"It's the Mindset, Stupid!"
Mustafa Abbas
Banker | Managing Director | University of Oxford | Finance & Investment Board Member
History is replete with failed attempts to initiate change. The common explanation usually on offer is that the "old vanguard” resisted, and the necessary laws were not enacted. But is this explanation valid?
It is over a hundred years since the Representation of People Act (1918) was passed by Parliament, allowing women to vote in the UK. While an important step in the transition towards gender equality, power relations hardly improved. The same could be argued for the Equal Pay Act (1970) and the Equality Act (2010). Laws were passed but significant change towards attaining the desired result was elusive. Although our focus tends to be on the incentives, punishments and constraints towards desired change, this approach might be misplaced.
Donella Meadows offers an alternative understanding of leverage points for any social system (be this gender, race, class, or sustainability). A fascinating finding for me, for its utter simplicity and common sense, is the observation that what is highly effective for change is our mindset. If we change our collective beliefs, the system will change - simply because our societal psyche is the foundation of all other leverage points.
So how do we change everything? By repeatedly and consistently pointing out anomalies and failures in the current paradigm until there is a shift in collective beliefs.
Simple, but not easy!
Platforms | Analytics | Data
4 年Historically, political and social change has been achieved by radical action (unless we are talking evolutionary processes). Hence, to see a change in the diversity space, you need to take radical approach, implementing a quota system for example, that will embed females as viable leadership models. Critique of the existing model is just a way of avoiding real action, and same goes for the token empowerment networks that create an impression of minorities being heard (instead of being promoted).