Dialogue 2 - Thinking Like a Movement: How to Approach Intractable Social Issues
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How do we move from creating social innovations to sustaining them? That is, how do we embed them into our social systems and institutions so that they endure? In this dialogue we looked at the working principles, patterns and attributes that contribute to the sustainability of innovations - in particular, those that address "intractable" social problems.

Summary of the Dialogue

Sustainability
In this context, "sustainability" doesn't refer to an organization's financial sustainability. Rather, it refers to the impact, durability and scale of the innovation.

From innovation to sustainability - PLAN as an example
PLAN is an example of a social innovation. It can be described as an innovation because it:

• Poses a different question: "What is a good life?"
• Uses a different model: Social Enterprise
• Operates from a different paradigm: Contribution and Citizenship

To achieve sustainability, PLAN needs to get its principles, concepts and values into the "water supply". This will happen when we've succeeded in embedding a full citizen perspective into our social structures and institutions, and in changing the cultural consciousness from needs and inability to contribution and participation. This is not a quickly achievable objective - it will likely take a generation or two.

PLAN's methodology for sustainability is fourfold:

• Doing - PLAN's day-to-day work with families
• Sharing - replication and dissemination
• Changing - policy and regulatory
• Inspiring - taking insights about caring citizenship into the broader sphere

Each of these operates at a different scale and on a different time frame.

C-Change
C-Change is a multisectoral collaboration on social innovation based on a set of underlying principles:

• Belief that massive Change is possible
• Willingness to embrace Complexity (i.e. multiple actions across multiple time frames, sectors and scales)
• Context is significant (i.e. time, place, resonance)
• Continuous innovation is necessary (i.e. there is no permanent solution)

The goal of C-Change is to bring about a sea-change in both consciousness and action, so that together we can begin to solve intractable social problems. By "intractable" we do not mean "impossible to solve." Rather, it refers to deeply rooted social challenges, such as poverty, homelessness, isolation and so on, which persist over time despite multiple interventions. Other words people suggested to describe these challenges were "chronic" and "embedded".

The question arose of how we might understand complexity. Vickie explained it by distinguishing it from "complicated." Whereas a complicated issue requires strategy, a complex issue - for example, raising a child - has no specific strategy. It's multi-disciplinary, continuously evolving, and often ambiguous or paradoxical.

C-Change can be seen as being "more about process and evolving change rather than focusing on fixed outcomes and end-point solutions. This allows for celebration of small successes and recognizes the need for ongoing attention so that innovation becomes a lifelong practice."

Common patterns, attributes and practices
Al and Vickie have traveled across Canada looking at social innovations and meeting with changemakers. In the course of their travels they have observed common patterns, attributes and practices among individuals, groups, coalitions and movements addressing deeply rooted social challenges.

Leadership attributes
Changemakers tend to be:

• Bold, ambitious, with a big vision
• Collaborative/Connectors: An example is BCAPI in Saint John, a coalition of high-profile business people who are bringing business people together to end poverty in Saint John, collaborating with each other and consulting with people living in poverty
• Communicators: "Visionaries make the truth visible"
• Comfortable with paradox and ambiguity: Willing to acknowledge they don't have all the answers
• Self-sufficient: taking personal responsibility to address challenges and recognizing they have the capacity to do so

Essential patterns - Tools and processes

• Convening: Creating coalitions, networks, learning groups.
• Making it easy to do the right thing: For example, the blue box program makes recycling easy. Often involves reframing the issue - e.g. PLAN reframed disability agenda from "what services are needed?" to "what is a good life?"
• Navigating the relationship between power, policy and politics
• Thinking like a movement: This involves thinking beyond initial actions and usual partnerships - e.g. the AIDS movement created coalitions across the AIDS community, each using different tactics
• Utilizing market forces and assets of constituency: For example, the GLBT movement focused on the market force their members represent

Examples of social innovations/movements

• Alcoholics Anonymous
• CNIB
• Blue Box
• AIDS Movement
• Service Clubs
• Slow Food Movement

Resources

Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future, by Peter Senge, Joseph Jaworski, C. Otto Scharmer, Betty Sue Flowers

Reinventing Accountability for the 21st Century, by Simon Zadek

Asset Building for Social Change: Pathways to Large-Scale Social Impact, Ford Foundation

Stanford Social Innovation Review

NextNB - A New Brunswick initiative setting the ground for profound change
 
Changemakers Solution Mosaic
 
Society for Organizational Learning
 
Skoll Foundation

Theory of Change

Jean Bateman offered the following additional books as resources:
Blue Ocean Strategy, by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne (Harvard University Press, 2005)
The World is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century, by Thomas L. Friedman (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2005)

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