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 the most powerful organization whose actions affect the problem you are trying to solve. Now imagine they disappeared — or if you prefer, that they totally lost interest in the problem for some reason. How might you and the other people and groups working on the problem respond? What new roles and responsibilities might you take on?
When I am teaching or consulting, this is a question I always have up my sleeve to deal with a particular moment. For some social issues, everyone is paralyzed waiting for some specific organization to act — usually the most powerful organization involved in the problem. It might be the federal government, or perhaps a major regulatory entity like the FDA. For a local problem, it might be the mayor or a school superintendent. Sometimes it could be a relatively new entity like Amazon or Google. Whoever it is, I challenge my clients or students with the same question: what would you be doing if this organization or person weren’t around?
The responses to this exercise can be surprisingly emotional. I don’t think it’s because anyone is so attached to the federal government or the mayor. Instead, I think it’s because we often define ourselves in opposition to some more powerful force. It’s sort of like how teenagers’ rebellion usually occurs in the context of an overall safe relationship to their parents; it would actually be really scary for those kids if Mom and Dad stopped enforcing the rules. But even if you don’t react that way, it’s a useful intellectual exercise. Let’s get into it:
HOW TO DO IT
Name the cheese - Is there actually a single dominant entity in the world of the problem you are trying to solve? This can be a harder question than you think, because we sometimes consign these powerful entities to the background. For example, if you were considering a problem where the main organizations were competing businesses, you might forget about the extremely powerful (but reticent) Federal Reserve. So it’s wise to survey all the groups connected to the problem so you know who the big cheese really is.
Explain the cheese - Now it’s time to reflect on what role this dominant group actually plays in the problem you are trying to solve. Take a more subtle approach than “tells everyone else what to do” or “sucks up all the money.” What in particular does this entity do that makes it so dominant? Is this function an essential trait of the entity or the result of present circumstances? Does it is power depend in part on everyone else acquiescing to its present role? Do your best to explain all this in a neutral way.
Bye bye, cheese - Next, make them disappear. What that means depends a lot on the last two steps. When I tell folks to make the federal government disappear, they’ll sometimes say something like, “Great, so now there’s chaos in the streets.” But that’s not quite what I mean — instead, I want you to imagine that the particular function that government has played in your problem disappears. So for example, it’s easy to imagine a world where the government played no role in environmental regulations, because that world actually existed before the 1960s. Use these kinds of handholds to imagine a world that is very different from our own but not totally ridiculous. What would everyone be doing in that scenario?
Slicing up the cheese - One of the most useful outcomes of this exercise is asking the question, “If the most powerful group weren’t doing X, would anyone else do it?” This can quickly show you capabilities within your organization or peer organizations that might be latent or forgotten. Another similar outcome is discovering that you might solve some of the same problems that would be solved by the dominant entity, but in a different way. For example, if the Google algorithm were obliterated from the Earth tomorrow, we would still find a way to navigate the Internet, but it wouldn’t be through the style of search that we’ve all gotten used to.
Hello again, cheese - Let’s come back to reality. How might your insights from the alternate world help you relate to the dominant entity in a new way? You might discover that they work differently than you thought, or perhaps they are less relevant than you imagined. Another frequent outcome of this exercise is seeing new ways of relating to other less powerful groups. Many times, the people and organizations working on a problem have gotten frustrated with a “big cheese” not because of their actions, but their inaction. Taking that unspoken resentment off the table can help you find a whole new way to behave.
CAN YOU GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE?
Yup. One way I discovered the power of this exercise was through a game we played in an all-day session with the U.S. State Department on the future of civil society. At some point we broke up our invited thinkers into different groups such as arts organizations, military, business, etc. An interesting consequence of this was that each group stopped thinking in terms of federal policy and instead looked at actions that were more natural for their groups. As a result, one of our federal participants leaned back and said, “You know, I think the most effective thing we could do would be to convene all these different groups and have them share ideas.” That’s pretty different from the role government normally plays, but it was the perfect fit for the problem at hand.
COOL, SO WHAT MAKES THIS WORK?
This question is an example of how to transform your thinking about a problem using the actors 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.