I have a little list….

About ten years ago, a Frenchman published a book with the great title How to Talk about Books you haven’t Read… and proceeded to do so….

I suppose I supply the same service to my readers - as the two recent little E-books How did admin reform get to be so sexy? and Dispatches to the next generation – the short version each had at their core annotated (and hyperlinked) reading lists. And such lists have indeed begun to figure as a regular item in the posts.

The previous post expressed some frustration – since I couldn’t quite pin the idea down which had been bothering me the entire week…it was something to do with the world having escaped “our” control, But it was also something to do with the mental models we used to make sense of the world….

So here is the list of books which landed up on my desk – with, inevitably, a few highly opinionated comments….

These titles, it should be emphasised, do not claim to represent anything except the vagaries of my purchases and interests. Half of them just happen to be in my library - but another nine are E- books (you can therefore all access) which reflect important stages in the very slow understanding which has overtaken us in the past half century that we have allowed a perverse linear/mechanistic model of society to occupy our minds…….

The date of the first book is 1967……. That’s 50 years ago….a long time for an idea to gestate and develop….The last book arrived only a few weeks ago and didn’t seem to be part of this conversation – but as I started it, I realised it was all about….mental models!

The Books which landed up on my desk

Titles from 1967	Clarity Factor	Significance	full book?
The Costs of Economic Growth; EJ Mishan (1967)	1	The first time an economist warns of this
The Limits to Growth; Club of Rome (1972)	2	The book which made the warning global
The Sane Alternative – a choice of futures; James Robertson (1978)	1	“Small is Beautiful” (1973) was seen as partisan, if not extreme. James Robertson’s book put the case in more balanced terms	Yes
The Whale and the Reactor – the search for limits in an age of high technology; Langdon Winner (1986)	2	Amazingly prescient book -	Yes
The Fifth Discipline; the art and practice of the learning organisation; Peter Senge (1990)	3	Made the concepts of systems and of “the learning organisation” fashionable
The Development Dictionary – a guide to knowledge as power; ed W Sachs  (1992)	2	A powerful challenge to “the western view”	yes
The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook; Peter Senge 1994	2	The sub-title says it all - strategies and tools for building a learning organisation
The Web of Life Fritjof Capra 1996	4	A well-intentioned presentation of systems thinking – but tough going
Deep Change; Robert Quinn 1996	2	Quinn’s first draft of what became the superb “Change the World”
Leadership and the new Science – discovering order in a chaotic world Margaret Wheatley 1999	2	An early classic in the attempt to present a new world of complexity
Dialogue and the art of thinking together; William Isaacs (1999)	3	One of many focusing on dialogue…
Change the World; Robert Quinn (2000)	1	I simply don’t understand why this book is so seldom mentioned….perhaps because it makes a moral case?
The Ingenuity Gap – how can we solve the problems of the future? Thomas Homer-Dixon (2001)	1	A fascinating book which focuses on the complexity of the contemporary world – with a powerful narrative
Towards Holistic Governance – the new reform agenda; Perri 6, Leat, Seltzer and Stoker (2002)	4	Cooperation in government is an important topic but is dealt with in an over-confident and technical manner by these academics
Systems thinking – creative holism for managers; Michael Jackson (2003)	3	Very comprehensive but – at 378 pages – not immediately user-friendly….	yes
Critical Mass; Philip Ball (2004)	3	A popular attempt to look at systems issues which probably tries to cover too many areas
An End to Suffering – the Buddha in the World; Pankaj Mishra( 2004)	2	A delightful idea and easy read
Presence – exploring profound change in people, organisations and society; P Senge et al (2005)	3	A conversation between 4 friends which reflects their uncertainties. Just a bit too self-indulgent and self-referential
The Dictionary of Alternatives – utopianism and organisation; ed M Parker, V Fournier and P Reedy (2007)	3	A nice idea – which I have still to read
Thinking in Systems – a primer; Donella Meadows (2008)	2	The early pages are a delight to read – this is the woman who lead the team which produced “Limits to Growth”	Yes
Exploring the Science of Complexity; Ben Ramalingam et al (ODI 2008)	5	Almost incoherent – but see “Aid on the edge of Chaos” below	Yes
The Master and His Emissary – the divided brain and the making of the Western World; Iain McGilchrist (2009)	3	Apparently a very important read but, with more than 500 pages, too big a challenge for me….
Deconstructing Development Buzzwords (2010)	3	Clever…	Yes
Power and Love; a theory and practice of social change; Adam Kahane (2010)	2	Most authors would avoid a title like this - but Kahane’s south African experience makes this a great story
The Dance on the Feet of Chance; Hooman Attar (2010)	3	A bit too technical – but honest
Mastery; Robert Greene (2012)	2	An important topic, nicely presented by a craftsman of his trade
Aid on the Edge of Chaos; Ben Ramalingam (2013)	3	A very comprehensive treatment of the various strands but ultimately (at 450 pages) indigestible
Embracing Complexity – strategic perspectives for an age of turbulence; J Boulton, P Allen and C Bowman (2015)	1	At first glance, wonderfully clear
How Change Happens Duncan Green (2016)	1	With its focus on the marginalised of the world, this may not immediately attract but it’s one the best discussions of change…	Yes
Can We Know Better?; Robert Chambers (2017)	1	What could be final reflections from the development scholar who wrote “Whose Reality Counts? putting the Last First”…	Yes
Doughnut Economics – seven ways to think like a 21st century economist; K Raworth (2017)	1	Didn’t seem part of this discussion – but the clarity of her exposition of how certain ideas first came to be developed blows you away!!

