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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Fachliteratur
- Sprache: Englisch
Transform your corner of the world with strategies from a social change visionary In The Toolbox: Strategies for Crafting Social Impact, celebrated nonprofit executive Jacob Harold delivers an expert guide to doing good in the 21st century. In the book, you'll explore nine tools that have driven world-shaking social movements and billion-dollar businesses--tools that can work just as well for a farmers market or fire department or small business. The author describes each of the tools--including storytelling, mathematical modeling, and design thinking--in a stand-alone chapter, intertwining each with a consistent narrative and full-color visual structure. Readers will also find: * A consistent focus and emphasis on the work of social good and how it can be applied in any business, government agency, or nonprofit organization * Dozens of poems, photos, equations, diagrams, and stories to illustrate and enrich of the core ideas of the book. * A fulsome, three-chapter introduction offering an a crash course in the basics of social impact strategy in the 21st century * A comprehensive strategic playbook for contributing to the shared work of building a better world An essential blueprint for anyone interested in improving the world around them, The Toolbox: Strategies for Crafting Social Impact is an incisive strategic guide that will prove to be indispensable for everyone who seeks to collaboratively build something better.
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Seitenzahl: 443
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
“Let’s check to see if the ground is okay.”
Notes
An Age of Flux
Life in a plastic hour
Notes
The Shape of Strategy
Finding a pathway
Notes
Ethics and Social Change
Do the right thing
Notes
Storytelling
All the world’s a stage
So, first, a story.
Notes
Mathematical Modeling
Counting what counts
Notes
Behavioral Economics
Reaping habits
Notes
Design Thinking
Thou shalt not design for thyself
Notes
Community Organizing
I am because we are
Notes
Game Theory
Win‐win
Notes
Markets
The visible hand
Notes
Complex Systems
A whole greater than the sum of its parts
Notes
Institutions
Patterns of people
Notes
Conclusion
Note
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Sources and Permissions
Introduction
Chapter 1: An Age of Flux
Chapter 2: The Shape of Strategy
Chapter 3: Ethics and Social Change
Chapter 4: Storytelling
Chapter 5: Mathematical Modeling
Chapter 6: Behavioral Economics
Chapter 7: Design Thinking
Chapter 8: Community Organizing
Chapter 9: Game Theory
Chapter 10: Markets
Chapter 11: Complex Systems
Chapter 12: Institutions
Concluding Materials
Index
About the Author
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover Page
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Sources and Permissions
Index
About the Author
Wiley End User License Agreement
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The Toolbox:
Strategies for Crafting Social Impact
Jacob Harold
Copyright © 2023 by Jacob Harold.
All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.,
Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per‐copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750‐8400, fax (978) 750‐4470, or on the web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748‐6011, fax (201) 748‐6008, or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permission.
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ISBN 9781119863359 (ePub)
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Cover and book design: Open (notclosed.com)
To my father, David Harold, for giving me tools of the heart, hand, and mind.
To my mother, Madeline Harold, for teaching me to ask if the ground was okay.
Learn to do good.
Isaiah 1:17
Good things are difficult.
Plato
All things are difficult before they are easy.
Chinese proverb
My beloved, let’s get down to business.
Chuck D
Introduction
Ieshia Evans protesting the murder of Alton Sterling on July 9, 2016, in Baton Rouge, LA.
Photo by Jonathan Bachman
“Let’s check to see if the ground is okay.”
Kids tumble, knees scrape. As a toddler, when I’d trip and fall, my mother would scoop me up. She’d give me a kiss and a hug. Then she would turn our shared attention to the spot where I fell. My mother would kneel, place her hand upon the earth, and ask us to show compassion to a scrap of land: “Let’s check to see if the ground is okay.”
In part, this was a young parent’s practical trick to distract a crying child from passing pain. But it was more.
My mother’s strategy manifested a deeper belief: kindness is infinite. We have enough kindness for a world that has held us up, even enough for a world that has hurt us.
That kindness powers the greatest of human impulses: to serve, to build, to love, to witness.
It drives us to seek a better world—to multiply justice and joy.
But change is hard. The world does not easily yield to our visions of perfection.
How do we make change?
There are no easy answers.
Instead, there are tools.
The work of social good is spread throughout society. Its burden falls upon the shoulders of people with and without power. Its challenges fall to those with formal training and to those who simply dream of something better.
It starts within the radius of community. One neighbor picks up trash along the sidewalk; another takes food to the homebound. The circle grows as people patch up the gaps in society from within the walls of a clinic or a school. Others build something fundamentally new, creating new products, new inventions, new art, and new institutions. Still others seek to change the systems that already exist—as executives on the inside or as activists on the outside.
Sometimes the change is part of a conscious vision; other times circumstances simply make it necessary. In a community hit by a natural disaster, people open their houses to neighbors who lost theirs. In a pandemic, fire chiefs transform fire stations into testing centers. In the midst of poverty, school administrators figure out how to feed a neighborhood so that they can educate it. A CEO looks out from a corner office window on a sea of demonstrators and realizes the time has come to confront the company’s carbon footprint.
