To everything there is a season

What can the way you respond to recurring events teach you about your problem?

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…

Our world is full of cycles. The most obvious ones are right there on the calendar: the seasons, holidays, annual deadlines, and other recurring events that give structure to our lives. Other cycles are less regular but are nevertheless predictable. What are some of the cyclical, recurring events tied to the problem you are trying to solve? How do you and other people or organizations respond to these events, and what assumptions does that behavior reveal? What might happen if you responded in a different way?

“No one can predict the future” we often say, yet many of our behavioral habits and social norms are based on the idea that we actually can. And we aren’t crazy to think so. For as long as human beings have been around, every year has brought the seasons of spring, summer, autumn, and winter.

Well, unless you live in a part of the world where there aren’t four seasons. Or if climate change makes your winter feel more like a long autumn. Or if Mount Tambora explodes and gives you “The Year Without a Summer.” In fact, if you find just about any regularly occurring cycle of events, you can usually find the story of a time in which the cycle was temporarily broken or disrupted. Both the cycles and the disruptions become part of the social norms that shape our world.

In this exercise, you’ll use these cycles to better understand behavior around your problem, and possibly use what you learn to develop new insights and solutions. Let’s give it a whirl.

HOW TO DO IT

1. Almost everyone starts this exercise by pulling out their calendar. A monthly calendar usually works best. You likely have a calendar that is marked up with important events and deadlines for your organization. You’ll also have a more subjective sense of how each month feels in the life of your institution and the work you do. Write down some of the most important parts of the cycle or talk about them with a group.

2. Now try to find some cycles that aren’t annual or regular. For example, in American politics, most jurisdictions hold some kind of election every year, but there are also longer cycles such as congressional and presidential elections that occur on a regular schedule and have predictable effects. You can probably also think of cycles that don’t have a precise schedule but are still predictable. In the entertainment world, for example, no one knows whether a given movie will succeed or flop, but it can usually be assumed that a movie will be making less money three months after it comes out — that’s part of the “life cycle” of a film.

3. You probably have a good sense of how you and your organization behave during various parts of these cycles. But take a moment to ask some questions about the world around you. Do your peer organizations or people in your community respond to the same cycles in the same ways? Do some groups respond differently or follow different cycles entirely? Think of how all this behavior might look from a satellite in space, without focusing on any particular group.

4. Now comes the hardest part of this exercise. Many of our perceptions of cycles in time are tied to our own organization or interests. But the point of these exercises is to develop new insights into your problem, not your organization. If your problem could talk, what would it think about these cycles in time? Are they essential to understanding it or are they just arbitrary? What behaviors matter most to the outcomes of the problem, and where do they fall in these various cycles?

5. Finally, review the behaviors you have listed, highlighting the ones that seem most interesting to you. Are there behaviors you would like to see become more frequent or less frequent over the course of the different cycles? Maybe behaviors you would like to eliminate? If you were to add a new behavior, what time in the cycle might be best? All these questions will rub against your pre-conceived notions of when various behaviors must occur. If by the end of the exercise you are doubting one of those assumptions, you’ve done a good job.

CAN YOU GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE?

Cyclical events are often described through the concept of “life cycles.” One of my students in the DSW program at USC, Stephanie Thompson, designed a program that challenged assumptions about the “life cycles” of U.S. Marines. Typically, Marines and other service members are treated for problems like post-traumatic stress disorder after their deployments end. But Stephanie observed that many of the young people recruited for the Marines were affected by social determinants of health that (though not disqualifying for service) might cause health issues later in life. So she designed an intervention that began to address some of those problems in a different part of the cycle, before Marines even saw combat.

COOL, SO WHAT MAKES THIS WORK?

This question is an example of how to critically examine 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.

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