In this essay, I draw attention to a fruitful and rich model for global system change called the Panarchy Cycle, and draw out some high-level implications for a worldchanging strategic agenda.
It's Both/And
Effective worldchanging needs good models and theories of change. Models are important because they help us make sense of things. They focus efforts, generate hypotheses and ideas to be tested and tried. They may even help us tell our story, explain the context, beyond the converted. Despite their power, it's been fashionable of late to reject theory as being too academic and abstract, and thus "not practical" or relevant. Business executives and technologists, especially in the Anglo-American world, over-represent this camp. On the other end of the continuum, we have people, usually social activists and critics, who reject models (sometimes it doesn't matter what it is) on principle because they are too "Western" and may undermine other ways of knowing and experience. Both camps have their points. All models can mislead; they can destroy thinking as much as they create it, an observation that must not be forgotten when using any model or theory.
However, the truth is we can't avoid models and theory; whether we're conscious of it or not, we all carry models in our head of how the world works, and we are constantly integrating both theory and experience as we navigate through life. We need models/theory to push our ideas beyond the limitations of experience, and we need experience to test and ground our ideas. Pitting theory versus action and analysis versus experience is thus a false and unhelpful meme, the residue of much conventional education (See Managers not MBAs
[more...]
A Model for Resilient Change
So, what are some useful models for understanding global systemic change? What conceptual tools can we grab to help make a compelling case that the context is shifting in fundamental ways? I'm often surrounded by trained skeptics, powerful incumbents, so this is something I've been looking high and low for. But finding good models is tough. Much is mediocre. Fortunately for us, a remarkable, transdisciplinary group of scholars called the Resilience Alliance have been working hard to fill this conceptual gap.
Called the Panarchy cycle, after the unpredictable Greek god Pan, this group developed an integrative theory (i.e. comprising economic, ecological, and social systems) to better understand the source and role of change in systems both natural and human. In the process, we learn more about the conditions for resilience and adaptiveness in any system. The Panarchy cycle looks like a figure-eight. It consists of two loops, one lurching forward (the growth and building up phase) and the other recoiling backward (the reorganization and renewal phase.)
While pained in two dimensions, it's actually a three-dimensional model, looking rather like the DNA spiral laid on its side.
As their research shows, all adaptive systems have a set of nested cycles like this going on at different scales. This is what makes them resilient and able to absorb shocks and change. I'll let the visuals do the rest of the talking and focus on some high level implications. But for more -- and there is a lot more to this model -- check out their book, Panarchy: Understanding Transformations in Systems of Humans and Nature.
Opportunities for Change in Times of Flux
A leader of this project was C.S. "Buzz" Hollings, the path-breaking ecologist. In a recent paper, From Complex Regions to Complex Worlds (easier to penetrate than the book so start there) Hollings draws some profound observations: that is, much evidence suggest that we are entering the creative destruction phase (? Omega) at a global level, with the following implications:
During such times, uncertainty is high, control is weakened and confused, and unpredictability is great. But space is also created for reorganization and innovation. It is therefore also a time when individual cells, individual organisms or individual people have the greatest chance of influencing events. In societies, there is opportunity for exploratory experiment if the experiments are designed to have low costs of failure. The future can then be mapped by experiments that fail and succeed, rather than by long term plans. It is the time when a Gandhi or a Hitler can use events of the past to transform the future for great good or great ill. (Emphasis added)
This theme also struck me as I read Adam Kahane's new book, Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening and Creating New Realities
There was a high degree of flux at that time. That was a real strength. There was no paradigm, there was no precedent, and there was nothing; we had to carve it, and so we were perhaps more willing to listen.
This unique moment made these people, once bitter enemies across racial and political spectrums, not just open to new ideas out there but also new ideas about themselves.
Bad News, Good News
Think of South Africa as a microcosm, an early bounded experiment, for a broader period of transition that our world is going through. (As Kahane argues, we have the "apartheid syndrome" lurking in many places within our society. In our companies, in our governments, in ourselves.) However, this is both bad and good news. The bad news is that, like many revolutions in the past, transitions often get ugly. At the very least, we can expect more turbulence, disorder, disruption and possibly decline as the old structures break down and the new ones emerge. We may not be as lucky as South Africa was in terms of avoiding widespread violence. "Transformation is not easy and gradual. It is tough and abrupt," writes Hollings. So when you throw around the word "revolution" -- which I hear many well-meaning change-makers do-- be careful what you ask for. If history is any guide, it could be a rough ride.
