Getting to Maybe
Frances Westley, Brenda Zimmerman and Michael Quinn Patton (2007).?Getting to maybe: How the world is changed.?Vintage Canada.?
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vii?Valclav Havel … made a critical distinction between hope and optimism: [Hope] is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”
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viii?Our current trajectory is no longer sustainable
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ix?How can we be more than just anxious critics of the status quo or wishful thinkers about a better future, and become actual and effective agents for large-scale transformations?
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Ix?a fundamental shift in perception – from complexity as obstacle to complexity as opportunity
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xiii?What drove us was not the idea that we could create something definitive, but the hope that it could be generative
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xiv?“maybe” has always been the best odds the world has offered to those who set out to alter its course … Eric Young
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6?This book is about figuring out how to make the impossible happen
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7?an organization is its relationships
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9?Simple = Baking a cake
Complicated = Sending a Rocket to the Moon
Complex = Raising a Child
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10?complex systems comprise relationships
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11?we organize our schools to be efficient … Then we diagnose those who cannot learn efficiently as suffering from learning disorders and attempt to treat them, not the system
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12?we can have no certainty about what the future will be.?It is not a good time for control freaks.?But it is a good time for those capable of living with uncertainty
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13?The mining company had built and owned most of the houses in Red Lake.?They all looked pretty much alike from the outside.?But the First Nations people lived on one side of the mine and the whites lived on the other.?Every day the First Nations children walked around the mine to go to school on the white side … First Nations community … no plumbing or electricity, and the walls were unfinished … The mining company had put a roof over the First Nations employees to create the illusion that their treatment of all staff was equitable
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14?[Linda Lundstrom] knew intuitively that the best place for her to start was where she was
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15?She believes that she acted not out of great confidence in her abilities but because she had no choice
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17?Jonathan Crane … In communities where fewer than 5 percent were professionals, the number of teenage pregnancies and high school dropouts was high.?But if the proportion of professionals passed the 5 percent threshold, the number of teen pregnancies and high school dropouts was dramatically lower
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18?the 5 percent level … “tipping point” … Malcolm Gladwell
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18?opened a bicycle repair clinic on Saturday mornings in his own driveway
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20?The successful social innovator is, intentionally or not, a part of the dynamics of transformation rather than the heroic figure leading the charge
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21?intentionality and complexity
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22?Questions, tensions, uncertainties, relationships, mindset
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22?in this book we offer thinking as a form of doing, and emphasize doing as an opportunity for thinking, reflecting and learning
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23?practice thinking
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24?social innovation holds thought and action in tension … complexity theory … balances intention and unpredictability … “maybe” combines the two ideas and holds them in tension
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25?things will likely get worse before they get better
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26?being at the right place at the right time … by the prepared mind
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35?the paradox that wanting to change others means accepting a profound change in oneself … could influence others but not control them
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37?The fact that we see the problem or hear the call may well signal a readiness for change in the system
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43?externalizing costs
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46?Getting to maybe has almost nothing to do with certainty and everything to do with serendipity, conviction, risk taking and faith
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55?Grameen Bank … one of the most notable social inventions of our time … “micro-credit” … Muhammad Yunus
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58?credit is a human right
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60?Muhammad Yunus … spent time in analysis and reflection
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60-61?David Bornstein … social innovators … shared a number of qualities … they trusted their intuition … and they learned through action.?In short, they were able to marry reflection and action
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65?C.S. Holling … Resilience is the capacity to experience massive change and yet still maintain the integrity of the original
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67?while disasters do destroy existing structures, they also release trapped resources and nutrients for new life
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67?Joseph Schumpeter … creative destruction … Failure to release the creativity for the next phase created a rigidity to the system, which Holling described as the “rigidity trap.”
