The Science of Deliberate Change

If there is an idea which encapsulates so much of our thinking in the 2020’s, it is perhaps this:  engineering change.  Never mind for a moment what the change is, but with any given one in mind - how to achieve it.

When we say change here, I mean real, fundamental change.  Big change.  The science of how to achieve that - is something grappling the minds of so many.  Probably because of the repeated failure to accomplish it in so many avenues. 

The character of change

There are some things we know - that can progress any such discussion. 

1.       We know "it" – big change - can happen, because such changes have occurred through history, and often there has been an element of deliberation about them.

2.       The incremental tweak to the status-quo is not change.  It is the opposite of change.   You can almost go so far as to say it is the enemy of change.   Because it begins with a premise that the best we can do is adjust the status quo, rather than really change.

3.       We know that big, deliberate change does not depend on unanimity of agreement.  Were that the case, change would never in fact happen, since when in human history has unanimity ever been a characteristic?  To realise so is a great release.   It releases us from feeling we have to achieve it.  Not from the need to use logic to persuade – that is still important.  Just that the quorum for successful change is not “everyone”.  It also focuses our attention on a subtly different question.   If we don’t need to persuade everyone, to achieve change, what do we need to do?  It is worth noting that while unanimity is not a requirement, that is not to dismiss as unimportant the differing view.  It is not to arrogantly say, you can’t stop us, out of our way.  It is just to note that things can begin without total agreement.  The biggest persuader is always the real-life demonstration of success.  Pilot demonstration projects are possible without their unanimous across-the-board support.  Projects begin when a group is prepared to pay the costs required to undertake it.  That doesn’t require everyone.  The proof is in the pudding and not everyone in the house needs to help cook it.

4.       We know that for deliberate change to happen, it first has to be imagined.  Imagination leading to ambition is no guarantee of achievability, but lack of ambition is a guarantee of stasis, and of any problems that accompany it. 

5.       We know that for deliberate change to happen, it first has to be desired.  I use that word very deliberately.  Desire, in all its connotations of passion and longing. We can associate all sorts of other concepts to it - value, and by implication money and profit included.  That is profit sensu-lato - an increase in the things we value whatever they may evolve to be.  Money and profit are simply a representation of seeking increase in the things we value.  The drive though is a desire, a want.  Change will not happen unless we desire it. Want it. Put another way, change purely for its own sake is recognisably a wasteful distraction of effort.  There does need to be a reason. A desire to change.

6.       Change almost always encounters resistance.   That is not to suggest resistance is necessarily sinister.  It is just to observe that it is usually harder to change.  It’s easier to keep doing what we are used to.  It’s harder to imagine something that doesn’t [fully] exist yet.  It might cost something to change, before any benefits that might justify the cost are truly obvious.  That can lead to fears, and resistance to change.  That is not to pooh-pooh such feelings.  It is to note they are a key, and important feature of the dynamics of any change.   Not all changes are necessarily good ones, so it is a perfectly legitimate part of rational decision making - to have fears of the costly mistake.  Just as change for its own sake is a distraction though, to resist change simply because it is change is also an impedance.  The recognition that change can be useful and important is as important as recognising not all changes will be. 

7.       Big change rarely starts so.  The mathematics of the exponential function are well known.  The key for achieving change at scale is not always initial momentum or a large sized starting point – more important is sustained continuity of desire to change.  That activates the exponential function.  That is largely driven by success – whatever metric we might use, might value, to measure it.  Of metrics to measure success there are many, and these are not set in stone.  That is also key to recognise.  Big changes are often seeded by genuine – not imposed - changes in how we perceive and measure success.  Where we perceive value.  What we desire.  The exponential function may not persist indefinitely – after all what we seek is an eventual stabilisation and sustainability to what can be deployed.  The point is though, that big often starts small. 

8.       As a corollary to the observation that big changes rarely start so, is the connotation of time.  The nature of the exponential function is that once in motion, things can happen quicker than we ever imagined, but it is also true that in the early stages things might appear slow and insignificant.  Some things take time.  If things have taken centuries to reach their status quo, we may need to think on centuries also to shift the status quo.   That does not mean ignoring urgency where there is urgency, but it does mean not panicking or unduly dismissing when something is not big immediately. 

The Opinion Deluge

If engineering change is one “flavour” of the 2020’s, another is the deluge of opinion.  To be clear, this is nothing new, there has always been opinion.  What is new is the ability for each of us to disseminate it widely.  That has its good sides and its bad sides and is evolving constantly.  I think we have all found that out variously to both our delight and horror at times…

I may be alone in this, but I detect a sea-change in 2023 in how social media are perceived, and the proliferation of opinion that it provides.  I have heard the sentiment “I’m fed up with opinion” many times, and it is something most of us can recognise to some degree.  Yet here am I adding another.... 

