The underlying concepts in Martec’s law help us understand the growing chasm between the change occurring in the world and our ability as individuals, as leaders, as community members, as organizations, companies, and systems to keep pace.
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As author Rebecca Solnit describes it, “Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky… hope is an ax you break down doors with in an emergency.”
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The first is to become a changemaker yourself. The second is to surround yourself with changemakers. You’ll learn later on in the changemaker leadership section of the book (see here) how to identify fellow changemakers, how to collaborate with them, and how to inspire them to join you on your own changemaker journey. The third and most trailblazing way is to help others around you become changemakers.
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- [note::Three levers of change:

1. Become a changemaker yourself
2. Surround yourself with other changemakers
3. Help others to become changmakers]

A true changemaker himself, Carr doesn’t do anything the prescribed way. Following an introductory email from me, Carr rejected the norm of an email response and simply called me directly (waiting only about ten seconds from the moment I hit SEND, meaning he couldn’t have possibly read my whole email)! Though we had never met, he told me to come visit him in Fresno, give a talk on changemaking to some students, and have lunch with him and a favorite school principal changemaker friend of his. Despite other commitments, I spontaneously said yes right on the spot, and two days later I made the four-hour drive to meet him. And since then, he’s made a point of sending emails, making calls, and checking up on me regularly to make sure I’m continuing to make change and to see if there’s anything I need. This would be exceptional, except that in the case of Tony Carr, this is ordinary—I learned that he supports dozens of changemakers in the same way. He opens his network, his creative brain, and his bottomless well of inspiration to each of us.
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This was a challenge to her fixed mindset, as she would need to overcome the belief that someone else’s success inevitably comes at her expense.
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- [note::Ashley Lin talks about this in Cultivating Community i.e. Power is not zero sum. Just because someone gains power in a community doesn't mean you have less.]

One of my favorite assignments in my Becoming a Changemaker class is called “Changemaker of the Week.” Students prepare a presentation for the class where they select a person who inspires them, and make a persuasive case for why that person is a changemaker. The choice of person is completely up to them: Their changemaker can be famous or known only by a few. They can be alive or dead. They can lead change in any role or sector. It’s up to students to tell us the story of their changemaker and show how this person embodies the traits, concepts, and characteristics they’ve learned in class.
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Together with his colleagues Jessica Kalip, Callysta Thony, and Angeline Seah, we created the Changemaker Index in early 2019, which is the first longitudinal study of changemakers ever attempted.
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A changemaker mindset starts with a conscious choice, remembering that we have agency in how we respond to changes around us.
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“Injustice prevails where hopelessness persists.
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Effectively questioning the status quo requires two high-level capabilities working together. The first is learning to recognize an established convention worth confronting. The second is having the mindset and skills to take the risk to pursue the change and to bring others along with you.
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Whereas convergent thinking looks for a single right answer, divergent thinking attempts to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions. It’s free-flowing and nonlinear, and these ideas are often generated in an emergent cognitive fashion. Unlike convergent thinking, divergent thinking doesn’t look for judgment right away. Instead, the focus is on generating lots of possible solutions.
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Divergent thinking is a brainstorming process where a single stimulus leads to many possible answers. To enable this process, you might try to write lists with as many ideas as possible or do free writing. You might spend time in meditation or use tools like bubble mapping, or even create artwork to tap into your creative side.
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I’ve quite often found in working with management teams that disagreements that feel personal or systemic during meetings are actually a misalignment on the type of thinking to apply at that moment. If half of the team is practicing divergent thinking and coming up with potential solutions while the other half is applying convergent thinking and trying to decide on a single best strategy, there will be inevitable conflict, no matter how good the intentions of everyone are. It’s therefore helpful when you lead teams and meetings to clearly state when your team should be in divergent mode and when it should be in convergent mode.
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- [note::Super relevant to brainstorming meetings]

Asking the wrong questions. To embrace your curiosity, consider approaching challenges in one of three ways. The first embraces your inner three-year-old: Approach a challenge with a childlike wonder and curiosity. Ask “Why?”—a lot. Practice a beginner’s mind and try to see things in a fresh light. The second approach asks yourself: What would my replacement do? Sometimes we get so stuck in the way we’ve always done things that it’s hard to zoom out and imagine that someone else might look at a challenge from a vastly different perspective. It’s a wonderful and empowering question to ask, to put your ego aside for a second and look at a situation anew, through the eyes of someone else. Finally, consider leading with the question “How might we…?” This question, a foundational part of the “design thinking” methodology, is a brilliant one. Notice that the question asks might, not should, which is an invitation for divergent thinking and new ideas and perspectives. Also note that it’s about we, not I or you, so it’s inherently an invitation for collaboration and for diverse ideas to be considered. Language matters, and these questions can help you tap into your own latent curiosity.
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- [note::Reminds me of "Just try it" in George Lucas documentary. Also: "What woud thd main character of your life do in your situation?"]

