FAQ - Let's Get Serious
These are actual answers to actual questions, asked by environmental
organization leaders who are serious about moving forward with
these ideas. Questions 1, 2, and 3 were answered on December
13, 2005. Questions 4, 5, and 6 were answered on December 15,
2005.
1. Who do you expect to identify
the leverage points using your system?
2. Do you see anyone moving in this direction?
3. Do you believe that the [name
of organization] is perpetuating the "exhort and inspire people
to support proper practices?"
4. What if you had already convinced
a group of environmentalists to switch from Classical Activism
to Analytical Activism? What would be the next step?
5. How much time/money would have to be
invested to get to a place where high leverage points are identified?
6. How often does the process need
to be repeated to stay current?
1. Who do you expect to identify the leverage
points using your system?
This is similar to the way, in a large
crucial business project, a market analysis is done, or a technology
analysis is done, or a financial analysis is done if needed.
A leverage point analysis is just another type of analysis
that is necessary in certain kinds of projects. Whoever is
qualified to do one would do it. Because the skills to do one
are lacking in environmental organizations, training, hiring
someone qualified, or hiring a consultant would be required.
I'm attempting to address this question in the book on Analytical
Activism. The purpose of this book is to convince the
modern environmental movement that it needs to switch from
Classical Activism to Analytical Activism. Otherwise it cannot
hope to solve the difficult problems it now faces, except
by luck or a wake up call catastrophe. The book shows how
the movement can transform itself using a number of solution
elements.
The key element is Incremental Change Projects. These start
small and take as little as 30 minutes. They are group exercises
to educate people on what Analytical Activism is. A group starts
with small projects and gradually moves up to bigger ones.
The projects produce useful knowledge in the form of education
and/or experimental data that is useful to the entire movement.
The key areas the projects cover are the value of experimentation
instead of unproven assumptions, the importance of process,
and the fact that social system analysis using modeling can
uncover behavior and solutions that cannot be uncovered any
other way. A few starter projects would be in the book. The
rest would be online and continually updated as the movement
itself improved them.
2. Do you see
anyone moving in this direction?
Yes. First let's look at an environmental
organization that has become formal process driven.
Two years ago I attended a sustainable cities conference in
Atlanta. One of the speakers presented the process they used
to solve the same problems over and over. They emphasized that
it was the process they had developed that was the key to their
success. The speaker was with a Georgia Riverkeepers organization.
The process handled how to protect a watershed area, starting
with the appearance of a small group of people who wanted it
to be protected. While the speaker emphasized how crucial the
process was, that message did not seem to resonate with the
audience, who asked questions related to specific projects
rather than the process. This, I feel, is because being process
driven is such a new concept to most managers and activists.
Next, what about high leverage points and emphasizing the
social side of the problem?
It was only the middle of this year that I started to begin
working with others, after four years of developing these concepts
and deliberately working alone, so as not to fall into the
same ruts and groupthink as others. The Sierra Club is the
first environmental NGO that I've worked with. This came about
because a neighbor, Curt Smith, is a member and the leader
of the Gwinnett group.
I've contacted other environmental organizations, but have
gotten nowhere, with one exception: the US Association for
the Club of Rome (USACOR). This is because they are not environmental
activists. They are academics, scientists, businessmen, civil
servants, etc. Thus they are closer to being able to judge
the value of an idea themselves, without the need for relying
on the opinion of someone else. It seems that because I don't
know anyone in an environmental org besides Curt Smith, I can't
sit down and explain these ideas one on one, where they seem
to click rapidly. But I didn't have to do that with USACOR,
because they can do it themselves by reading the material.
I am in the long process of being nominated and approved for
membership in USACOR. See usacor.org.
They limit the number of members to about 100. In August the
membership chairman wrote me:
"Dear Jack,
Thank you so much for your interest in the U.S. Club
of Rome. I will be most pleased to place your name
before the board of directors at our next meeting in
September.
I read with great interest the paper that you sent me
and am glad that you have been in contact with Dennis
Meadows.
First to speed the paperwork, I will use your letter
to me as part of it. I would also appreciate your
sending me a copy of your CV either by email or snail
mail.
