I remember when I worked in the federal government, one of my roles was acting as part of an internal facilitation team. This team was put together by a director in who had an interest in organizational development. This was back in the late 1990s and we didn’t really have in house OD units which was a blessing. Instead we had this team of people that were interested in systems thinking, development and facilitation and we were made available by our bosses to do work within the organization. I cut a lot of my hosting teeth in that context.
I remember that we once led a little informal experiment. We were finding that much of what we heard when we ran sessions in the organization was platitudes of a kind of aspired set of values and stories. But when you went on the road with people, especially senior people, you’d get the real stories. This is where anyone wanting to go into management was going to get their real mentorship training. My job involved a lot of travel so I heard a lot of these stories.
We called these “tie off” stories, because when senior managers travelled in the public service at that time, they used to take their ties off and just wear an open collar shirt and a blazer. (This seems to have become a mark of high status these days, but back then it was a kind of relaxing of protocol) When the tie came off the stories flowed. And travelling around remote British Columbia communities pre-World Wide Web and smartphone, means you get a lot of time kicking back in hotel bars and airports and avalanche detours. With no Netflix to watch, no mobiles to check and no email to get through, there was nothing left but storytelling. (By the way, I rarely learned anything deeply personal about people in these settings. Personal stories were strictly available only when your senior manager was completely casual. I learned early on that the uniforms of business are like the gels used in the theatre lighting to change the colour of the stage light: suits and jeans and ties filtered the person. People were always “authentic” but their uniforms constrained and shaped what was coming through.)
A small group of us resolved to spend a year listening to these stories and comparing them to stuff we heard in formal planning processes and at the end of a year we basically concluded that there were two different organizations: one that was a performance for the bean counters and the accountability police, all tidied up into reports, memos and budgets and the other which was a mess of story, rumour, gossip, cobbled together work-arounds, covered up failures and surprising results. When citizens wonder why government seems to be such a mess of bureaucratic boondoggle, saying one thing and doing another, they are noticing an actual phenomenon. Part of the reason for this phenomenon is that the second set of characteristics and stories is how things actually get done, but the first set is the story the public (and the Minister) wants to hear.
You cannot have innovative change without a mess. And very few organizations, especially it seems in the public sector, allow for mess making to happen. Whatever we learn, it has to be packaged up into something neat and simple, and preferably replicable. It bothers me to this day that citizens demand one without the other. I think citizens need to be a bit more grateful about the way public servants get things done in spite of the overwhelming demand to simplify processes and guarantee results in what is a massively complex job.
I was back at St. Aidan’s United Church in Victoria yesterday, hosting another conversation in their continued evolution into their next shape. Last December we worked together to explore four possible scenarios that were being proposed for the congregation. In the past few months they have been working on implementing one of these scenarios – the one which featured a plan to develop a Spiritual Learning Centre. Yesterday was a short strategic conversation called to explore the shape of what that Centre could be and how it will change life at the church.
A couple of good blog posts in my feed this morning that provoked some thinking. These quotes reminded me how much evaluation and planning is directed towards goals, targets and patterns that cause us to look for data that supports what we want to see rather than learning what the data is telling us about what’s really going on. These helped me to reflect on a conversation I had with a client yesterday, where we designed a process for dealing with this.
In a complex and interconnected world it is hard to be an activist against things. One of the easiest ways that your opponents can neutralize your opposition to things like oil and slavery is to say “we” you depend on oil and slaves, so that makes you a hypocrite.”
So this is tricky – solving global problems of labour, energy, economics and justice are the very definition of complex problems. There is no simple solution, there is a frustrating degree of progress and even large shifts in public consciousness (think land mines or climate change) are met with initial enthusiasm but later are eroded by commercial or power interests that have a stake in the status quo and way more influence than activists.
So what to do?
Consider the slavery question. All of us in North America depend on slave labour to support our lifestyles. As with the issues of oil dependance, our very existence creates an impact that is measurable, real and negative against our social justice agenda. Affordability usually is usually the result of slave labour. Real slave labour.
So how does one deal with this?
First it’s important to remember that you are part of the problem. To quote Adam Kahane:
Bill Torbert of Boston College once said to me that the 1960s slogan “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem” actually misses the most important point about effecting change. The slogan should be, “If you’re not part of the problem, you can’t be part of the solution.” If we cannot see how what we are doing or not doing is contributing to things being the way that they are, then logically we have no basis at all, zero leverage, for change the way things are — except from the outside, by persuasion or force.