Curious changemakers benefit from taking part in a diverse array of activities, even if they come at the expense of efficiency. The benefits of, say, reading a book on anthropology or having a conversation with a food scientist might not be clear in the moment, but they broaden our perspective and open up new possibilities for insight down the line. We need to give ourselves permission to think expansively, not just efficiently. As my grandmother would often say, “Nothing is ever wasted,” meaning that every new experience we have and each new thing we learn might end up becoming valuable at some point in the future, helping us make new and interesting connections.
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- pluralism, insight, intellectual diversity, creativity, divergent thinking, ideas, connections,
- [note::AKA have a pluralistic mindset and seek to find value in every experience.]

There’s a deceptively simple and incredibly powerful tool developed by entrepreneur Tyler Tervooren called “the risk quotient” that helps aspiring leaders get perspective on which risks are worth taking.16 Begin by identifying a risk and then quantify the potential rewards and potential losses on a 1-to-10 scale. The risk quotient is equal to the potential reward divided by the potential loss. If the risk quotient is greater than 3, then according to Tervooren, it’s probably a risk worth taking. (I told you it’s deceptively simple.) The concept can be applied to risks large and small, across the full spectrum of change efforts we seek to lead. The risk quotient helps us gain clarity as to whether or not questioning the status quo is worth our time.
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- [note::Risk quotient = Potential Reward / Potential Loss]

Idiosyncrasy credits, as conceived by psychologist Edwin Hollander, are earned through either conformity or competence. Hollander defines these credits as the “positively disposed impressions” an individual acquires from other group members.18 You can gain these credits in two ways. The first is by going with the majority on issues that you don’t feel strongly about—so that you can then apply your credits toward leading change on issues that do matter to you. If you earn a reputation for questioning the status quo on anything and everything, you’re more likely to be seen as a contrarian than a changemaker (remember the example earlier about identifying when and where to question the status quo in planning an event). This might mean going with the flow on what type of accounting software to use or where to post a job opening, so that when you do choose to deviate from the group and speak up about supply chain transparency, people will be more likely to listen because they know you don’t always diverge. The second way to earn credits is by developing and displaying expertise and clear abilities—for instance, by always doing high-level work. In other words, members of a group will be more accepting of someone taking a risk or pursuing a new path if they know that they generally are part of the group and that they are competent and talented. You can start building up these credits now so that when the time comes to zig while others are zagging, you can put all your idiosyncrasy-credit chips on the table to influence those around you to join you down this new path.
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- [note::Acquiring idiosyncratic credits and gaining buy-in from a group:

1. Conform with group during low stakes decisions
2. Build a reputation of having clear expertise and abilities]

In a terrific study titled “When Risk Seeking Becomes a Motivational Necessity,” University of Waterloo professor Abigail Scholer and colleagues look at how we can motivate others, especially in decision-making positions, to pursue new ideas.19 Their findings show that we can reframe a new idea or a new change initiative by, instead of viewing it as a risk itself, flipping the narrative to view not pursuing it as the greater risk.
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- [note::Emphasize the risk of inaction instead of the benefit of action]

organization she cofounded, Tribeless, received worldwide attention for its first product, the Empathy Box. The Empathy Box, which has now been used in over thirty countries, is a facilitation and connection tool to help teams and groups practice empathy, respect, and mutual understanding, and she had become the face of it.
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The Empathy Box, which has now been used in over thirty countries, is a facilitation and connection tool to help teams and groups practice empathy, respect, and mutual understanding,
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“Leadership isn’t about pretending you have it all together, or telling others what to do,” she told me. “It’s about humility and vulnerability and trust, and being willing to put yourself last.”2
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changemakers don’t find a muddled middle ground of semiconfident and semihumble; rather, they challenge themselves to do “both, and”—remain confident, courageous, and self-assured yet also humble, trusting, and open to working with and learning from others.
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Humble CEOs were found to have reduced pay disparity between themselves and their staff, they hired more diverse management teams, and they gave staff the ability to lead and innovate. Humble leaders have less employee turnover, higher employee satisfaction, and, most crucially for my dear skeptical executives, they improve the company’s bottom-line performance.
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In addition to findings on corporate strategy and market positioning, the data show that the leaders of “great” companies had two traits in common: fierce resolve and humility.
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Collins uses the metaphor of a mirror and a window. When a nonhumble leader receives praise, even if it’s meant for their team, that leader will look in the mirror and take the praise for themselves. And when a nonhumble leader receives blame, even if it is meant for them, they will look out the window and project the blame onto others. A humble leader, meanwhile, does the opposite. When praise comes in, even if it’s meant for them, they will look out the window and share that praise with their team. And, conversely, when blame comes in, even if it isn’t meant for them, they will look in the mirror and take the blame themselves.
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According to Pew Research Center, from 1958 to 2021, the number of Americans who say they trust the federal government “always or most of the time” has plummeted from 73 percent in 1958 to under 25 percent today.7 Meanwhile, 71 percent of Americans say trust in each other has been shrinking, with 70 percent saying that this decreased trust makes it harder to solve problems together. Sixty-two percent of respondents say that people are more likely to look out for themselves rather than help someone else, and over one-third of people don’t trust their employer.8 While there are variations by country—for instance, Swedes have much higher levels of trust9—overall the trend is clear: Trust in institutions, in organizations, and in each other is plunging. Trust has never been more critical, yet trust has never been more absent.
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For changemakers, it’s important to fully appreciate that trust is nuanced, in order to effectively apply it in service of our change efforts. Trust consists of three interrelated aspects, or pillars: 1. Trusting ourselves. 2. Trusting others. 3. Earning the trust of others. Each one is important on its own, but to fully make trust a superpower, it’s imperative that you are able to build upon all three pillars, which are mutually reinforcing. Having only two will leave the foundation of trust wobbly. If you have the first and the second pillars without the third, you risk becoming isolated from your teams and your collaborators, remaining an individual contributor rather than a leader who regularly brings out the best in others. If you have the first and third pillars without the second, you risk coming off as arrogant or aloof, potentially landing on the side of confidence with attitude. Finally, if you have just the second and third pillars but not the first, you are never able to fully lean into your own talents, insights, and expertise, limiting your impact and contributions to your team’s collective efforts.
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- [note::I think I struggle all three of these, mostly trusting myself and trusting others. More recently, though, I've come to understand how essential trust in others is to managing projects and building communities.]