I was also wondering if you could send me nine
additional copies of the paper you sent me so I can
provide each member of the board with a copy."
I had sent them a copy of the same three articles (How the
Environmental Movement Can Find Its Way Again) that I mailed
out to the Sierra Club in August, plus the cover letter attached.
Last week the membership chairman wrote that:
"I have sent all your documents to the Board members,
but we have not had a quorum for the past two meetings and
hopefully we can get things done next week.
Your document has stirred interest in our board so keep
up the good work."
Thus, as you can see, some organizations do see value in these
concepts.
I've also submitted an article on The Dueling Loops of the
Political Powerplace to a peer reviewed environmental sustainability
journal at ejournal.nbii.org.
They rejected it because it is not written in an academic style,
since it does not have lots of references to peer reviewed
journal articles. So I will correct that and resubmit it. The
editor of the journal, Dr. Maurie Cohen, was kind enough to
write a page of feedback on the article. His first paragraph
said:
"As editor of SSPP, one of my tasks is to review submissions
before they are sent out for review. In this capacity, I
enjoyed reading the paper you sent to us and found parts
of it quite intriguing. In particular, your observation
that the challenge of sustainability is largely social, rather
than scientific or technological, is one that I, on a personal
level, agree quite strongly."
This serves as strong support that the social side of the
problem is indeed the crux. If the entire environmental movement
eventually comes to this conclusion, we will have made great
progress. Right now, due to reliance on Classical Activism,
the movement is convinced that the technical side of the problem
is the crux.
I've rewritten the article. The new version is here.
It's now too long, so I will work with USACOR members to carve
it down to the 6,500 word limit, add lots of references, and
resubmit it. But the long version is very useful at explaining
what I feel is the heart of the analysis, and thus the heart
of at least one way to solve the social side of the sustainability
problem.
Another organization that has just started to look into these
concepts is the one producing the Georgia Progressives Summit
for January 2006. Last week I received this message, that Susan
Keith (in charge of identifying and inviting organizations
to present workshops) had sent Rick Krause (Gwinnett group
member, who spoke of my work at the screening) about my work:
"I was the one at Oil on Ice [an environmental movie
showing], and have been reading all of Jack's papers on the
site. Really interesting. I was hoping he would do a presentation
at the progressive summit. Could you encourage him to
submit a proposal? Here is the link to send him: http://www.gps2006.org/
I actually lost a few good nights sleep after the Oil on
Ice screening because I stayed up too late reading at thwink!
If he doesn't do the summit, perhaps he could come speak
to a group of interested people?"
So I sent in a workshop proposal, which is under review. It
would be based on those attending reading the paper on The
Dueling Loops of the Political Powerplace ahead of time. This
would allow a very in depth coverage of the subject, instead
of the normally light coverage we see at most workshops. I
would bring my laptop and 20" monitor and supplement a
short presentation of the live computer simulation model with
lots of Q and A. Seeing live models is very educational.
At the workshop I also plan to stress a certain point by asking
each participant: "What is your theoretical basis for
knowing that your solution to your problem will work?" Almost
none will have one, and most assuredly none will have a detailed
analysis driven by a problem solving process tailored to the
type of problem they are solving. Then I will explain how if
you have no sound theoretical basis for why a solution will
work, then the solution will only work by luck. I expect to
see some nods of realization on this key point. You could ask
any environmentalist the same question. I have never met one
with a good answer. But nearly all are convinced that their
solution will work, if they just keep trying hard enough....
To summarize, there are starting to be many signs that people
are seriously interested in these concepts, despite their unconventional
approach.
3. Do
you believe that the [name of organization] is perpetuating
the "exhort and inspire people to support proper practices?"
Yes, but they are probably unaware of it.
It is useful to "exhort and inspire people to support
proper practices." But the drawback is this is insufficient
to solve the solution adoption resistance side of the problem.
Because the [name of organization], along with the entire environmental
movement, is unaware of the distinction between the social
and technical sides of the problem, they are unaware of the
invisible trap they have fallen into.