“You imagine a circle of compassion, and you imagine no one standing outside of it.”
Father Gregory Boyle1
The path to something better is rocky, steep, and difficult. We quickly learn the limits of our understanding. There is no one single answer; there is no one technique; there is no silver bullet.
Let’s all say it together: if all you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail. Narrow strategies invariably stumble against the complexity of the world.
Alas, the work of social change is full of people with hammers. I have been as guilty as any. In my days as a grassroots organizer, I thought that bottom‐up activism was the only way to make authentic change. In business school, I looked to markets for the possibility of scale. Working in philanthropy, I viewed decision‐making through the lens of behavioral economics. When leading a technology platform, I used the frame of complex systems science to formulate our strategy.
How might we judge my strategic promiscuity? We might say I was always naïve, distracted by the latest shining object. Or we may say I was—unknowingly, perhaps—partially right each time. In fact, each tool offered a unique perspective for understanding—and acting in—the world. The complexity of the world forced me to assemble a toolbox that worked for me.
I wrote this book because agents of change need a toolbox strategy. By “tools” I mean frameworks for thinking and acting. By “toolbox” I mean an individual’s collection of tools. And by “toolbox strategy” I mean an approach that brings multiple tools to complex problems.
In this book, we will—in a structured way—explore a set of nine tools that can help us build the better world we seek.
These tools have driven world‐shaking social movements and billion‐dollar businesses. But they are just as relevant for a neighborhood association or a farmers’ market.
The nine tools do not represent every possible perspective on strategy impact strategy. But, together, they offer a mosaic view, a toolbox strategy for change.
“We need a multitude of pictures about the world…
a gentle jeremiad against theoretical monism.”
Kwame Anthony Appiah2
Storytelling is the human impulse to understand the world through narrative.
Mathematical modeling is the essential practice of putting numbers to our assumptions.
Behavioral economics offers insights into human behavior as it is, not as we wish it to be.
Design thinking puts the user at the center of any process or challenge.
Community organizing is the art of building people power.
Game theory is a rigorous way to align our decisions with those of other people.
Markets represent the primary mechanism of resource allocation in our world.
Complex systems teaches how the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts.
Institutions form the essential infrastructure of our society.
Signs of wear are signs of use
Signs of use are signs of necessity
Necessity and use are
Signs of love
Rūta Marija Kuzmickas
The structure of this book
The Black feminist scholar Audre Lorde famously said, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”3
She argued that attitudes and systems of oppression cannot simply be turned against the oppressor. We must apply new approaches to solve old problems, otherwise, “only the most narrow parameters of change are possible.” This is a warning that should echo in our minds.
Luckily, the tools in this book do not belong to the master. These tools are the common heritage of humanity. The question is, how do we choose to wield them? What purpose and what moral frameworks do we bring so that we may rebuild a house for everyone?
This book is meant to offer a hand to those on this fraught and thrilling journey. It is, admittedly, a hybrid: part textbook and part pep rally.
But mostly, it is meant to seed your intuition as you face the unknown ahead.
Throughout, I’ve included stories, poems, quotes, diagrams, photos, and equations that represent a range of possibilities for social change. Some will resonate with you, others may not. That is the point.
You can think of the first three chapters as the “box” and the next nine chapters as the “tools.” In Chapter One, we’ll explore our early‐21st‐century context and why a toolbox strategy is necessary.
Chapter Two provides a basic language for thinking about strategy. Chapter Three explores a set of moral and ethical dynamics that complicate and enrich the work of social change.
Then, the nine tools. Each of the tool chapters will explore a tool in depth, laying out its basic presumptions, concepts, and vocabulary. In each case we will explore times when this tool is appropriate and when it is not. And, for those ready to go deeper, I’ll suggest more resources.
There is no chapter with architectural drawings for the perfect society. The tools in this book are just that: tools. They do not provide boldness, vision, or moral clarity. These tools must be brought to life by the force of human action. When the book closes, the rest is up to you.
“For the vanguards of the present dreaming up new ways to fight global warming or Black Lives Matter activists seeking alternatives to policing as we know it, this is an essential point: that the shape and extent of the change they seek depends as much on what tools they use as it does on their own will and hunger.”
Gal Beckerman4
Commonalities and mindsets
The nine tools are not isolated or distinct; they overlap and intertwine. Throughout this book, you’ll find common themes like listening, risk, power, information, and interconnection. (To highlight some of these commonalities, you’ll find color‐coded “hyperlinks” that show connections across chapters.)
A social change agent doesn’t have to pick one single tool to solve one problem.
Instead, the essence of toolbox strategy is multiplicity: there are many ways to understand and many ways to act. Our complex world asks us to go beyond our single hammer, and it is possible to do so.
Let me suggest four foundational mindsets to help you navigate the range of ways of thinking about social impact strategy.
