See the Big in the Small
Five Lessons from System Shifters
This is the second of five lesson we’ve drawn from our learning festival Making the System Shift which brought together more than sixty system shifters from around the world. Links in the text will take you to videos of the relevant sessions. The first lesson was to start from the possibility, not the problem.
Lesson Two: See the Big in the Small
System shifters are grounded, practical people. But they work with a bigger picture in mind, one which shows where they sit in the larger systems they want to influence and the alternative, better system they are trying to create. They are practical visionaries, creating practical solutions which carry the kernel of an alternative system.
A system shifting entrepreneur shifts the context in which they work, to create the conditions in which their venture can flourish. Their impact comes not just from the scale that their venture reaches but also through their influence on the wider systems which surround them.
We heard several versions of that story.
Sometimes system shifters start their work with a strong, enticing sense of the bigger picture they want to create even if it lacks detail.
Karyn McCluskey shifted how Glasgow tackled knife crime by reframing it as a public health challenge, a communicable disease that needed to be eliminated at source through prevention. Instead of arresting perpetrators the police needed to work with schools, employers and community groups to prevent the crime in the first place. McCluskey was an experienced police officer, and before that a public health nurse; she had a clear picture in her head of how an alternative could work and the roles that different partners could play to bring that about.
Sometimes system shifters start by mapping the wider systems in which they work, to identify leverage points where their intervention can have the greatest impact because they shift the underlying dynamics which drive outcomes. Philip Essl from the social investment group Big Society Capital explained how it tries to identify key leverage points in systems where a well targeted investment can catalyse change. There are many ways to create these bigger pictures from system mapping to the three horizons model.
Yet the bigger picture only comes into focus as the work unfolds. As entrepreneurs start to probe how to move their venture forward they bring to light how a system works and what stands in their way. By responding to these obstacles they start to create a picture of the alternative. It’s like creating a map as you undertake a journey, in which the ultimate destination only becomes clear once you are well underway.
Nikishka Iyengar is a great example. Iyengar started out trying to create something that had never before existed in the US state of Georgia: a cooperative live-work space for social and creative entrepreneurs. Iyengar quickly found that there was no provision in Georgia state law for a cooperative and the idea of a live-work community blew the minds of most people in the local real estate industry. Iyengar had to become highly knowledgeable about the systems which stood in her way. She became a system shifter out of necessity: to grow her venture she had to campaign to change the law and find allies in real estate and finance.
As she put it: “We are very fundamentally positioning ourselves to repair harms and inequities that the current system has engendered… We’re not just entrepreneurs, but we’re also community organisers… building that new narrative and building something that is so tangible, that then spreads and gets amplified.”
Anne Beth-Sorensen from Homes for All in Denmark told a similar story. An initiative which started by promoting a specific solution - providing new homes for people who were homeless - became an alliance to prevent homelessness, which involved influencing the national conversation, helping policy makers to learn from the success of other countries, showing how homeless shelters could change their business models. Homes for All started by being solution-centric: it wanted to have impact by scaling its particular approach. It became system-centric when its many partners realised they would have greater impact by shifting the entire system towards the goal of preventing homelessness. Together they formed the bigger picture of the system that needed shifting and the destination they were heading towards.
Seeing the bigger picture which their work illuminates can be intimidating for entrepreneurs. How can a small fledgling venture shift a much wider system? Yet it has several important advantages. It helps to: identify partners and forge alliances with others who are part of that picture and make visible where to intervene in a system to influence it.
System shifters are bearers of forces for change in society which are much larger than them. That is where their power and potential comes from. That only becomes available when entrepreneurs are both curious and generous about the wider currents they work with. That’s how big change comes about: the historian Bo Lidegaard opened the festival by talking about how the Danish welfare state rose with practical innovation in response to waves of pressure for social change, first from farmers then from workers and women. Narratives that shift systems, says Ella Saltmarshe of the Long Time Project, have a degree of humility; they recognise this longer lineage of change that system shifters are part of.
System shifting entrepreneurs make an explicit connection with these much larger forces. Rodney Foxworth put his community wealth building work at Common Future in the context of long movements for racial justice. Joe Nelson explained how the work of the SeaAlaska Trust, with its 100-year investment horizon, sat at the meeting point between movements for indigenous reparation, climate change and economic development to address deep seated inequalities. Willemijn de Longh, explained how the Dutch non profit Commonland was helping communities to devise strategies for community economic development which were both socially inclusive and ecologically reparative.
All of these are providing small working models of the much larger systems we need for a better shared future. Small ventures can have a big influence when entrepreneurs act with a bigger picture in mind, to channel deeper forces for change, to influence the context in which they work.
What aspects of the wider context do you need to shift for your innovation to be successful: social norms, legislation, professional practices, financial flows?
How will you create your map of the system you want to change; where do you sit in that map; who else is there with you and where do you hope your journey will take you?
What are the wider, deeper social changes that you want to give expression to?
The next lesson - how coherence creates leverage - will be out this time next week.
