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!
Sorry, that sentence above ("I wonder how all groups focused on social change, worldwide...") reads awkwardly - I didn't mean to imply you were proposing some totalising set of principles for the whole of humanity :) I should have written "I wonder how enough groups focused on social change, worldwide, may be convinced to organise around a common set of simple principles (which would presumably help nurture good social soil for seeds to grow in many different contexts)."
I appreciate this inquiry, and the invitation to hold the tension. My own sense is twofold: there are universal principles (e.g. seeds need appropriate soil, air, water is universally true). And those principles differ in their application depending on the context. So the goal (I think!) is to do our best to distill those universal principles, which themselves should account for the need for changing context. For me belonging (a world for the 100%, for all life) is a universal inviolable principle. We could call that a seed. What belonging looks like in practice -- and how we get there from here -- no doubt looks different in different cultural contexts, and different aspects may need to be emphasized (in the not-so-United States, e.g., it seems to me that our "soil" needs to include a strong dose of racial trauma healing, past and present. That might have a different flavor in a place without a history of settler colonialism... perhaps in Ethiopia something else is needed).
I guess part of what i'm responding to is a sense that we have erred too much in the opposite direction (too much relativity, not enough core design principles), and part of what i'm exploring is how to hold onto what is universal (speaking just for humans, e.g.: we are all the same species with the same basic needs/drives, etc.) without having that tip over into rigid structures to be enforced through some top-down standard process?
Thanks Brian, this makes a lot of sense. Clearly integrating, within universal principles, the need for flexibility in how they are applied, does seem critical to enabling these principles to spread (as memes) far and wide, without requiring some sort of huge top-down bureaucratic structure.
In terms of making this happen... Putting together universal principles is not something new of course - there are plenty of examples to learn from, be it the Declaration of Human Rights, the UN's Sustainable Development Goals... as well as national constitutions perhaps? Obviously, the degree to which such texts are crafted in a participative way, with the wellbeing of all constituencies in mind, varies widely. But at least, there's a long history of humans referring to textual common reference points as guidelines for action.
But how to make these guidelines or principles gain purchase on our hearts and minds, counteract or correct entrenched patterns of behavior, and unite people from very different social backgrounds towards a same goal?
As I mull over how this question, I am reminded that at least two kinds of social organisations have been successful at making this happen, historically: political parties, and religions.
In my understanding, most of these organisations have relied on more top-down systems to ensure compliance and alignment with principles. However, some have adopted more decentralised, organic ways of spreading their beliefs - particularly religions: I'm thinking of certain stages of the spread of Buddhism or Protestantism in various parts of the world, for example.
I don't feel competent enough to make sweeping assertions on how such enterprises fail or succeed, but my general sense is that a crucial factor is that of identification with the cause. In other words, to what extent is it vital to my identity as a person that I invest my life and work into this cause / to the promotion of these principles, including finding ways for them to grow more adapted to the local context in which I find myself?
And of course, identification in this sense has everything to do with belonging: if I identify with a particular social endeavour, then it means I belong to the community of people promoting this endeavour.
In his social learning theory, sociologist Etienne Wenger distinguishes three "Modes of Belonging" that should be combined, in order for any community to be a learning community, able to anchor its action within a practice that is broad, creative and effective in the world. Here's a very crude summary (see the links at the end for more details):
- Engagement: Roughly, that's about directly engaging on a personal level with other people who are embarked in the same enterprise;
- Imagination: about envisioning oneself to be part of a wider community intent on doing certain things, across time and space;
- Alignment: playing one's part and following certain rules in order to bring about large-scale action or coordination.
Considering this theory, I would think that monks spreading Buddhist scriptures across Asia, or Protestant priests creating reformed churches in Europe, were likely successful because through their action, they combined these three modes of belonging. In Wenger's terms, they formed a community of practice. Without engagement, one is but a marginal actor, without access to others from which to learn and with which to share one's experience; without imagination, there is no wider community in which to feel one plays a part; and without alignment, coordinated action is impossible.
So... I wonder how this lens might be usefully applied to considering ths work of creating change "at scale." Perhaps it would tend to indicate that a community of "sowers" would be necessary to form, in order for seeds of change (such as universal principles) to be spread far and wide, and adapted to local soils? A group akin to missionaries, but without the control of a religious hierarchy?
Just riffing here, curious to know your thoughts on this :)
I like the Wenger-Tayler framework of engagement; thanks for sharing (I'm doing a deep-dive of their work now around "systems convening"... really good stuff).
We riffed on this yesterday in a couple conversations inside Building Belonging, playing with the metaphors of symphonies (the role of the conductor in guiding the collective toward alignment, toward harmony) and jazz (no conductor, a more improvisational self-organizing approach to harmony). This is what I'm trying to get at when I talk about moving from emergence to resonance: what is the intervening force (if any?) that ensures alignment, that moves us from diversity to unity without insisting on uniformity?
I don't know... I suspect none of us do, at least not without turning to the technologies of the dominant system we are seeking to transcend (top-down hierarchies, dogmatic insistence on scripture or the "constitution"). But I love the inquiry, and it's where I devote much of my energy... and I'm convinced it's necessary. This is the riff in my last post on why I'm not drawn to "re-wilding": I think there is a role for human agency for helping find that resonant frequency, and for helping bring others to that place.... without directing. Inviting, humbly, while continuing to attune with ever-more-nuance to where others are, and converging (I like congruence rather than convergence... the subtleties of what language can convey).
Anyway, thanks for raising the question; would love to hear other perspectives.
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.
Oh you know I have been thinking about Elinor Ostrom, and a future post about our relationship to the Commons... Looking forward to catching up!
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!
