There is so much here I appreciate, including the clarity that whatever scale we work at, I we world, we can include awareness and vision around how it could scale and transform in ever expanding circles.
What comes up for me is to include in my thinking - what conditions support a rippling out. Also seems aligned with a vision of beyond patriarchy because I see joy in the seeds of what I do being a harvest for others.
Im engaging with and thinking a lot about Miki Kashtan and NGL's work on vision mobilisation - a framework to mobilise towards vision WITHIN capacity, bringing ourselves towards the world we long for not with force but with alignment with life that increases capacity naturally. V excited by that in conjunction with what I see here.
And I recognise that aloneness in some of these questions, and however I got on you making list im glad, because im asking these things too.
And to your questions, a don't know, much curiosity and interest to see what emerges from asking - as Charles Eisenstein puts it, the fertile ground of belonging.
This is inspiring for me "Even if the intervention is at the level of the “I”...the resonant wavelength must have as its target the transformation of systems." I'm a psychotherapist and always looking for frameworks for relating individual-level interventions with systems-level thinking. Like you say, it's abstract enough to make it hard to know how to really act on it in a meaningful way, but still, it's a helpful starting point.
Hey Brian, thank you for writing this piece. It feels increasingly timely as impact and urgency mount, getting smooshed together. I've been fascinated by, and often disheartened, by the ideology of "scale" (sometimes equated to impact) and often coupled with "accelerated change" as I struggle with what we really mean by these terms, as an end (what does it look like when we get there), and what are the means needed to arrive there (already a misnomer due to the complex infinite system we're in?). So when folk mention "scale", and maybe similar to you, I'm curious what this looks and feels like as a process of change and ultimately what we really mean by this catch-all word that gets thrown around. Warren Nilsson who you mention above first got me really thinking about what we mean by scale while teaching in Cape Town in an inclusive innovation masters program (you might imagine the "scale" was thrown around a lot here) during a lecture and later through a short piece he wrote on "Questions of Scale" (http://insideoutpaper.org/questions-of-scale/). This got me interested in asking what are we really trying to scale? Questions? Patterns of interations? Relationships? More recently, I've been inspired by Gord Tulloch's "problematizing scale in the social sector" (https://inwithforward.com/2018/01/expanding-conceptions-scale-within-social-sector/), which outlines 5 different forms of scale. I find this nuanced perspective on scale to be really useful when we are talking about impact, evaluating or simply trying to get to the essence of what kind of change we are working to contribute towards. A lot of this makes me think also of Meg Wheatleys work on hope. Left with something about an easing up on the hope of results (fixing/end states) and resting on the rightness of the work in of itself, which might have something to do with your scale is fractal and is about seeding. Just some thoughts:). Thanks for the wonderful post!
Brian - to seeeed our conversation later today - This writing brings to mind the work of Elinor Ostrom and David Sloan Wilson. Elinor was the first woman Nobel prize recipient in the field of economics for her ground breaking work on how communities around the world (regardless of culture) successfully manage their commons. She identified 8-core design principals that all successful communities utilize in managing their commons. David Sloan Wilson worked with Elinor Ostrom for several years before her death to apply her work to the field of evolutionary science - how and why species and cultures evolve. His work observes that evolution will often take species in directions they don't want to go - collapse, etc. All natural systems experience destruction/deconstruction before renewal and sometimes they never renew. Sloan Wilson observed the core design principals at work at the genetic level as well as the group selection level and made his contribution with multilevel selection theory (see his book, Prosocial. He is prolific and also wrote Darwin's Cathedral and his most recent Atlas Hugged). This correlates nicely with your writing and is one of the avenues we attempt to follow in developing organizations and communities that can seed transformation with eyes toward global scale. Like Russian nested dolls. David argues for a whole earth ethic that like Russian dolls, nests prosocial communities and groups within each other up to a global scale.
I've worked in system transformation and cultural transformation in government organisations.
Responding to your ask about resources and thinking that I find useful, I would direct you to the "spiral model" of software development as well as business theories and practical steps for cultural transformation.
There are lots of noble goals in government organisations, but in my work in transformation projects the thing I've noticed is how easily these initiatives can revert back to the original state.