Changing the World - or oneself?

You know you’re losing your mind when – after a week of intensive musings – you still can’t put into clear words an issue which has led to much feverish searching for (and pulling out of) books……

It seemed initially to be about the source of significant social change – the extent to which it comes from external social and technical factors compared with more internal subjective factors… Arthur Koestler’s The Yogi and the Commissar; (1945) was perhaps an early expression of that dualism….

The collapse of communism in 1989 showed how regime self-confidence could melt in the sunshine….

In the middle of last week I came across in Brasov a nicely-presented book in the self-help genre - About Presence; a journey into ourselves - which I was tempted to buy (and read!) simply because the language was more conversational and downbeat than its usual type. And the book seemed to connect to the point which a friend had just put to me about the over abstract nature of the discourse which people like me use. As well as to the question put a couple of years ago by a schoolfriend with whom I had tried to renew contact after more than 50 years – “why doesn’t your personal life figure in your blog??”

The answer is quite simple – the technocratic role I’ve played since 1991 had no place for the personal….at least in the style of our writing…We had to pretend to a neutrality…if not omniscience! (Although the feedback was that I seemed to be more committed to grassroots change than the typical “expert”….)

The About Presence book reminded me of another similar title in my library Presence – exploring profound change in people, organisations and society; P Senge et al (2005) - typical of "new age" managerialism. By then I had piled on my desk my old Robert Quinn favourites – “Deep Change” and “Change the World” – which remain for me the key books exploring the link between the individual and the apparently impervious forces of the world at large…..

But the library also contains books on subjects such as Systems Change, Chaos theory and Complexity which have never been able to engage my sustained attention – apart from Thomas Homer-Dixon’s The Ingenuity Gap – how can we solve the problems of the future? (2001)

These focus on the increase of the interdependence of one system with another – making apparently for a world which no one can control and yet one in which local victories are achieved….

So other books were duly deposited on the desk – both real and virtual - and now form a rather fascinating list which starts with a book written in 1967 and ends with 4 powerful books with messages of hope I strongly recommend to my readers.

Embracing Complexity – strategic perspectives for an age of turbulence; Jean Boulton, Peter Allen and Cliff Bowman (2015)

How Change Happens Duncan Green (2016)

Can We Know Better?; Robert Chambers (2017)

Knowledge Management Matters – words of wisdom from leading practitioners; J and J Girard (2018)

This post is long enough. I will attach the list tomorrow……  

Is it people who change systems? Or systems which change people?

Individualists say the former; sociologists and fatalists the latter.

And both are right!

Change begins with a single step, an inspiring story, a champion. But, unless the actions “resonate” with wider society, such people will be dismissed as mavericks, “ahead of their time”.

Change of any sort – whether an organisational reform or a social movement - is an intervention in a social system. Like an organism, it will quickly be rejected or absorbed unless there is some such “resonance”.

A significant number of people have to be discontent – and persuaded that there is an alternative before there will be any movement.

And the wider system has to be ready for change.

Robert Quinn’s Change the World (2000) is still one of the few books to focus seriously on this question of how one individual can change history….

Formal and informal systems are a well-recognised fact of organizational life. In 1970, Donald Schon coined the phrase “dynamic conservatism” to describe the strength of the forces resisting change in organisations – an update almost of Robert Michels’ “iron law of oligarchy”. Whatever new formal systems say, powerful informal systems ensured systems remained largely unchanged.

I remember vividly the discussions which ran in the 60s and 70s in the professional journals about rationality and change – with names such as Donald Schoen, Chris Argyris, Ametai Etzioni, Warren Bennis, Charles Lindblom and Herbert Simon to the fore (Alvin Toffler was simply the populiser)

These, of course, were the academic scribblers in whose midst American society was threatening to escape control….a moment perhaps best described in Adam Curtis’ documentary The Century of the Self (2002).

But it was The Aquarian Conspiracy – personal and social transformation in the 1980s; by Marlyn Ferguson (1980) which at the time caught the spirit of the age and posed the essential challenge both in its title and subtitle. Alas, it was a challenge soon to be marginalised…..

Those of us who had bemoaned the inertia of our bureaucracies were suddenly caught unawares by the speed with which change was unleashed…. In the 1990s, managing change became as popular as sliced bread. And soon indeed had its own recipe -

·         communications, leadership and training to ensure that people understand what the reform is trying to achieve – and why it is needed and in their interests

·         Development and enforcement of new “tools of change”

·         “Networking” in order to “mobilise support” for the relevant changes

·         building and “empowering” relevant institutions to be responsible for the reform – and help drive it forward

We are these days advised always to “control the narrative” and to carry out “stakeholder analyses” – to track who will be affected by the changes and how the indifferent or potentially hostile can be brought on side or neutralised. Out and out manipulation...,,and the world is wise to it....at last!!

