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As process designers, facilitators, and change agents, we are called upon to help create conditions in which things can happen between people, whether alignment, agreement building, innovation, etc. At times this can be a tall order. Thankfully we are supported by an array of tools and techniques at our disposal. Knowing which of the social architect’s tools to turn to in any given situation is a core challenge. Something I’ve recently found useful as a guide is considering different dimensions of social space and how these can be leveraged so that collective work can bring about the very best.

My thinking here has been informed by the work of psychologists and anthropologists identifying three clusters of morality across cultures: the ethic of autonomy, the ethic of community, and the ethic of divinity.  These clusters speak to me of the vital dimensions of social space.

Autonomy is that dimension that honors individual identity and agency. It can be very important for people to feel individually recognized before they commit to anything collective. Furthermore, autonomy can help mitigate group think.

Community is the dimension concerned with the integrity of groups in terms of shared identity and commitments. In collaborative work, we often spend time navigating between individual stakes and shared intentions as a way of creating healthy and generative environments. What is missing from these is that dimension that speaks to transcendence, to taking individuals and groups to another level of awareness and connection. This is the dimension of divinity.

Divinity in this case may or may not involve belief in a supreme being. What research suggests is that this dimension of social space engenders a psychic and emotional sense of “uplift,” a physiological response that can lead to sensations of being a part of something much larger than one’s self or group. Subsequently, people may experience profound feelings of love, trust, and openness, making them more receptive to new relationships and ideas.

How then do we leverage these dimensions? A few thoughts:

• Autonomy: Differentiation. Create the opportunity for people to individually speak/write about their own hopes, fears, skills, etc.  Don’t force agreement. Encourage differences of opinion. Create opportunities for individual thinking.

• Community: Integration. Direct people’s attention and conversation to what they share with others. Help facilitate agreement. Point out shared interests beyond differences of opinions. Create opportunities for a group to work together toward some common goal.

• Divinity: Elevation. Share stories of moral exemplars (virtue can trigger feelings of uplift). Have people think/speak about places and events that are “sacred” and expressive of their deepest values. Play inspiring music.  Read poetry. Meet/immerse people in the natural world.

Still playing with this and curious to hear your reactions.

Sharing an inspiring vision is one of the seven practices of Facilitative Leadership.  Here at the Interaction Institute for Social Change we are fond of saying that “a leader must share an inspiring vision in order to inspire a shared vision.” If you are reading this blog you probably have a vision.  You are interested in social change, you want to believe that indeed another world is possible – and you have a role in making it happen.  You have a vision of the world you want to see.

However, having that vision is not the same thing as being able to articulate it – and to do so in such a way that enrolls others in bring it about.  The first step towards sharing an inspiring vision is to have one – and you have it!  The next step is to feel it, to literally engage your senses in your full imagination of what the world will look and feel like when your vision is accomplished.  In their new book, Switch, the Heath brothers talk about the importance of feeling the change you want to see in order to bring it about.

Knowing what your vision feels like is what will sustain you on the often arduous path to bringing it into reality.  This is the feeling that you communicate when you share an inspiring vision, the more intimate you are with what your vision feels like, the greater your capacity to transmit that sense to others.  It is from this intensified feeling that you are then able to cover the “components of an inspiring vision” that are articulated in our FL training chart above.  From here you can move into the more technical aspects of a good articulation.

We call this a practice because it is something that you do over and over again, it is something that you work on, you enhance, you sharpen, you get ever better at.  We are told that Dr. King himself spoke versions of his “I have a dream” speech many times before his prophetic moment on the national mall.  I hesitate to bring him up because YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE DR. KING in order to have an inspiring vision and to share it with others.  You just have to be you, the most authentic version of you that you can allow yourself to be.

Share your vision, speak it, in many settings and many times, in front of your mirror, before your family and friends, with your team members, volunteers and funders – with all the people that are ready for change.

• A Focus on Customers/Users. It’s not about the company and how your business is structured. The customer doesn’t care about that. They care about doing their tasks and achieving their goals within their limits. Design thinking begins with those.
• Finding Alternatives. Designing isn’t about choosing between multiple options, it’s about creating those options. Brenda Laurel speaks of her love of James T. Kirk’s “third option” instead of two undesirable choices. It’s this finding of multiple solutions to problems that sets designers apart.
• Ideation and Prototyping. The way we find those solutions is through brainstorming and then, importantly, building models to test the solutions out. Now, I know that scientists and architects and even accountants model things, and possibly in a similar way, but there’s a significant difference: our prototypes aren’t fixed. One doesn’t necessarily represent the solution, only a solution. It’s not uncommon for several prototypes to be combined into a single product.
• Wicked Problems. The problems designers are used to taking on are those without a clear solution, with multiple stakeholders, fuzzy boundaries, and where the outcome is never known and usually unexpected. Being able to deal with the complexity of these “wicked” problems is one of the hallmarks of design thinking.
• A Wide Range of Influences. Because design touches on so many subject areas (psychology, ergonomics, economics, engineering, architecture, art, etc.), designers should bring to the table a broad, multi-disciplinary spectrum of ideas from which to draw inspiration and solutions.
• Emotion. In analytical thinking, emotion is seen as an impediment to logic and making the right choices. In design, decisions without an emotional component are lifeless and do not connect with people.

