Marjorie Kelly on the Emergent Ownership Revolution

Do you need something more tangible to use when talking about social business?

Is the 'social purpose' argument a bit thin for you?

According to Marjorie Kelly in Towards Mission-Controlled Corporations: Extractive vs Generative Design there are 5 elements of a generative ownership-driven design framework for social businesses:

1. Membership – How can we have the right people forming part of the business? How can they contribute to the running of the business? What roles and authority can they have?
2. Purpose – What purpose can a business have beyond profit-making for shareholders? What problems might it solve? How is 'wealth', and value spread within the local community?
3. Governance – Who is the board? Who does the board answer to? 
4. Finance – Where does the money come from? Where does it go? How does it circulate through the business? How does it generate wealth and value?
5. Networks – How does the business get access to goods, services, information? How might the exchange be carried out? How might it be non-financial? How might it reach beyond typical boundaries e.g. geography?

Habits of a Systems Thinker

Source: www.watersfoundation.org/systems-thinking/habits-of-a-systems-thinker/

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes ... - Neil Gaiman

A systems perspective to supply chain development

In classic economic theory, making products cheaper by reducing the cost of goods (COGS) can mean removing the intermediaries in the supply chain where margin might be absorbed. This means system actors, such as agents, middlemen/women, traders, small retailers (kiosks) are vulnerable to the disintermediation. However, in low-income countries, this has a system wide effect: this will limit the supply of goods and services to marginalized populations, such as smallholder farmers or the urban poor and this will reduce employment and revenue generation by cutting the poor out of the system. Moreover, in times of desperation, this will naturally create conflict and instability that will have even more far-reaching effects beyond the original supply chain.

Things to remember:

• For real wide-scale change, take a step back and think more systemically and less narrowly and think about the wider impact of any intervention in business operations, pricing and COGS. 
• Rather than a focus on cost, price and money, consider gains that bring about long-term growth, such as quality, value and service-driven loyalty
• Yes, eliminating supply chain actors may reduce the cost of goods along the way, but there is no guarantee that this will be passed on to the customer.  
• Intermediaries are the backbone of a system and agents, traders, kiosks are ever present in a market - work through them rather than against them or by sidelining them
• Look at where the incentives lie. For a supplier, that wants to shed certain costs, who might be willing to take them on? Who might benefit? Who might see the value in managing this transaction directly? This is essentially the origination of outsourcing.
• Consider how the market could function better. As a supplier, you may be incurring a huge cost getting products to the consumer. However, if a retailer can offer a better coordination function, then it would make more sense to switch to wholesale operations. Many retailers in developing countries do this albeit with  need for capacity building around effective management. 

An illustration on mental models for systems thinking

The graphic was originally found on Twitter posted by Amy Koo ‏@awykoo, who had come across it at a sustainability and systems workshop in November 2015: http://watersfoundation.org/category/newsletter-archives/march-2014/

Why might some poverty reduction project incorporate behaviour change theories?

Nudges
(behaviour change tactics)

• Commitment device. A commitment device is a choice that an individual makes in the present which restricts his own set of choices in the future, often as a means of controlling future impulsive behavior and limiting choices to those that reflect long-term goals.
• Temptation bundling 
• Loss aversion. More pain with loss than the pleasure for what we gain. The customers that cancel with you are more worried about what they will lose than what they could gain by switching and going elsewhere

System actors
(for market actors integrating nudges)
Market actors who may be interested in behaviour change nudges are diverse. We see commercial enterprises looking to develop a customer base within a low-income population at the bottom-of-the-pyramid; we see Governments wanting to affect the behaviour of citizens such as through giving up smoking, reducing speeds on the roads and paying taxes on time; and we see opinion leaders/institutions/social networks wanting to influence and change socio-cultural dynamics - think of #blacklivesmatter.

System change
(why?)
We think that some behaviour change nudging is needed when the context is new for people, such as a unprecedented growth in the market economy, or recent modernisation, or evolving non-traditional systems, or new sectors and economic activity that require new practice and behaviours.