their crucially important article “Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome.”
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I shared three specific approaches with him to help him become a changemaker who learned to trust others: Start small. Many changemakers are overwhelmed by the idea of losing control over their projects and see trusting others as the first crack toward that loss. Instead of telling them to go all in, I advise changemakers to start with small trust leaps. Give collaborators room to contribute one small part of a project in their own way. Then, if that works well (it usually goes far better than expected), give them a slightly bigger project next time. Trust isn’t binary. As the Russian proverb that was often quoted by Ronald Reagan during US–USSR nuclear disarmament talks advises, “Trust, but verify.” Give a bit of trust, confirm that it was warranted, and then provide a bit more trust the next time. Be clear on the “what” and flexible on the “how.” Imagine you want to plan an event on the topic of sustainable cities and you want to delegate the planning to someone but you aren’t sure how much control to cede. Outline the vision and the nonnegotiables, while giving lots of room for flexibility and creativity on how that plan is actually achieved. You might tell your collaborator that you want it to be held in a modern setting, featuring a panel with four speakers—two men and two women—and that you want at least fifty people in attendance. This is the “what,” and this is crystal clear. But the “how” for achieving it is left up to the person you are learning to trust. Perhaps they will recruit speakers through their networks or perhaps through cold emails. Perhaps they will advertise through Facebook, or perhaps they will create an email campaign. Those details don’t (and shouldn’t!) matter to you. You have outlined what the end results will be, and in doing so, you are allowing yourself to trust someone else to execute on that vision in their own way—a way that might be even more effective than your suggested path. Protect against the downside of risk. Even if you start small and remain clear on the what and flexible on the how, it can still feel really scary to take a trust leap, especially if it’s an endeavor that means a lot to you. Here you can focus on protecting against the downside of risk. In other words, figure out what the worst-case scenario might be if someone were to flake on you and proactively plan ahead to overcome it. As you learn to trust people, you need not do so blindly. As you get more comfortable with trusting others, you’ll get better at judging how and when to trust. But in the meantime, prepare for what will happen if your trust isn’t warranted. For instance, if you delegate someone to plan that event on sustainable cities, perhaps you give them a deadline of completing all plans two weeks in advance. That way, in an absolute worst case, where your colleague falls through, you can still pull off the event on your own. Protecting against the downside allows you to take away your trust before it’s too late, should things go…
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- [note::Very applicable to me!]

When people lack information about what’s going on, they tend to make up stories, trying to connect whatever dots they can discern. When people make up stories, they tend to make themselves both the heroes and the victims of their own stories. It’s incumbent on you, as someone worthy of earning trust, to help people tell the right stories.
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As a changemaker looking to gain the trust of others, being vulnerable—being human, being our full selves, and being open and honest—is an incredible way to get others to feel comfortable around us and to trust us. As changemakers, we often think that we need to wear armor and appear invincible. Yet it’s often that armor of invulnerability that repels others from being able to trust us.
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I advise changemakers looking to develop trustworthiness to be hard on ideas but soft on people. Leading change often requires ruffling feathers and pushing forward ideas and visions that are uncomfortable to others. But while forging an agreement might not be easy, we need not be disagreeable in the process of pursuing it. The most trust-inducing conversations are ones where people can speak their minds and where teams can wrestle with ideas. But it’s crucial to challenge the ideas—with new approaches, concepts, visions, possibilities—while separating those ideas from the people sharing them.
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helping you understand what your default approach to conflict is, through understanding and applying the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, or the TKI model.19 It’s a simple but powerful tool to provide you with self-awareness about your default approach to conflict and disagreement.
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- [note::This sounds like an valuable thing to engage with - per Rose and my conversation about my deeply rooted avoidance of conflict with my family, I have a hunch that I more readily default to compromise than collaboration.]