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69?for novelty to enter the world, change is necessary
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71?Resilience is about avoiding the traps – both of rigidity and poverty
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72?In the late 1980s a small group of people began meeting … Each had a child with a disability
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74?The group determined that four elements could add up to a good life: family and friends; financial security; a home that is a sanctuary, not a warehouse; and the ability to have one’s wishes and choices respected … PLAN … Planned Lifetime Advocacy Network
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74?Relationships did not lead to quality of life; they were quality of life
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75?safety was dependent upon the number of relationships the person had
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76?independence was key … They resolved to accept no government funding
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78?giving was truly a two-way street
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82?To stand still is to take stock … social innovators ask themselves, “Am I on the right track? …”
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83?Developmental evaluation
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84?Support those who question and inquire, not just those who have answers … Support those who try to act in the context of the long view
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85?Impressive promises of results should be matched by equally impressive questions, which reveal the capacity to engage in inquiry as a part of action
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85?We’ve seen first-hand the value of bringing together thoughtful and engaged social innovators from highly diverse sectors, who learn from and challenge each other
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86?thinking is a form of action
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88?resilient innovations, like resilient people, need support in every phase
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89?Make reflective practice a centrepiece of your action and build your skills in this area
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90?Traditional Western education, then, does not school young people in complexity science or provide them with the capacity to analyze complex systems
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94?the powerful stranger can make or break your day
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94?Pogo … 1960s … “We have met the enemy and he is us.”?To create change we must find and confront our biases, blindness, fear and our own power, both to create and to destroy … and to find forgiveness, for others and for ourselves
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96?Anyone who wishes to transform a system has to unlock resources claimed by the status quo
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98?In the enemy, surprisingly, we discover ourselves, sometimes a lost part of ourselves.?In the HIV/AIDS story, “Advocates constructed themselves as business-minded community people while company representatives constructed themselves as community-minded business people
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99?It is the nature of power in complex systems to have a “sticky” quality, certain hubs of influence taking on more and more resources and leaving the rest with much less
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99?If the system is to be transformed as opposed to overturned, collaboration between the radicals and the establishment must be created
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104?To avoid pressure for particular outcomes, and to keep the process from becoming bogged down in bureaucratic red tape, [Ulysses S.] Seal avoided working with powerful funding agencies
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105?His richest resource was the tremendous personal and professional loyalty he garnered
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106?Ultimately, he didn’t see the hope of real change as residing in his hands; the hope for change lay, he felt, in the younger people he met
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106?He believed … that the power lay in the kinds of connections between people that he repeatedly tried to forge and nurture
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107?Mary Gordon … Canadian … what has made her internationally famous are her attempts to eradicate bullying in our schools
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107?my mother said that whenever you go into someone’s home remember it is their castle and treat it as such
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108?I needed to listen rather than preach … she asked questions and she listened
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109?Gordon believed that if children developed their capacity for empathy with babies, they would be less likely to bully those who were younger and weaker than themselves … When you have an imbalance, and no mutuality in relationship, you have abuse … when you get to the level of the two main social institutions in the world, families and schools, that’s where we have to teach consensus building rather than power mongering … She designed it to be respectful of the least powerful, the baby.?The whole experience is based on letting the baby lead
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111?When an individual behaves in a way that is either too good or too bad it suggests that he has repressed, edited out, or rejected parts of his human nature.?Both the bully and the saint have lost a sense of proportion
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112?we all are strengthened, are made more powerful and effective, by possessing the full range of human responses
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114?how do we build collaboration between those who want change and those who hold the resources to sustain that change?
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115?“Palliative” comes from the Latin pallium, meaning a cloak … Its existence is poignantly reflected in a sentence from the Qur’an … ‘May you be wrapped in tenderness, you my brother, as if in a cloak.’
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116-117?palliative care means to focus on the whole person rather than simply on the biology of disease … To focus on the patient and the family rather than just the patient.?To focus on home care rather than institution care
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117?[Dr. Balfour] Mount had the support of many of the young doctors and medical students, but to create a palliative care centre he had to convince the hierarchy … Palliative care also demanded a team approach where doctors were equals with nurses, therapists, psychologists.?It demanded the inclusion of volunteers and families in the care process itself … he succeeded by building identification between the palliative care concept and key concerns of those in power
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118?The key people saw the palliative care initiative as a window of opportunity, a means of realizing their own priorities … Mount took great care to speak the language of his audiences at all times … scientific language, political language or spiritual language
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119?Mount’s approach tells us much about engaging the powerful stranger, knowing and being known … people did not feel manipulated.?Mount did not create an appetite for change; he tapped a deep-seated desire for change … He presented it as a supplement and a complement to their services
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120?Niels Bohr … there are two kinds of truth – superficial truths, the opposite of which are obviously wrong, and profound truths, whose opposites are equally right.?The powerful stranger is not friend or foe – she is both
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120?In order to identify and confront the powerful stranger, our actions?are drawn from three steps developed throughout this chapter.?The first step is the development of connections and group ties.?The second is confrontation, with the power in others and in ourselves.?The third is learning how to collaborate with powerful allies … Transformation needs to occur at all three levels for real change to happen
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120-121?money and power are so often linked.?And those who fund or support social innovation are not always comfortable discussing this relationship … social innovation involves – indeed, requires – redistributing power … but power is the philanthropic taboo
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121?- In any discussion of power and its redistribution, link the issue directly to the organization’s mission and keep it in that context
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121?to consider mission fulfillment … what kinds of changed relationships would be necessary to support genuine social transformation
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122?Politicians are much more interested in gaining power than sharing it … Politicians are especially prone to thinking you’re either with us or against us
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122-123?- Invite social innovators to the table.?Whether what they propose is in line with your preferences or not, they are valuable sources of grassroots information about trends, potential tipping points and new directions in the political economy.?Treat them respectfully as information allies
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123?spin a win-win scenario for policy makers and social innovators around their common need for information
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123?- Become skilled in and sophisticated about power dynamics.?Hone your skills by seeking out and engaging with those in power.?Make yourself, and therefore your organization, a serious player and worthy ally in support of social innovation
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124?he took the time to connect meaningfully to the power players … he worked to minimize antagonism … by creating connections among the committed, even if these were not the power brokers, he built a foundation for powerful change
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125?find the roots of empathy
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129?Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is fascinated by peak or optimal human experiences … He calls such experiences “finding flow.”