The trap is the sustainability problem is mainly a social
behavior change resistance problem, but they are treating
it as if it's a technical problem. Thus nearly all effort
is directed towards finding better technical solutions, promoting
them, and when that fails, increasing the amount of "exhort
and inspire." Better would be to find out why change
resistance is so strong, and direct the movement's effort
to solving that side of the problem.
According to my analysis, reliance on Classical Activism is
the main reason environmentalists have been unable to solve
the sustainability problem for over 30 years now, despite brilliant
and heroic effort. However, I've discovered that when most
environmentalists hear this message, they get defensive and
some start shooting the messenger. But a few are able to get
past this stage, and a very few skip this reaction altogether.
Despite the doom and gloom of the lack of progress being made
on climate change and other problems, I remain confident that
we can solve the global environmental sustainability problem,
because there is a untried path that leads to untried solutions.
The path is the Analytical Method, which is based on the Scientific
Method, which is what has allowed science to solve huge, seemingly
impossible to solve problems. The most promising untried solution
elements are the three mentioned at the end of The Dueling
Loops of the Political Powerplace article: the Truth Test,
Truth Ratings, and Corruption Ratings. But I am sure more will
appear on further iterations of the problem solving process.
These three solution elements are mere examples of what is
possible with a whole new way of thwinking.
I wonder what John Muir would do if he saw where the movement
he founded is today?
4. What
if you had already convinced a group of environmentalists to
switch from Classical Activism to Analytical Activism? What
would be the next step?
Wow, what a welcome scenario! ;-)
Classical Activism (CA) and Analytical Activism (AA) are two
very different processes. CA is essentially no formal process.
It uses intuition instead, which is why it fails for difficult
problems. AA is a very formal process based on the Scientific
Method. Thus the main thing an environmental organization would
need to do to switch from CA to AA is individual training and
organization reengineering, centered around the various new
process elements.
Your question is getting a little ahead of where I am in writing
the book on Analytical Activism. The chapter on solution
convergence has solution elements describing how organizations
(and the movement) can transform themselves from CA to AA.
The solution elements that are already written up are:
1. The Initiation Package
A. The Precipitating Event - This is the publication of the
concept of AA. Some of this has already occurred, due to Thwink.org
and the 118 piece mailing in August 2005 to the Sierra Club.
But still, very few environmentalists have heard of these concepts.
B. Incremental Change Projects - These were described in the
previous email.
Your question essentially says that you are ready for the
second package:
2. The Top Talent Package
A. Unified Top Talent - This is training at the level of an
MBA in the aspects of AA. Until the movement can setup a program
at one or more colleges, it can go with its own training program.
But it still has to be very high quality, or it will not get
high quality results. I expect the Union of Concerned Scientists
would be the best place in the US to setup an initial training
program, because of their scientific bent and their proximity
to MIT, where systems dynamics was invented and the world's
best teachers teach.
B. Certification of individuals and organizations in problem
solving ability - The chief benefit of this is donors no longer
have to guess where to best direct their funds. This will cause
a rapid survival of the fittest shakeout. Only those with high
certifications will be left, which is what is needed if the
movement is to be able to solve difficult problems in record
time.
C. Peer Reviewed Analytical Activism Journals - Environmental
magazines like National Wildlife, Audubon, and Orion would
morph into mostly presenting the results of analyses and experiments,
in a popular, accessible style. New magazines would appear
to handle specialty areas. Because AA views all work as analysis
or experimentation, even articles on successful solutions are
really just more successful experiments.
D. A Guiding Coalition - This would resolve "the environmental
movement is fragmented" flaw. Note how the opposition
is incredibly well coordinated and speaks with one voice. Unless
the environmental movement does the same, it cannot push on
the high leverage points with coordinated, maximum force.
The next package is not yet written up, but it is not hard
to see what it should be:
3. The Analytical Method Application Package
A. Formal Process Management
B. Hypotheses Generation
C. Experimental Proof
D. Knowledge Base Management
As you can see, it is serious work to transform the entire
environmental movement. But your question was how to transform
a single group of environmentalists who have already decided
to switch. What would be their first step?