Facilitation using behaviour change
(for development practitioners)

• Avoid prescribing behaviour. Instead, help system actors find the behaviour they want to adopt; let it be self-deterministic and self-motivated. This makes it easier to find the right nudge - through the process, system actors will indicate the right nudge for them and what it will take to adhere to the effects of the nudge. 
• Be intuitive and look for deeper narratives. System actors will tell you what they want but this will not be overt, out-loud and obvious. This will be through their attitudes, behaviours, mindset, actions, and perceptions. You will need to read all of these cues to understand the full script of what the actor is (not) saying to you.
• Look into the socio-economic benefits for sharing the costs of desgining and implementing nudges and the socio-economic benefits for the value created. This should be the basis for programming the nudge into the market system
• Celebrate the effort not just the intellect. Telling people that they are smart and intelligent can create situations where the individual relies on their intelligence to get them through complex situations. Often what is needed more is a combination of patience, commitment, sacrifice, and possibly super-normal hard work (= effort)

What are some useful indicators of systemic change?

What is systemic change?

1. A measurement  of the change in the rules that govern the system and that affect how actors/agents behave and function. From an economic perspective, this means going beyond the conception of people as 'rational individuals' and incorporating a better understanding of social constraints that lock us in to our patterns of consumption. 
2. The relationship between certain types of 'resilience finance' and the ability to confront shocks and disasters at individual level, household level, business level, industry level and across social networks and political positions 
3. A measurement of 'subjective resilience' at household level to better understand the ability to "anticipate, buffer and adapt to disturbance and change"
4. Developed by looking at synergies between the development, business and economics fields of study to better frame measurements of systemic change. Bringing together traditional nonprofit measurements around poverty and impact with typical business and social enterprise measurements of efficiency and effectiveness with typical economic measurements, such as tax revenues, job creation, labour income, for deeper systemic measurement, such as increase in business-to-business services, change in investment patterns towards long-term customer relationships and emergence of new market-based products and services that respond to pro-poor needs. 
5. A recalibration of the equilibrium. Moving systems from unjust to just, marginalisation to inclusion, structural disadvantages to systemic advantages (gender), traders to value creators, short-term transactions to long-term relationships and incremental shifts [in markets] to transformations and revolutions, 

Do market-based approaches hold too many false assumptions?

This blog post from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) attempts to reflect the main challenges in implementing market-based approaches. It questions the "false assumptions" of market development and systems thinking for poverty reduction.

In fact, what is most evident is that a very damaging assumption held by policy makers and practitioners alike is that market-based approaches simply mean "business" and "market access". In fact these are two outcomes of a functioning market system - among many others - but not the end-goal. In reality, well-designed market-based approaches that adopt systemic principles also deliver the following benefits:

• Production and supply systems that respond to demand and the needs of the market so that relationships are inherently win-win and about capturing the value within the system 
• Inclusivity of poor, marginalised, vulnerable groups as key actors and influencers (including, women, youth, disabled, etc.) 
• Market resilience and the ability of the system to stay strong and react positively to economic, social, political shocks even after any development intervention 
• Innovation is from within the market itself and emergence of new products and services (both for mainstream as well as niche users)
• Better relationships between market actors and market-driven design and testing and learning so that products and services respond to market needs 

When talking about market-based systemic approaches to poverty reduction, the first step is for all parties to get on the same page. For advisors to development projects, these are some things to look out for:

• An inaccurate understanding of systemic thinking and a persistence towards value chain approaches. The former is about the structures, patterns and cycles in systems, and the systemic constraints that affect the functioning of a system (rather than any specific events or element or value chain). Systemic analyses then lead to solutions and leverage points that generate long-term change throughout the wider system (and not for any particular market actor value chain or sector). 
• Visible conflicts between projects and market partners and disagreements around 'ownership' and 'control'. There can often be a tug-of-war between 'who does' and 'who pays'. The project may be doing too much and be paying too much and can be reticent to relinquish control and allow market forces and systemic pressures to take over. 
• A lack of understanding of what a better functioning market system looks like. Poverty is often considered a 'wicked problem'. As a result, without diversity for multiple viewpoints in problem-solving, there can often be difficulty in envisioning a better future. Some projects also perceive that by formalising all things informal and turning informal activities into formal value chains will somehow naturally strengthen systems. 
• A lack of appreciation for (and a fear of) complexity. As a result, there may be a pattern of efforts to simplify, delineate, isolate and control within specific timeframes and outcomes, leading to tick-box approaches to measuring systems change. 
• A heavy emphasis on quantity over quality in project activities. In particular, a tendency to prioritise activities that promise large impacts for lots of beneficiaries as soon as possible ... over and above interventions at leverage points in the system that take time but draw people into the system and bring about sustainability through relationships, value creation, growth, feedback, market response and evolution 
• A tendency to directly intervene in the market instead of employing facilitative approaches and market-based tactics. Examples: 
• running 'project pilots' instead of working through market actors and offering opportunities for 'market exposure and idea testing' 
• dragging actors into the market through 'cost-sharing' instead of supporting existing interest and willingness for 'early-stage market entry' 
• organising and leading 'stakeholder forums' to get buy-in for the project's bright ideas instead of facilitating membership based groupings around common market constraints 
• when buying down the risk in new markets, offering a heavy amount of 'financial subsidy' to businesses instead of non-financial options such as 'networking, capacity building, coaching, information-sharing and relationship-building' 
• a lack of adequate focus on the incentives, relationships and behaviours in markets. This can be evidenced by projects that make broad assumptions about why the private sector does not already work in marginalised markets. e.g. ICT4Development projects often make the mistake that ICT constraints are primarily technical software issues, and do not spend enough time addressing the incentives and facilitating the relationships and interactions between firms and the market (mostly small rural-based enterprises).