The first is to open yourself to a “both/and” mentality. Toolbox strategy does not choose between qualitative or quantitative; it uses both the quantitative and the qualitative. Toolbox strategy is not limited to gradual change or to revolution; instead, it sees power in both the incremental and the disruptive. Toolbox strategy is not limited to radical outsiders or ambitious insiders; it recognizes the possibility of change both inside the system and outside the system.
Second, recognize the power of clarity. Clarity short‐circuits confusion and enables collective action and learning. A clear hypothesis is more useful; direct communication is more effective. Clarity does not mean arrogance. Humility is itself a type of clarity. Sometimes the best way to equip ourselves for reality is to be honest about our own ignorance.
Third, experiment with understanding. We can explore which ways of thinking are most useful for a given problem. You can “try on” a given mindset or framework and see where it leads you. Then try another.
Draw lessons according to how useful they are.
Finally, and most importantly, the right thing to do is the strategic thing to do. Even as you experiment with understanding, hold fast to your values. Human virtue offers a stable foundation for strategic creativity. And it works. Honest, compassionate behavior ultimately builds trust. Trust builds connection. Connection builds power. The most important piece of news in this book is this: kindness can be strategic, and strategy can be kind.
“Service is the rent we pay for being.”
Marian Wright Edelman5
Language
The vocabulary of social good can be unsatisfying. We are stuck using words like “nonprofit” or “non‐governmental” that are defined by a negative. Simple ideas end up conveyed through a complex stew of acronyms. (In the Markets chapter, we’ll go through ESG vs CSR vs PRI vs SRI.)
This linguistic reality reflects a changing society. People are trying to sort out a new, cross‐sector vocabulary for social good. This aspiration gives me hope, but it undoubtedly makes communication harder.
In this book, I’ve tried to use the words we have instead of making up new ones.
Where appropriate, I’ll highlight important linguistic nuance. (For example, I will later discuss what I see as the difference between “social change” and “social impact.”) Other times, my word choice reflects an expansive view: “changemakers” or “social change agents” are just people working for a better world.
This generality is on purpose. Millions of people are positioned to do good in the world—and to do so in different sectors and at different scales. We cannot confine these lessons to nonprofit staff, social entrepreneurs, and philanthropists. Our world needs strategic action from nurses and pharmaceutical executives, accountants and tax officials, prime ministers and community gardeners.
I acknowledge the awkwardness of the social good lexicon. But let’s try to see this linguistic confusion as a reminder that millions of humans are in the middle of something important: they’re trying to figure out how to do good, together.
The power and limitations of perspective
Before I close this introductory chapter, I should say a few words about myself—and the strengths and weaknesses of my own perspective.
First, the weaknesses. Most fundamentally: I am only one person. My life has offered one perch from which to understand our shared complexity.
Further, on almost every dimension of my identity—race (white), gender (male), sexual orientation (straight), citizenship (U.S. citizen)—I find myself in a privileged caste. This privilege has given me access and opportunity that I have tried to use for a greater good. And it has surely blinded me to realities that are obvious to others.
While I’ve had deep engagement with business and government, most of my work has been in the nonprofit sector. I’ve worked in many countries but have lived most of my life in the United States. I try to be conscious of these limitations, and readers should, too.
The man pulling radishes pointed the way with a radish.
Kobayashi Issa
Now, the strengths. I’ve been blessed to spend two decades working for a better world. I’ve felt the sting of tear gas and the cut of handcuffs. I’ve sat in seats of power: in elite boardrooms and on the stages of august conferences. I count myself lucky that I’ve been able to work within some of the most influential, innovative, and impactful organizations in social change, from Greenpeace to Bridgespan to the Hewlett Foundation.
Over the past decade, I’ve had the privilege of serving as CEO of GuideStar and to lead its 2019 merger with Foundation Center to create Candid, which Fast Company called “the definitive nonprofit transparency organization.”6
These roles have been a blessing, not least because they have given me access to the lessons of a field. Ultimately, what is most important are not the organizations I’ve worked for but those I have worked with. My one perspective has allowed me to bear witness to the perspectives of so many others. Their tools—our tools—offer hope in an age of flux.
“The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present.
The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise—with the occasion.
As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew.”
Abraham LincolnDecember 1, 1862Annual Message to Congress
Notes
1
“The Calling of Delight: Gangs, Service, and Kinship.” Interview with Greg Boyle.
On Being
. February 26, 2013. (Fr. Boyle has offered various versions of this quote elsewhere.)
2
As If: Idealization and Ideals
, pg.
x
. Harvard University Press, 2019.
3
Lorde, Audre. “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.” 1984.
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches
, pg. 110–114. Crossing Press, 2007.
4
Beckerman, Gal. “Radical Ideas Need Quiet Spaces,”
The New York Times
, February 10, 2022.
5
See Wright Edelman (1992), section 1. She may have been referencing Muhammad Ali’s quote, “Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on earth,” which he wrote in a note to the staff of the Atlanta Hilton on April 19, 1978.
