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…
This week’s question is all about “the biggest.” If you scaled up an effort to address your problem to its maximum possible size, what would happen? Would it be victory, disaster, or somewhere in between? How do you know? Reflect on the possibilities but also how you came to your sense of the maximum size.
I happened to read two popular science books recently that featured chapters on the same research methodology. For many years, zoology has primarily been an observational science. Naturalists collect specimens, dig up fossils, or observe creatures in their natural habitats. Then they analyze the available information to draw conclusions. If you can’t get the fossil or snap the photograph fast enough, you’re out of luck.
However, recently some biologists have tried a new approach. Using mechanical and digital models, they’ve explored what structures might be physically possible in various environments, bringing a new context to the collected evidence. For example, scientists now think the largest sauropod dinosaurs are the most massive animals that can live on land. Anything bigger would collapse under its own weight.
Under the sea, though, things are entirely different. In the deep, the limit isn’t so much about the physical constraints but instead the right combination of metabolism and calories. Apex predators like sharks have gotten pretty big in Earth’s history, but they don’t get anywhere near the size of baleen whales. The unexpected combination of breathing oxygen and eating krill let these beasts evolve into gigantic diving scoops — the biggest animals that have ever existed on Earth.
The point is, there are lots of ways to go big. Let’s use a few of them to better understand your problem.
HOW TO DO IT
What will you embiggen? - This exercise is admittedly a little open-ended. But you can try it with anything in the world of your social problem. The default option is probably imagining very large organizations — possibly bigger versions of the ones where you work. You could also try scaling up campaigns, donations, interventions — anything that’s important in the world of your problem. If the category you choose starts to feel unhelpful, just start over with a different one.
Who’s your brontosaurus? - The sauropods were the biggest animals on Earth for a long, long time. If there were any scientists around back then, they might have hypothesized that nothing larger would ever evolve, never imagining a whale. So in your field, what’s the most massive organization (or intervention, or campaign, etc.) to date? What were the consequences of its size, positive and negative? Do people imagine that you could go bigger? Why or why not?
Now imagine a blue whale - Whatever you picked for the last question, it’s time to go bigger — much bigger. Ridiculously bigger. If you’re working on politics, imagine a trillion dollar presidential race. If you’re working on higher education, imagine a university with millions of students. As you increase the size, notice what kind of limits your new organism might run into. Are they physical? Economic? Social? Would it be shut down by government regulators or riots in the streets? Try to imagine how these limits might be defied to reach the maximum conceivable size.
Reflect on the limits’ effects - Building models of hypothetical sauropods and whales might sound a little silly in isolation. Where this science really pays off is when you think about how real animals may have struggled with the physical constraints the scientists challenged in their labs. All of the limits to maximum size are affecting the world of your social problem right now. Where do you see them in real life? How do they shape what solutions to the problem might be possible?
Use what you learned to challenge assumptions - The supersized entities you imagined in this exercise might make you feel inspired or terrified — maybe a bit of both. In almost all cases, they are unlikely to really evolve. But just imagining how such an eventuality might occur can unlock new options for possible behaviors. Maybe you discovered that one of the traditional limits to growth doesn’t matter anymore. Maybe there are new solutions that only make sense at scale (even if not the scale you imagined). Try to say to yourself, “Now that I know this is possible, here is what I should do.”
CAN YOU GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE?
I think of this exercise a lot in relation to climate change. Because we humans are incredibly short-sighted, many people have asked whether there might be some simple technological solution to climate change. Since it’s really just a physics problem, lots of people have come up with ideas, such as covering gigantic areas of the Earth with white paint to reflect sunlight back into space. Regardless of whether this is a good idea or not, considering the hypothetical cost has prompted many environmentalists to point out that we already have massive white reflectors — glaciers and ice caps — that we are doing a terrible job of protecting. Why not spend the resources there instead? These are some of the kind of insights you might encounter when you let yourself play with the limits of your problem.
SO WHAT MAKES THIS WORK?
This question is an example of how to question assumptions about your social problem using the limits 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.
Image: Life-size model of blue whale, National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo