New hire

Who would make a big splash for your problem?

Imagine you could recruit a superstar from any profession who would devote all of his or her time to your problem. What kind of person would you seek out? Why would their skills make such a difference?

Every social problem has a cast of characters. Even if you have worked on your problem for just a short time, you can become totally accustomed to the roles everyone assigns to various people and organizations. Instead of groups of human beings, all these folks just become cogs in the machine of your problem and how it works.

This is a problem because people aren’t widgets — when they are truly seen, they can bring many skills and experiences to a problem that never seemed relevant before. However, there is an even bigger issue: these habits of thinking limit our ideas about what traits might be relevant to solving the problem. Before long, we can’t see beyond the resumes of the people in the metaphorical cubicles next to us.

I tell one story along theses lines in the book I’m writing about social change. In one project, we brought in a diverse team to help an intergovernmental organization. At some point someone asked, “Wait, everyone who works here is a diplomat?” To them it was completely normal. To our invited thinkers, it was completely insane, since solving the problem at hand would require thinking outside the norms of international relations.

Your problem has its own equivalent of “diplomats” — the people who are “supposed” to work on the problem. So who could you bring on to shake that up? Musicians? Engineers? SCUBA divers? (My go-to is always SCUBA divers.)

To be clear, this exercise is not designed to help you find an actual partner (though that sometimes happens). Instead, it’s designed to help you see what skills exist in the world that you aren’t thinking about now. Once you’ve found one that captures your imagination, ask yourself what they’ve got that the people currently working on the problem don’t. Is there any way you might be able to bring out some of those skills in your team or other people connected to the problem?

This question is an example of how to discover creative solutions to social problems 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.