Given these combination of features which together make for “design thinking” (and any others you think apply), how do you understand what it means to employ “design thinking for social change”?  What are some successful examples of designing for social change that you’ve observed?

Photo by bitzi took his umbrella and left

My wife and I are wrapping up our annual winter vacation to visit family in Florida.  Each year this proves to be something of a spiritual practice for me, and this trip has been no different.  As wonderful as it is to slow down, un-hunch shoulders, and wear fewer layers, the focus of my practice tends not to be the natural surroundings and climate so much as what I find to be the challenging social environment.

Vero Beach is a rather conservative and wealthy community.  Generally it does not take long before my blood pressure rises to see the sprawl and McMansions and to overhear disparaging comments  about views I espouse (e.g. “Climate change is such a crock.”).  As a result we generally try to spend a fair amount of time at the beach, local parks and nature sanctuaries.

This time around, however, I made an effort to check my self-righteousness and bring some intention to the gap I no doubt contribute to creating between myself and these perceived others.  To this end I have been guided by the thought leadership of Marshall Rosenberg and Jonathan Haidt, as well as a call to practice what I teach.

Marshall Rosenberg has long promoted Non-Violent Communication.  In recently listening to his recording Speaking Peace, I was reminded of the important step of asking, “What needs are being expressed by behavior that upsets you?” Just getting curious about this has helped me be proactive in striking up conversation with people I would otherwise avoid.  In one case it led to some insights about why one gentleman obsessively develops land (desire for approval).  Just that understanding has been enough to generate some compassion, while I maintain my belief that these needs could be met in more sustainable ways.

As for social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, he has done some fascinating research about the moral differences between people at opposite ends of the political spectrum.  What he suggests is that liberals and conservatives are “expert” in different and important moral aspects of human existence.  For example, liberals tend to be better at thinking about victimization and equality, conservatives excel when it comes to considerations of group loyalty and respecting tradition.  And so I have been called to pause and look for wisdom underlying socio-political perspectives different from my own.

Lastly, at IISC we preach “listening as an ally”, or using inquiry to break down walls while leading with an attitude of curiosity and empathy over judgment and distrust.    I have been well served by heeding the reminder to practice this and again amazed by what such listening can make happen.  And what about your own efforts to bridge such gaps?  What have you found to be helpful?

Photo by Photos8.com

In her essay, hooks reminds us of the very purpose of struggle as Dr. King himself defined it:  “the end is reconciliation, the end is redemption, the end is the creation of beloved community.”  She herself states that “we best learn love as the practice of freedom in the context of community.”  We are not alone in this struggle, and there is no aspect of freedom that implies the loosening of our accountability to one another, the call to accountability is actually heightened by freedom.

When I speak of freedom I speak of Mandela’s freedom, and I mean the freedom that was his during thirty years of imprisonment, the freedom that could not be taken away from him even when they kept him in a prison cell.  A political project of liberation has to account for the fact that any hope for lasting political freedom – objective, material freedom – is only possible when rooted in this unshakable inner freedom among those who mean to be an integral part of movement.

When I speak of love, I lean on the same definitions hooks is relying on, hooks quotes M. Scott Peck to define love as an act of will, both an intention and an action – as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”  There is little about romance here, there is nothing here that invites a release from our mutual responsibilities to one another.  Love is instead connected to a discipline of self-expansion, and self-giving.  From this perspective it is not so difficult to understand how love can serve as “an ethical foundation for politics.”

This is all to be practiced in the context of community; which is different from saying that we are to talk about love in community, because while talking will be helpful it means nothing without practice.  As hooks says, “working within community… we are able to experience joy in struggle.”  It is by leading with love that we are able to begin to get a taste for the world we are trying to build, we begin to live into the possibility of freedom, we make it possible to experience joy even in the context of struggle.

Love snaps us out of a logic of postponement, an ethic of love demands that we understand that how we get there is as important as getting there.  When we respond to the call to love as a practice of freedom we are snapped out of the idea that we will have community when we are politically free and demands that we build community in order to become free.