Perhaps the most obvious demonstration of this is in how easily various geopolitical conflicts can be manipulated in social media vehicles.  Again, this is nothing new – whatever media have existed throughout history, they have always been co-opted and manipulated by such things – so it should come as little surprise.

It does however wake us up a little bit I think, to the fact that social media is largely opinion. We all become so familiar with each other’s view sometimes, that the merits of hearing it again dissipate with time.  That’s not to say this is a good or bad thing, just that it is.  It’s also to recognise that most of us agree on a lot and most of us disagree on a lot.  And all of us have different levels of expertise on different things.  That experience level however is detached from what appears on social media.  There is no qualification filter.  Again, that is both the blessing and the curse, but it tells us a bit about how the information here can and can’t be used.  While there is certainly valuable information posted – that “valuation” is in the eye of the beholder typically, and usually we apply our own pre-conditioning of how much we “trust” the source.  There is no accompanying filter with social media other than our own judgement.  

That has great value, in that it opens up contributions from any source.   That has great traps, because it opens up contributions from any source.  What this tells us is that any social media vehicle, for a researcher, can be a useful “first base” to detect what is topical, and to share what we believe is topical, but it is not the site for detailed research.  It is a pointer to topics that deserve further analysis of detailed, peer reviewed, or reality-enacted, studies and projects.  It’s a great first base, but it needs reality checking.  

Increasingly we know that.  The evolution of various social media platforms sometimes reflects this.  Social media platforms change year on year, not least in ownership, and if we expect our favourites to stay the same we are probably in for disappointment - and to a degree have failed to observe what social media are.  They are something organic, and to a degree transient, just as companies are.  Some would draw comparison with a fungus, not the most complimentary of images perhaps, others might suggest a jungle of nutrients and hazards to navigate.  Each social media vehicle is at the end of the day a company and will not last forever.  So we can enjoy what they offer but we should invest in the offerings lightly, knowing that each one is a transient phenomenon.  Like crops they come and go with the season, and the mood of an evolving populace.

Yet, they serve purpose.  To show what is topical, and also, in what I think is an undervalued role – as a motivation and opportunity for us to organise our own rationales suitably for communication.  That’s not to say every social media posting does this, but it is nevertheless an opportunity to do so.  To informally and quickly articulate our own trains of thought in a way that can be shared, albeit without the rigours of formal peer review.  While that also has its downsides, in a world where the peer reviewed publication process is so fraught, time-consuming, cumbersome, and costly, it is neither without value.  It is not a replacement to the latter, but it is not without complementing value.

What does however – I think – prick up all of our ears, is when we hear of real projects with real success.  Again, we need to “test everything” in the sense that it is always possible to present a one-sided view and a selection of facts with deselection of others.  Some of the most powerful disinformation which circulates is not in telling overt lies, but in omitting certain other aspects of truth. Navigating that subtlety has become a very lucrative living for many.  Nevertheless, the value of a real life project is that it is there, and it is possible - at least to some degree - to audit and ground-truth it in a way that endless opinions about what will happen in the future with something or other, aren’t. 

Innate love of the wholesome?

There are few generalisations that apply to 100% of the human race, and any I make here are no exception.  Yet there is I think an innate desire for “wholesomeness” which most of us seek.   A desire to seek happiness that does not come either at the cost of the happiness of others or of future generations.  This would be something that most of us could I think adhere to – at least in the early years of our lives.  Of course in the real world the bitterness and anger of injustices can creep in, to ferment hatreds that influence such positions, and this has always been the case.  There is no shortage to point at.   Injustices visible and topical, and many others not. Yet those bitterness’s which result are rarely the starting point.  They are a reaction. 

The reality is that so much of what we do, does come at the [often invisible] cost of the happiness of others.  Without condemnation, seated in that growing modern awareness of others worldwide, is much of the desire for change.  Not least because some of those impacts are spreading – again no shortage to choose from there.  More than ever before in history we can document, measure, and recognise the costs of our own actions not just for other people, but for other species.  Again, this is not to suggest there is any altruistic unanimity of how to respond to that, but we can begin I think, on a fair assumption, that most do not want to screw up the life of others –in providing for themselves.

We have lots of other words that talk to subsets of this sense of “wholesomeness”.  One could spend a lifetime trying to define it, but in a way it’s not necessary given that most of us I think already have an innate feel for what it looks like.  Even if simultaneously, we may or may not be aware of how far short of those standards, we, and the systems we live surrounded by, fall.  Sustainability is one such word we use, to try and describe elements of it.  The ability to do things in a way that can be continued without landing others in a mess.

