Foreword

Assume hope, all you who enter here.

 

When he was still in prison, serving a sentence of four and half years’ hard labour for his human rights activities in defiance of the communist regime, long before he became president of Czechoslovakia—and long before, I suppose, there was even the remotest notion in his mind that he would be president or indeed that democracy would be restored any time soon in his beloved country—Valclav Havel wrote this about hope in a letter to his wife, Olga: “Hope is a dimension of the spirit. It is not outside us, but within us.” Many months later he wrote: “The more I think about it, the more I incline to the opinion that the most important thing of all is not to lose hope and faith in life itself…This doesn’t mean closing one’s eyes to the horrors of the world—quite the contrary, in fact.” Havel made a critical distinction between hope and optimism: “[Hope] is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” Havel’s story and his wisdom are lessons for all of us who have a desire for transformative effect in a world that so often seems so unyielding.

 

Here’s another: in the mid-fifteenth century, for several decades prior to the European discovery of America, people were certain that the end was nigh. There was a kind of apocalypse watch in effect. The authoritative Nuremberg Chronicle provided blank pages for readers to record signs and portents of the impending end.

 

Of course, the end was not nigh. Nor were the riches of India. But when Columbus sailed out on the curved sea, everything changed. An unimaginable future began to take shape.

 

If history shows us anything, it’s that the obdurate world does yield. Change—surprising and sometimes radical change—does happen. The world does turn on its head every once in a while. And what seemed almost impossible looking forward seems almost inevitable looking back.

We are living at a point in history when the need and desire for change is profound. Our current trajectory is no longer sustainable. We cannot ignore the compelling environmental and social challenges that vex today’s world because they will undermine us all. We cannot dismiss the fractures in our own communities, or the fissures between those of us fortunate to live in comfort and the massive number of our fellow human beings who live under the crush of poverty around the world.

 

It is a pivotal time. We need to be change-makers—and very capable ones at that. Over the past two hundred years, human society has developed exceptional ingenuities, proficiencies, organizations and systems for the task of making things—from steam engines to microchips. Going forward, we must learn to be equally adept at the task of making change. It’s an essential modern competency. In fact, the challenge of change has begun to draw an interesting and diverse assortment of players, and their numbers have been growing over the last few years. I have been in the business of social change for more than twenty-five years. The recent growth in the field has been astonishing to observe. It is evidence of the urgency of the challenges we face and an indication that social change has moved from the margins to the mainstream. But how can we move the dial on our most complex and seemingly intractable social problems? How can we be more than just anxious critics of the status quo or wishful thinkers about a better future, and become actual and effective agents for large-scale transformations?

 

These are the questions that Getting to Maybe sets out to address. There are no simple formulas—serious and significant social change necessarily involves recognizing and dealing with complex systems, which seem to operate with a logic and life of their own, are far from inert, and battle (like the living organisms with which we are more familiar) for their own preservation. But if you’re willing to open your mind to the nature of these systems, you will discover a world of possibility.

 

This book is about the art, the science and the experience of possibility. Its bold purpose is to change the way we change the world. Again and again, you’ll see from the examples it contains that change seems to be a process that can be tapped but not muscled. The science of complexity, admirably brought to life in the pages that follow, helps us to see the world through a different lens, to make a fundamental shift in perception—from complexity as obstacle to complexity as opportunity.

I have been asked by the authors to say something about the genesis of this book. The story goes back to the fall of 1999, when I was approached by a senior executive at DuPont Canada to help them with the development of their corporate citizenship strategy. He told me they were not interested in just making charitable contributions to worthy causes—they wanted to find a way to make a significant difference. As I began my investigations and came to learn more about DuPont, I was struck by the fact that this is one of the world’s great innovation-driven companies. The culture of innovation is powerful inside DuPont and has been central to the company’s success throughout its long history. As DuPont says, “We didn’t get where we wanted to go by taking baby steps. We got there by taking leaps…leaps that have changed everything.”

 

Because my own work involves the development of large-scale social change projects, and because I’ve had the opportunity over the years to tackle a very broad range of social challenges (ranging from AIDS prevention to environmental protection, from civic engagement to using sport and play to improve the lives of the world’s most disadvantaged children) with a broad range of clients (in the public, private and voluntary sectors), I had become increasingly convinced of the need for radical innovation linked to a systems approach amongst those who are working to make a difference.

 

So I made a pretty bold recommendation to DuPont. I suggested that they make social innovation itself their cause of choice: help foster the development of new mindsets and new skill-sets for achieving large-scale pattern-shifting impact. Draw on the company’s own invaluable knowledge assets—developed over many years by being deliberate, thoughtful and scientific about complex systems and the human, organizational and collaborative processes necessary to achieve innovation. These “processes,” as DuPont put it, “get partners working together to a higher-order purpose on complex challenges to achieve breakthrough results.”

 

I fully expected to be shot down. This suggestion was about as far out on a limb as any corporate citizenship program I was aware of. It was difficult to envision, more difficult still to communicate. It would take a long time and a lot of hard work before there were any payoffs. It had no simple hooks to give it ready emotional resonance for the public.