Theories of Change - mine and other people's

For the past few years, people in the “development” field have been encouraged to have a “theory of change”. The global technocracy had at last been forced to recognise that its attempts to make political institutions in “developing” countries more open to economic development had not been working - and that a different more local, inclusive and incremental approach was needed if there were to be any prospects for improving the government systems under which so many citizens are yoked….. 

Practitioners of this curious field often use the phrase “Doing Development Differently” – there is a nice short powerpoint presentation here of the main ideas to complement the OECD paper which is the first hyperlink

I.ve had my own theories of organisational change – whether in Scotland in the 1970s and 80s or in central Asia in the 2000s – always (I have just realised) with the assumption that "we" were facing the implacable force of what the great organisational analyst Donald Schoen in 1970 called “dynamic conservatism”

When I was lucky enough to find myself in a position of strategic leadership in a new and large organisation in the mid 1970s, we used what I called the “pincer approach” to set up reform structures at both a political and community level. The organisational culture was, of course, one of classic bureaucracy – but, from its very start, some of us made sure that it had to contend with the unruly forces of political idealism and community power. The regional body concerned was responsible for such local government functions as education, social work, transport, water and strategic planning for two and half million people; and employed 100,000 staff but not has been written about it.

You’ll find the full story of the strategy here – and a short version here. 

Thirty years later. I was doing a lot of training sessions in the Presidential Academies of Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan and developed there what I called the “opportunistic” or “windows of opportunity” theory of change against what I started to call “impervious regimes” ie so confident of the lack of challenge to their rule that they had become impervious to their citizens -

“Most of the time our systems seem impervious to change – but always (and suddenly) an opportunity arises. Those who care about the future of their society, prepare for these “windows of opportunity”. And the preparation is about analysis, mobilisation and trust.

·         It is about us caring enough about our organisation and society to speak out about the need for change.

·         It is about taking the trouble to think and read about ways to improve things – and helping create and run networks of such change.

·         And it is about establishing a personal reputation for probity and good judgement that people will follow your lead when that window of opportunity arises”.

I realised that it would be difficult to implement such an approach in Beijing when I arrived there in January 2010 to take up the role of Team Leader in a “Rule of Law” project and made a fast exit from a project that was supposed to last for 4 years – for reasons I tried to explain in a note called Lost in Beijing.

A year later, I tried to share some of my concerns about how the European Commission was dealing with capacity development in “transition countries” with participants at the annual NISPAcee Conference in Varna. But The Long Game – not the log-frame was met with indifference.

As it happens that was the year the World Bank published its quite excellent People, Politics and Change - building communications strategy for governance reform (World Bank 2011). And it was 2015 before this guide on “change management for rule of law practitioners” saw the light of day    

I said earlier that I had always assumed that reformers were facing “implacable force” in their intervention but need now to question this..…not just because 1989 showed how easily certitudes and legitimacy can crumble….. but also because management writing has in the past 2 decades paid a lot more attention to chaos and uncertainty – even before the 2006 global crisis (eg Meadows and Wheatley).

As someone who has always felt compelled to try to intervene in social processes (ie of an “activist” mode) I readily admit that my initial responses to those who argued that every force attracts a counterforce and, most memorably, that “the flap of a butterfly’s wings can ultimately contribute to tornados”…has been one of impatience. Quite a lot of the writing on “chaos theory” and even “systems theory” seemed to me to run the risk of encouraging fatalism.

One of my favourite writers - AO Hirschmann – actually devoted a book (”The Rhetoric of Reaction”; 1991) to examining three arguments conservative writers use for dismissing the hopes of social reformers:

- the perversity thesis holds that any purposive action to improve some feature of the political, social, or economic order only serves to exacerbate the condition one wishes to remedy.

- The futility thesis argues that attempts at social transformation will be unavailing, that they will simply fail to “make a dent.”

- the jeopardy thesis argues that the cost of the proposed change or reform is too high as it endangers some previous, precious accomplishment.

He was right to call out those writers; but we perhaps need a similar framework these days to help us make sense of the world of chaos in which we live. I had been aware of systems thinking in the 1970s (particularly in the writing of Geoffrey Vickers and Stafford Beer) and again in 2010 and, finally, in a 2011 post which focused on complexity theory. My brief foray into the subject didn’t greatly enlighten me but I have a feeling I should return to the challenge….

I have therefore a little pile of books on my desk – including The Web of Life (Fritjof Capra 1996); Leadership and the new Science – discovering order in a chaotic world (Margaret Wheatley 1999); Thinking in Systems (Donella Meadows 2009) – as well as a virtual book Systems thinking – creative holism for managers; Michael Jackson (2003). 

So let’s see if my older self is capable of new insights…….