Unlimited budget
What would you do if you had all the gold in Fort Knox?
Today’s question: Pretend you have an unlimited budget to solve your problem — but only one year to spend it. How might you approach solving the problem in a different way than you are now?
Just about everybody working on social change says they need more money. But very often, the constraints of the most recent program or budget cycle lodge themselves into our heads in a way that prevents us from thinking about strategy at all.
As a result, we spend all of our time recalibrating fundraising appeals rather than critically examining how that money will be spent. This limits our most ambitious thinking about the problem. It can also prevent us from discovering cheaper or more effective solutions.
When you ask the question at the root of this exercise, you or your team members may laugh or even scoff. You may spend five or ten minutes fantasizing about the vacations you’ll take with your unlimited budget.
But in my experience, more serious thinking about the problem soon emerges — and you almost always discover some insight you can use when you go back to staring at your revenue projections.
This question is an example of how to discover new insights into a social problem using the limits dynamic. It’s one of six innovation dynamics I use to help people improve their critical thinking and build strategies for social change. Reply to this e-mail with your answer to the question and we can get to work. Or visit http://www.teachingsocialchange.com to learn more.
Sadly even if I had unlimited $$ for a year, we could not end the stigma of mental health. For example in a recent case I staffed, the client/patient did not care for the psychiatrist so choose not to talk to them. They liked their social worker so they choose to engage with them. Subsequently the psychiatrist wrote in their chart that the client/patient was uncooperative and manipulative. And this “label” had a impact on the social workers ability to find placement for the client. In the end, those that should be on the front line of fighting the stigma of mental illness were the ones contributing to the stigma.