Dealing with prejudice in social settings

Often, I am out with friends or friends of friends or co-workers or in fact, complete strangers and I am confronted by horribly sexist, homophobic, racists and other prejudiced opinions. I naturally end up confronting these people to expose the bigotry in their thinking. However, very often I leave feeling dissatisfied, frustrated, more angry or even ashamed if the group plays a dominant domineering role in society (as often happens if I am talking to white privileged male heterosexual able-bodied people).

Here are a selection of blogs and articles and thought pieces that I have found to help deal with bigotry in social settings.

• Make a plea for empathy - "For example, during a recent conversation where someone was saying some very stupid things about a trans person who had recently come "out" at work, I made the comment that. "Yeah, it can be weird, but I always think with this sort of thing that it must be much harder for them than it is for you really.." Which didn't actively disagree with what they were saying but made a plea for empathy." 
• Remember you are "an emissary from the next generation" and there are things you can do to share the Word from your own (biblical or non-biblical) gospels. This is some of the very inspired thinking behind the #blacklivesmatter hashtags on Twitter and others. 
• If you have suffered prejudice and have been deeply wounded, apply antiseptic, de-sensitise the area of attach and opt for pragmatism in building prejudice-free environments in places where you have power and control. Remember, prejudice is learned and can be unlearned. Prejudices are attitudes rooted in ignorance and a fear of differences. Work within social and commercial spaces to plan an appropriate response. 
• Set up projects (such as this one) to record, monitor, map, measure prejudice in honour of the the 'victims' and their voices and remain vigilant in the face of aggression, paranoia and hate

Scaling and systemic change in market systems programmes

Many reports on pro-poor business, especially from the grey literature, call for companies to ‘scale
up’ their impacts, with systemic change sometimes seen as a means to scale, as well as impact. Yet
there is an important distinction to be drawn between systemic change and efforts to achieve scale.

Scale is about numbers. It is about increasing the size, amount or extent of a business and development approach, through working with large corporations that have a vast reach, through
partnerships, or through replicating and multiplying results. The WBCSD (2013) describes scale as a
combination of the number of people reached, geographic footprint, and sales or procurement volume. While economies of scale and return on investment are important for business, as they can determine whether ventures are commercially viable, scale implies nothing specific about development impact.

Systemic change is about transformation in the structure, dynamics and relationships of a system.
Where business and development initiatives target systemic change this implies delving behind immediate problems or symptoms and tackling underlying causes to deliver tangible and enduring benefits with significant impacts on the material conditions or behaviours of large numbers of people, going beyond those directly involved in the initiative.

There is also a time element. Scale may be achieved in a (relatively) short period, but changes are not necessarily long-lasting. With systemic change, often the initial activities are niche, involving small and isolated impacts and unstable structures, which take a long time to strengthen and stabilise. However, where these innovations eventually drive systemic change, the result can be dramatic with lasting impacts over long time horizons.

Market systems analysis to evaluate change and transformation of a market system can be carried out by looking at 3 main questions:

1. How was ownership in a pro-poor business initiative structured? Initiatives led by an existing company, initiatives led by a new company that was created in response to a specific development challenge, formal partnerships between two or more entities, and multi-party platforms involving a large number of organisations with broad, shared objectives are different ways in which ownership by the market actors in a system (and not the donor or the market facilitator) will lead to actual systemic change.
2. Were key elements of systemic change part of the design of the initiative? Did it address issues that originate from the system and its elements (institutions, policies, relationships, resources, power structures, values and behavioural norms), rather than challenges specifically relating to the value chain and individual actors. Did the initiative distinguish between incremental initiatives around efficiency, quality and productivity, which rarely drive systemic change, and radical niche innovations that change the underlying constraints in the system?
3. How have changes to behaviours and norms been observed and monitored? How have they demonstrated that change has been sustained and long-term and not short-term, ad-hoc, or with undesirable unexpected consequences?