The good news and bad news is that it is impossible to influence change from outside the problem. Such self-righteousness is easily dismissed. In addition, it is very difficult to advocate an end to slavery while at the same time not being prepared to pay a lot more for your food and clothes. Change must be made from within the problem. And to do that you have to work with others who are part of the problem.
In general for large scale global neo-liberal problems, there are three players: governments, capital and markets. All three of these create the conditions for problems and leverage is needed on all three to create the conditions for solutions, especially at the level of transformative change. Consumers demand cheap products, capital creates the flow of materials to meet the need and governments regulate to ensure that things happen (usually for those who have the best ability to keep governments in office). The hardest of these to change is the market because market behaviour is completely emergent. Think of the last time you saw a damaging industry collapse because the market changed overnight. IN general shifts in demand are prompted by better products in the market – things that will help people do things in a better way, at a competitive price. There is no question that there is a demand to end slavery, but the demand for cheap clothes outweighs it.
Markets can be influenced by capital and government. Capital influences markets by controlling what is offered out there. If you have billions of dollars, you can do things like buy up your cometeitors patents for clean energy for example, or in the case of companies like Wal-Mart, use you economy of scale to provide loss leader products that bring people into your store to buy cheap things at the expense of local manufacturing. And if you are in government you can regulate to eliminate bad things in the market, such as slavery as a labour practice. But if you also sign international agreements that allow the free flow of capital, you box yourself in to accepting slavery as a practice because capital will always seek the lowest expense climate.
So to affect change requires an engagement of all three. It begins with a personal practice and commitment to a trajectory of social and economic justice. It requires that personally I commit to “better.” Will we ever have a world where slavery is abolished? No. Can I live my life without any dependance on slaves? Doubtful, and certainly if I was to live that life I would be far from the ability to influence power in anyway.
So it is commitment to a trajectory rather than a finish line. Complex problems are not “solvable.” You have to get good with living with this uncertainty and get good at accepting the gift and the curse of emergence.
Second, people have to affect change with powerful narratives. Governments have coercive power and large corporations have the power of manipulation using capital. All people have are narrative power – the power of a better story. Almost always this story “fails” against the coercive power of force and capital – think Occupy, Arab Spring, Idle No More and so on. But while they failed to achieve their specific goals, these kinds of movement are very important. It is important that citizens try and try again to advance the narrative of justice. Because from time to time these narrative movements succeed. Think gains like gay marriage and civil rights in North America. Think about what happened in places like Estonia, Czechoslovakia and India and South Africa. When the narrative wins, that one time in 1000, things transform.
And it would be nice to know that any intervention we choose will have the system changing effect that we want, but we can’t have that certainty. We need to work towards change from inside the place of the problem.
So, what is your experience in affecting change from inside the problem? How do you work towards justice while recognizing your complicity in the very problems you are addressing? How does a complexity-based world view and skill set enable good work to happen?
Yesterday was wonderful. We spent the whole day around a fire on MacKenzie Beach listening to three stories and reflecting back what we learned. Pawa’s father Moy and uncle Tim both told stories of growing up in a traditional family and village. For me Tim’s story of getting stranded with his brother in a rowboat was powerful and contained all kinds of teachings about leadership, knowledge and practice. In the afternoon we did the same with Admire’s story from Zimbabwe, the story of what is happening at Kufunda Village. A full day of deeply listening to stories, harvesting lessons and teachings. And then this morning, Tim’s story was reenacted. Myself and Kelly, one of the participants here, re-enacted the story of Tim and his brother in a canoe alternately rowing and baling and having to switch roles while the waves pitch and roll. Physically re-enacting the story, sitting in chairs and actually switching places as if we were in a canoe leant a depth to the story – teachings about balance and safety and working together. Feeling it is a whole different kind of listening.
One of the things that is happening here is that we are beginning to experience a really different sense of time. We are spending our days outside, blessed by constant sunshine that is a complete surprise at this time of year. We are gathering around a fire on the beach or sometimes outside one of the cabins where we are staying. Teachings are flowing in everything we do, from cooking to walking, to spending time alone. Time is so slow here and we are finding ourselves going to bed at 8:00 after the sunsets and waking up early in the morning. This is probably one of the most interesting teachings we are getting from the land itself, watching the tides come and go and the moon grow towards fullness, as we barbeque salmon on the fire and share the work of our little village.
Purpose is beginning to arise amongst us. And as that happens, offerings are beginning to appear as well, offerings of space for future gatherings, offerings of resources and friendship and deep commitment. We are still running the Indiegogo campaign so people from around the world are contributing there too, and you can join them. Tomorrow we continue our living in open space, heading out for a walk in the woods and perhaps playing some lahal later after the sun goes down.