6
Ben Paynter, “GuideStar and the Foundation Center are merging to form the definitive nonprofit transparency organization.”
Fast Company
. February 5, 2019.
An Age of Flux
In 2012, the Atlantic Ocean swallowed the roller coaster at Casino Pier in Seaside Heights, NJ.
Photo by Julie Dermansky
“The real problem of humanity is the following: we have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god‐like technology.”
E. O. Wilson1
“We are relying on nineteenth century institutions using twentieth century tools to address twenty‐first century problems.”
Ann Mei Chang2
Life in a plastic hour
In 1862, a Dutch ophthalmologist accidentally burdened the year 2020 with significance. Herman Snellen’s scale set “20/20” as “normal” sight. Over time, those four digits leaked into other realms of life. “2020” came to evoke a sense of visual—even strategic or moral—clarity. Countless executives sought to capitalize on that association by writing strategy documents with names like “Vision 2020.” (I was as guilty as any.)
In retrospect, 2020 now feels like a pivot moment away from clarity. The COVID‐19 pandemic shook an already unstable world. Slowly building crises of climate, democracy, and inequality all seemed to explode at once.
Later in this chapter I will argue that we are in a “plastic hour” (perhaps even a plastic century), a time when change is more possible. But to change the world, you must first see it as it is. So, let us set our toolbox down on the ground of reality. Below is a whirlwind tour of our early‐21st‐century moment, through the good, the bad, and the fast.
Say it plain: that many have died for this day Sing the names of the dead who brought us here.
Elizabeth Alexander
The Good
Billions have escaped extreme poverty. Infant mortality has plummeted, and lifespans and literacy have risen. Deaths from violence—still too high—have dropped since the bloodbaths of past eras. And, inconsistently, in bursts and with setbacks, the full range of humanity is getting a chance to love whom they would love, to be who they are, and to recognize the immense diversity of the human experience. We, in fact, have much to celebrate.3
Source: OurWorldinData.org
These are but some of the things we overcome But let us come to be more than their sum.
Amanda Gorman4
The Bad
And yet, we must confront the reality of raw injustice faced by billions and a struggling planet. 400 million people lack access to essential health services.5 2.4 billion people do not have access to toilets.6 860 million people are undernourished.7 10 million tons of plastic are dumped into oceans annually.8 3 million tons of toxic chemicals are released into the environment each year.9 2 million people—disproportionately Black and Brown—are incarcerated in the United States.10 The list of injustice goes on and on and on.
As change agents, we face a paradox. The world has seen real progress. If we deny that progress, we insult those who fought for it. But if we ignore the challenges of the world, we betray ourselves and future generations.
Source: Visualization by Femke Nijsse based on data from PAGES2k consortium published in “Consistent multidecadal variability in global temperature reconstructions and simulations over the Common Era,” Nature Geosciences, volume 12, pages 643–649 (2019)
Source: Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook
“Change is the one unavoidable, irresistible, ongoing reality of the universe.”
Octavia Butler11
The Fast
The metronome of history clicks faster. We find ourselves in the middle of what has been called “the great acceleration,” where we witness a change in the very pace of change. That is, we face not only the velocity (speed) of ideas and events but also the acceleration (increase in speed). Information pours into our minds; culture is a blur; politics moves to a next phase before we understand the previous one.
Pope Francis called this phenomenon “rapidification” and highlighted that it is not just an external phenomenon but a psychological one. He saw humanity as being caught in a temporal vice: “Although change is part of the working of complex systems, the speed with which human activity has developed contrasts with the naturally slow pace of biological evolution.”12 We are outpaced by the change we have wrought.
Source: OurWorldinData.org
But, I think, the future is also another thing: a verb tense in motion, in action, in combat, a searching movement toward life, keel of the ship that strikes the water and struggles to open between the waves the exact breach the rudder commands.
Ángel González
This acceleration has immediate implications for decision makers of all kinds. In 2017, Gen. Joe Dunford, then chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, considered the effect on military affairs. He explained, “Decision space has collapsed” and the acceleration of time “makes the global security environment even more unpredictable, dangerous and unforgiving…Today, the ability to recover from early missteps is greatly reduced.”13 The compressed space for reaction is particularly acute in war, but just as relevant for social change.
There are many causes for the collapse of decision space. One core driver is “Moore’s Law,” Intel founder Gordon Moore’s observation that the power and cost‐efficiency of microchips tends to double every 18–24 months. We have all witnessed the extraordinary acceleration of computing power that has followed. It is so fast that it is most appropriate to show the graph logarithmically (that is, 10, 100, 1000, etc.).
Innovation theorist Bhaskar Chakravorti has countered that societal change happens only half that fast—what he has jokingly called “demi‐Moore’s law.”14 Technical innovation does not happen in a social vacuum. In an interconnected world populated by intertwined organizations, change requires the social and political wherewithal to align disparate efforts across multiple actors and organizations. This complexity is the brake pedal that balances the force of the accelerator.