It may seem paradoxical, but the very best collaboration happens when you are high on both assertiveness (looking out for your own needs) and also cooperativeness (looking out for your partner). This is “collaboration” on the TKI graph. You try to find a win-win solution that completely satisfies both your concerns and your teammate’s concerns.
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To be a great collaborator often means going slow at first so that you can go fast later. The initial steps of leading with values and focusing on alignment are not quick. Nor should they be if they are done well, where each party is fully engaged. But by spending time up front in a collaboration to align and discuss values first, you’ll be able to make future decisions much more quickly.
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you can get lucky and get to the same outcome quickly through force of will or persuasion, but if your collaborators don’t feel part of the process and bought-in as full participants, your change is unlikely to stick. Many changemakers prefer to be the first person to share their opinion or ideas; this is the confidence part, which is important. But equally so is the humility to hang back and to let others share their ideas first. Your collaborators are likely to suggest ideas you wouldn’t have thought of. And if they suggest an idea that you would have raised yourself anyway, then that’s even better. You can praise them for their terrific idea and let them take credit, while enjoying the fact that you’ll still get the outcome you want.
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- [note::"It's the outcome that matters, not who takes credit."]

Start strengthening your humility muscles by putting the mirror-and-window concept into practice. The next time you receive praise, see if there are others whom you can share that praise with. The next time you see someone on your team receive blame, see if there are ways you might take responsibility. Then reflect: How do others respond when you show up with greater humility?
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a mindset of going beyond yourself. The four parts to this mindset are practicing servant leadership, practicing ethical leadership, engaging in long-term thinking, and developing and applying a vision. Put another way, it’s serving others (servant leadership) in the right way (ethical leadership) for the long run (long-term thinking) toward a meaningful goal (vision).
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The idea stretches back to philosopher Lao-tzu, who twenty-six hundred years ago taught: “The highest type of ruler is one of whose existence the people are barely aware… The Sage is self-effacing and scanty of words. When his task is accomplished and things have been completed, all the people say, ‘We ourselves have achieved it!’”1
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What does servant leadership look like in practice? When I meet with direct reports, I consider my top priority to be doing whatever it takes to help them do their best work. I ask them what is getting in their way and how I might be able to intervene to help. Instead of thinking I know best, I actively look to serve others; I trust that they know best what they need, I listen to them, and then I take action. This means that my role as a manager could be anything from having a difficult conversation on my colleague’s behalf, helping them strategize a big pitch, or even smaller actions like making sure that they have access to booking a conference room. It’s being an offensive lineman to block whatever might be getting in the way of their growth, to allow them to become stronger and more capable in their work. It all starts with the conscious choice to serve others.
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- management, servant leadership,

If you’re looking for a way to begin practicing servant leadership, consider starting with Grant’s concept of the “five-minute favor.” Ask yourself: “What is something I could do for someone else, with no expectation of reciprocation, in five minutes?” Perhaps it’s making an email introduction between two people who you think would really enjoy meeting one another, or writing a note to a colleague, manager, or friend to thank them for their hard work. In just five minutes, you can begin becoming a servant leader by serving others.
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- [note::This reminds me of Stephanie's (RD's) notes of gratitude. Even though they took less than 10 minutes to write, I still remember them after all this time.]

There are three keys to becoming effective, ethical leaders today: authenticity, consistency, and inclusive engagement.
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- [note::1. Being authentic - Our actions reflect those we would encourage of others
2. Being consistent - Our actions are an accurate representation of our own moral beliefs
3. Being inclusive - Our actions include engage all kinds of stakeholders, regardless of belief, status, background, etc.]

Change takes time. Many changemakers with whom I work are naturally impatient, a trait that serves them well in many instances, because this restlessness leads to action. But forging real, lasting change is a marathon, not a sprint.
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- [note::Yesss - I have had to learn this. Change requires strategic, deliberate action. In the same way it's best to let communities grow organically, you have to let the change simmer and not try to force it to occur.]

Jocelyn Ling Malan, an expert in design and innovation, who says to think of your first jobs as a series of hypotheses to test that will inform your career: Do I like working in a small company? Do I prefer working in a fast-paced environment? Does a career in writing feel as fulfilling as the courses I took? This reframe of the job search from being finite to infinite helps students develop a new perspective on the decisions they then make in pursuit of that exciting first job.
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Rich Lyons, former dean of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, defines vision in a simple but powerful way: painting a picture of the future for others to follow. Your ability to paint that picture and to articulate a future-oriented vision that is clear and compelling is crucial to your ability to lead.
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- buy-in, vision, leadership,

Instead of framing the questions as a problem/solution, we asked, “What is the future you are creating?” and “How are you creating this future?”
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- [note::Problem/solution: "What is the problem we're trying to solve? How are we going to solve it?"
v.s.
Envisioned Future: "What is the future we want to create? How are we going to help create it?"]