As I said above, the group would need to engage in individual
training and organization reengineering. If it's a small group
the reengineering is trivial. If large, the generic side of
reengineering is usually the hardest part. A medium size organization
of 10 to 100 people can go either way, depending on its culture.
First let's discuss a small group of 10 people or less. Unless
they already have one or more of these skills, they would need
training in these areas: formal process design and management,
systems thinking, systems dynamics, hypotheses generation,
experimentation, and complex social system analysis. The best
way to train is to combine theory with practice, by tackling
real problems as part of the training. So from day one they
would be working on some of the very same problems they have
already been working on--but with an entirely new problem solving
process.
Who the instructors are and how good the actual training is
will make a huge difference, so don't even consider taking
any shortcuts here.
Next let's see how a large organization could get started:
We would be pioneers, so there is not yet a large environmental
organization transformation to Analytical Activism blueprint
to follow. I would equate the transformation with what the
business world calls reengineering.
The best selling business book of the 1990s was Reengineering
the Corporation, by Hammer and Champy. It launched a
tidal wave of reengineering projects, for a good reason:
American industry was faced with a rapidly changing business
environment and was falling behind. This book and the mini-industry
it spawned helped many American businesses to catch up and
even excel in their markets. Reengineering has not allowed
businesses to solve all their problems, but it has made a
crucial overall difference.
The first step in any reengineering effort that hopes to succeed
is to get total commitment from top management. This may not
be easy in some cases, because it requires openly admitting
that your present management practices are less than satisfactory.
What can help here is to realize that it is not the managers
who are "bad." It is the process they have been using
that is at fault. By changing the total process used in running
the organization, the same people (with some replacements as
necessary, since a few will not be able to change) can accomplish
much more. This is because Total Effort x Total Process
= Productive Output. It is that simple.
Usually an organization does not have the capability to perform
its own first reengineering project. It must use outsiders.
This is so common that a mini-industry has appeared to fill
the void. There are plenty of poor reengineering consultants,
as in any industry. But there are also plenty of good ones.
A large problem is those firms needing to reengineer usually
do not have the ability to tell bad consultants from good ones.
To avoid this trap, get referrals, and even then, appraise
the consultant closely as the first few milestones pass.
It may be that the organization(s) you have in mind can do
self-reengineering. You can find out pretty quickly if they
can. First, how easily do they take to totally new better concepts,
on the logical strength of the concepts alone, without having
to depend on the opinion of others? Second, what is the organization's
status of the big four of organizational strength: strategy,
communication, change management, and process management? If
the org is strong in all these areas, they can easily do self-reengineering.
If weak, they need outside assistance. If somewhere in between,
they need at least some outside assistance. The key ability
is change management, which is the same as organization learning
ability. An org with good change mgt skills can learn anything
it needs to quickly.
What exactly is reengineering? It is overhauling the total process
an organization uses to achieve its goals. Hammer and Champy
define process on page 38 as: "a collection of activities
that takes one or more inputs and creates an output that is
of value to the customer." Because the total process
is improved, radical productivity increases are to be expected.
Quality improvements of factors of 2 to 10 are typical. But
because total process overhaul is such a large mental change
to the many people in an organization, there is the problem
of change resistance. This is such a frequent roadblock that
on page 221 Hammer and Champy say that 50% to 70% of reengineering
projects fail. You should be aware of this, and so should the
[name of organization], because we don't want that to happen
to us. There are ways to avoid failure.
To summarize, for a large organization the next step would
be to:
- Get top mgt to openly commit to a total reengineering project.
- From a process point of view, the goal of the project is to convert from
Classical to Analytical Activism.
- From a results point of view, the goal of the project is to convert from
being ineffectual in solving difficult problems like climate change to being
effectual. There are ways to measure effectiveness, and to thus measure project
success.
- Perform an initial assessment. You may even want several assessments, so
that you have a variety of inputs to base more reliable decisions on.
I do know one person, [name], who performs business assessments
regularly for the venture capital community. He is also pro
environmental, so much so that he and his family are considering
moving from Vancouver to Quebec province to setup a sustainable
farm, with [name] consulting on the side. Last time [name]
was in Atlanta I briefed him on the latest on my sustainability
project, so he is fairly up to speed on Analytical Activism.
