[you can discsuss this on twitter #iwantto]
Sometimes you wake up and realise that you want to change the world.
It might be that three o’clock in the morning and the fears and ideas that have plagued your mind for the last week coalesce into something you want to do. You have an idea. You write it down.
The next step is always one of the hardest, what to do next, how do you go about changing the world?
Taking the first step
The first step is always the hardest, in all things. The only way to approach anything is at a step at a time. You may create a grand vision, but what you act upon that always has to be managable. You have to be able to make the steps to reach towards your goal.
Now this starts to sound a bit like AA, the steps to moving away from addiction but that is because as a method of achieving something this works. There is a goal, ‘stop drinking’ or ‘cure cancer’. You can only ever step towards that goal and each step has to be one that you can take. It may be a hard step, it may take effort, it may cost you personnally but you have to be able to take the steps.
The goal may never be reached, but each step does change things. It alters to world to varying degrees.
A while back I was sat in a Le Pain Quotidien with Mark Stevenson and John-Paul Flintoff. Mark had recently finished his book ‘An Optimists Tour of The Future’ and John-Paul was researching how people affect change.
We were discussing the idea around the League of Pragmatic Optimists, how this idea of people meeting regularly, sharing ideas about changing the world might work. How we could actually get action, not just a talking shop. John-Paul put forward that the key is to be able to examine the problem properly, be able to define what it is that you are trying to achieve and then, create the steps necessary to get there.
I think I reduced that down to ‘ToDo Lists’ for people attending LOPO meetings. Not quite the same thing.
The point, I think, is that we are very much in an age where we very quickly hit a point of impasse, what do we do next, how do we move forwards. It’s not just ‘us’ though. Politicians hit the same thing, everyone does.
Stop, reflect, regroup and replan
Being able to assess what it is that you actually want to achieve is a skill, one that can be taught and learnt.
One of the simplest ways though is to talk to people, other people can often look at a problem and help you see what you need to do next. Not everybody i’ll admit but on the whole they can.
Lots of people already do this. It is not new. In 2008 Clay Shirky wrote ‘Here Comes Everybody‘ which was about “what happens when people are given the tools to do things together, without needing traditional organizational structures”.
PledgeBank, a site from MySociety is explicitly a site to help people get things done.
I have recently helped to launch a site and app Impossible. In this you add your wishes and gifts, there is no exchange but you can connect to people and help them to do something.
These are not the only tools out there either, the trick now is working out which step, which tool is the right one to take.
And this is where I think the gap is right now, I read an article on some grand disaster that is happening somewhere in the world and instinctively I want to do ‘something’ but what?
I wake up with and idea that will change the world, probably in small way but what are the next steps.
How to I add a wish to impossible that, in terms of effort from someone else, is grantable? How to I scope my gifts so that I know that when someone asks I can do it, without, at the back of my mind wishing I hadn’t posted that?
When do I create a pledge? When do I contact my MP? When do I take to the streets?
In a way we can approach this using a funnel model, we start with something possibly big, at least big in terms of the fact that you don’t quite know which direction its going to take. You examine it and start to break it down, possibly into steps that involve all of the above and more, steps that you can give to friends and contacts which are at the right scale that they can do them without too much thought.
So what happens now?
We talk. I don’t have one of my usual ideas, collapsing two words and thinking about creating something new. We probably don’t have to. The tools are already out there and there are plenty of people who have managed and are now affecting change.
Maybe if we just find it easier to find out these examples and maybe if we can just say, sometimes:
‘I want to change X in the world’
and people, anyone can come back with:
‘Look at Y’, ‘Start by contacting Z’, ‘I’ll help email me at …’
We can help each other look at the grand goals and help create the steps so that we can move towards them.
We can then use the tools out there, post our wishes and gifts on impossible, create the pledge on pledgebank that affects the next level of change.
This is not about creating a platform to ‘help you make change’, to try and own processes and tools, its a discussion about taking part in the community that can make change happen, that can point to and help with the tools out there, can possibly help make the new tools necessary.
Make a difference.
[you can discsuss this on twitter #iwantto]