From there, ask the question “Why?” to get at the root of your vision. I’ve used this approach intuitively in my coaching of changemakers for years, but I learned after the fact that my approach is quite similar to the “five whys” interrogative technique developed by inventor Sakichi Toyoda and used throughout Toyota Motor Corporation.
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- [note::Reminds me of Angela Duckworth's top-level goals]

Steve Zaccaro, professor of psychology at George Mason University, has dedicated his career to trying to answer the question “What is it that allows some leaders to adjust better to change than others?”5 His work focuses on flexibility and shows that the concept is a nuanced one, that there are, in fact, three different kinds of flexibility: cognitive, emotional, and dispositional. All three of these are crucial for you as a changemaker, both for your own well-being and in support of the change projects you lead.
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Cognitive flexibility. Zaccaro identifies cognitive flexibility as “the ability to use different thinking strategies and mental frameworks.” Think of this as being able to hold multiple potentially conflicting strategies or scenarios in mind at the same time.
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Emotional flexibility. Per Zaccaro, this is “the ability to vary one’s approach to dealing with emotions and those of others.” It allows you to support a wide variety of emotional responses.
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Dispositional flexibility. This is “the ability to remain optimistic and, at the same time, realistic.” Put simply, dispositional flexibility is the ability to find optimism while being grounded in reality.
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Educator and author Stephen Covey might not use the word self-care, but he’s created the best analogy I know to explain why it matters; he calls it “sharpening the saw.”15 Imagine that you are sawing down a huge tree. It’s likely you would just keep sawing and sawing and sawing until the tree finally falls. That’s how most of us approach change; we keep going and going without stopping to think too much until the job is done. But Covey teaches us to question the status quo and think differently: “We must never become too busy sawing to take time to sharpen the saw,” he advises us. A saw’s blade dulls over time. The more it is used, the weaker it gets. As changemakers, it’s easy to feel guilty about taking any time for ourselves when we are so motivated to lead change, especially for others. But if you don’t care for yourself, if you don’t establish these crucial self-care practices, you will end up like I did during my time with StartSomeGood: sawing and sawing and sawing, becoming both less effective and more exhausted with each passing day. The practice of sharpening the saw encourages us to take a break from the work, metaphorically sharpening our saw through self-renewal, so that we can get back to sawing much more effectively.
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- [note::Great analogy - Sharpening the saw = stepping away from the work to be done & taking time for yourself
This could also be used as a decent argument for improving meta-skills (e.g. speaking, decision-making, productivity, etc.)]

I define leadership as “the ability to make meaningful things happen through and with other people.” This definition focuses on the act of leadership. Sometimes leadership happens through others. Sometimes it happens with others. Sometimes it’s a combination. But it’s always a meaningful act, and it’s always done in cooperation and concert with others. (Leadership does not happen alone in a vacuum.)
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The first step in reinventing leadership is to stop waiting for permission.
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- impact, favorite, leadership, agency,

Ibarra conducted research on the most important leadership competencies, and based on surveys and analysis, she identified the six most crucial skills. They are: • Collaborating across organizational units and functions • Inspiring and motivating others • Getting buy-in/support • Providing strategic direction • Making decisions under conditions of uncertainty/ambiguity • Influencing without authority I love this list, because every single one of these—except perhaps, in some cases, making decisions under conditions of ambiguity—are leadership skills you can do regardless of your title. Collaborating, inspiring others, providing direction, influencing without authority: These are all things that you can start doing right now. You don’t need anyone’s permission to do them; you simply need to give yourself permission to lead.
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- [note::How can I most effectively upskill in these areas?
Note: these are all skills you can become exceptional at without having any position of authority.]

So if we know what bad leadership looks like and what good leadership feels like, why do we have such an abysmal state of leadership in the world? I believe it’s because for too long we have mistaken leadership as something bestowed upon someone because of title. But leadership is something we do. It’s not something we are.
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- leadership, power, favorite,
- [note::"Leadership is something we do, not something we are." - LOVE this]

“Experimental Evidence for Tipping Points in Social Convention,” they conducted experiments within social networks where they had “confederates”—people in on the study—change behavioral norms.6 Their findings, as summarized in a Fast Company article, “The Magic Number of People Needed to Create Social Change,” show that “only 25% of people need to adopt a new social norm to create an inflection point where everyone in the group follows.”7 This means that leading change through a network is much more accessible than many of us think, and that the influence any of us as individuals can have is likely much larger than we would imagine.
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- [note::Huh, good thing to keep in mind i.e. you only need to influence a fraction of the people for an idea to eventually propagate through a whole network.]

and wonder why this generation hasn’t produced the next Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, or other singular leader, this is actually a deliberate and strategic approach that shows what’s possible through
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Instead of a single changemaker, today’s social movements increasingly look toward and are led by networks of many changemakers to effect positive change.
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- [note::But how do we make sure coordination between each of these changemakers is effective?]

