Change You Can Believe In

May 5, 2009 Leave a comment

“Change you can believe in”, “Be the change”, “Yes we can”…words to live by but what about the how? As I work with so many diverse groups across so many issues I’ m struck by the similarity of the struggles. It all centers around trying to bring their system into more coherence for greater impact. Whether it’s bridging the so-called divide between grassroots and advocacy organizations, public and private foundations or the larger more recalcitrant divide across the public, private and nonprofit sectors. And, what kind of change are we seeking? Let’s start there.

In an article written by Don Beck, founder of the Spiral Dynamics Group, he articulates the many dimensions of change in the following way

First Order Change has several variations: make minor adjustments or tweak the system; re-align the elements within the system; upgrade the givens within the present modis operandi; adjust by hunkering down and going back to basics; push the envelope.

Second Order Change: attack the barriers, remove the status quo (revolutionary rather than evolutionary); transform to the next level of complexity (subsume the old into the new); quantum shifts of epochal proportions i.e. modern to post-modern -integral, change across the entire landscape.

Important, it seems, for all of us working for transformational change to locate the specific change efforts with which we’re involved to be clear on the kind of change they are seeking. Assuming there is no right way, but what is right at this time is for this system to move forward toward greater health and wholeness.

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  • Gibran says:

    I appreciate the distinctions you are making, makes me think of Heifetz and Snowden and their very related models. It would be good to learn more about our role as practitioners and working with our biases. What I mean is, I am so interested in evolutionary change that I have little patience for technical change. What does this mean for me? Am I to learn to work on both or am I to give my attention to the type of change my heart wants to work on?

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