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From Change
Gethos
Building the tools for change so as to realise a global ethos.
Change - this is a constant part of all life. We as humans often fear change rather than embracing it. Yet, as our awareness expands we realise that the process of change is something that, if left to chance, can often result in unexpected results and unnecessary failures. Where as, embracing change opens up the avenue to ongoing creative progress.
Contents |
Objective
Find ways to manage and drive positive change and progress in our society so as to make our world a better place for all individuals.
- The barrier to change is not too little caring, it is too much complexity. To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see a solution, and see the impact. But complexity blocks all three steps.
- Bill Gates
Context
What is affected by change?
First we need to understand where change impacts our lives, and we can see from the following brief list, that it shows up in almost every aspect of our lives:
- growing up as a kid
- environmental affects caused by our actions
- building a business
- economic cycles
- adapting an organisation to changes in its environment
- town planning
Why is change a problem?
In experiencing change in the above settings we wish it to be sustainable and beneficial. However, there are many examples where this is unfortunately blatantly not the case:
- psychological problems individuals acquire during their upbringing
- the massive impact on many different areas of our natural environment as humanity expands
- economic turmoil that follows political change
- failure of city transport systems as cities mushroom in size
- billions of Rands lost due to failed software implementations in large organisations
In each of these cases we see that transformation is being driven by the people involved, but that the related outcomes are unexpected and have far reaching repercussions.
In other cases we have already ended up with untenable situations that we want to change, but often this seems to be an impossible task:
- world poverty
- HIV/AIDS pandemic
- oppressive political systems
- exploitation of natural resources
- pervasive environmentally damaging behaviour
In each of these cases the system seem to be resistant to change.
How do we get started?
In order to successfully manage change and create sustainable systems we need to have a model by which to understand the process of change and how to apply this to problem at hand.
In practise this means that we need consider the following aspects:
- System - the concrete and complete system that we want to change
- Process - the process that we need to continually follow in order to manage change
- Model - the ideal structural representation of the system
Ultimately we also need to be creating systems that support ongoing change. That is, while it is important to understand how to change existing systems, it is also important to understand what structural properties are needed for a system easily change whenever needed.
Social Change
Vision
My vision is to see people and society reaching their full potential.
I believe that one of way we can help realise this vision is to by explicitly trying to understand the process of change in when working with complex systems, such as social organisations, and using this understanding to build frameworks that guide change. This is motivated by principle of taking a second order approach to problems, in which we pay explicit attention to the context and process (enjoy the process). In many senses this is about building frameworks, structures and processes that support system wide learning - internalising successful concepts, approaches and values.
Projects
With these concepts in mind I now hope to embark on projects that will affect social change and creative progress...
Resources
There are a number of resources that might be helpful in supporting social change projects.
Commentaries
- Collaboration - what are the conditions that lead to social collaboration?
- Market Forces - is supply and demand enough to support progress?
- Governance and Society - how does the change process apply to our societies?