In the Stanford Social Innovation Review piece “The Most Impactful Leaders You Have Never Heard Of,” Jane Wei-Skillern, David Ehrlichman, and David Sawyer outline four specific principles to follow.
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- [note::1. Focus on trust, not control
2. Focus on humility, not brand
3. Be a node, not a hub
4. Focus on mission, not organization]

I break down leading with purpose into a model of three V’s: vision, values, and victories.
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As a changemaker, can you continually paint that picture of the future for folks on your team and help them connect each of their individual parts to the overall vision you are creating together? That’s the first step in leading with purpose.
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Leading with values means giving your team a way of working that connects them to something greater.
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Celebrating small wins and creating a sense of progress is what is meant by leading with victories.
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Lean into your curiosity, and instead of asking leading questions to force a conversation to where you might want it to head, embrace the unexpected that can arise through a catalytic question like “What might happen if…?” or “What is just one more possibility I might not have considered yet?” These questions invite divergent thinking.
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Stop waiting for permission to be a leader.
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- leadership, agency,

Changemaker Challenge • Reflect on some of the worst examples of leadership you’ve experienced: moments where leaders frustrated you or let you down. Come up with a list of negative traits and use them as inspiration to reinvent your own leadership, and choose to create a style in opposition to these.
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There are four keys to embracing microleadership.
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- [note::1. Believe It, Be It - You are a leader, so act like it!
2. Give Yourself Permission - If you wait for permission to be a leader, you will never have it
3. Serve Others - Look for small opportunities to demonstrate leadership through helping others
4. Take Action - Continuously take action again and again and again. Social change is not possible without it.]

Changemaking usually requires bringing together lots of different people, from different backgrounds, collaborating across sectors and silos, and working across, through, and around hierarchies.
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One’s ability to influence others irrespective of title or authority is often referred to as “lateral leadership.”
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I believe lateral leaders need to embrace three leadership tools: seeing the best in others, building alliances, and asking others for advice.
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To see the best in others, I love the insight Liz Wiseman, author of the book Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, provides us. She says the critical question for “multiplier” leaders is not “Is this person smart?” but rather “In what ways is this person smart?”7 “The job,” she and fellow author Greg McKeown write in a related article, is “to bring the right people together in an environment that unleashes their best thinking—and then stay out of the way.”
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INFLUENCE SUPERPOWERS
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- [note::Ways of influencing people:

1. Relationships
2. Vision
3. Empathy
4. Passion/Positivity
5. Making it safe for others to take action with you]

sometimes people will join your change initiative not because they particularly care about the specific change you are leading but just because they care about you.
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The second superpower is vision. We define vision as painting a picture of the future that others feel called to follow. Can you paint such a vibrant and exciting future that someone can’t help but be excited to join? Remember to make it clear and compelling and use the power of aspiration, of helping others see what’s possible and believe that they can help make it a reality with you. Use vision to bring everyone along—from the NASA janitor to the executive team whose buy-in you require—to imagine this new future with you.
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When attempting to influence, empathy is required to actively seek to understand what’s in it for the other person and why they should care. As changemakers, we often fall in love with our own ideas, but empathy forces us to see things from another’s perspective and understand that perhaps they like the idea but feel scared to join, or they want to help but perhaps not at the level we might be asking.
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Our workplace-composting hero, Sebastien, whom we met in chapter 6, made passion and positivity his influence superpower in encouraging a new behavior throughout his office. He galvanized others to join him in his composting efforts in part through his sheer excitement, and that same enthusiasm started a chain reaction. His first supporters were called to join him because of his passion, and then they themselves transmitted that same zest in rallying their own networks to join in.
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many of the people you will meet along your changemaker journey are more scared than you are to take action. How can you proactively make it safe for others to join you?
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This reminds me to connect back to Jim Collins’s mirror-and-window insight (see here). I tell them that I know they are taking a risk to join me on this change initiative. And I promise that if the initiative fails, I will take all the blame and make sure that they don’t receive any negativity for having trusted me. And meanwhile, if it succeeds, I will make sure they get credit. Here, the power of humility ensures we make it safe for others to join us.
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Influencing can sometimes feel sleazy, but by practicing influence superpowers like investing in relationships, employing empathy, and making it safe for others, you can influence effectively in honest and transparent ways.
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organizational psychologist Andrea Titus have done terrific work on identifying six keys to becoming an inclusive leader.4 Let’s start by reviewing what their research says are the traits that the least inclusive leaders have, so that we can be aware of these noninclusive traps.
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- [note::NON-inclusive leadership traits:

1. Overpowering others
2. Displaying favoritism
3. Discounting alternative views]

Now that we’ve identified the traits of noninclusive leaders, let’s turn our attention to the six key traits Bourke and Titus identified and explore how each of these connects to aspects of the changemaker mindset we’ve already learned.5
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- [note::Inclusive leadership traits:

1. Visible commitment to inclusion
2. Humility
3. Curiosity about others
4. Cultural intelligence
5. Effective collaboration
6. Awareness of bias]

Humility. In the words of Bourke and Titus, this means to “admit mistakes and create the space for others to contribute.”
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Steve Zaccaro’s “emotional flexibility”
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Cultural intelligence.
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- [note::How do I grow this in my own life?]

