops

• Select the right people in the room, as those in the room will build the story, structure and narrative
  • Who should be in the room?
    • People who are affected and motivated to solve the problem
    • Decision makers and key stakeholders of the partner organization
  • How should we decide who should be in the room?
    • Conduct listening drives and 1:1 training as a first action and commitment/leadership test for core team members
    • Self-nomination is not always great (needs leadership testing afterward)
• Find a champion or an ally in the partner organization, who is familiar with the framework, open to coaching, and committed to transforming awareness and service oriented projects into organizing campaign
  • There is a temptation to go into awareness raising as a strategy for the campaign, and coaching was important to shift to organizing (focus on behavioral change & developing leaders)
• Secure a coach for the coach, especially if it is the first time running a SSS journey

More to be discussed around SSS workshops

At LCN’s learning session on the SSS workshop on May 30th, 2024, we identified below topics regarding SSS workshops that we want to discuss further in future sessions. Stay tuned for more discussions and, in the meantime, feel free to share your SSS resources with the community by emailing resources@leadingchangenetwork.org.

• How do we measure the efficacy of the SSS? How do we evaluate a SSS workshop?
• How do we get SSS work funded?
• Can we do a SSS workshop with multiple teams that want to launch their campaigns?

Relevant resources

• SSS workshop sample agenda
• Campaign document template (output of SSS workshop)
• NHS workshop on campaign story, strategy, and structure (SSS) guide
• Watch a recording of LCN’s learning session on the SSS workshop on May 30th, 2024

If you need coaching and/or support in planning your SSS workshop, please reach out to resources@leadingchangenetwork.org.