Labs for Social Change Seminar Notes

8/14/2019 Labs for Social Change Seminar Notes

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LABORATORIESFOR SOCIALCHANGESEMINAR

NOTES


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1

CONTENTSIntroduction 2

Dominant Patterns and Trends 4

Stuckness 6

The Dominant Response 8

Origins and Evolutions o Our Response 10

Ontology 12

The Game 14

The Inner Game 16

The Team 18

Practice 20

The Field 22

Movement 24

Strategy 26

The Change Lab 28

Stystemic 30

Who are Reos Partners? 32


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INTRODUCTION:THE CHANGE LAB

3

The ambition o the change lab isto be a space that brings together a

group o diverse stakeholders and toorge them into a team. The purpose

o this team is to attend to a socialchallenge until such time that ways

orward emerge, which when actedupon, increase the probabilities

o a shit occurring at a causal,

structural level.

For many reasons, pursuing thisidea has proved to be anything

but simple. Our eorts give riseto many questions.

Who owns the space? Who denes

the rules by which the team plays?Who decides the constitution o the

team? Given that social challengesnever have single owners, who pays?

Who takes the risk? What does itmean to attend to a mess? How

exactly does a way orward emerge?What does it mean to act? What

denes an action? What theorieso emergence show this can and

does happen? What theories operception, o innovation, show

that this is how ideas emerge?

What are the conditions by which anidea succeeds? What is the journey

path o an idea rom conception towide spread adoption? What do we

mean by structural change? What issystemic change?

To date a number o change labs

have been convened, includingthe Sustainable Food Lab (global),

the Bhavishya Alliance change lab

(Maharashtra, India), Orphans and

Vulnerable Children (Midvaal, SouthArica), and Meadowlark (Northern

Great Plains, USA).

These change labs can be thoughto as second generation o multi-

stakeholder alliance. The generationbeore them were largely ad-hoc

eorts. This second generation

o change labs is being ollowedby a next generation, in nance, ineducation, in climate change, in

agriculture and in post-confictsocial reconstruction. These eorts

aspire to build consciously on whathas been learnt.

Taken together these constitute themobilization o many hundreds o

people, many tens o institutionsand many millions o dollars a

sizable experiment. One wayo understanding these second

generation change labs is that theyare ontologically new. That is, as

organizational orms, they do notcorrespond to what we currently

understand to be an organization,precisely because they are new.

Inspired by grounded theory,

taking an inductive approach romthese initial change labs has led to

an articulation o what a changelab is. This, in turn has led to what

could be thought o as a preliminaryattempt at a phenomenology o

systemic action.


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DOMINANTPATTERNS

AND TRENDS

The world we have created hasoutstripped our capacity to understandit. The scale o interconnectivity and

interdependence has resulted in a stepchange in the complexity o the operatingenvironmentThe anchors o identity,morality, cultural coherence and socialstability are unravelling and we arelosing our bearings. We are living ina conceptual emergency.

The International Futures Forum

5

Our Contemporary Condition

Current approaches to addressingcomplex social challenges are not

working. While there is much tocelebrate in terms o the numbers

o people involved in changeinitiatives, in the increasingamounts o money being invested

and daily innovations in what couldbe called alleviation, the underlying

trends continue to deteriorate.Social abrics are increasingly

strained under loads they werenever intended to contain. Both

scrutiny and demands or actionare increasing.

I were interested in changingdominant and deteriorating trends,

such as anthropomorphic climatechange, ood security or child

malnutrition, then how are we tomake sense o current trends? How

are we to make decisions aboutwhere to intervene and as to the

eectiveness o an intervention?

complex &interconnected

stuck socialsituations

tragedy othe commons

species loss

co2 emissions

nancialsystems

collectiveaction

problems

race


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STUCKNESS

Were problematising dominanttrends & patterns into a consensus

oproblemsand creating uncontested

terrain which means our presence asproblem solversis legitimate which

leads to making unconsciousboundary judgments.

7

Our social, economic, andtechnological systems arenow incomprehensibly

and oten unmanageablycomplex, they operate atunprecedented velocities,and they produce sudden,sharp, and oten harmulsurprises over ever-shorterintervals o time.How

should we address thesemultiple challenges?

- Thomas Homer-Dixon


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THE DOMINANTRESPONSE

Power, quite simply, produces theknowledge and that rationality whichis conducive to the reality it wants

- Bent Flyvberg

dominant

localizedimpacts

publicharmony

cleargoals

plannedrationalisation

singleowner

rigidroles

closedboundaries

silos

re-produces &re-enorces existing

power structures& relations (non

-negotiable &unspeakable)

TECHNICAL

TECHNOCRATIC

PLANNING

9

NON-SYSTEMIC

unintendedconsequences

dominantpatterns &

trends

BLIND

SPOT


localizedimpacts

privateconfict

publicharmony clear goals

closedboundaries

single owner

uncontestedterrain

re-produces & re-enorcesexisting power structures

& relations(non-negotiable& unspeakable)

silos

uncontestedterrain


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ORIGINS ANDEVOLUTIONSOF OURRESPONSE

11

systemsthinking

agileprocesses

prototyping

deepdemocracy

multi-stakeholderprocesses

the U-process

THE CHANGE LAB


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ONTOLOGY

13

What is the Change Lab?

