Preface: This is and is not a post about the demise of Roe v. Wade.
This is a newsletter about social change strategy, and I don’t advise trying to do strategy when coping with the initial shock of trauma and other strong feelings. As a white man socialized to present myself as rational and decisive, I know that I have all too often turned to my ability to analyze and plan when I actually had a greater need to stop and feel. And in this particular situation, I am trying to stop and pay attention to the feelings of the people who will be most affected by this decision — primarily women. Here are a few of the things I’ve been reading.
But at the same time, I realized when working on my June 17 post that I can’t stop writing just because bad things happen in the world. The whole point of this newsletter is to give people tools to think of new options to deal with injustice and other social problems. I have to keep going.
So in line with current events, I am sharing one of my favorite tools to deal with a big setback. I want to do a lot more listening before I think about how to apply this kind of tool to the Supreme Court ruling, but I welcome your thoughts in response.
NOW FOR THIS WEEK’S QUESTION
You or your organization has suffered a serious setback, the kind that could force you to change your mission or strategy. You aren’t yet sure what to do. To start figuring it out, imagine someone in the future looking back and saying, “Well we probably never would have had the great things we have now if that setback hadn't happened.” What great things are they talking about? Why was the setback essential as a part of the story?
Narrative is how human beings make sense of just about everything. When we face a big setback, the pain doesn’t just come from the event itself. It also comes from the disruption of our stories about ourselves, our organizations, and even our entire society.
Yet the sensemaking that narrative forces us to do can also unlock new possibilities. This exercise breaks through our sense of paralysis by making our brains adopt a radically optimistic perspective, even if we don’t particularly feel like it.
To be clear, this is not a “Polyanna” exercise or a search for “silver linings.” You should not pretend that what happened to you is a blessing in disguise. But if you imagine it as part of a much bigger story, you might be able to figure out your next move.
Here’s how I recommend you go about it.
HOW TO DO IT
Imagine a specific person. I frequently ask people to imagine current events from the perspective of the future. But “the future” is not a perspective — it is a collection of perspectives, just like the present. So pick some specific person you imagine looking back at this difficult time. It can be yourself if you want! But some other common choices are the people your organization serves, a future leader of your organization, or — if you want to go really far into the future — your children or grandchildren.
Name the future good. Setbacks frequently make our previous goals seem distant or even impossible. A major benefit of this exercise is that it can help us imagine new goals. But to get there, you should first imagine something more vague — a future good that does not currently exist. Make this more creative than “the setback turns out not to be as big a deal as we thought” or “things go back to the way they were before the setback.” You want this to be something wonderful that we don't have now, even if it seems unrealistic.
Make the setback part of the story. This is the hard part. Why would this setback be an essential step along the way toward a positive outcome? What unexpected effects might it have? How might it change the priorities of people and organizations in your world? What conflicts might it bring into the open that were previously hidden? Think about this long enough to find a story that surprises you or your colleagues. Don’t go with your first thought, such as “It made everyone so mad that they demanded change.”
Fill in the gaps. If you can see a specific future where the setback leads to positive outcomes, what are other necessary elements of that story? What new organizations or resources might be essential to achieving the outcome? How might social change efforts feel different if they were moving in this new direction? Don’t worry if not every aspect of this story makes sense. You might write down something as vague as “we need to understand computers better” or “intersectionality?” The point is to get any information about ways you could connect the radically better future with the present.
Stay in touch with your instincts. This is not an exercise about predicting the future. The future will inevitably be much stranger than anything we can imagine. Instead, it’s a way of discerning a direction when your compass seems to be spinning. By the end of this exercise, you’ll likely have a few solid ideas to build out into a new strategy. But don't forget that they came from your feelings at this particular moment. If those feelings change, you may want to reconsider your conclusions. If they stay the same, use them to make sense of new facts, even if they contradict the story you told yourself today.
CAN YOU GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE?
Lots of people felt this way after the 2016 election in the United States. Even Trump supporters were shocked by the outcome. I remember listening in on dozens of meetings that November where people would try to follow a typical agenda and then suddenly say, “Wait, does any of this make sense anymore?”
I happened to catch the leader of one social services organization in California before the beginning of such a meeting. We talked about how in the absence of new federal policies, local organizations might become the most important sources of innovation. She began the next meeting by saying something like, "Okay team, I want you to imagine that we are the last bastion of hope for social change in the United States.”
Everyone laughed, but you could also tell they thought it might be true. That’s how using this exercise feels when you get it right — it breaks through the paralysis and opens a new sense of possibility.
COOL, SO WHAT MAKES THIS WORK?
This question is an example of how to jump-start creative thinking about your problem using the future 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.