Humainologie creative dialogue Wed Dec 1 on Highly Innovative Approaches to Complex Societal problem

“If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships - the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

“We are losing the skills of cooperation needed to make a complex society work.” – Richard Sennett, Together: The Rituals, Pleasures, and Politics of Cooperation

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” - Henry David Thoreau

Two ideas are better than one, and the more the merrier. Each of our weekly events is a creative dialogue, designed to foster group genius. There are apocalyptic challenges on the road ahead. Whether we survive them and flourish, or instead just do business as usual, is up to us. We can come up with more and better ideas than I can.

Two things that will have a decisive influence on our future are human relationships and human imagination. You are cordially invited to come up with an idea to improve each creative dialogue and then lead the way in implementing the idea. Suggest a topic for our focus. You could facilitate or co-facilitate. If you want me to help with background preparation, I would be happy to do that. Or suggest an idea to add spice to each event, such as the link to the front page of a recent edition of the New York Times or the link to an interesting article from the good news network. We can share our thoughts about such things at check-in.

Our topic for dialogue this Wednesday December 1 is Highly Innovative Approaches to Complex Societal Problems. Here are three ideas to spark your creativity:

1. Describe in 100 words or fewer a major problem or challenge we human beings face currently, preferably a problem that will probably get worse unless we find innovative solutions to counteract it. Your description could refer to a very large problem such as the climate crisis, or to one specific part of it such as people driving their fossil-fuel-powered vehicles too much. Also keep in mind that two problems usually thought of as distinct can be related. For example, the climate crisis can be related to our difficulty talking to strangers.

2. Now come up with at least three innovative ideas for possible solutions to the problem (or some part of the problem).

3. Pick one of the three possible solutions and make up a story about how you have brilliantly implemented that solution. The outcome of this (totally fabricated) story is that an important part of the original problem you had described seems to be improving very quickly where you implemented your solution. In effect you are writing a piece of short fiction (let's say flash fiction, under 1,000 words). Try to give it substantive details about how you did it, rather than aiming for entertainment or a beautiful prose style. You are the main character, and you are describing (perhaps as in a TED talk or as in a step-by-step guide to help someone in another part of the world replicate what you have accomplished) exactly how you achieved this extraordinary success.

And here is the link for our playing field, provided by Shinobu:

Topic: Humainologie Dialogue Session Time: December 1, 2021 06:30 PM Mountain Time (US and Canada) Every week on Wed, until Dec 29, 2021, 9 occurrence(s) Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89600374916?pwd=OXg2dkF4NEtsMmNzSkdRdW1kdUV5UT09 Meeting ID: 896 0037 4916 Passcode: 12345

Arthur

Book: (Zaid Hassan) The Social Labs Revolution: A New Approach to Solving Our Most Complex Challenges (2014)

In the Preface, Zaid Hassan states that “violent conflict is a largely avoidable product of ineffective approaches to complex social issues.” Specifically, the “planning-based approaches - so common across government, civil society, and even business – represent a neo-Soviet paradigm, one that is spectacularly out of step with what we now know about complexity…and about how change happens.”

The author states four goals of this book, beginning with “To make the case that the planning-based approach of addressing complex social challenges leads to certain widespread social collapse.” The other goals refer to principles, practice, and theory of social labs. Although our own initiatives here in Calgary are quite different from social labs, many of the concepts in the book are relevant for our purposes. People tend to be most enthusiastic about ideas they themselves have come up with, and therein can be found the power of solutions. Accordingly, the social lab has three characteristics. 1) It includes diverse participants working in a team, “ideally drawn from different sectors of society, such as government, civil society, and the business community.” 2) It is experimental, i.e., it consists of “ongoing and sustained efforts” to find effective solutions. A “portfolio of promising solutions” is being tested at any given point in the process. 3) It is systemic, meaning it tries to identify and address the “root cause of why things are not working in the first place.” Hassan is critical of how research into solutions for social challenges is funded. “Instead of supporting talented and committed teams to seek permanent solutions to our most serious challenges…we fund tightly controlled five-year plans. This leaves little space for learning, innovation, and change,” and he refers to this as a “neo-Soviet” approach. While it is important to measure progress toward a goal (solution), it is also important not to let measurement put the process in a straitjacket. “We have to ask ourselves not only what does it mean to be winning or losing in the social sphere but what does it actually mean to play?”

Chapter 1 defines a complex social challenge as having three characteristics: 1) The situation is emergent, that is, it is constantly changing in ways that are not predictable. 2) The second characteristic is that “there is a constant flow of information to negotiate.” (3) The third characteristic is that “actors are constantly adapting their behavior.” As an example of a complex situation, he uses a violent conflict arising in Yemen which he had been asked to help mitigate. As he observed the government officials and others he observed at a decision-making conference, he witnessed the government officials behaving in a way that would be called “business as usual.” Assembling an automobile can be accomplished using a “business as usual” approach. Complex social challenges are typically dealt with by a power elite in a similar way, using planning and familiar practices. That is exactly why such situations are likely to turn violent.

