CHAPTER 4: THINK DIFFERENT—CHANGE YOUR THEORY OF CHANGE
CHAPTER 4 SUMMARY
Our best attempts to “fix” our more divisive, intractable conflicts often backfire or have little sustained effect. This is due to our focus on moving the boulder (the conflict), not reshaping the landscape (the context).
We all have implicit theories of how change happens – and of how to change our worst conflicts. The most prevalent theory is the mechanical clock theory – just fix it.
An alternative but less familiar theory-of-change is Radical Re-landscaping theory or R2, which views change according to the Seven Crude Laws for Nonlinear Change.
However changing our theory of change – especially one we have grown up with – is no small feat.
So we have developed five practices to help you do so, which include resetting, bolstering/breaking, complicating, moving and adapting .
These practices are not offered as a sequence, but rather as a set of actions that can complement one another, and offer useful levers for finding the way out of pathological polarization.
CHAPTER 4 EXERCISES AND ASSESSMENTS
Brief Reflection on Your Theory of Conflict and Change
Exercise #1
In-Depth Reflection on Your Theory of Conflict and Change
Exercise #2
Will Americans Ever Really Change? Implicit Theories about Stability and Change
Exercise #3
CHAPTER 4 IMPLICATIONS
Implications for Your Community
Implications for You
Understand your own implicit theory of how to change the more destructive conflicts in your life.
Is it more clock-like? When does fixing conflict work well for you? When does it not work?
Recognize that some conflicts are very different from most others and are often unresponsive to our best attempts at working them out.
Know that there are alternative theories of change for these more complex, cloudy conflicts.
How familiar are you with cloud-like (complex systems) thinking?
Although a mastery value-orientation (I can control the world around me) is probably more familiar to you, are you at all familiar with a harmony orientation (I can have partial control when I work in sync with my environment) to change?
How effective are you in in translating cloudy values and thinking into real change tactics in your life?
Where are the people, groups and organizations in your community that employ a more complex, cloudy theory of change for addressing difficult conflicts?
How effective have they been in managing the types of problematic relationships you are interested in addressing?
These are what we refer to as networks of effective action already at work in your community.
Do they espouse and enact harmony-values like fitting into the social and natural world, trying to appreciate and accept rather than to change, direct, or exploit it?
How do they tend to respond to failure and setbacks? Are they set-up to learn from them?
How effective are they in translating cloudy values and thinking into real change tactics on the ground in your community?