What’s your capacity for systems change?
My goodness. Systems change is not for the faint-hearted, loves. Imagine, for a moment, trying to advocate for listening and responding to collective wants and needs, instead of making assumptions about what’s important to people. Or letting go of the preciously guarded professional autonomy we so crave in our individualistic society too?
Letting go of control
What happens when you’re immersed in the realisation that other people perceive and experience the world differently from you, leading you to go on and question your own hot take on how the world works. Confronted with your own fears, modelling and conditioning, how willing and able would you be to relinquish decision-making, control and knowing best?
At Noisy Cricket we champion co-creation and transformation as being two of the key pillars of systems change. It takes opening up to holistic perspectives to realise that your worldview doesn’t exist in a vacuum. For those willing to dig into the discomfort as pennies drop, realising that for some people, having the choices and opportunities to live the life that they dream of might be possible if we stopped prescribing it for them.
It’s here that the potential for the third pillar of systems change — innovation — unfolds. Yet, seven bloody years into helping individuals, teams, communities and organisations work towards reciprocally nurturing systems, it’s no easier to gauge how willing and able a person or organisation will be to do things differently. It takes pioneering people, a mindful culture and a spacious structure in which to realise new possibilities for society.
Naturally, these people are hard to find. We’ve been exceptionally fortunate at Noisy Cricket to work with some courageously caring individuals. People who face their personal shit and challenge the cultures that inform their understanding of the world. Brave souls, willing to let go of the structures that currently make them feel safe, worthy of love or good enough in the brutal systems we currently exist in, and try something new.
Opening up to possibility
None of this is for shits and giggles mind you. There’s deep and abiding logic in creating things that people genuinely want and need, as by reason, it’s more likely to succeed. Capitalist catnip, as it were, rendering sales and marketing useless in its wake. Woot! The idea of no longer consuming crap we don’t actually want and need is giddying, (though there’s nothing like rampant consumerism to distract our species from existential dread).
Regardless, our current market economy insists, and organisations continue to set agendas, ask consumers, users and communities if they agree with them and make stuff that misses actually resolving people’s problems. Doing what we’ve always done is comfortable, even if the outcome isn’t that great. Meanwhile, the potential to create something that mutually benefits society and organisations across sector is repeatedly missed.
Observing how you respond
So, come with me to imagination station once more, darling, and consider what responses might arise should you challenge the status quo? Asking people to think beyond their own context and shift their approach always brings up creative tension, and often spills over into resistance. Yet, it’s when avoidance or worse, aggression, creeps into working relationships that your mettle is truly tested.
It’s hard for everyone involved when these crop up, as one leaves the issues already at play around a project to fester, while the other invariably triggers all sorts of personal pain. Impacting us as a delivery team and other members of the client or customer’s organisation, it can be especially traumatic if people from marginalised and vulnerable communities are involved.
Avoidance, where people’s concerns are brushed under the carpet, or aggression, where misdirection of blame towards those advocating for new ways of working and being, simply upholds existing systems. Hierarchical structures under patriarchy and civilising culture under colonialism stay in play, for example, and its only when an organisation, partnership or community have a clear idea and commitment to a share sense of purpose can this be overcome
Focusing on the bigger picture
This is why we spend so much time as Noisy Cricket, getting clear on the needs, opportunities and challenges of everyone involved, from business, government, charities and most importantly, people impacted by the social issues being addressed. Having a clear sense of why this is important, and shaping a shared sense of purpose for everyone involved is essential to guiding the way forward, and holding people to account.
By design, it’s freaking hard. If power dynamics are the key challenge, for example, not only are you going to have to look at how this manifests around the issue you’re committed to, but how it shows up in your own organisation, team and role too. The line between the personal and professional dissolves too, as you see how you and others help and/or hinder what it is you’re trying to achieve.
Its often excruciating, and I’m not immune. My own conditioning around having to be responsible for others ok-ness (hello patriarchy) often leads me to take on way more than I should for other people, disempowering others and stretching my ability to play my part in the collective work we’re undertaking. While I’m ok with discomfort, it physically pains me to see others experience it. Given the nature of the work we do, it isn’t ideal.
Starting with you
Its something I’m unlearning, and if you engage in systems change, shifting your thinking and behaviours is something you’ll come face to face with too. For new possibilities to be realised, the old systems that framed our lives and are the root cause of the issues we’re working on need to be left behind. To do that, change starts with you, but once the thinking that tied you to the status quo is left behind, the potential that lies ahead is unimaginable.
So, how might you like to work in systems change?
