Adjusting to Changing Goals - How I Taught my Dog to Stand

Ever since Bindi and I began obedience training, getting her to sit has been the goal of a lot of our work. Beyond just teaching her to sit on that specific command, she's also expected to sit before she goes through a door, before she crosses a street, and whenever I stop during a walk. In fact, usually when Bindi and I are trying to learn a new behavior, the first thing she tries is to sit and see if that gets her a reward.

Consequentially, teaching her to stand was difficult. She was very confused as to why I suddenly wanted the exact opposite behavior we have been working on. From her perspective, I had completely moved the goal of her obedience training.

Similarly, goals in campaigns are not guaranteed to be static. Especially in today's unstable policy environment, outside factors can suddenly make campaign goals irrelevant. When this happens, it may seem like an entire campaign is ready to fall apart. However, there are several techniques I have found useful to help adapt a campaign and get it back to pushing forward an effective policy solution.

• Reevaluate the techniques you're using to achieve your campaign goal. No two campaigns goals are exactly alike, so neither should the techniques being used to achieve those goals always be exactly the same. Initially, a campaign goal might be built on needing additional information gathered through a survey to motivate policy change. However, if information comes out and has no effect or becomes irrelevant, continuing to gather data is no longer useful. When campaign goals change, be flexible enough to adapt campaign techniques to support new goals.
  

• Slow down the campaign machine to make sure it will still work towards the new campaign goal. When goals change in the middle of a campaign, it can feel like the entire process is about to go off the rails. It feels counterintuitive to suddenly slow everything down instead of pushing quickly ahead. However, even the most well-oiled campaign machines should be slow down and checked ensure they will support new goals. As examples, campaign materials might need to be updated to reflect new goals, or campaign volunteers might need to come in for new training to ensure they'll be maximally effective at communicating new goals. No matter how much time or effort it takes to slow down and recalibrate your campaign machine, it is always better to help it run at maximum efficiency then to allow it to be working without having any impact.
  

• Celebrate the small victories with your campaign team. Even the most seasoned campaign professionals become distant heartened by shifting goals. Shifting goals and revaluation of campaigns leads to abandoning techniques or projects that had required a lot of effort from campaign team members. Therefore, it is essential campaign leaders make the extra effort to celebrate small victories. Celebrating small victories help teams feel like they are continuing to achieve small steps towards their ultimate goal and can reduce feelings of burnout.

Ultimately, Bindi did finally pick up the stand command, but it involved using a different technique, slowing down training dramatically, and celebrating her getting the command mostly right until she was able to get it completely right.

Bindi, a good dog who knows how to stand.