Sorry, that sentence above ("I wonder how all groups focused on social change, worldwide...") reads awkwardly - I didn't mean to imply you were proposing some totalising set of principles for the whole of humanity :) I should have written "I wonder how enough groups focused on social change, worldwide, may be convinced to organise around a common set of simple principles (which would presumably help nurture good social soil for seeds to grow in many different contexts)."
I appreciate this inquiry, and the invitation to hold the tension. My own sense is twofold: there are universal principles (e.g. seeds need appropriate soil, air, water is universally true). And those principles differ in their application depending on the context. So the goal (I think!) is to do our best to distill those universal principles, which themselves should account for the need for changing context. For me belonging (a world for the 100%, for all life) is a universal inviolable principle. We could call that a seed. What belonging looks like in practice -- and how we get there from here -- no doubt looks different in different cultural contexts, and different aspects may need to be emphasized (in the not-so-United States, e.g., it seems to me that our "soil" needs to include a strong dose of racial trauma healing, past and present. That might have a different flavor in a place without a history of settler colonialism... perhaps in Ethiopia something else is needed).
I guess part of what i'm responding to is a sense that we have erred too much in the opposite direction (too much relativity, not enough core design principles), and part of what i'm exploring is how to hold onto what is universal (speaking just for humans, e.g.: we are all the same species with the same basic needs/drives, etc.) without having that tip over into rigid structures to be enforced through some top-down standard process?
Thanks Brian, this makes a lot of sense. Clearly integrating, within universal principles, the need for flexibility in how they are applied, does seem critical to enabling these principles to spread (as memes) far and wide, without requiring some sort of huge top-down bureaucratic structure.
In terms of making this happen... Putting together universal principles is not something new of course - there are plenty of examples to learn from, be it the Declaration of Human Rights, the UN's Sustainable Development Goals... as well as national constitutions perhaps? Obviously, the degree to which such texts are crafted in a participative way, with the wellbeing of all constituencies in mind, varies widely. But at least, there's a long history of humans referring to textual common reference points as guidelines for action.
But how to make these guidelines or principles gain purchase on our hearts and minds, counteract or correct entrenched patterns of behavior, and unite people from very different social backgrounds towards a same goal?
As I mull over how this question, I am reminded that at least two kinds of social organisations have been successful at making this happen, historically: political parties, and religions.
In my understanding, most of these organisations have relied on more top-down systems to ensure compliance and alignment with principles. However, some have adopted more decentralised, organic ways of spreading their beliefs - particularly religions: I'm thinking of certain stages of the spread of Buddhism or Protestantism in various parts of the world, for example.
I don't feel competent enough to make sweeping assertions on how such enterprises fail or succeed, but my general sense is that a crucial factor is that of identification with the cause. In other words, to what extent is it vital to my identity as a person that I invest my life and work into this cause / to the promotion of these principles, including finding ways for them to grow more adapted to the local context in which I find myself?
And of course, identification in this sense has everything to do with belonging: if I identify with a particular social endeavour, then it means I belong to the community of people promoting this endeavour.
In his social learning theory, sociologist Etienne Wenger distinguishes three "Modes of Belonging" that should be combined, in order for any community to be a learning community, able to anchor its action within a practice that is broad, creative and effective in the world. Here's a very crude summary (see the links at the end for more details):
- Engagement: Roughly, that's about directly engaging on a personal level with other people who are embarked in the same enterprise;
- Imagination: about envisioning oneself to be part of a wider community intent on doing certain things, across time and space;
- Alignment: playing one's part and following certain rules in order to bring about large-scale action or coordination.
Considering this theory, I would think that monks spreading Buddhist scriptures across Asia, or Protestant priests creating reformed churches in Europe, were likely successful because through their action, they combined these three modes of belonging. In Wenger's terms, they formed a community of practice. Without engagement, one is but a marginal actor, without access to others from which to learn and with which to share one's experience; without imagination, there is no wider community in which to feel one plays a part; and without alignment, coordinated action is impossible.
So... I wonder how this lens might be usefully applied to considering ths work of creating change "at scale." Perhaps it would tend to indicate that a community of "sowers" would be necessary to form, in order for seeds of change (such as universal principles) to be spread far and wide, and adapted to local soils? A group akin to missionaries, but without the control of a religious hierarchy?
Just riffing here, curious to know your thoughts on this :)
Some links:
https://jennymackness.wordpress.com/2012/07/31/modes-of-belonging-in-communities-of-practice/
https://futuref.org/maintaining_community
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_of_practice
I like the Wenger-Tayler framework of engagement; thanks for sharing (I'm doing a deep-dive of their work now around "systems convening"... really good stuff).
We riffed on this yesterday in a couple conversations inside Building Belonging, playing with the metaphors of symphonies (the role of the conductor in guiding the collective toward alignment, toward harmony) and jazz (no conductor, a more improvisational self-organizing approach to harmony). This is what I'm trying to get at when I talk about moving from emergence to resonance: what is the intervening force (if any?) that ensures alignment, that moves us from diversity to unity without insisting on uniformity?
I don't know... I suspect none of us do, at least not without turning to the technologies of the dominant system we are seeking to transcend (top-down hierarchies, dogmatic insistence on scripture or the "constitution"). But I love the inquiry, and it's where I devote much of my energy... and I'm convinced it's necessary. This is the riff in my last post on why I'm not drawn to "re-wilding": I think there is a role for human agency for helping find that resonant frequency, and for helping bring others to that place.... without directing. Inviting, humbly, while continuing to attune with ever-more-nuance to where others are, and converging (I like congruence rather than convergence... the subtleties of what language can convey).
Anyway, thanks for raising the question; would love to hear other perspectives.