Here are 5 mindsets for 2024 from 21 social entrepreneurs who are changing lives in their communities and beyond. I extracted this list from the book, America’s Path Forward Edited by Konstanze Frischen and Michael Zakaras of the Ashoka Organization. The book is a series of 21 interviews with social entrepreneurs.
- Frame the goal, not the problem
- Listening works better than dictating
- Fight for real change, don’t fiddle with what’s not working
- Personal accountability works better than rewards and punishments
- Be fluid, dynamic situations evolve
While each item on the list could be a post in itself, I’ve expanded a little on each one below.
To learn about shifting mindsets, for yourself and others, consider the Mindshifting 3 course starting on January 16 or the Mindshifting 1 course starting February 20.
Frame the goal, not the problem
Our assumptions are often, “Let’s do something to fix this problem.”. That mindset often leads to actions that don’t fix the issues but merely allow us to survive in bad situations, that stigmatize people, that lead to measures that exert control instead of making things better, and that impose metrics that focus on deficits that might not even be there in the first place. It operates around the power of “No”;” you can’t do this”, or “don’t do that.”
Our gut reactions view other people as the problem, and so we try to fix them. But more often the system is what’s causing harm, not the actors. We have these stories in our heads about who we are and who other people are, and we live into that narrative, whatever it is. That identity has an outsize influence on our behavior.
Both the Right and Left find plenty of people to blame. For example, if we are on the left, we vilify those who fear changing demographics, and if we are on the right we often use immigration, wokeism, or government as universal weapons.
David Lubell says, “Fear is a very human phenomenon. And ignoring it or vilifying it will not stop it from growing. It becomes counterproductive, which is what we were experiencing.” Casey Woods amplifies that it’s very powerful, important, and productive to focus on the motivation for the fear.
As Trabian Shorters says, “you can’t lift people by putting them down.”
First, we need to work on changing our own attitude. It’s so much easier to “improve” someone else.
Instead of looking at the problem, or looking at others as the problem, begin with our aspirations, what do we want? Second, explore why it is so hard to get there and what is obstructing our way. And third, starting mapping what do we have to do to change those systems.
Listening works better than dictating
During a crisis and in times of transition, process and participation really matter. Solutions can’t just be imposed; democracy matters more during these times.
Will Jackson talked about this issue with charities that “know” what’s best for the people they are supposed to serve, and the same goes for government and even the ways most of think about solutions: “It is repugnant that philanthropy has designated whole funding initiatives and invested millions and millions of dollars without ever talking to the people who’ve actually experienced the problem, without asking for their input or ideas.”
Bren Smith talked about the intelligence that exists in communities: “when you’re working-class, you’re having to invent every day to find a way to make it through this complex society because you don’t have the resources.”
Just as David Lubell talked about the effects of our tendency to make fun of or minimize other people’s fears above, Casey Woods observed, “it’s hard to be successful when you go to people and say, ‘I’ve got this all figured out. We want to do X, Y, and Z. Can you come in and be part of this piece?’ People don’t feel like they are part of the process. Instead, we say and mean it: ‘This is wide open. Come participate in this process. You can own it. And you are the experts.’”
Tim Lampkin recommended: “What I try to do is that I don’t jump in explaining myself first. I try to start from a place of listening, of curiosity about why people believe the things they do, what has shaped their viewpoint. I ask—and I’m sincere, too—' Oh, you feel that way? Tell me more about that.’ I listen, then I try to help by adding new information, a new angle. And for me, it’s a worthwhile conversation even when someone says, ‘I may not agree with you, but now I understand where you are coming from and why you are doing this work.’”
Look for opportunities for people to interact with each other, to get to know each other. By our interaction, we they will find areas of commonality, including common values. As social entrepreneur Sarah Hemminger says. “Sustained change requires us to understand our own knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs, and learn to bridge and bond across lines of difference. Why? Because it is individuals who control institutions, make up communities, and write policies that have the potential to create a more just world.”
Fight for real change, don’t settle for charity
As a consequence of focusing on problems and not goals, we resort to creating methods to “help” people instead of implementing real change. Charity may allow someone to survive but doesn’t set them on a path to independence or self-sufficiency.
Democrats sometimes ask why certain people don’t vote Democratic when the Democrats are giving them so much. Using Appalachians as an example, Brandon Dennison explains, “The answer is that people don’t want to have to depend on government subsidies to survive. They do it because they need to feed families, but it doesn’t mean they’re going to be happy about it. A lot of government programs take away a person’s sense of agency and pride in a way that can be quite damaging.”
