𖠫 Hold Outcomes Lightly, It's The Cycles That Hold Us - Kiessel - 2024
# Do we need missions for systemic change?
[…] declaring outcomes makes it seem like some day we can solve all our problems, or that our problems can be solved in isolation. But we work in a dynamic, dualistic, and ever-changing world, which will exist long after any program ends.
The implication, of course, is that goal pursuit in complex systems change is a loose goose chase. Kiessel argues that, for changemakers working in complex systems, outcomes are a tool not for engaging in our work but for focusing our perspective. They help us to see what’s important, but they don’t help us do the work. This runs in parallel with James Clear’s maxim in Atomic Habits: ”We don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems,” and Annie Duke’s concept of thinking in bets. Dreaming about how much we want something and thinking about the specific things we want has a very limited effect on actually getting the thing. Instead, we need to find the right actions to take and connections to make so that the thing happens to us.
Consider an intensely wicked problem: getting kids into the bath. Ostensibly, the goal we want is clean kids (and a bit of relaxing fun would be nice, too). Note, first, that to fill the bath, we don’t actually pour water in the bath ourselves. The outcome we want is a full bath, but to do that, we turn a handle to change the pressure in our plumbing. We touch the water to make sure it’s the right temperature: not cool, but not too hot either! And we observe the bath “system,” watching the water level rise so that we may turn the handle to shut off the flow when it reaches the right level.
The second outcome, getting the kids in the bath, is more instructive. Is the easiest way simply picking up a child, removing them from whatever they were doing, and placing them in the water? Anyone who has bathed a kid knows that this might work sometimes, but it’s just as likely to cause crying and chaos — e.g., if the kid had been doing something else that they were enjoying, or if they had decided that this was one of those days were they weren’t going to bathe, etc. It is far better to make the bath a joyful place, and to invite the kiddos’ participation in shaping it to be joyful: ”Who wants to add the bubbles for the bubble bath?”
Antoine de Saint-Exupery said it best: “If you want your kids to be clean, do not scrub them with a sponge; instead, teach them to yearn for the warm and bubbly sea.”
It isn’t systemic change if we just participate in the system by forcibly manufacturing the outcome we want ourselves. When dealing with wicked problems, that probably won’t even work the first time, let alone reproducibly. Instead, systemic changemaking work involves (re)designing the system — often by changing the way we and others participate in it — so that the thing we want happens regardless of whether we’re there to see it.
What does it even mean to not focus on outcomes? Kiessel advocates that changemakers need to adopt a rhythmic pattern of working: focus on the outcomes to gain perspective, then focus on the work of delivering our programs or reviewing the next round of grant applications, then after a while pick your head up again to view the whole system. If you don’t do this intentionally, it will happen anyway, and could be disastrous:
What is possible today may not be what is possible in the future. Inevitably one day you will come up for a deep breath of air, to zoom out, only to realize that even though you delivered exactly what you had hoped, the tide around you had shifted and it was no longer what is most needed. In fact, you may be going the opposite direction or have failed to notice that there is a rock behind you to hold on to. These are the learnings that can be most meaningful and feel the most catastrophic.
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Especially if we weren’t expecting to ask efficacy questions at all, the answer to these questions may mean that we need to renegotiate funding, relationships, and step into steep, uncomfortable learning. It may mean asking unexpecting people to be willing to make big changes. Contracts, funding relationships, job descriptions, functional roles, and organizational models… for the most part, none of them were designed for us to flex, especially in this way.
If instead you adopt a changemaker’s rhythm, you can dance with the system:
[…] when zooming out does reveal that what’s the ‘right thing’ has shifted, no one is surprised. We’ve seen it coming. It may not be easy, but it’s why we are here. Folks get to work creatively imagining what may be possible now as they build on what has been learned and grieve what needs to end. Then, assuming we’re still needed, we begin again […]
Yet I am curious about the need to think about outcomes at all. Is there a way to build habits, organizations, partnerships, ecosystems, and protocols that work on better first principles? Do we need a mission at all? Or what happens if we only have missions that are about how we participate — what we do, rather than what we want to happen as a result of our doing?