Adapted from John Humphrey, Professorial Fellow Institute of Development Studies (IDS), 'Market systems approaches: A literature review', December 2014 and available at Beam Exchange and Jodie Thorpe, 'Business and international development: Is systemic change part of a business approach?', Evidence report 42, August 2014 and available at Institute of Development Studies (IDS) 

Article - Oversimplifying behaviourial science

Why are simplistic solutions dangerous when addressing complexity? Do they promote simplified and lazy thinking? Do they result in linear solutions based on 'low-hanging fruit' for complex problems?

Does the new found energy and excitement around behaviourial science, psychology and marketing for selling products (both in wealthy consumer driven markets as well as in low-income bottom-of-the-pyramid markets) run the same risks?

This blog post was originally published here by Jesse Singal

Here's an excerpt.

"Although this product sounds like a fun idea, I’d worry that it could be distracting for drivers and it’s misleading to cite these rather complex and nuanced studies as evidence that looking at a smiley emoticon will make us all happier on the road," he concluded.

So no, MotorMood isn’t scientifically proven. But why should it be? It’s a light-up smiley face! Either people will like it and support it and buy it, or they won’t. Science shouldn’t have anything to do with it.

I’m only picking on this one Kickstarter because it’s a particularly silly example, and because this style of claim is so common right now. The emails arrive daily with the expectation that Science of Us and, presumably, the dozen other sites a given company is pitching, will breathlessly report shaky scientific claims that exist solely to prop up or draw attention to a given product or company.

This is a waste of everyone’s time, and in the long run it makes it hard for people who don’t think or write about this stuff for a living to understand what scientific claims really are, and what making and testing them entails.Surely there’s enough room in the world for actual, real-life science, and for products that are just fun (or stupid, depending on your opinion) but don’t need science’s imprimatur.

In other words, there’s no need to drag behavioral science into areas where it doesn’t belong. Like, you know, light-up smiley faces on Kickstarter.

Article - UK supermarkets criticised over misleading pricing tactics

Great steps forward in the UK. Helping consumers feel justified in their feelings of anxiety, confusion and mistrust. I know in the past, supermarket managers have hidden behind trading standards and claimed that their price tactics are in line with the rules and fully endorsed by the trading standards office.

And, this argument is very relevant everywhere where are market systems at work!

When working in 'retail' as a market system intervention, one thing that development projects need to remember is their role in market regulation. This means the policies and institutions and an adequate oversight function in the system to curtail predatory, confusing, misleading behaviour by retailers. Including agro-inputs firms (agrovets), animal and human health service providers, small grocery shops for the urban or rural poor etc...

The article was originally published here on the Guardian website.

UK supermarkets criticised over misleading pricing tactics
Rebecca Smithers Consumer affairs correspondent
Thursday 16 July 2015 09.09 BST

The competition regulator has criticised the UK’s leading supermarkets over their pricing, after a three-month inquiry uncovered evidence of “poor practice that could confuse or mislead shoppers”.

The Competition and Markets Authority stopped short of a full-blown market investigation but has announced a series of recommendations to bring more clarity to pricing and promotions to the grocery sector.

The top tricks supermarkets use to confuse customers

 

Read more

It plans to work with businesses to cut out potentially misleading promotional practices such as “was/now” offers, where a product is on sale at a discounted price for longer than the higher price applied. It also wants guidelines to be issued to supermarkets and has published its own at-a-glance guidance for consumers.

The investigation by the CMA was launched following a “super-complaint”lodged by the consumer group Which? in April, which claimed supermarkets had duped shoppers out of hundreds of millions of pounds through misleading pricing tactics.

Which? submitted a dossier setting out details of “dodgy multi-buys, shrinking products and baffling sales offers” to the authority, saying retailers were creating the illusion of savings, with 40% of groceries sold on promotion. Supermarkets were fooling shoppers into choosing products they might not have bought if they knew the full facts, it complained.

The supermarket sector was worth an estimated £148bn - 178bn to the UK economy in 2014.