The change lab is a space, a team,and an intention. It is a space

with direction and movement.It is literally an approach, anda movement in time & space.These spaces can take variousorms, such as battle space, innerspace, dance space, theatre space,a stadium, caravansarai ora workshop. It is a space withinwhich a team practices to learnhow to shit dominant patternsand trends.

The ambition o the changelab is to be a space that brings

together a group o diversestakeholders and to orge theminto a team that will in attend toa mess until such time that waysorward emerge that increase theprobabilities o a shit occurringat a causal, structural level.

Space

Intention

Team


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THE GAME

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There are at least twokinds o games. Onecould be called fnite,

the other infnite.A fnite game is playedor the purpose owinning, an infnitegame or the purposeo continuing the play.- James P Carse


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THE INNERGAME

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There is always aninner game beingplayed in your mind

no matter what outergame you are playing.How aware you are othis game can make thedierence betweensuccess and ailure inthe outer game.- Tim Gallwey


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THE TEAM

What are the preconditionsfor a team that can respondeffectively to complexity?

Entry into the gametakes the orm o aquasi-contract, whichis sometimes made

explicit...or recalled tothose who orget it isonly a game. By contrast,in the social felds, aregames in themselvesand not or themselves,one does not embark on

the game by a consciousact, one is born intothe game- Pierre Bourdieu

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PRACTICE

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Learning to see, listen, speak,collaborate and embody areby their very nature humancapacities, or to use a phase romSandercock, they are sensibilities,that can only be mastered withpractice. These are not one-time activities. Rather they are

practices. This is doubly truewhen considering teams. Teamsthat are good at anything, beit a theatre troupe or a ootballteam, only become good bypracticing together. The answerto Leoni Sandercocks question ocapacities is what could be calledrefexive practice. Teams practice.There is no way a team that comestogether once will be able to

perorm anywhere near as well asa team that has been practicingtogether or months or years.Its simply not possible. Teamspractice, and then they perorm.

The replicability o a changelab rests less in the replicability

o the specic innovation orproject in itsel but in participantslearning rom each other, buildingrelationships and practicing thosecapacities or mind-states that areconducive towards social change,in moving rom not knowing howto cope with a particular socialmess to becoming a team ovirtuoso social actors.

HOW DO A RANDOM GROUP OF

PEOPLE BECOME AN EFFECTIVE TEAM?

what does

movement generate?

(habitus)(capital)] + eld = practice

the u-process as

a series o movements

what do they practice?

Teams practice


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THE FIELD

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ProbeSense

Respond

SenseAnalyseRespond

SenseCategoriseRespond

ActSense

Respond

DISORDER

ORDERED

UNORDERED

COMPLEX COMPLICATED

SIMPLECHAOTIC

Flux and unpredictability

No right answers; emergent

instructive patterns

Unknown unknowns

Many competing ideas

A need or creative

and innovative approaches

Pattern-based leadership

High turbulence

No clear cause-and-eect

relationships,

so no point in looking

or right answers

Unknowables

Many decisions to makeand no time to think

High tension

Repeating patterns and

consistent events

Clear cause-and-eect

relationships evident to everyone;

right answer exists

Known knowns

Fact-based management

Expert diagnosis required

Cause-and-eect relationships

discoverable but not immediately

apparent to everyone; more than

one right answer possible

Known unknowns

Fact-based management

Field Theory, Conditions and Mechanisms

Above: Snowdon & Boone (HBR 2007)


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MOVEMENT

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The opposite o being stuck is,o course, to move. The changelab is rst a space and secondlya space with direction and

movement - literally an approach.What makes a good movement?The movements that the changelab has been characterized by todate draw on and are inspired bythe U-process . They constitute acollaborative process o innovationthat provides both direction andmovement, particularly in situationswhere the direction orwardis unclear.

The change lab is a response toincreasing stuckness o manycontemporary social challenges.Convening and supporting

change labs, and other suchspaces, provide us with a betterand more promising direction totake in addressing complex socialchallenges than the acceptedplanning and problem-solvingparadigms that are normallyused to manage problems andmitigate risk in most institutionalcontexts.

Observe, observe, observe

Act in an instant

Retreat and refect:

Allow the inner

knowing to emerge

3 MOVEMENTS

OF THE U


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Big strategies can grow rom little ideas(initiatives), and in strange places, notto mention at unexpected times, almostanyone in the organisation can proveto be a strategist. All he or she needsis a good idea and the reedom andresources required to pursue it.