In Chapter 2, the author describes four “spheres” that define contemporary “business-as-usual (BAU) approaches.” The developmental sphere involves efforts to meet basic needs such as food and water. The humanitarian sphere involves responses to unexpected crises such as natural disasters. The security sphere involves responses to people who become desperate when the developmental and humanitarian responses have failed. “Security is typically containment of grievances.” Security forces arrest protesters, sometimes shoot them, and in general suppress popular response to intolerable failures of developmental and humanitarian efforts. “When a security response is deemed insufficient, we are in a situation of war.” This is the “battle sphere,” as we have seen in situations such as those in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. “At the heart of all BAU responses sit experts. And what experts do in response to all social challenges is formulate plans.” The experts typically have no “skin in the game.” They are detached from the situation on the ground. The plans are implemented using “technical problem solving.” Expensive activity around complex social challenges fails again and again. The “Vietnam War is a textbook case of this.”

Chapter 3, “The Sustainable Food Lab: From Farm to Fork,” includes a concise explanation of why market forces cannot be relied upon for feeding the world’s poor. Unlike television sets, food is necessary for life; and “high demand for scarce resources is a recipe for high prices and high profit margins.” That recipe is not helpful to people on the edge of poverty or starvation. The membership of the lab team was chosen with “diverse and influential” in mind – from various parts of the world, various organizations and political outlooks, and with gender balance. While the purpose of the lab was stated in various ways (sustainable food production), the definition of “sustainable” was left up to participants to decide for themselves, as they travelled to different food production places and learned that it meant environmental sustainability in one place, financial sustainability in another. The lab is not a “project,” instead it is designed as a platform to generate a constant flow of ideas for projects.

Chapter 4 is about a social lab directed specifically at the problem of child malnutrition in India. The story sounds like a modern version of the Tower of Babel. Friction and failures are necessary for progress. As he left India, he was “exhausted, burned out, and disappointed….” However, he was also more experienced in how to make progress. The failures and friction of the social lab effort in India had been necessary to produce its legacy, which included significant improvements in childhood nutrition, as documented by UNICEF; a Day Care Centre for children whose mothers were working, with over a thousand children benefiting; and a life skills program for girls, with 7,800 completing the program.

Chapter 5, “The New Ecologies of Capital,” emphasizes the importance of producing diverse forms of capital: “Changing complex social systems requires that actors have competencies (human capital), the knowledge and understanding of what is to be changed (intellectual capital), the infrastructure and services required to deliver services (physical capital), the ability to pay for whatever is needed in order to do their work (financial capital), and the networks to organize themselves (social capital).” Depleting any of those diverse forms of capital can lead to catastrophe.

Chapter 6 emphasizes that agile people respond quickly and resiliently to friction and failures, as they actualize their vision. He lists three rules for evaluating effective practice: 1) Make what works stronger. 2) Let go of what doesn’t work. 3) Discover what you don’t have. Practical experience enables us to grow. We can enhance that growth by getting off the beaten track of our daily lives. For example, they had taken participants in the childhood malnutrition project to visit the families of malnourished children and eat what they were eating as one part of efforts to understand the whole system.

Chapter 6 emphasizes practice; Chapter 7, “Steps toward a Theory of Systemic Action,” emphasizes theory that is generated by practice. Experience with the concept of a “diverse and influential” team had taught him to change his way of thinking about “influential.” Influence spreads “through relatively small, tight clusters, but a few members of these clusters are weakly connected to other clusters. It’s through these weak links that information, viruses, and connections in general occur.” Be sure to design an iterative process. “The simplest form of an iterative process is trial, error, observation, and reflection.” That’s how to come up with a good theory and update it continuously based on new information coming in. The third requirement is to actively create environments that foster creativity and are “supportive of diversity and difference.”

Chapter 8 describes things to do when starting a social lab, such as clarify intention. Clarity of intention inspires effective action, whether in planning your day or in starting a social lab that will attract enthusiastic, sustained participation. Recruit people who have latent enthusiasm for the expressed intention, create a space that fosters their own creativity in the direction of the lab’s intention, and set a sustainable pace of progress. The network will become a mutual support and information system, a tremendously valuable resource. Contribute to the network and draw from it. Ideally, people on the lab team are as self-motivated as world class athletes and “believe in the need to shift a system from its current state to a desired state.” In other words, insofar as possible, they should be self-motivated, visionary global citizens.