In its formal response to the super-complaint, the CMA said the problems raised by the investigation were “not occurring in large numbers across the whole sector” and that retailers were generally taking compliance seriously. But it admitted more could be done to reduce the complexity in the way individual items were priced, particularly with complex ‘unit pricing’.

We have found that, whilst supermarkets want to comply with the law and shoppers enjoy a wide range of choices, with an estimated 40% of grocery spending being on items on promotion, there are still areas of poor practice that could confuse or mislead shoppers. So we are recommending further action to improve compliance and ensure that shoppers have clear, accurate information.”Nisha Arora, the CMA’s senior director, consumer, said: “We welcomed the super-complaint, which presented us with information that demanded closer inspection. We have gathered and examined a great deal of further evidence over the past three months and are now announcing what further action we are taking and recommending others to take.

Richard Lloyd, the executive director of Which?, said: “The CMA’s report confirms what our research over many years has repeatedly highlighted: there are hundreds of misleading offers on the shelves every day that do not comply with the rules.This puts supermarkets on notice to clean up their pricing practices or face legal action.

“Given the findings, we now expect to see urgent enforcement action from the CMA. The government must also quickly strengthen the rules so that retailers have no more excuses. As a result of our super-complaint, if all the changes are implemented widely, this will be good for consumers, competition and, ultimately, the economy.”

The CMA has been in close contact with retailers cited in the dossier, asking them for explanations for the misleading pricing and promotions. For the first time in its history, it has used social media including Twitter and Facebook to get more consumer and focus group feedback. 

This is only the sixth time Which? has used its super-complaint power since it was granted the right in 2002. It last issued a super-complaint in 2011 when it asked the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) to investigate excessive credit and debit card surcharges. The OFT upheld its complaint. The right to make a super-complaint to the CMA or an industry regulator is limited to a small number of consumer bodies such as Which? and Energywatch. After Which? submitted its dossier to the CMA, the regulator had 90 days in which to respond. Which? said more than 120,000 consumers had signed a petition supporting the super-complaint and urging the CMA to take action.

A decade ago Citizens Advice helped bring the payment protection insurance scandal to public attention by lodging a super-complaint with the now-defunct Office of Fair Trading.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jul/16/uk-supermarkets-criticised-misleading-pricing

A systems-thinking approach to public policy

(The blog has been reproduced from where it was originally found on the LSE website here.)

A systems-thinking approach to public policy eschews linear model for more holistic understanding of decision-making.

By Joseph A. Curtatone and Mark Esposito, September 25th, 2014

In Somerville, we’re working to bring this kind of intuitive, systems-focused thinking into the policy-making process in partnership with an internationally acclaimed systems-thinking course now in its fourth summer at Harvard University and taught by one of the authors of this article. Harvard students are working with staff from the city’s SomerStat Office of Innovation and Analytics, thinking holistically about how, for instance, a policy decision regarding affordable housing might affect education and public health, and vice versa. This class is serving as an ideas incubator for the city’s new NEXUS initiative, which aims to engage city officials and residents alike in thinking about issues facing the community not as isolated threads but as part of an interwoven community fabric.

This isn’t a theoretical exercise. It’s about applying this holistic way of thinking in a practical way to real-world problems. Opioid abuse and overdose, for example, is an urgent and critical issue facing Somerville and other cities, and intuitively we know that there are many factors driving this epidemic. It’s a question that the students are examining this summer with a wide-angle lens, trying to understand how this issue enmeshes with others such as education, housing and social cohesion within the community.

As for childhood obesity, Somerville has employed systems thinking to tackle that problem as well. The city’s Shape Up Somerville program instituted healthier school food menus and policies focused on getting kids active at school and beyond. Infrastructure, zoning and planning work aim to make the city more walkable and bikeable. Parks, open spaces and community events invite people out. Families have better access to healthier foods through Shape Up-approved restaurants as well as farmers’ markets and a year-round mobile market where people can use their SNAP and WIC benefits. And the city’s urban-agriculture ordinance makes it easier to grow fresh, healthy foods at home. By attacking the problem of childhood obesity holistically, Somerville created a model that has achieved real, measurable results: fewer Somerville children were obese or overweight after two full years of the intervention. Shape Up Somerville was cited by first lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” program.