I find that practically, when trying to "scale up" transformation, some of the what is commonly missing is the careful crafting and communicating of a vision, the maintenance of alignment to that vision and the discarding of things that do not align.
The goal with the vision is to craft it to the point that it can be sensed and resonated with by a set of distributed "champions" of the vision who are among the doers, those who will actually manifest it into reality. This work looks like a clear aspirational "North Star", stories and visuals of what the future will look like, leaders who embody the ways of being for the future and can be observed and imitated, a clear articulation of outcomes that will lead to this vision, trust and empowerment of people to work towards that, and critically for the question of scaling up, removing all blockers based on feedback from those involved that reveals what is and isn't working - and the cycle repeats, spiralling upward towards the vision and magnetising people with the increased momentum.
Great post, Brian! I love the perspective of thinking about social change in terms of disseminating seeds, which need to find the appropriate soil in which to grow and flourish. And also your thoughts on Donella Meadows's leverage points. Very thought-stimulating.
Here's a question I am left with, and which is probably impossible to answer with much clarity...
No seed can grow on just any soil anywhere (that I know of!), but is suited to a certain kind of ecosystem. Likewise, practices for social change are probably at their best when they serve a particular culture/network from which they emerged, and might not work well when transplanted elsewhere. Even within Western progressive-activist circles, there can be important differences in terms of tactics, strategy, philosophy, etc. - or at least, these differences become important because we dwell on them so much, instead of considering what unites us (which to me is part of the reason why leftist politics as a whole has tended to fail to bring about massive system change in the past decades). And such diversity is absolutely fine in itself of course. But in this context, I wonder how all groups focused on social change, worldwide, may be convinced to follow the "common set of simple principles" that you mention... How to better enable the seeds of change to circulate, and inspire the creation of new seeds elsewhere? How to encourage more mutual learning amongst the thousands of initiatives that are being pioneered worldwide?
Perhaps it's a question that is explored in the Yet-to-be-named-Network's handbook, haven't had the time to look at it yet!
There is so much here I appreciate, including the clarity that whatever scale we work at, I we world, we can include awareness and vision around how it could scale and transform in ever expanding circles.
What comes up for me is to include in my thinking - what conditions support a rippling out. Also seems aligned with a vision of beyond patriarchy because I see joy in the seeds of what I do being a harvest for others.
Im engaging with and thinking a lot about Miki Kashtan and NGL's work on vision mobilisation - a framework to mobilise towards vision WITHIN capacity, bringing ourselves towards the world we long for not with force but with alignment with life that increases capacity naturally. V excited by that in conjunction with what I see here.
And I recognise that aloneness in some of these questions, and however I got on you making list im glad, because im asking these things too.
And to your questions, a don't know, much curiosity and interest to see what emerges from asking - as Charles Eisenstein puts it, the fertile ground of belonging.
Thank you.
This is inspiring for me "Even if the intervention is at the level of the “I”...the resonant wavelength must have as its target the transformation of systems." I'm a psychotherapist and always looking for frameworks for relating individual-level interventions with systems-level thinking. Like you say, it's abstract enough to make it hard to know how to really act on it in a meaningful way, but still, it's a helpful starting point.
Hey Brian, thank you for writing this piece. It feels increasingly timely as impact and urgency mount, getting smooshed together. I've been fascinated by, and often disheartened, by the ideology of "scale" (sometimes equated to impact) and often coupled with "accelerated change" as I struggle with what we really mean by these terms, as an end (what does it look like when we get there), and what are the means needed to arrive there (already a misnomer due to the complex infinite system we're in?). So when folk mention "scale", and maybe similar to you, I'm curious what this looks and feels like as a process of change and ultimately what we really mean by this catch-all word that gets thrown around. Warren Nilsson who you mention above first got me really thinking about what we mean by scale while teaching in Cape Town in an inclusive innovation masters program (you might imagine the "scale" was thrown around a lot here) during a lecture and later through a short piece he wrote on "Questions of Scale" (http://insideoutpaper.org/questions-of-scale/). This got me interested in asking what are we really trying to scale? Questions? Patterns of interations? Relationships? More recently, I've been inspired by Gord Tulloch's "problematizing scale in the social sector" (https://inwithforward.com/2018/01/expanding-conceptions-scale-within-social-sector/), which outlines 5 different forms of scale. I find this nuanced perspective on scale to be really useful when we are talking about impact, evaluating or simply trying to get to the essence of what kind of change we are working to contribute towards. A lot of this makes me think also of Meg Wheatleys work on hope. Left with something about an easing up on the hope of results (fixing/end states) and resting on the rightness of the work in of itself, which might have something to do with your scale is fractal and is about seeding. Just some thoughts:). Thanks for the wonderful post!