In both cases, small or large, get everyone to read the material
on Thwink.org first.
5. How much time/money
would have to be invested to get to a place where high leverage
points are identified?
Can't say for many reasons, but there are
ways to find out:
First, who is the organization? What size is it? Let's assume
it is large. Second, until an initial assessment is done, it
is impossible to measure the factors affecting time and cost
of conversion.
Probably the best way to get a reasonably accurate range for
a time and cost estimate is to fund an reengineering project
time and cost assessment by a highly recommended consulting
firm - the one that would do the project or manage another
firm doing it. I know that many non-profits are allergic to
high priced consultants. But unless you can find some cheap
good ones, foregoing the expensive good ones would be penny
wise and pound foolish.
One rule to consider is that switching to the nuts and bolts
of Analytical Activism, like generating hypotheses, running
experiments, and building models, is probably going to be only
20% or so of the effort. The 80% is the whole idea of being
formal process driven and abandoning many strong held old habits.
It is the organizational momentum that takes 80% of the effort
to change. The actual new analytical practices are the easy
part. Because the 80% part is so generic and requires the most
effort, any good reengineering consultancy can help you with
that. The specialized training discussed earlier can handle
the 20%.
It would seem that once you have top mgt commitment, self-reengineering
would be easy. But experience shows this is not the case. I
hope you and others in the [name of organization] or the movement
will see this false assumption pitfall and avoid it, because
firmly established habitual behavior is usually difficult and
slow to change. There is also the problem that most people
are not naturally analytical oriented, and so in many cases
cannot learn analytical techniques.
There is another approach entirely: Your objective was "to
get to a place where high leverage points are identified." Well,
there may be a way to temporarily skip training people so they
can do another analysis or verify the one I've done. This is
to launch a project to experimentally verify whether the high
leverage points and solution elements identified in A Model
in Crisis are real or not. Politician ratings look the
most promising. A series of experiments could be performed
by a handful of the right people over a time span of a few
months for some artificial world experiments, plus however
long it took to perform some experiments on real world elections.
You could even launch two projects at once: this one and a
reengineering project.
Also, you don't have to start with an entire organization.
Typically a smaller unit is selected that is eager to try a
whole new way. This reduces investment cost and speeds the
project. Then, if it succeeds, that unit serves as a role model
for the rest of the organization. As a bonus, the major kinks
will have been shaken out, and conversion for the rest of the
organization will be smoother, faster, and less expensive.
For example, a [name of organization] office may have several
scientist types who would be especially adept in picking up
the elements of Analytical Analysis. Or you may know of a smallish
environmental org that is very scientific oriented. Either
would be fertile ground.
It may be that in a large org, a new department needs to be
created to perform the core work of AA. This is analogous to
the R&D departments that work so well for so many businesses.
For the environmental movement to succeed as a whole, it may
be that one or more new orgs specializing in core AA work need
to be created. Or existing orgs could commit to specialized
areas.
6. How
often does the process need to be repeated to stay current?
The process itself will tell you that.
At first major new iterations are required. For example, a
group of analysts needs to perform a second iteration of my
analysis to see if the first iteration is correct or not. It
probably won't be, and will need improvement.
But after a few iterations you will graduate into what's known
as continuous improvement. In that stage, you are never
starting from scratch or near the beginning. Instead, you are
improving what already exists. Generally this phase is achieved
after a year or two. Thereafter it is rare to have to do major
new iterations, unless you are in an industry like chip manufacture,
which goes through periodic overhauls as chips sizes shrink.
For example, I worked for NASA for a year while a coop student
in college. Once it settled on a general process, NASA has
not had to redo its process since the 1960s. All that has happened
since then is continuous improvement, which is a joy to behold
and a fantastic atmosphere to work in. It's like being surrounded
by excellence all the time. I hope that experience comes to
environmental organizations.
Well, these are good questions and are not easy to answer.
I hope I've helped you make some progress on them.
Thanks for such probing questions,
Jack