Source: OurWorldinData.org
Taken together, these two laws—Moore’s Law and demi‐Moore’s Law—illustrate our predicament: constant, accelerating innovation constrained by increasing interconnection and complexity. Let’s briefly examine four dimensions of this predicament: technology, culture, ecology, and politics.
“…as if time were not a river but an earthquake happening nearby.”
Roberto Bolaño15
Technology: The Fourth Industrial Revolution
We are entering the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The first three technological earthquakes could each be summed up in a single word: steam, electricity, and computing. Each changed the structure of society. The upheavals of the Third Industrial Revolution—mobile, cloud computing, social media—are by no means over; they will echo for decades to come.
The Fourth Industrial Revolution has a different character. It cannot be distilled into a single technology; instead, it is a cluster of technologies emerging on the frontiers of change. I’ll suggest the shorthand QARBIN (pronounced “carbon”) to capture the key technologies that make up the Fourth Industrial Revolution: quantum computing, artificial intelligence, alternative energy, robotics, biotechnology, blockchain, new interfaces, the Internet of things, and nanotechnology.
QARBIN:
“Only the historian of the future will be able to assess the net effect of the machine age on human character and on man’s joy in being and his will to live.”
Helen and Scott Nearing16
Each technology could revolutionize our world. We cannot know which will be the most transformative. What we can know: this cluster of technologies is likely to cause dislocations equal to those of the first three industrial revolutions. The dreams—and nightmares—of science fiction are coming true: customized children, universal surveillance, fully autonomous warfare, self‐replicating intelligence, and the metaverse.
Culture: The humanity of change
Technology has fundamentally restructured human communications, bringing promise and peril to our work as changemakers.
For millions of years, communication was limited by the speed of human legs or the volume of the human voice. The printing press and postal services enabled ideas to move faster. The telegraph and the telephone connected vast distances in real time. Radio and television wove together a fabric of human stories. Through all of this, humanity has had to adjust, to evolve, and to react to the implications of these technologies.
In the second half of the 20th century, for better or worse, it seemed we might be heading to one global monoculture, where every corner would have a Starbucks and every teenager would listen to the same music. Many shared a sense that technology was driving cultural convergence.
“‘Future shock’ is the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time.”
Alvin Toffler17
The early part of the 21st century, however, has shattered a once‐emerging monoculture into seven billion pieces. The Internet—and, in particular, social media—has thrown that once‐confident understanding of the near future into question. The friction once inherent in communication seems to have played a crucial role in cultivating a type of cultural stability; conspiracy theories previously had to pass through intermediaries or at least find deep adherents before they could spread. Now, with a few quick “reshares,” a once‐unthinkable idea can permeate the discourse.
The past two decades would suggest that on some deep cognitive level we humans are ill‐suited for the social media age: our attention is fragmented, our body images are distorted, and our sense of community—even reality—is filtered through screens.18
These challenges do not just test civic culture and human decency. There are deep practical implications for the work of social good. It is hard to solve problems with others without shared truth or shared trust.
For those trying to make a better world, we can take solace that our recent fragmentation reflects the diversity of the human experience. We can celebrate that we did not end up in a global monoculture. But we should also acknowledge that, in some ways, change has become harder as each of us lives in a self‐reinforcing bubble. Our challenge is to reach through the membrane of our political world without breaking our connections with those closest to us.
Ecology: Mother Nature bats last
On Sunday, June 27, 2021, the Canadian village of Lytton, British Columbia, set a temperature record of 116 F (47 C). On Monday, it hit 118 F (48 C). On Tuesday, it set a national record of 121 F (49 C). Then, on Wednesday evening, a fire broke out that burned 90% of the town to the ground. Lytton’s week from hell was a stark reminder of what we have in store amidst a changing climate.
Solving the climate puzzle is perhaps the greatest collective challenge ever faced by humanity. Technological growth over the first three industrial revolutions has brought immense wealth, immense destruction, and a world‐historical crisis. It is as if an impetuous demon is testing humanity: “I’m going to put all this useful stuff in the ground. But I’m not going to leave enough room for it in the atmosphere. Let’s see what happens.”
“By the middle of this century, mankind had acquired the power to extinguish life on Earth. By the middle of the next century, he will be able to create it. Of the two, it is hard to say which places the larger burden of responsibility on our shoulders.”
Christopher Langton, 198719
Climate change gets—and deserves—top billing. Like no other issue, the changing climate highlights our interconnections, our injustices, and our insufficient action. But let us not forget other ecological issues: the pollution of water, air, and life itself; the degradation of soil, habitats, and ecosystems.
Historians and anthropologists have repeatedly shown that environmental change often preceded societal collapse.20 Sometimes this environmental change was beyond the control of the soon‐to‐collapse human community. They fell to volcanos, earthquakes, or storms. But in many cases, it was the choices of that community that led to their own downfall, whether by overfishing, deforestation, or polluting their water supply.