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130?a wonderful sense of collective ownership
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131?Steven Johnson, in his book Emergence, describes the mysteries of slime moulds, which are single-celled organisms when food is plentiful and multicelled organisms when food is in short supply
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132-133?Bottom-up behaviour seems illogical to Western minds because we have a hierarchical bias against self-organization … Because of our dominant belief in the omniscient and visionary leader, we often miss the other partner in the dance of change – the self-organization that is so critical to achieving flow
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133?A nomadic tribe in Ethiopia, called the Afaris, believe it is a sacred responsibility to listen and share dagu – a word that means information
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134?They collectively make sense of the patterns that are emerging … The Afaris do not believe that they can control the patterns, but that if they can understand them deeply, they can work within them and potentially nudge them or influence them
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134-135?Part of the brilliance of the micro-credit movement was its recognition of normally invisible resources – the social relationships in the borrowers’ communities
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136?Brazil’s approach to HIV/AIDS … The government’s brilliance was to ask questions about how things really worked across the country and to enhance the natural patterns, relationships and behaviours … strategy … both the grassroots players and the federal-level leaders
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137?Deciding not to leave the poor to die, Brazil … used a controversial clause of the World Trade Organization charter that allows countries to violate patent laws in cases of national emergency … Brazil gave the generic drugs to HIV/AIDS patients free of charge … Rather than choosing between prevention and treatment Brazil circumvented the issue of limited resources by integrating the two
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138?In spite of the high illiteracy rate in Brazil, the adherence rate for the drug regime was the same as in Canada or the United States
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138?Complicated solutions are finite.?They are clear and precise and lead to specific follow-up actions.?Complex solutions lead to more questions; they continue to open up the space for inquiry and for solutions to emerge from the interactions in the system
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139?an intense dialogue was taking place within Brazilian society concerning poverty and the large gap that existed between rich and poor.?That willingness on the part of the citizenry to be involved in an open dialogue on class and wealth provided a ripe setting for public discussion of the HIV/AIDS issue … the gay community was extremely active … infected people need to be given a role in the treatment
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140?In Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point, he showed how many social transformations mimic diseases
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140?Brazil’s HIV/AIDS recovery seems to have happened almost instantly in the mid-1990s … the society reached a tipping point
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140?Is it possible to catalyze a tipping point
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141 ?There is a kind of dance or oscillation between the social innovator and the collective effervescence
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141?Emergence is neither good nor bad – it simply is.?Henry Mintzberg … strategy is a pattern in a stream of actions involving both intentions and emergence
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142?As Mintzberg notes, key to this craft is the ability to “manage patterns,” to “create the climate within which a wide variety of strategies can grow,” and then to detect the emerging patterns and help them take shape
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142?Jane Jacobs … get out of the way! … challenged city planners to focus more on the patterns of interaction that already make neighbourhoods vibrant and self-renewing … Over and over we have seen the failure of planned or designed communities
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143?successful emergence involves building on what exists and is already working … ants … are more inclined to add to a pile of existing dirt rather than start a new pile
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144?Even in our information-rich age, physical proximity allows for a wider and deeper range of information to be shared … Face-to-face interaction, accidentally bumping into each other, the sharing of gossip and the observation of emotions convey a rich array of information that helps people make sense of the patterns of business, and helps them to learn quickly and adapt to changing contexts.?In other words, businesses are looking for dagu [see p 133]?