 

But DuPont has a big appetite for bold, problem-solving challenges. They not only got the concept, they leapt at it. Ron Zelonka, who was the executive vice-president in charge of the Research and Business Development Unit, as well as a brilliant scientist, created the Social Innovation Enterprise under his wing, and hired two staff members from within DuPont—Colleen Brydon and Chris DeGrow—to run it. (A few years later, Lori Summers would take the helm.)

 

As a first step, I convened a round table of about a dozen leaders from Canada’s social sector to meet with the DuPont team and explore the opportunity to promote social innovation and refine our initial thinking. One of the participants we invited was Frances Westley, a co-author of this book. Frances had designed and was directing the McGill-McConnell Program for National Voluntary Sector Leaders, an executive MBA for the non-profit sector. It was unique in North America, truly innovative in its approach and highly consequential in its effects. I think it’s fair to say that the attendees were impressed by DuPont’s commitment to foster social innovation. By the end of the session they recognized the seriousness of the company’s intention, the depth of knowledge they could bring to the challenge, and the rare combination of courage and humility with which they were venturing forth.

 

Once the Social Innovation Enterprise was operational, we formed a working alliance with a community development initiative called Opportunities 2000, whose mission was “to create bold solutions that reduce and prevent poverty” in the Waterloo region of Ontario, about ninety kilometres down the road from DuPont Canada’s headquarters (for a full description of the project see 5. Let It Find You). Soon after, DuPont formed another key partnership with the Ontario Science Centre. The science centre was at the formative stages of a dynamic new venture—its leap into the twenty-first century—driven by a goal congruent with that of the Social Innovation Enterprise: to promote a culture of innovation and collaborative problem-solving to help equip a new generation to meet the challenges and opportunities of the future.

 

In early 2002, Chris, Colleen and I began to consider the best path for the Social Innovation Enterprise. We shared a conviction that the richest opportunity lay upstream, in research and knowledge development: advancing knowledge about social innovation so that it could advance the work of change-makers. We reconnected with Frances Westley to explore the possibility of forming a joint initiative at McGill. From these deliberations, the McGill-Dupont Social Innovation Think Tank was born.

 

Frances is a master at many things, not the least of which is the design of brilliant cross-cutting collaborative processes. She recruited two eminent academic colleagues, Brenda Zimmerman and Michael Patton, who eventually also became her co-authors. In addition to their own scholarship, they, too, had considerable experience on the social change front, working with voluntary sector and government organizations. Warren Nilsson and Nada Fara, both doctoral candidates at McGill’s Faculty of Management, came on board as research associates and active participants. Along with Chris, Colleen and myself, this made up the think-tank team.

 

We were a hybrid group and we followed a hybrid process. We brought ideas, insights and hunches shaped by our respective individual experiences to the table. We drew on research and theory about transformative processes from a broad cross-section of sciences—from biology and ecology to behavioural psychology and management to network analysis, chaos and complexity theory. We identified a variety of examples of successful social change initiatives and examined them for detectable—and informative—patterns of congruence. We consulted leading social innovators to gain insights about lived experiences. And we engaged some world-leading thinkers, among them Henry Mintzberg, C.S. (Buzz) Holling, William Isaacs and Thomas Homer-Dixon, to participate in our working sessions.

 

Getting to Maybe was born of those inspiring discussions with some of the leading players in the field. What drove us was not the idea that we could create something definitive, but the hope that it could be generative. That we could constellate some of the diverse knowledge of transformative processes with actual case studies of significant social change. We believed that ways of seeing could change ways of doing, that influencing perspective could influence practice that in turn could influence progress. Coming out of the work of the think-tank, and drawing on their own rich experience as academics and practitioners, Frances, Brenda and Michael have created Getting to Maybe.

Perhaps Getting to Maybe strikes you as an odd title for a book whose core message is a powerful statement of hope and profound possibility. Until you recognize that “maybe” so accurately describes our fundamental relationship to the world. It is a relationship in which time is one of the critical dimensions—a relationship to what is ahead, a relationship that is constantly unfolding.

 

The world ahead is what calls to us, compels our judgments and commands our actions.

 

The world commands us. We do not command it. And yet—it yields. So “maybe” becomes a potent word for the brave, the inventive, the adventurous. Maybe, just maybe, we can discover a way to save a species, prevent an epidemic of disease or violence, help lift people out of poverty and indignity, break the grip of intolerance, lighten our footprint on the fragile earth.

 

“Maybe” comes with no guarantees, only a chance. But “maybe” has always been the best odds the world has offered to those who set out to alter its course—to find a new land across the sea, to end slavery, to enable women to vote, to walk on the moon, to bring down the Berlin Wall.

 

“Maybe” is not a cautious word. It is a defiant claim of possibility in the face of a status quo we are unwilling to accept. And as you will see from reading this book, transforming the world is possible because the very complex forces of interconnection that make systems resistant to change are the same ones that can be harnessed to propel change.

 

“Maybe” is hope incarnate—for all but the complacent and the cynical.

 

This book is for the rest of you.

—ERIC YOUNG, PRESIDENT, E.Y.E.
KOEYE, B.C., JUNE 2006