Technology and population growth have supercharged our ability to degrade the ecosystems upon which we depend. Change comes faster, and we have less time to adapt to the new ecological context we ourselves have created.What’s more, environmental issues have become truly global. Greenhouse gases do not have a nationality, and decisions made in Detroit or in Beijing affect the entire planet. The usage of fertilizers has transformed global agriculture, fed the world, and created global nitrogen and phosphorus crises. And, in a crisis that may soon become acute, the overuse of antibiotics is rapidly contributing to the microbes resistant to all the medicines we can throw at them.
If only the impacts of environmental degradation were distributed evenly. But environmental destruction weighs more heavily upon certain groups. In the United States, we see this clearly through the dimension of race. The evidence is clear: communities of color face a far greater burden of air pollution, poor water quality, and household toxins.21 In the United States, Black and Brown neighborhoods simply have fewer trees. Around the world, the poorest countries—those least responsible for the problem—tend to face the worst impacts of climate change.
In all of this, we can despair at the injustice. And we should. But let this also be a clarion call for facing the ecological challenges that tie us together.
Politics: Power spread and clustered
The once unstoppable march of capitalism and democracy has shown itself to be decidedly stoppable. China’s unique political and economic system has proven to be not only an engine of global growth, but resilient to global pressure—indeed, expectations—that it would shift towards the model of Western capitalist democracy. Across the globe, we have seen the rise of new forms of authoritarian government, often powered by populist and ethno‐nationalist narratives.
Even as some countries have gained power, we have seen a relative weakening of the nation‐state as the organizing principle of global society. Since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, the world has been a collection of countries. And the country remains the substrate of global politics. But now we’ve also seen an explosion of non‐state actors. Transnational corporations operate at the scale of national governments, alternately facilitating destruction at a global scale and serving as beacons of responsibility. Terrorist networks like Al Qaeda have shifted the contours of history. Organized crime networks like the Sinaloa cartel in Mexico or the ‘Ndrangheta in Calabria alter politics and economies.
“In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”
Eric Hoffer22
And through all of this, civil society organizations have emerged as a force. Whether a giant global network like Oxfam or Greenpeace, or a small village cooperative in Peru, these organizations have institutionalized the work of social change. Spanning the political spectrum, a range of different strategies, and a full set of social issues, these organizations have made the work of doing good part of the very structure of society.
More broadly, our assumptions about the roles of different institutions in our society are in flux. For‐profit corporations face pro‐social demands from customers, employees, and investors. Companies can no longer speak only of shareholder value. The very allocation of financial capital has been reset by the emergence of the multi‐trillion‐dollar socially responsible investing market.
Military strategists speak of a VUCA world, one that is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Our challenge as agents of change is this: acknowledge the challenges of a VUCA world and succeed anyway.
Nonprofit organizations have built business models that are often the envy of the business community, with trillions of dollars of annual economic activity in the U.S. alone.23 Society faces a promising but profound question: where does business end and social change begin?
Government roles have shifted as well. Sovereign wealth funds are some of the world’s biggest investors. State‐owned enterprises dominate entire sectors.24 In many countries social services are outsourced to either for‐profit or nonprofit organizations. The countless campaigns run to alter corporate behavior can be seen as a type of outsourced regulation.
“There are in history what you could call ‘plastic hours.’ Namely, crucial moments when it is possible to act. If you move then, something happens.”
Gershom Scholem 25
All of this adds up to a social contract in flux. Once‐stable assumptions about the roles of different institutions shift and crack. For the social change agent, this presents both a challenge and an opportunity.
It is undoubtedly a challenge to plan how to make a better world in the midst of such shifting sands. But it also creates an opportunity for growth, innovation, and nonlinear change; openings emerge in times of flux.
Acting in a plastic hour
Let us summarize this early‐21st‐century moment. Earth’s ecosystems are on the brink of radical change or even collapse. Multiple technologies are transforming our very understanding of life. Human culture is fragmented, yielding ineffectual politics unable to come to grips with the challenges before us.
The systems of the world are shaken; components are loose, floating, and disconnected. But just like when a Lego set is broken into pieces, it is possible to build something new from the fragments. Instability offers opportunity. Perhaps the structures of society are ripe for change.26 (In the Complex Systems chapter, we will develop a language—equilibrium, feedback loops, and tipping points—to help us think through how to act strategically in a system out of balance.)
The author Arundhati Roy described the COVID‐19 pandemic as a “portal.” She challenged us to decide what we brought with us as we passed through: “We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”27
Our window of opportunity remains open: perhaps this plastic hour is a plastic century. As long as our world continues to change, it will be susceptible to the will of those of us who would act. One thing is certain: this is a consequential moment in the human story—an era where our choices will matter for generations to come.28
“If I had no choice about the age in which I was to live, I nevertheless have a choice about the attitude I take and about the way and the extent of my participation in its living ongoing events.
To choose the world is…an acceptance of a task and a vocation in the world, in history and in time. In my time, which is the present.”29
Thomas Merton
Two words for “time” in ancient Greek:
Chronos
() clock time; the sequential structure of reality
Kairos
() an opportune moment; a season for harvest
“There is always a well‐known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.”
