After The Nudge
"What should be different now?" My colleague in Detroit and I have been collaborating on re-envisioning Foresight's consulting practice for a few months now. Poised for our public launch, we paused and considered this question one afternoon last week in light of the election. I started to learn about and practice Systems Thinking & Design more than 15 years ago, finding it a logical extension of my interest in sustainable design and social innovation. There is a lot to get wrong, including looking for singular fulcrum points, thinking systems are always slow to change, and not considering how even well-intentioned and reasoned approaches can actually make matters worse. Power, root causes, and empathy can all be overlooked. Systems are often more complex than they initially appear to be, but they always function because of some fundamental structure and logic, however complex and sometimes contradictory to what might seem rational to us. Systems projects can take different forms, and even seem initially innocuous, whether a strategic plan, a philanthropic or investing strategy, or convening of colleagues working within the same ecosystem, to mention but a few types on which I've worked. Last week revealed some significant and disturbing insight about what will be overlooked, if not sacrificed, to placate a conjectured sense of threat and loss. The conditions of my work will certainly be changing within the upcoming stress test of American Democracy, but not its fundamental purpose. Inflecting systems is essential to human liberation. However, many times we don't get to choose how that happens, but rather only how we will respond.