- Henry Mintzberg

STRATEGY

27

RealisedStrategy

EmergentStrategy

UnrealisedStrategy

DeliberateStrategy

IntendedStrategy

Let: http://search.ahp.us.army.mil/search/images


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THECHANGELAB

The change lab opens a space withinwhich an experiential pedagogy ochange can be practiced. The seeds onew cultures and new realities lie inthis practice

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The change lab is not a project ora plan, but a space within whichemergent processes can unoldand fow, where learning cantake place and confict is invitedas an opportunity . As a space itis experimental and heuristic innature, characterized by action-learning, driven by the purposeand intention. The change lab

is a space within which multipleand potentially divergent action-learning experiments can belaunched in order to learn howbest to shit increasingly inter-connected social challenges.

The change lab is a containerwithin which we can learn how tocope with the exceptionally ast-changing and liquid nature o

social challenges that we ace. Itsessentially an attempt to conductaction-learning experiments inorder to learn how the social bodycan be healthy, as opposed toaccepting a triage-paradigm thatlargely cannot aord to considerunderlying causes and in the longrun cannot be sustained.

Finally, the change lab presentsus with the opportunity tore-negotiate the various socialcontracts within our societiesthat have broken down rompressures they were never intendedto contain. The possibility andpromise o the change lab is thepossibility o resolutions to many oour most intractable challenges.

Lab Team

Dominant CultureDominant trends

and patterns

Movement


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SYSTEMIC

NON-SYSTEMIC

SYSTEMIC

unintendedconsequences

dominantpatterns &

trends

multipleowners

localprecipitates

non-local impacts

non-localimpacts

multiple levels

emergent rationality

contested terrain

BLIND

SPOT

permeable

boundaries

public confictprivate harmony

clear intentionality

causal powerstructures & relations

negotiable

uzzy goals

fuid roles

interconnectedness


localized

impacts

privateconfict

publicharmony

clear goals

closedboundaries

single owner

uncontestedterrain

re-produces & re-enorcesexisting power structures

& relations(non-negotiable& unspeakable)

silos

31


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WHO ARE REOSPARTNERS?

In the ace o social challenges oever-increasing complexity, how do

we learn to see opportunities andact together across our dierences?

How can we actively increase thecapacities o the systems we live in

to serve us better?

Reos Partners is an organisationdedicated to supporting and

building capacity or collectiveaction in complex social systems.

We acilitate action-orientedmulti-stakeholder collaboration

within and across business,

government, and civil society.

At the heart o all the issues we areinvited into are groups o people

attempting to act in situations whereno clear road maps exist. In the

ace o complex social challenges,we aspire to creative, diverse and

systemic collective responses.We design and acilitate processes

or groups to immerse themselves

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deeply in the social context theywish to aect, to connect with their

own purpose and to set collectiveintention, which serves to unlock

creativity, persistence and action.We believe in the eectiveness o

collective responses to situationso complexity and dicult social

challenges.

Our processes have evolved romteen years o practice across every

continent. They are designed tosupport diverse groups o people

to become increasingly eectiveat responding to situations where

either no road-maps exist or aplethora o competing road-maps

exist, with no clear direction beingagreed upon by stakeholders.

Our work usually begins with an

individual organisation approaching

us to help them catalyse actionsthat aspire to creating change that

is systemic, where the root causes oa situation are addressed and shited

or where demonstrations o abetter system are required.

The end results o our engagements

range rom the establishment onew relationships, organisations,

alliances, to the creation o newinitiatives and the strengthening

o existing innovations and nallyto proound shits in the capacities

o individuals.

We locate our work, drawing bothpractice and theory rom a diversity

o elds, within a small group ocutting-edge practitioners who are

ocused on evolving our humancapacity or addressing complex

social challenges through intelligent

collective collaboration and action.

Our work supports groups to movebeyond agreement on the nature

o our problems towards actionsthat shit the very causes o our

most proound social dilemmas.

We believe that hopes, dreams andintentions are crucial or driving

all eorts at innovating, changingand shiting stuck social situations.

We help in creating the conditionsor individuals to rise to the

challenges that ace us, to organizeand to create groups that can take

orms and actions appropriate totheir context.

We currently have oces in

Cambridge (Massachusetts),London, Johannesburg,

and So Paulo.


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NOTES


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Credits

This work is licensed under the Creative

Commons Attribution-Share Alike

2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

To view a copy o this license, visit

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

by-sa/2.0/uk/ or send a letter to

Creative Commons, 171 Second Street,Suite 300, San Francisco, Caliornia,

94105, USA.

Text taken rom Laboratories

or Social Changeby Zaid Hassan

(orthcoming 2010). Illustrated

by Emily Wilkinson.


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Documents

Labs for Social Change Seminar Notes