Making a Vision for Change a Reality

One of the many things I love about my job is meeting social entrepreneurs (who often don’t even know that they are social entrepreneurs) who have amazing, game-changing ideas for solving social problems.  Their creativity, vision, passion and commitment are truly inspiring.

But the thing that strikes me about some of them, and the main reason I started Social Velocity, is that they don’t know how to make that idea, that solution, a reality.  We can’t expect that the same people who come up with great ideas or have a grand vision for change also have ALL of the skills required to build momentum around that idea and execute on it.  Often people approach me with a great idea, or a great organization, that has hit a roadblock.  They can’t figure out how to take the idea or organization to the next level, how to make their vision a reality.  Often I find that the roadblock exists because they are missing three key steps.

The first step is assembling an effective group of advisors, evangelists, supporters, workers, whatever you want to call them.  This doesn’t have to be an official board of directors or advisors.  But it does need to be a group of people who get the vision, are deeply committed to it and have resources to offer toward making the vision a reality.  These resources could be expertise in the particular solution, connections to influential people, funding, who knows.  But the idea is that a single actor cannot do it alone.  The same is true for people within organizations who want to take the organization in a new direction, toward a new solution.  Again, they need to find key supporters who can help them make their vision for change a reality.

The second key piece is a plan.  An idea for a new solution or an idea for a change in direction is great, but it is just an idea. It is difficult to build action around an idea.  To bring an idea to fruition you have to create a plan for how you will get from point A (where you are right now) to point B (where the vision is a reality).  What is it going to take to get there (infrastructure, funding, people) and how will you make it happen?  A clear, articulate, compelling plan demonstrates that you have done your homework, you know what you are doing, you have a clear vision, and you are going to get there.

Finally, you need to translate your plan into a pitch that will convince funders to jump on the train.  But how to successfully communicate with potential supporters is a key and often misunderstood skill.  You need to translate what you know to be truth (your vision for change) into something that will compel an outsider to become involved.

These three steps are key to making a vision for change a reality.  And this is what Social Velocity helps social entrepreneurs navigate. I think we are wrong to expect social entrepreneurs to do it all alone (assemble supporters, create a compelling plan, build the infrastructure, find funding).  They aren’t superheros; they are just leading the charge.

Tags: change, social entrepreneurs, Social Velocity

The Long View of Change

There is a tendency in the social entrepreneurship movement to think that everything related to social entrepreneurs and social innovation is new.  But  much can be gained by occasionally looking to other sources, examples, people and models to inform how change, in a broader context, happens and is eventually made a new norm.

One of these older models that could prove helpful to social entrepreneurs is the concept of Real Change Leaders–agents of change within successful companies–which was introduced by Jon Katzenbach’s 1995 book of the same name.  By “real change leaders” he meant mid-level, corporate employees who were working to encourage innovation within the company, which in a marketplace that increasingly demands innovation as a competitive advantage were critical to the company’s success.  These Real Change Leaders were not the CEOs or big-name leaders, rather they were the otherwise average, mid-level employees who were moving companies forward in remarkable, yet unrecognized, ways. Through extensive study and interviews, Katzenbach determined that these “real change leaders” share seven characteristics, which interestingly echo how many people describe social entrepreneurs:

• Commitment to a Better Way. They have an inexhaustible and visible commitment to the need for change and an ability to execute successfully on that change. Their change target is exciting, worthwhile and essential to future success.




• Courage to Challenge Existing Power Bases and Norms. They have the personal courage required to sustain their commitment in the face of opposition, failure, uncertainty and personal risk.  They do not welcome failure, but they also do not fear it. They demonstrate the ability to rise again and again.




• Personal Initiative to Go Beyond Defined Boundaries. They consistently take the initiative to work with others to solve unexpected problems, break bottlenecks, challenge the status quo, and think outside the box. Setbacks to not discourage them, and they do not wait around for directives to move.




• Motivation of Themselves and Others. They are highly motivated themselves, but more importantly, they have the ability to motivate and inspire others around them. They create excitement, momentum and opportunities for people around them to follow their example and take personal responsibility for change.




• Caring About How People Are Treated and Enabled to Perform. They really care about others and are intent on enabling the performance of others as well as their own.  They don’t knowingly manipulate or take advantage of others.




• Desire to Stay Undercover. They attribute part of their effectiveness to keeping a low profile. Grandstanding, strident crusading and self-promotion are viewed as sure ways to undermine their credibility and acceptance as change leaders.




