Here are four lessons from my research and reading on making progress in an imperfect world that offer me seeds of hope, and a nudge to act. Change often starts smaller and quieter than we realize, which makes it accessible to all of us.
Start with small groups.
Last year I attended an event at San Francisco’s SPUR Urban Center where several non-profit leaders discussed an initiative they had collaborated on and implemented in the city. It reflected what Greg Satell, author of Cascades: How to Create a Movement that Drives Transformational Change, found in his research—driving change comes down to small groups that are loosely connected and united by a shared purpose.
Change doesn’t require masses. You can start small, joining a group and then partnering with others. What is required is patience and doing the work to collaborate and build coalitions. As Satell writes at the end of this article:
“The problem is that fantasies about overpowering your foes are much more romantic than doing the hard work of building traction in small groups and then painstakingly linking them together through forging a sense of shared purpose.”
Ask yourself: What is a small group I could join or start around a purpose I care about?
Leverage small, quiet spaces.
In the book The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas, Gal Beckerman writes about his research and findings that radical ideas and change form in quiet, small spaces that allow for incubation (e.g., communities that used more intimate or non-mass communication protocols compared to social media platforms). He writes near the end:
“Radical change… doesn’t start with yelling. It starts with deliberation, a tempo that increases, a volume set first at a whisper…. So we need to ensure the possibility of those spaces…. They are where the first inflections of progress can—and almost always do—occur.”
Beckerman closes the book with the image of a table—a place to sit, be with others, and deliberate.
Ask yourself: Where’s a “table” I can sit at to shape my thinking or an idea about a cause I care about?
Build social capital to move organizations.
Individuals and their connections matter in making change happen in organizations. In a Change Signal podcast episode, Helen Bevan, who works in the UK health system, noted research that found that social capital predicted which organizational transformation programs made progress and which failed. Relationships and trust matter. She said:
“... Social capital, which are the relationships and the connections that build a foundation of trust and connectedness, is far more important than human capital, which is about the people in the system and the skills and the capabilities that they've got.”
I may be making a leap here, but I look at this as a way to take back agency, and frankly power. Be someone who has social capital within an organization, because it’s through a trusted network that change moves forward.
Ask yourself: Where do I already have or where can I build trust to help move something I care about forward?
Influence societal culture through your art.
Art shapes culture, so earlier this year I was drawn to the Whitney Biennial exhibit to take a pulse of this moment through artists’ work. I noticed several themes like making visible that which is invisible, the absurdity of the modern, honoring heritage and inheritance, and reclaiming in the face of injustice.
Art can bring forth the voice of the people and can shape cultural narratives, influencing our future. It is that powerful.
Given how I’ve been feeling about the world, I’ve found inspiration in what Toni Morrison said in her 1975 keynote address at Portland State University about racism as a form of distraction:
“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being.”
I’m not referencing this to co-opt Morrison’s message. But I see a parallel to today—we can get distracted by all the noise. Perhaps an antidote is to not get distracted, and rather to make our art.
Ask yourself: What would I make or say if I weren’t distracted by the noise?
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