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144?Mintzberg, Jacobs and Krugman observe what is working in the world and ask why it is working.?Looking at social innovation from this perspective, we see that those who are most adept at making change recognize the local rules of interaction and then leverage them to increase their potential
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144?Al Etmanski … “Belonging and meaning are yearnings of us all – they’re universal yearnings,”
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145?When they didn’t like the status quo, they implicitly knew they needed to work at the level of changing the simple patterns of relating
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147?[Paul] Born worked closely with Mark Cabaj … “How can we fundamentally reduce poverty in the [Kitchener-Waterloo and Cambridge] region?” and “Who needs to be involved in poverty reduction in order for it to be sustainable?”
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148-149?OP2000 maintained and even furthered the notion of partnership … “We’ve got to stop working with everybody and we’ve got to start focusing in on cornerstones [cornerstone institutions].”
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150?Royal Bank of Canada … Jim Gordon … liked the fact that “OP2000 would not be satisfied with money alone, but wanted to tap the Royal’s ‘heart and soul.’” … two staff secondments
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150?the simple process of calculating how many of their own employees were living in poverty was such an eye opener that that information itself resulted in a gestalt shift
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154?The conversation with self must co-exist, or at least seamlessly alternate, with the conversation with others
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154?it happened through the interaction of motivated individuals who were focused on a goal, prepared to watch the patterns emerge, and who listened carefully to their own intuitions and those of others
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155?Social innovation is as much about letting go as it is about taking control
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156?Set information targets, not just performance targets
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158?Don’t just gather information, share it
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159?Don’t try to control the energy, just encourage the conversations and let the momentum build.?The energy of others is your most important resource
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161?Those who struggle to make a difference have to face two paradoxes.?The first is that success is not a fixed address.?The second is that failure can open the way to success
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162?Social innovation is clearly high risk
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168?Criticism is well known to undermine creativity
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168?but … the paradox between absolute dedication to a great vision and ruthless commitment to staring reality in the face … James Stockdale … survived years of torture
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169?Ruthless attention to reality was the common path to attaining their visions
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169?social innovators … following the money is such a limiting way to judge success in this sphere
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170?Evaluation helps chart a changing path of innovation by providing rapid feedback
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174?developmental evaluation makes learning primary
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175?[Deanna] Foster and [Mary] Keefe understood reality as messy, not orderly; emergent, not controlled.?They understood social innovation as an ongoing process of experimentation, learning and adaptation
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176?hell is not failing; hell is delusion … developmental evaluation is about learning what works, acknowledging what doesn’t work and learning to tell the difference – with none of the blaming
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178?Mentors and support groups, as well as staff support, are now provided post-graduation
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179?She knew better than to let the program’s past successes crystallize into a formula
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179?they were applying what they were learning from evaluation and framed these changes as developments, not just improvements, a key difference in perspective
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180?the highest form of accountability is internal
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190?1980 … Drunk driving was the major cause of traffic fatalities in North America
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198?in August 2003, the Columbia board of inquiry concluded that the [NASA] space agency lacked … the characteristics of a learning organization
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199?it is hubris to accept too much blame or praise
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207?“the time is right,”
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207?scaling up is rarely a linear process
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210?The second great invention for supporting the first invention is finding how to relate the invention itself to the public … becomes part of everyday life and no one can understand why it wasn’t always there
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210?We’re trying to organize now geographically.?We’re trying to organize taxonomically.?We’re trying to organize in terms of professional knowledge and skills.?All three at once
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213?“grass-tops.” … acting locally but thinking globally
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213?Consider supporting social innovators in leaving an initiative once launched successfully; in particular encourage a focus on changing the broader institutional context in order to ensure impact
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213?Sustaining a capacity for innovation is different from sustaining a particular innovation or a particular organization
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214?Success can create resistance to ongoing change … The antidote??Developing a fierce commitment to ongoing reality testing, especially seeking and being open to critical feedback, and standing still to see the bigger picture
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216?The Cassandra paradox is that the most obvious possibilities may be ignored or dismissed precisely because they are so obvious
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219?T.S. Eliot … “And the end of all our exploring / will be to arrive where we started / and know the place for the first time.”
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219?Going to a new place inevitably means leaving something behind.?Moreover, there is no guarantee of success
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220?the door makes no promises; it is only a door
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222?building toward an opening for a new opportunity
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223?Perhaps the most important thing about social innovation is that, like exploration or immigration, it demands simultaneously that we set a course, move to action and relinquish the idea that we can control the outcome
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223?To be an explorer is to not know where, precisely and concretely, one is going
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228?attributing praise or blame in a complex process merely confuses things