Engineering deliberate change - not the absence of difference, but agreement on method

If we imagine that we can join any group of people setting out to achieve such sustainability and acquire immediate agreement on how to do so, we are setting ourselves up for a fall.  I may be a particular outlier on many things, but I have yet to find any group with whom I agree 100% on everything on such matters.  I would be surprised if was any other way.  If that were the case, in many ways, we would lose a big part of our value as individual human beings.  We are meant to be different, and indeed we have difference.  Including different views on how to fix problems. At the same time I have been around long enough to also know my own views can change and will change on many things. 

Something I think we can all relate to however, is that what often changes our mind most, is demonstration that something is working well, sustainably, in real life.  Not someone repeating a view to us they have been repeating for a decade.  Been there bought the T-shirt – both on the giving and receiving end, and it’s limited in what it achieves. That demonstration doesn’t even have to be working well.  It just has to give an indication of progress that might lead to something more.  Imperfect is OK. Failure even is OK, if we also learn how best to do something that will improve things.  

That is why the headline of this article matters so much, in my view.  It is not entitled the science of agreement.  It is entitled the science of deliberate change.  That, inevitably, has connotations of – the science of deliberate change, despite disagreements.

What is required to progress in such complex issues and problems, does not have to be an agreed particular route.  I.e. It’s all gonna be solar power; hydrogen will change everything; nuclear is the answer; mine asteroids; geoengineer the planet; move to Mars.  We could go on.  There is rarely much limit to the bizarreness of what can be proposed.  Amidst this cacophonous soup of ideas and proclamations - wild, weird and wacky - lurks the sensible and worthy of test. 

We can almost always predict in expressing ideas like this, that someone will respond instinctively and reactively with a passionate argument for one route or the other.  Or some mix.  And that’s fine, it is not to discard the proposition – but we also need to recognise the reality that amidst eight billion different ideas of what should happen, there is a priority-need for formal decision process.

The empowering route we seek first is not precisely which of those or thousands of other possibilities we choose, but an agreed protocol for choosing.  Once again, this does not have to be unanimously agreed, but a protocol agreed amongst enough to set things rolling, somewhere.  Some projects.  So that the initial exponential function can begin - or fall flat and start somewhere else.

In suggesting such a thing, no-one is under any illusion that there will be ubiquitous enrolment of it.  The name of the game is always “enough”.  Enough critical mass to seed projects, whose outcomes can in turn seed those exponential functions of initial deployment prior to some later stabilisation and sustainability.  And to scatter the seeds widely enough such that a healthy percentage germinate and thrive, amidst the percentage that inevitably won’t germinate, and the percentage that might germinate but then wither.   

GATE

GATE (www.transitionengineering.org ) is the Global Association for Transition Engineering, and one of the reasons I enjoy them so much is that with good humour and tolerance, this is their goal.  Practical routes for designing major change amidst complexity. Not to realise some pre-fabricated vision of an energy “transition”, but amidst the differences and diversity of inputs to a complex problem, to resolve protocols that can usefully move such problems forward.   Amidst all our professional differences and individual concerns.  It is an association not “of” transition engineers, but for transition engineering.  That means, if change of the kind described is something you seek to activate in your professional role, there is a place for you in it.

To be clear, a first premise in 2023 is recognition of a need to downshift fossil fuel combustion on climatic grounds, so if that is not your view, GATE is not for you.  Devising the protocols that can help address that issue are the first objective on the agenda, with all the social, political, and economic issues that are tied up in it.  Note downshift is not instantaneous global shutdown.  That is a straw man no-one is presenting – not here anyway.

That downshift, however, is a template issue for many others which involve similar complexity of planetary constraints and sustainability.  Tackle this one methodically and there is more work to be usefully done.  There are many, many other examples of such issues.  They are not being neglected. Such problems are profound indeed, and the association looks to what we value, and how to continue it, amidst the complexities which in 2023 hinder it.  Amidst the first exercises in any decision process of this nature, is understanding precisely that – what do we value in common.  Recognising that this, in detail, might also vary from place to place, culture to culture. 

If you have a professional expertise and those goals sit well with your own, then please check GATE out some more.  It’s not some crusade from a very fixed viewpoint.  It’s just good sense, good engineering, and good manners.  Some things aren’t infinite in nature.  Let’s use them well and equitably in a way that enables others to do so too, both now and in the future. Using all the gifts and learnings and talents that human evolution in all its mystery has provided us with so far. Some utopian vision might not in the end be possible, but sensible optimisation against defined goals can be.