The good new is that it need not be. We can learn our way through this, however belatedly and spasmodically, if continue our worldchanging efforts. The good news is that we have more opportunity than ever before to change the parameters of the system, and do so peacefully and thoughtfully. "Contextual change is the cradle of new institutions" writes Richard Normann, a wonderful business theorist. If the Resilience networks findings are true, this means that the central challenge of the moment is to trigger a bunch of "mini" panarchy cycles at local and regional levels which may create complimentary pools of social ingenuity and learning to select from as the transition creeps towards a global scale. This may mitigate the severity of the release point and ensure that we are more resilient and adaptive -- that we can manage this transition with the least amount of destruction and the best amount of creation. We want to avoid situations like the French Revolution or the last mass extinction, events where there was too much change, too fast, making the leap to renewal all the harder to do because so much was destroyed when the systemic dike broke open.
How we do all this is still dimly perceived, but hints are found in this blog, in books like Kahane's, in exceptional research like the Resilience Alliance, and in the myriad of experiments happening around the world, especially in hotbeds of transition like South Africa, India, China and Brazil. Indeed, Hollings argues that "the only way to approach such a period -- where uncertainty is very large and one cannot predict what the future holds - is not to predict, but to act inventively and exuberantly in diverse, adventures in living and experiment." To improve our chances for a positive phase of renewal, he recommends the following strategic agenda:
i.) Encourage innovation: a rich variety of experiments and transformative approaches that probe possible directions. It is important to encourage experiments with a low cost of failure to individuals, to the environment and to careers, as many of these experiments will fail.ii.) Reduce inhibitions to change, common when systems get so locked up.
Encourage discourse amongst the full range of parties to try to understand where we are going and how to achieve it.iii.) Encourage new foundations for renewal that build and sustain the capacity of people, economies and nature for dealing with change, and ensure that these new foundations consolidate and expand understanding of change.
iv.) Allow sufficient time. This is a global phenomenon... and it could potentially affect all levels of hierarchy, all the way up the chain, from the individual/family, to national and global systems.
I feel this is a wise description of where the world is at, and a wise proscription of what the world needs right now. It's also encouraging verification since elements of our collective work seem to touch on aspects of Holling's list. This framework puts the work of Worldchanging in perspective and may help us think about our strategic agenda more clearly. What kinds of questions does it suggest to us? Where should we best intervene in the system? Does this model help us tell our story in a more compelling and credible way? I think it does.
A good model can also act as a foil, as a prototype (design term) or transitional object (psychology term), where collaborative sense making can hash itself out, where people can react to something using all of our sense, both analytical and emotional. For instance, Eric Raymond's Cathedral and the Bazaar piece describing the Open Source community proved seminal, not because it accurately described the movement (arguably, the metaphor of a "bazaar" is misleading), but because it put an important stake in the ground for debate and discussion.
This model may be useful beyond just us worldchanging folks. Since this theory tries to transcend human and natural cycles, and its very shape appeals to ancient wisdoms and ways of knowing, this big picture scope might help us engage with other points of view. Clearly, the biggest worldview rift cleaving the world today is a fundamental ideological difference over how change is perceived. To reduce this grossly, we have roughly two groups in collision: conservatives and progressives. For conservatives, change is perceived as a negative thing, an enemy of tradition which should be preserved. For progressives, change is inherently good, a driver of life and renewal, while tradition and the status quo is something to be challenged and overturned. Most people have a combination of both tendencies in themselves; all of us love and hate change. But the Panarchy model showed me that all healthy resilience civilizations have an ideological division of labor between progressives and conservatives: a system of checks and balances where both elements -- continuity and change -- are present, honoured, and allowed to work in ways that benefit the whole. While we don't like talking with people with a different view, especially in polarized America, finding useful transitional objects to dialogue around is essential if real worldchanging is going to happen without force. My hope is that simplified models like the Panarchy cycle, accompanied with real life stories and examples, might be the sturdy planks in the conceptual bridge to the other side, a tool to have a better dialogue for how to build a better world.