Edmondson defines psychological safety as “a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking,” “a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject, or punish someone for speaking up,” and “a team climate characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves.”8 Google adds to this definition, asserting that when psychological safety is present, members of a team “feel confident that no one on the team will embarrass or punish anyone else for admitting a mistake, asking a question, or offering a new idea.”
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How can you establish and reinforce the presence of psychological safety in your teams, whether or not you are the formal leader? Here are some suggestions based on Edmondson’s research and some tactical approaches that have worked well for my teams.
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- [note::Ideas for improving psychological safety:

1. Frame each challenge as a “learning problem” rather than an “execution problem.”
2. Acknowledge your own fallibility.
3. Model curiosity.]

The first suggestion is to frame each challenge as a “learning problem” rather than an “execution problem.” When challenges are presented this way, we can acknowledge uncertainty (which will no doubt be there in any change effort you pursue!) and lean into our interdependency. When a challenge is simply about execution, its focus on converging—without time to diverge—might be efficient, but it will often exclude other voices, perspectives, approaches, ideas, and connections that could be leveraged in pursuit of learning about a problem.
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The third suggestion is to model curiosity. Instead of watching us as leaders provide the “correct” answer, seeing us instead lean into curiosity and powerful questions sets the stage for others to feel comfortable putting forward their own ideas. It reinforces that we are pursuing learning, not just execution, and by showing ourselves to be curious, it inspires this same approach in others.
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Here are some strategies you as a changemaker can use to ensure that everyone on your team feels psychologically safe. These tools are based on what I’ve experienced in my own work.
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- [note::Author's suggestions for improving psychological safety:

1. Give EVERYONE a chance to put ideas forward before making a decision
2. Embrace Zaccaro’s “cognitive flexibility”
3. Celebrate failing forward
4. Be watchful for absolute unison on the team, especially for an idea you yourself proposed.]

You can create this environment in multiple ways: during a meeting, as you go around the room inviting everyone for their input; sending out a survey before or after you meet; or leveraging other tech-enabled platforms to let everyone add their voice to the conversation.
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Next, celebrate failing forward. One of the values important to my team at Reach for Change in Sweden was that we would “proudly and consciously fail forward.” We would open every single weekly team meeting by going around the group with answers to two questions: What was your win of the week (the thing you did that propelled us closer to our goals)? And how did you fail forward last week?
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In this case, consider asking someone—even if they agree with you—to take the opposite position and point out potential flaws in the idea. At worst, you’ll gain some new perspectives that will strengthen the existing idea. And you will signal to others that you want the strongest answer, not just the easiest answer, which will encourage them to take risks and put bold new ideas forward.
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- [note::Nice idea - "delegated red teaming"]