H.L. Mencken30
Seeing the moment clearly
We face a situation too complex for any of us to fully understand. If we organize our work through any single lens, we are almost certain to stumble upon the complexity around us. A given perspective might be morally neutral, but it is not strategically neutral. Each lens focuses our attention on some things and blinds us to others. Consider how different forms of media promote different ways of thinking: the political repercussions of social media are different from those of radio. Similarly, each strategic framework tends to tilt us towards a given way of thinking and thus way of acting.
We do not have to look far to see the limitations of narrow ways of thinking about the world. The siloed institutionalization of the U.S. intelligence community rendered it incapable of recognizing the danger presented by Al Qaeda in 2001. The 2008 Financial Crisis was an inevitable consequence of applying a market lens to every aspect of life. Compelling business narratives like WeWork31 fell under the crushing weight of arithmetic. Countless nonprofits have brought a narrow solution to a complex problem—and failed.
Each of these failures was a consequence of the narrow application of one perspective on a complex world. As social change agents, we have an opportunity—and an obligation—to step back, take a breath, and do better.
In the next two chapters, I’ll offer frameworks for social change strategy and ethics. Then we’ll dive into the nine tools themselves.
I recognize this may seem like a lot to keep in your mind. But this multiplicity is the point. The human mind is a pattern recognition machine. When we seed our minds with patterns, we prepare ourselves for an unpredictable future. The age of flux demands a range of tools.
When you go to the eye doctor, they often sit down in front of a big metal machine called a phoropter. The optometrist cycles through a range of possible lenses—two at a time—and asks you, “Which is better: one or two?” That process helps find the right prescription for you.
Similarly, this book is meant to offer you a range of options to “try” in our complex world. It is up to you to choose which offers you the greatest clarity for thinking and acting in this plastic hour.
The 2020 California wildfires were a collision of intersecting crises.
Photo by Noah Berger
Clock of the sky, you measure the celestial eternity, one white hour, one century sliding on your snow, meanwhile the earth, entangled, is humid, warm: the hammers hit the tall ovens burn, the petroleum shakes in its plate, man searches, hungry, for matter, he corrects his banner, siblings gather, walk, hear, cities emerge, bells sing in the heights cloths are woven, transparency jumps onto the crystals.
Pablo Neruda
Age of Flux Takeaways
If we deny the real progress the world has made, we insult those who fought for it; if we ignore the challenges of the world, we betray ourselves and future generations. History is contingent; it flows from our actions and from the forces that surround us.
As we try to change the world, our predicament is constant, accelerating innovation constrained by increasing interconnection and complexity.
A time of change is the perfect time to make change. Flux creates space for growth, innovation, and nonlinear change. In instability there is opportunity.
Notes
1
“An Intellectual Entente,”
Harvard Magazine
, September 10, 2009.
2
Chang (2019), pg. 180.
3
For more good news, see:
https://www.vox.com/2014/11/24/7272929/global-poverty-health-crime-literacy-good-news
4
From “Monomyth.” Gorman (2021), pg. 191.
5
https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/17-statistics-world-statistics-day-and-why-we-need-invest-them
6
https://blogs.worldbank.org/opendata/17-statistics-world-statistics-day-and-why-we-need-invest-them
7
https://www.worldometers.info/
8
https://plasticoceans.org/the-facts/
9
https://www.worldometers.info/
10
https://www.sentencingproject.org/criminal-justice-facts/
11
Butler, Octavia E.,
The Parable of the Talents,
pg. 72. Grand Central Publishing Reprint Edition, August 20, 2019.
12
Laudato Si
, Chapter 1, Paragraph 18.
13
“From the Chairman: The Pace of Change.”
Joint Forces Quarterly
, January 26, 2017. Quoted in Wood, David. “We Need a Slow War Movement.”
Backbencher
, March 16, 2021.
14
Chakravorti (2003).
15
Quoted by Hugh Raffles in
The Book of Unconformities: Speculations on Lost Time
. Pantheon Books, 2020.
16
Nearing, Helen and Scott.
Living the Good Life
, pg. 39. Shocken Books, 1954.
17
Toffler, Alvin.
Future Shock
, pg. 2. Bantam Reissue Edition, June 1, 1984.
18
Our fragmentation is not just a virtual phenomenon. A spatial dynamic helped build our islands of belief. In the United States, this has come to be known as the “Big Sort”—the physical relocation of people to neighborhoods full of people just like themselves. This geographic division complicates basic human communication, not to mention the work of changemakers.
19
Artificial Life: Proceedings of an Interdisciplinary Workshop on the Synthesis and Simulation of Living Systems
. Pg 43. From a workshop in 1987 hosted by Los Alamos National Laboratory and co-sponsored by the Center for Nonlinear Studies, the Santa Fe Institute, and Apple Computer Inc. Later published as a book by Routledge in 2019.