FOR ONE WHO HOLDS POWER

May the gift of leadership awaken in you as a
vocation,
Keep you mindful of the providence that calls you to
serve.

As high over the mountains the eagle spreads its
wings,
May your perspective be larger than the view from
the foothills.

When the way is flat and dull in times of gray
endurance,
May your imagination continue to evoke horizons.

When thirst burns in times of drought,
May you be blessed to find the wells.

May you have the wisdom to read time clearly
And know when the seed of change will flourish.

In your heart may there be a sanctuary
For the stillness where clarity is born.

May your work be infused with passion and creativity
And have the wisdom to balance compassion and
challenge.

May your soul find the graciousness
To rise above the fester of small mediocrities.
May your power never become a shell
Wherein your heart would silently atrophy.
May you welcome your own vulnerability
As the ground where healing and truth join.

May integrity of soul be your first ideal.
The source that will guide and bless your work.

A few lines in particular leap out at me. For instance, “In your heart may there be a sanctuary, For the stillness where clarity is born.” Yes! As a Christian, I’m embracing the Lenten season as an opportunity to make space for stillness. But someone like me is also affected by the provocative line in O’Donohue’s pretty poem that beckons me to “rise above the fester of small mediocrities” via my leadership. While I often misapply this call to excellence and do too much, it is when I slow down to stillness that I recognize that it precisely in the doing of many things that mediocrity festers. Thank you John! Again, as in last week’s post, I find myself in deep gratitude to a poet for speaking plain, piercing, truth to my soul.

In reading this poem, did any parts jump out at you in particular? Why? How might your leadership, “integrity of soul” be strengthened? Where is it most weak? What insights or meditations are spurred from this reading?

Though we are occasionally thought of as organization development professionals, IISC staff see ourselves more as supporters (and members!) of movements for social change that are rooted at the roots and expand across boundaries.  I have appreciated the work of L. David Brown in helping to distinguish between organization development/change and what must shift when focus and these techniques are brought to societal change efforts.  Something I find myself saying with increased frequency is that in the social sectors we risk mistaking the raft for the shore when we concentrate our efforts on building up organizations.  This is evident in research findings and experiences that indicate how institutions can quickly become distanced from the interests of communities they were built to serve.  Furthermore, relying upon individual organizations to tackle complex social issues is understood now as being rather misguided.  From the Obama administration, to researchers on social innovation, to growing numbers of activists, the case is being made for both greater localism and more expansive network-centric activity.  That’s where IISC wants to be.

This is not to say that there isn’t a case to be made for strengthening individual organizations or individual leadership, and no doubt we will continue to do some of this work.  And we want our actions to be in alignment with our understanding that action must happen between and across actors and agencies, and that our ultimate commitment is to those stakeholders who have the most to lose from continuing to be overlooked or not fully engaged in processes that directly impact their lives.  In the end, their losses are ours.  There are no others.

Photo by Philip Bouchard

I just had the great fortune of spending seven days in Dakar, Senegal (and traveling back and forth to it). An amazing trip – and the two twenty hour travel days gave me time to really dig into the book “Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives” by Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler.  I read it within the context of doing work in Senegal on a project that’s global in scope – and also thinking back to many of the other initiatives I’ve worked on.

What struck me while reading (and thinking about how to really engage disparate people in creating real change) was Christakis and Fowler’s descriptions of the ways change occurs in networks.  They describe that if you want to change things like voting behavior, obesity, smoking, and the spread of disease, that it’s critical to understand and use the network to create change.  So rather than large scale public relations campaigns to try to influence everyone, they describe a few different ways to think about making change.

First, they describe that by finding those people who are the most connected (the hubs) and focusing on them, you can have incredible results creating change around them.

Then they describe that the ways to change behavior of your friends in things like voting behavior, obesity and smoking is to engage the friends of your friends.  It is, in fact, more effective to change a behavior with friends of your friends than with your friends.  Because if you only make the change with your friends, you’re all still getting pressure from a large group of people wanting you to change back.  But if you engage the next rung, you can start to create cohesion for real change.  And that this form of creating change is even more powerful as their friends get to know each other and are themselves connected and reinforcing the change.

So what does this say about creating social change?  It would seem to imply a few things.  That understanding who the hubs are is incredibly important in creating change (so that you know who to target in changing behavior), as well as understanding who they’re connected to.  That in trying to create change, engaging not only a group of “known” people in a field – but also the group of people they know and trust will have a much larger effect.  And that it’s very important to build relationships at all of these levels.

It has me thinking in some new ways about how to engage people for change.  And I’m wondering, how might this apply to social change work you’re doing?