Our recent explanation of constructivist investing leads naturally to a review of the range of potential approaches to activist situations. 

These approaches all answer the question, "what about a portfolio company does an activist investors seek to change?" Or, what do you want company leadership to do differently? 

This exercise lends itself to kind of formal listing or taxonomy of potential activist approaches. Thus, some might recognize these different forms of activism: 

• Social 
• Governance 
• Operational 
• Financial. 

We put together an earlier version of this structure in our white paper on activist investing. Some of the thinking from the white paper continues to apply here.

This structure leads to some striking conclusions about how operational activism has the most impact, how financial activism should be easier to pursue, and how governance activism enables these other two.