• Sense of Humor About Themselves and Their Situation. Their sense of humor gets them through when others around them start losing heart. It also enables them to help others stay the course in the face of confusion, discouragement and the inevitable failures that change produces.

So these Real Change Leaders that Katzenbach chronicled 15 years ago share interesting parallels with those leading change in the social sector today.  Although the ultimate goal of his RCLs was change for the sake of greater profitability, as opposed to social entrepreneurs’ ultimate goal of change for the sake of the greater good, the comparisons are interesting and enlightening.  The book and the stories of RCL’s upon which it is based could hold some interesting insights for those who are working towards change in the much broader context of our communities, our institutions, and our world.

Tags: change, Jon Katzenbach, Real Change Leadership, social entrepreneurs

Making Change Happen

There’s an interesting article by Michael Grunwald in Time Magazine about how Obama is using behavioral science to create the tremendous change he has promised and that America needs. Perhaps this approach can be useful to social entrepreneurs as well.

Grunwald illustrates that throughout the presidential campaign Obama used behavioral science to change voter and donor behaviors. Now, the administration is using it to take on healthcare reform, the economy and energy. During the campaign Obama relied on a advisory group of behavioral scientists which included authors Dan Ariely of MIT (Predictably Irrational), Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago (Nudge), and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman of Princeton. These advisors provided his team research to back up their recommendations on everything from voter turnout, to rumor control, to fundraising. Behavioral science (among other things) got Obama elected and now its charge is to change the behavior of Americans who eat too much, use too much gas, don’t save money, run up their credit cards, etc:

The latest science suggests that yes, we can [change]. Studies of all kinds of human frailties are revealing how to help people change — not only through mandates or financial incentives but also via subtler nudges that preserve our freedom to make choices while encouraging us to make better ones, from automatic-enrollment 401(k) plans that require us to opt out if we don’t want to save for retirement to smart meters that warn us about how much energy we’re using. These nudges can trigger huge changes; in a 2001 study, only 36% of women joined a 401(k) plan when they had to sign up for it, but when they had to opt out, 86% participated.

What behavioral science offers, the Obama administration believes, is a way to capitalize on the inherent imperfections of the human race, which were formerly ignored or denied:

Neoclassical economics…has ruled our world for decades. It’s the doctrine that markets know best: when government keeps its hands off free enterprise, capital migrates to its most productive uses and society prospers. But its elegant models rely on a bold assumption: rational decisions by self-interested individuals create efficient markets. Behavioral economics challenged this assumption, and the financial meltdown has just about shattered it; even former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan confessed his Chicago School worldview has been shaken. Behavioral economics doesn’t ignore the market forces that were all-powerful in Econ 101, but it harnesses forces traditionally consigned to Psych 101. Behaviorists have always known we don’t really act like the superrational Homo economicus of the neoclassical-model world. Years of studies of patients who don’t take their meds, grownups who have unsafe sex, and other flawed decision makers have chronicled the irrationality of Homo sapiens.

In order to curb human being’s natural imperfections (their desire to pick the bad option) four aspects in the better option must be present:

1. Knowledge about what the better choices are, which is why the Obama administration is so interested in information transparency.
2. Affordability–Change can’t be expensive or it becomes unattainable.
3. Ease–Default options on healthcare and automatic retirement plans make it more difficult to not participate, making the better option the easier option.
4. Normalization–If people think that everyone else is doing it, they’ll be more likely to do it.

It occurs to me in reading this article that in essence Obama is the ultimate social entrepreneur.  As Grunwald points out:

Obama is no therapist changing individuals one at a time. He’s an organizer trying to build community and inspire collective action through house parties and Facebook as well as rhetoric about shared values. In other words, he’s trying to create social norms — behavioral change’s killer app.

He is trying to scale change throughout the country, perhaps throughout the world, in not just one area, but several.  So isn’t there something to be learned from his behavioral science approach to creating change that could be translated to the field of social innovation?

For social entrepreneurs whose challenge is to change crumbling systems and institutions, perhaps a behavioral approach can make scale achievable, more effectively and quickly.  For those looking to create a social capital market and bring “dinosaur” philanthropists and traditional investors toward new financial vehicles, perhaps behavioral incentives could help.  Whatever the area, whatever the need, the end goal is to change old ways of doing things.  Perhaps there is something to be learned from this new approach. Instead of denying or overriding human imperfection, we could actually harness that imperfection in order to create change on a large scale.  Perhaps the very problems we seek to solve require such an approach.

Tags: behavioral science, change, Obama, social capital market, social entrepreneurs