The impact of the systems-thinking approach can already be felt far beyond Somerville: The Harvard students are getting real-world experience in applying concepts that they’ll be able to take into their respective fields and careers. Many of the students come from business backgrounds, a realm where systems thinking has been in use for decades. The Harvard course was selected in 2013 by European Parliament President Martin Schulz as an incubator for ideas for dealing with the European Union’s financial crisis.

We live in the era of Big Data. But while number-tracking and crunching have deepened our understanding of issues, data analytics is mostly aimed at figuring out linear relationships. The other piece of the puzzle is discerning complex webs of interrelationships — the broader, more holistic approach to policy-making that we need to tackle problems that are rarely linear.

This article first appeared at Governing.

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2014/09/25/systems-thinking-approach-to-public-policy/

Article - How systems thinking can impact climate change

(The blog has been reproduced from where it was originally found on the Clinton Foundation website here.)

How Systems Thinking Can Impact Climate Change

By Dymphna van der Lans

Sep 19 2014

Systems thinker: a phrase that has come to define my method for problem solving, my approach to tackling the world’s greatest challenges, and most importantly, who I am today. When I was asked to serve as the CEO of the Clinton Climate Initiative, I had the opportunity to reflect on what led me to this point and how my identity as a systems thinker would ultimately shape our mission moving forward to confront the complicated threats of climate change.

I was fortunate to be raised by systems thinkers as I grew up in the Netherlands, where everything and everyone is close together. Since there is no wilderness, very little land and very little space, we have to be thoughtful about our resources and about each other, and I have carried these lessons with me to where I am today.

The world, as I see it, is made up of systems, and is the result of any interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves an outcome.

The world, as I see it, is made up of systems, and is the result of any interconnected set of elements that is coherently organized in a way that achieves an outcome. A tree is a system. A forest is a system. I am a system. Systems are often embedded in larger systems, which are embedded in yet larger systems. The earth’s climate is a system comprised of the subsystems of our atmosphere, our oceans, the land, and human society.

The earth’s climate is a system comprised of the subsystems of our atmosphere, our oceans, the land, and human society.

“Systems Thinking” views outcomes as the result of the interactions between the various elements of a system and recognizes that systems often contain within them the causes of their own success, and — this is critical— the causes of their own failure. Similarly, “Systems Problems” are problems that have origins in the interactions of the elements of a system, characterized by a high degree of interconnection and interdependence with other variables around them.

Climate change may well be the most complex systems problem that we have ever faced. In our modern economy, almost every human activity is linked to the use of fossil fuels or other sources of climate-altering greenhouse gases. Every time we buy or download a book, every time we cook a meal, every time we travel across town, we are impacting the climate.

In our modern economy, almost every human activity is linked to the use of fossil fuels or other sources of climate-altering greenhouse gases. Every time we buy or download a book, every time we cook a meal, every time we travel across town, we are impacting the climate.

At the same time, almost everything that sustains and enriches our lives is affected, directly or indirectly, by the changing climate. At the Clinton Foundation, we realize that access to clean water, the price of our food, national security, the health of ourselves and our loved ones, economic opportunity for this generation and those to come, all are placed in jeopardy by climate change.

We must insist on solving more than one problem at a time and on tackling multiple interrelated challenges at the same time. We need the resolve to address systems rather than symptoms. A solution will not be effective or enduring if it creates new problems. And so, we need new business models, new technologies, new policy frameworks, and most importantly, new ways of engaging with each other.

We are moving away from focusing on single technologies to using a whole systems approach as we recognize that there is no single silver bullet solution to stopping climate change.

The Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) does exactly that in its unique systems thinking approach. We are moving away from focusing on single technologies to using a whole systems approach as we recognize that there is no single silver bullet solution to stopping climate change. Rather than narrowly focusing on one approach, like renewable energy as the only solution, we take a more holistic view to developing systemic solutions. We collaborate with world-class partners to increase the resiliency of communities facing climate change and to create replicable and sustainable models for others to follow.

At the core of our engagement philosophy is Systems Thinking; identifying and activating leverage points that can create significant, positive impact in climate change mitigation and energy transition for communities around the world. CCI has worked with governments and communities to build data systems to better inform decisions and policies on the management of land and natural resources. CCI has also developed waste, water, and energy strategies with our Small Islands partners to create impact from boosting the local economy to women’s empowerment. Finally, CCI has introduced innovative financing mechanisms by partnering with employers to bring energy efficiency benefits to lower home energy expenses and improve people’s lives and their living and working environments.