20
See, for example, Jared Diamond’s
Collapse
. Penguin, 2011.
21
For a discussion of the link between pollution and discriminatory housing practices see, “Redlining means 45 million Americans are breathing dirtier air, 50 years after it ended” by Darryl Fears in the Washington Post, March 9, 2022.
22
Reflections on the Human Condition
(1973). (Quoted in Stein Greenberg 2021.)
23
See
https://candid.org/explore-issues/us-social-sector/money
24
In China, you even see influential GONGOs, “government organized nongovernmental organizations.”
25
Quoted by George Packer in “America’s Plastic Hour is Upon Us.”
The Atlantic
, October 2020.
26
Recent science has demonstrated the human brain’s extraordinary capacity for change—a phenomenon known as “neuroplasticity.” Old dogs can, in fact, learn new tricks. Perhaps human society can show a similar capability, a socioplasticity.
27
Roy, Arundhati. “The pandemic is a portal.”
Financial Times
, April 3, 2020. I cannot help but to note another dimension to Roy’s remarkable metaphor. In physics, “flux” is defined as a volume passing through a surface over a given amount of time. As we think the “flux” of a changing world, the equations of science match her image of passage through a portal.
28
Serious thinkers have suggested that the 21st century may be the most important in history. See, for example,
https://www.cold-takes.com/most-important-century/
29
Merton, Thomas.
Contemplation in a World of Action, pg. 149
. University of California Press, 1968. Quoted in Odell (2019), pg. 59.
30
From
Prejudices: Second Series
, pg. 155. Alfred A. Knopf, 1920.
31
Brown, Eliot and Maureen Farrell.
The Cult of We: WeWork, Adam Neumann, and the Great Startup Delusion
. Crown, 2021.
The Shape of Strategy
Ray Charles—blind since childhood—loved chess. He watched the board with his fingers and played in his mind.
Photo by Bill Ray
“If you do not develop a strategy of your own, you become a part of someone else’s strategy.”
Alvin Toffler1
Finding a pathway
How do we find a pathway to impact?
On such a journey, you need a language. So we will begin with a definition.
Strategy is the logic we use to allocate our resources to achieve a goal.
If you have a goal, but no logic, you have only desire. If you have resources, but no logic, you have only potential. If you have logic, but no goal, you are only a machine.
The challenge is this: each one these three elements can change. You might find yourself with more resources or a new means of allocation. The context around you may change, forcing you to shift your logic. Or, as you learn more over time, you might reframe your goal.
This, then, is the fundamental paradox of strategy. At the beginning we choose a goal and imagine a pathway to that goal. But as we go through time, we will learn. Things will change. Our path will curve and split and end in ways we cannot predict.
We need the prospective clarity of an imagined pathway. But we also need the flexibility to embrace a new route to something better as we retrospectively learn.
The visual metaphor of a pathway is no accident. Social change is a journey. And one helpful way to map our journey is to talk about the shape of strategy. Over the course of this chapter, we will discuss several dimensions of this geometry of social change.
But, first, a story that is both an inspiration and a cautionary tale.
An invitation.
Bring a tent
The launch poster for Occupy Wall Street was a design masterpiece: a ballerina balanced atop the Wall Street bull, her grace somehow reining in—and reigning over—the strength of the bull.2
At the bottom are clear instructions: bring a tent. In that simple call, the logistics of the event were obvious. The events of the next several weeks cast a new kind of light upon the global financial system. For that time, “Occupy” protesters focused attention upon inequality in a new way. It injected the term “We are the 99%” into the public discourse to describe the U.S. concentration of wealth. Occupy Wall Street was a seminal moment in how American society thinks about finance, wealth, and power.
And, yet, it faded. Why? Perhaps there is a clue at the top of the poster. A question, there in red: “What is our one demand?” We might read this as a response to an oft‐stated critique of Occupy Wall Street: it did not have a clear set of demands, or “asks.” Or, more generally, critics argued that OWS did not offer a well‐articulated plan for a better financial system. In the words on the top of the protest, the designers essentially admitted the absence of a definitive strategic logic for the protest. There was no exit strategy for themselves or their ambiguous opponents.
To many strategists, this is a searing indictment, an indication that OWS had a fundamentally unserious approach to making change. But perhaps it is more complicated than that. Two organizers, Astra Taylor and Jonathan Smucker, wrote that the lack of traditional policy proved to be a powerful kind of flexibility: “As it turned out, the lack of demands became one of Occupy’s greatest assets, enabling a wide range of people to see themselves in the same struggle. Popularizing a broad critique of inequality was far more important, politically, than writing out detailed policy prescriptions.”3
So perhaps we may choose to be more generous. Instead of locking itself in a single answer or a single logic, maybe we can think of Occupy Wall Street as having a different kind of purpose. Can we think of this question—“What is our one demand?”—as a strategy to imagine a different kind of society? Perhaps it is a window to a desire that cannot fit on a single placard but instead involves conversations and actions across thousands
