This is Andrew Benedict-Nelson, social change strategist and innovation educator. Each week, I share a question that you and your organization can use to find a new perspective on the toughest problems you face. Reply to the e-mail or comment on the site and we can talk about them together!
NOW FOR THIS WEEK’S QUESTION…
Think of a very influential person in the past of your problem. Often this is the founder of your profession or the organization where you work. It might also be the person who defined the problem you are solving. How would ideas about the problem change if everyone forgot that this person existed?
All of us come from somebody else. On the biological level, it’s just a fact of life. But human societies often take this to another level, telling stories about a common ancestor or mythical founder of their tribe or town. Anthropologists call it “fictive kinship.”
This pattern also shows up in the modern world of companies, professions, social movements and governments. Sure, nurses know that they are not all descendants of Florence Nightingale (she had no kids) but try spending any time at a professional nursing gathering without hearing her name.
Temporarily imagining a world without such figures can help us better understand their influence. Here’s how you can ask these kinds of critical questions yourself.
HOW TO DO IT
Start by picking your person. My default with an established organization is always the group’s founder, but there are many other possibilities. Think of a person from the past that you hear about a lot, who is commemorated in statues, paintings, or other works of art. This is often a person everyone wants to be like when they “grow up.” In the end, it is not so important that you pick the perfect example, so long as the person has significant influence on the present.
Describe how and why this person is so influential on the present. Is it their values? Their actions? Their character? Does the influence take the form of a specific book, speech, or other set of ideas? Is it possible that you heard about this person and their importance from a secondary figure like a boss or teacher? Try to put together a mental collage of this person’s influence as seen by you.
Now your job is to connect that picture of the person’s influence to specific behaviors today. Start by looking at actions that are the direct result of this person’s influence. These may take the form of rituals where the person’s name or story is invoked. Then move out to more general behaviors, like similarities between the character of your profession and this person’s personality. Some of these connections between the founder figure and current actions may be speculative, and that’s okay.
Finally, it’s time for amnesia. Imagine how the behaviors you listed might change if you removed the influence of your important figure from the past. Chances are that some would stay the same while others would change. For those that stay the same, what other stories might explain the behavior? As for the ones that would change, do they offer any clues to a better approach to the problem you are trying to solve? Try to find at least one insight you can use in the real world.
CAN YOU GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE?
Gladly. I was once running a workshop at a major utility focused on generating new ideas for renewable energy strategy. Seemingly out of nowhere, an argument broke out about Thomas Edison. One person said something like, “Thomas Edison would have hated this company!” Others, shocked, defended themselves against this accusation.
I got under the surface of the argument by asking what specifically Thomas Edison meant to the group. Of course since this was an electric utility, the group really could look to Edison as a kind of founder figure. But it turned out that what they were really arguing about was different styles of central planning. Breaking down the influence of Edison into its components helped the group use this critique to consider alternatives to their current behavior.
COOL, SO WHAT MAKES THIS WORK?
This question is an example of how to uncover insights into your problem using the history dynamic. It’s one of six innovation dynamics I help people master to improve their critical thinking and build strategies for social change. Reply to this e-mail with your answer to the question and I’ll let you know what I think! Or learn more by visiting http://www.teachingsocialchange.com.
This week’s illustration comes from a genealogy of Charlemagne in the Nuremberg Chronicle.