Through our programs, focused on landscapes and land use, energy supply and energy demand, and energy efficiency, we aim to work together to tackle these systems problems. Now we call on you to take action, to start thinking about your home, your country, your world, and your climate as a system. We ask that you join us in creating solutions that take into account the entire system and all its complexities. Together, we can work to create measurable, meaningful and lasting contributions—one system at a time.

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https://www.clintonfoundation.org/blog/2014/09/19/how-systems-thinking-can-impact-climate-change

The dangers of of the 'cash transfer magic bullet'

Cash transfers, conditional or not, are a particularly dangerous movement in development. 

The research from Harvard, MIT, NPR on cash transfers has been often cited in the media. But, it is clear that the the cash transfer mechanism is a very limited and is a short-term stimulus that does not address systemic failures that keep people poor. Could this be another magic bullet that make donors feel good about giving money? Won't money just flood the systems but play no role in building systems? How is this sustainable or scaleable beyond any donor handout?

It is the system that causes poverty, and not, as is assumed under the cash transfer paradigm, people and people's willingness and ability to pay. To take this one step further it is the weak poorly-functioning system for goods, services, information, knowledge that causes poverty. if for example, there are medicines available for poor people to buy, the systemic problem is actually that medicines are not well-distributed and clearly branded with a system for verification so that counterfeits cannot creep in. If there are agents/traders/salespeople/distributors working for the big pharmas, the question is always: what are they incentivised to do? Is it to push products for commission? If so, what will the effect be on the quality of information that goes out to people on what they should buy? Who can poor people go to make sure their ability to spend isn’t subsumed by their inability to get a good quality product?

In weak systems, there are systemic constraints that trap poor people in a cycle of no/bad/sub-optimal investment. They also have no 'voice' to complain, protest, influence, push up quality. Poor people are ‘voiceless’. Cash transfers simple result in money in the pocket but no voice or influence.

Why employee rankings can backfire

This NY Times article talks about how employee rankings to drive up performance can actually backfire.

In the workplace, promoting competition between individuals can have several effects. Instead of driving up performance, in an context that needs people working in teams with high levels of collaboration, there can be several opposite effects. One tool for promoting competition in order to improve performance is through HR assessments and ranking. When ranked in a list, people can exhibit the following behaviour:

1. Some feel positive, and strive to do better in order to increase their rank or to stay at the top
2. Some feel demoralised at the valuation of their performance, and reduce performance and fall down the table
3. Some feel content and stick with what they are doing, thus maintaining performance and rank position
4. Some feel suspicious and have less trust in management and the company, which may result in reducing performance or even a tendency to sabotage the process or the company

As a result, in some cases, it may be better to inform each individual privately of his/her performance and not to publicise ranking tables. In others, designing multi-level performance rewards that celebrate performance at different levels may be helpful – only rewarding those at the top may create animosity, however, rewarding ‘most improved’, ‘most innovative’, ‘most supportive in a team’ will create a positive team culture.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/business/why-employee-ranking-can-backfire.html?_r=0

Article - Digital finance for smallholder farmers - a systemic approach

This USAID Microlinks article describes a systemic approach to building financial systems for digital-based smallholder farmer finance. This approach is naturally scalable as it has the in-built mechanisms for growth.

These interventions use the following design tactics:

1. Behaviour change principles such as, features and incentives to make it easier for people to adopt a new practice for the first time 
2. Multi-level design - digital services can both bring in new behaviours as well as make existing good practice more efficient and automated and easier to stick to
3. Savings and insurance services for resilience and long-term sustainability 

Source: How Digital Financial Services Can Meet The Financing Demands Of Smallholder Farmers, LIZ DIEBOLD, Agriculture Finance And Investment Lead, NANDINI HARIHARESWARA, Senior Digital Finance Advisor, And HARSHA KODALI, Agricultural Finance Specialist PUBLISHED ON JUNE 16, 2015, AVAILABLE AT WWW.MICROLINKS.ORG/BLOG/HOW-DIGITAL-FINANCIAL-SERVICES-CAN-MEET-FINANCING-DEMANDS-SMALLHOLDER-FARMERS

Achieving flow

Achieving ‘Flow’

Having a clear understanding of what you want to achieve.

Being able to concentrate for a sustained period of time.

Losing the feeling of consciousness of one's self.

Finding that time passes quickly.

Getting direct and immediate feedback.

Experiencing a balance between your ability levels, and the challenge.

Having a sense of personal control over the situation.

Feeling that the activity is intrinsically rewarding.