Brian - to seeeed our conversation later today - This writing brings to mind the work of Elinor Ostrom and David Sloan Wilson. Elinor was the first woman Nobel prize recipient in the field of economics for her ground breaking work on how communities around the world (regardless of culture) successfully manage their commons. She identified 8-core design principals that all successful communities utilize in managing their commons. David Sloan Wilson worked with Elinor Ostrom for several years before her death to apply her work to the field of evolutionary science - how and why species and cultures evolve. His work observes that evolution will often take species in directions they don't want to go - collapse, etc. All natural systems experience destruction/deconstruction before renewal and sometimes they never renew. Sloan Wilson observed the core design principals at work at the genetic level as well as the group selection level and made his contribution with multilevel selection theory (see his book, Prosocial. He is prolific and also wrote Darwin's Cathedral and his most recent Atlas Hugged). This correlates nicely with your writing and is one of the avenues we attempt to follow in developing organizations and communities that can seed transformation with eyes toward global scale. Like Russian nested dolls. David argues for a whole earth ethic that like Russian dolls, nests prosocial communities and groups within each other up to a global scale.
Great article! I appreciated the integration of Meg Wheatley’s work, and the systems perspective.
So good, Brian!! Thank you.
I've worked in system transformation and cultural transformation in government organisations.
Responding to your ask about resources and thinking that I find useful, I would direct you to the "spiral model" of software development as well as business theories and practical steps for cultural transformation.
There are lots of noble goals in government organisations, but in my work in transformation projects the thing I've noticed is how easily these initiatives can revert back to the original state.
I find that practically, when trying to "scale up" transformation, some of the what is commonly missing is the careful crafting and communicating of a vision, the maintenance of alignment to that vision and the discarding of things that do not align.
The goal with the vision is to craft it to the point that it can be sensed and resonated with by a set of distributed "champions" of the vision who are among the doers, those who will actually manifest it into reality. This work looks like a clear aspirational "North Star", stories and visuals of what the future will look like, leaders who embody the ways of being for the future and can be observed and imitated, a clear articulation of outcomes that will lead to this vision, trust and empowerment of people to work towards that, and critically for the question of scaling up, removing all blockers based on feedback from those involved that reveals what is and isn't working - and the cycle repeats, spiralling upward towards the vision and magnetising people with the increased momentum.
Great post, Brian! I love the perspective of thinking about social change in terms of disseminating seeds, which need to find the appropriate soil in which to grow and flourish. And also your thoughts on Donella Meadows's leverage points. Very thought-stimulating.
Here's a question I am left with, and which is probably impossible to answer with much clarity...
No seed can grow on just any soil anywhere (that I know of!), but is suited to a certain kind of ecosystem. Likewise, practices for social change are probably at their best when they serve a particular culture/network from which they emerged, and might not work well when transplanted elsewhere. Even within Western progressive-activist circles, there can be important differences in terms of tactics, strategy, philosophy, etc. - or at least, these differences become important because we dwell on them so much, instead of considering what unites us (which to me is part of the reason why leftist politics as a whole has tended to fail to bring about massive system change in the past decades). And such diversity is absolutely fine in itself of course. But in this context, I wonder how all groups focused on social change, worldwide, may be convinced to follow the "common set of simple principles" that you mention... How to better enable the seeds of change to circulate, and inspire the creation of new seeds elsewhere? How to encourage more mutual learning amongst the thousands of initiatives that are being pioneered worldwide?
Perhaps it's a question that is explored in the Yet-to-be-named-Network's handbook, haven't had the time to look at it yet!