Mauricio Lim Miller notes that Democrats want to “give” workers a minimum wage. But, “On $15 an hour you may be able to survive, but you won’t be able to save for your child’s college education.”
Sarah Hemminger tells us that we should flip the story; from “I am here to help you” to “I am here because I need you.” This mindset moves us to understand that we are all inextricably linked, acknowledging the humanity of each of us.
It’s our existing approaches that are holding the problems in place. What we need is narratives on what a newer, better society and economy would look like. It gets back to that first mindset, focus on the aspiration, not the problem.
Personal accountability works better than rewards and punishments
Daniel Sered talks about our propensity to punish, to put people in prison. In the short term, there is some benefit in that it takes people who do wrongs or commit crimes and for a time removes them from the possibility of committing more.
Data show that prison, though, is criminogenic, it increases the likelihood of future criminal behavior, just as data show that rewards and punishments in general tend not to have a positive long term benefit.
We often grant second chances to those we feel close to. And we should learn to extend that as a human to human reaction. For example, “Students of color are not given the same grace to make mistakes. For undocumented people, a mistake while driving can lead to either police brutality or deportation. We should all be given grace to make mistakes in our lives that don’t have life-or-death consequences.”
Daniel Sered points out the distinction between accountability and punishment, “Accountability is different. It’s active. It requires that I acknowledge what I’ve done. I acknowledge its impact. I express genuine remorse. I make things as right as possible, ideally in a way defined by those who were harmed. And I become someone who will never cause that harm again. Accountability is some of the hardest work any of us will ever do. And unlike punishment, it is actually transformative.”
Rather than diminish their dignity, allow people to step into their human dignity and from that place act as agents of repair of what it is they have broken. Where practiced, as shown by Laura Amiko Soltis, this can be transformative for communities because it works. People who previously caused harm stop causing harm. And every time that happens, a community, relationship, or organization becomes stronger.
Be fluid, dynamic situations evolve
Roanne Hagerty pointed out that meaningful progress happens “where people are trained to think in systems and improve how teams work; how to practice accountability for results; how to use data for learning, not judgment; how to make progress through small tests of change and see ‘failure’ as part of the learning process.”
We can’t just assume “leaders” have the magic solutions. Eric Liu noted, “I also recognize that most of the time, most of what we call elected leaders are not leaders. They are exquisitely attuned followers. They will listen for demand signals, and they will follow where they think the heat is. And so it’s up to us—we the people—to create more noise…”
We can’t just delegate solutions and walk away. Too often we just trust others will do the work or have the answers.
We often think that we have a solution, we implement it, and a problem will be solved. It’s rarely that simple, as David Lubell says, it’s not just planting a seed or watering it, “if you only focus on pouring water on the seed and not on keeping the soil around the seed fertile, then you won’t get very much growth.”
Sixto Cancel cautions that problems are complex, which means continued vigilance to “the six conditions that hold problems in place: mental models, prior dynamics, connections, resource flows, policy, and practice” during the change process. Or, as Angekou Ezeilo says, “It’s not just focusing on the fish; it’s focusing on the water too.”
Rosanne Haggerty relates this to efforts to reduce homelessness. ““the most extreme and least helpful narrative—and one that needs to be disrupted—is the one of “it’s just about spending more money on what we’re already doing.” In fact, it’s the existing approaches that are holding the problem in place. We have learned from disease eradication efforts that success is not a onetime achievement but requires a local system that is continuously preventing and quickly resolving new incidents of homelessness.”
And the authors themselves maintain that we can’t “get too enamored with a single approach. Be open to learning and pivoting as the world around you changes. The commitment needs to be toward making the problem go away, not to proselytizing one brilliant idea.”
All the social entrepreneurs mentioned in this post are doing remarkable work, which you should further explore in Frischen and Zakaras’s book, America’s Path Forward.
And to dive deeper into how to recognize and change mindsets, consider the Mindshifting 3 course starting on January 16 or the Mindshifting 1 course starting February 20.
The photo is my son and me at the Ernie Els Winery in South Africa. Here are more photos of that trip. Here is the story behind that picture. My wife and I had bicycled about 60 KM and what was ahead of us was a 15 KM (mostly) climb from the valley to the Ernie Els Winery. With about 1KM to go, I was shot, but my wife continued while I walked. When I finally arrived, she had already finished her wine tasting, and at the same time our guide had driven there with our son who hates bicycling but loves tasting. She took the van back to the hotel while my son and I did a tasting and walked around the grounds until our guide returned with the van and took us back to the hotel. That's why this photo was just my son and me and not my wife. If you ever meet my son, ask him how much he enjoyed climbing Table Mountain.