Lacking awareness of bodily needs.

Being completely absorbed in the activity itself.

Article - Diffusion of innovations theory

Diffusion of innovations

Diffusion of innovations is a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread through cultures. Everett Rogers, a professor of communication studies, popularized the theory in his book Diffusion of Innovations; the book was first published in 1962, and is now in its fifth edition (2003).^[1] Rogers argues that diffusion is the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the participants in a social system. The origins of the diffusion of innovations theory are varied and span multiple disciplines. Rogers proposes that four main elements influence the spread of a new idea: the innovation itself, communication channels, time, and a social system. This process relies heavily on human capital. The innovation must be widely adopted in order to self-sustain. Within the rate of adoption, there is a point at which an innovation reaches critical mass. The categories of adopters are: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards.^[2] Diffusion manifests itself in different ways in various cultures and fields and is highly subject to the type of adopters and innovation-decision process.

The key elements in diffusion research are:

Element	Definition
Innovation	Innovations are a broad category, relative to the current knowledge of the analyzed unit. Any idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption could be considered an innovation available for study.[14]
Adopters	Adopters are the minimal unit of analysis. In most studies, adopters are individuals, but can also be organizations (businesses, schools, hospitals, etc.), clusters within social networks, or countries.[15]
Communication channels	Diffusion, by definition, takes place among people or organizations. Communication channels allow the transfer of information from one unit to the other.[16]Communication patterns or capabilities must be established between parties as a minimum for diffusion to occur.[17]
Time	The passage of time is necessary for innovations to be adopted; they are rarely adopted instantaneously. In fact, in the Ryan and Gross (1943) study on hybrid corn adoption, adoption occurred over more than ten years, and most farmers only dedicated a fraction on their fields to the new corn in the first years after adoption.[6][18]
Social system	The social system is the combination of external influences (mass media, organizational or governmental mandates) and internal influences (strong and weak social relationships, distance from opinion leaders).[19] There are many roles in a social system, and their combination represents the total influences on a potential adopter.[20]

Five stages of the adoption process

Stage	Definition
Knowledge	The individual is first exposed to an innovation, but lacks information about the innovation. During this stage the individual has not yet been inspired to find out more information about the innovation.
Persuasion	The individual is interested in the innovation and actively seeks related information/details.
Decision	The individual takes the concept of the change and weighs the advantages/disadvantages of using the innovation and decides whether to adopt or reject the innovation. Due to the individualistic nature of this stage, Rogers notes that it is the most difficult stage on which to acquire empirical evidence.[11]
Implementation	The individual employs the innovation to a varying degree depending on the situation. During this stage the individual also determines the usefulness of the innovation and may search for further information about it.
Confirmation	The individual finalizes his/her decision to continue using the innovation. This stage is both intrapersonal (may cause cognitive dissonance) and interpersonal, confirmation the group has made the right decision.

Change agents bring innovations to new communities– first through the gatekeepers, then through the opinion leaders, and so on through the community.

Adopter category	Definition
Innovators	Innovators are willing to take risks, have the highest social status, have financial liquidity, are social and have closest contact to scientific sources and interaction with other innovators. Their risk tolerance allows them to adopt technologies that may ultimately fail. Financial resources help absorb these failures. [40]
Early adopters	These individuals have the highest degree of opinion leadership among the adopter categories. Early adopters have a higher social status, financial liquidity, advanced education and are more socially forward than late adopters. They are more discreet in adoption choices than innovators. They use judicious choice of adoption to help them maintain a central communication position.[41]
Early Majority	They adopt an innovation after a varying degree of time that is significantly longer than the innovators and early adopters. Early Majority have above average social status, contact with early adopters and seldom hold positions of opinion leadership in a system (Rogers 1962, p. 283)
Late Majority	They adopt an innovation after the average participant. These individuals approach an innovation with a high degree of skepticism and after the majority of society has adopted the innovation. Late Majority are typically skeptical about an innovation, have below average social status, little financial liquidity, in contact with others in late majority and early majority and little opinion leadership.
Laggards	They are the last to adopt an innovation. Unlike some of the previous categories, individuals in this category show little to no opinion leadership. These individuals typically have an aversion to change-agents. Laggards typically tend to be focused on "traditions", lowest social status, lowest financial liquidity, oldest among adopters, and in contact with only family and close friends.
Leapfroggers	When resistors upgrade they often skip several generations in order to reach the most recent technologies.

Source: Wikipedia