introduce what I call the changemaker impact equation: (MINDSET + LEADERSHIP) x (ACTION) = IMPACT This simple equation shows that your impact as a changemaker is a function of the sum of your mindset and your leadership multiplied by the action you take.
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I’ve distilled these insights down into six lessons, which I will share with you in this chapter. You’ll develop the art of agency—the ability to simultaneously feel frustration or despair while also believing you can go do something about it. You’ll learn how to first fire bullets, then cannonballs—to first take lots and lots of small actions to give you confidence when it comes time to make a big, bold move later. You’ll see how to reduce resistance to action by reframing problems and leveraging existing resources. You’ll learn how to validate your ideas and then use the “lean startup” methodology to start small and iterate quickly. Finally, you’ll learn how to know when it’s time to take a leap—and why it’s never a good idea to go discount skydiving!
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“Inaction is an action.”
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insights from Morten Hansen and Jim Collins: First fire bullets, then fire cannonballs.4 Through their review of big organizations, the authors help us see that often what looks like one single big bet on a strategy is actually the sum of lots of small tests, which then provide the confidence to go big.
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often with change initiatives we think we have one single shot and it’s a make-or-break moment. Samar was envisioning one contentious meeting with his boss where he would lay out his entire refreshed curriculum and give his manager an ultimatum to let him try all of these techniques or else he might leave. That would be far too much pressure on everyone involved and would be unlikely to provide his best shot at hitting the target. Instead, I encouraged him to think about how he could try some smaller tests to gain confidence and feedback before going big.
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the essence of lean startup methodology is helping figure out if a proposed idea is worth pursuing as quickly as possible.
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The lean startup is built around a cycle called the build-measure-learn loop. The cycle begins with an idea. It could be an idea for a startup business, a feature, or even a technique; think of Samar’s more efficient swimming stroke. We take that idea and build a “minimum viable product”: the smallest, simplest test that will allow us to get feedback from users as to whether this idea has potential.
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Minimum viable products come in many different forms: • Dropbox cofounder Drew Houston had a vision for a file-syncing app, but he knew that building it would be incredibly costly. So he filmed a video mock-up showing what his app would do and he posted it to Reddit for feedback. People seemed to love the idea, and this initial feedback buoyed his confidence that the app was worth creating. • Pebble was one of the first-ever smartwatches—way ahead of Apple Watch. Would people want a smartwatch? Its founders weren’t sure, so they launched a minimum viable product; they put the concept out on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter, inviting people to back the product and receive a watch months later for doing so. Not only did Pebble pre-fund all of the manufacturing costs, but it also became the most successful campaign to that point in Kickstarter’s history, showing that there was, indeed, demand for its watch.
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In the lean startup methodology, there isn’t anything like failure, only “validated learning.” If you try to launch an after-school tutoring program for middle schoolers but no one shows up, this isn’t a failure. This is an insight for you: that your idea didn’t quite land. You’ve validated that a tutoring program for middle schoolers isn’t the approach to take. Based on the data you have collected, you can then use these insights—this validated learning—to go back to the beginning of the cycle again and come up with a new idea. Maybe you will try an after-school tutoring program for high schoolers instead. Or maybe you will try a weekend-tutoring program for middle schoolers.
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The lean startup helps us test, not guess.
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I made two big, scary leaps that day: one out of a plane, one into a change I cared deeply about pursuing. It may never be perfectly logical to jump. After all, what person in their right mind would say it’s a good idea to jump out of a plane? (Certainly not my mom.) And there are always reasons that would make us feel it’s better to be safer, to take the easy path, and to never put our idea out into the world.
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- [note::Skydiving as a metaphor for publishing your ideas]

From there, she did surveys to discover what store associates really needed, and then launched a petition to call on Walmart executives to change the company’s policies. She’d expected a few hundred signatures. But Davis had tapped into a collective need. To her absolute shock, she gathered over one hundred thousand employee signatures. “To have a group behind you, giving you support, it makes a huge difference,” she said. “There is power in numbers.”
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- grassroots advocacy, collective needs,
- [note::Are the largest collective needs the most invisible? This story definity involved some form of plurastic ignorance.]

Davis didn’t set out to be a vocal leader, but by taking many successive small steps, she was able to grab the microphone with the power of thousands behind her.
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- [note::"Change happens in small steps."]

NOBL (pronounced “no-bell”) Collective is a group of organizational psychologists and change management experts who help individuals and teams lead change. They have identified “the three types of people you’ll meet while implementing change,” which is a helpful place for us to start as we begin thinking about how to lead change when change is difficult.3 These are labeled as champions, cynics, and fence-sitters.
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NOBL suggests that we “get champions involved,” by delegating projects and decision-making to them, supporting their ideas (when possible), and showing appreciation for their enthusiasm.
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Champions help build a movement.
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Cynics are those who actively oppose change. NOBL recognizes that “cynics’ negativity can be annoying,” but engaging with them and trying to convince them can often be a huge time suck when it comes to leading change. Here’s the magic: “cynics are just disappointed idealists.” Perhaps they have gotten their hopes up about change only to be let down. Unlike a fence-sitter, a cynic is at least actively engaged with the change effort so spend your time delivering “something that matters” to your cynics, because actions will speak much louder than words. And if you are successful, your greatest cynics, once won over, will often become your greatest advocates.
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- social change, cynicism, favorite, stakeholder engagement, feedback solicitation, change_management, 1socialpost-queue,
- [note::These archetypes are not mutually exclusive - personally, I've noticed I tend to oscillate between both "champion" and "cynic".]

When a skeptic expressed disappointment at a missing feature, I didn’t tell them why we had deprioritized it. Instead, I thanked them for their feedback and then as soon as that feature shipped, I would send them a note to ask them to help us test it out. Some of the cynics who authored some of the angriest of emails ended up becoming among our strongest and most ardent supporters once we proved to them that change was, indeed, possible. Optimism in action often won over even our harshest cynics.
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Fence-sitters are those who aren’t sure what to think when it comes to change. NOBL suggests leaving the fence-sitters to others. “Get some small wins on the board,” NOBL advises, “and then let the champions and converted cynics take care of the fence-sitters.” Just as we learned in the video of the dancing guy, once there is momentum, even the most persistent of fence-sitters will often come around.
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the goal of norm entrepreneurship, which defines or creates specific behavioral standards such that others within the community follow them.5 Legal scholar Cass Sunstein adapted this concept from the nation-state level to the individual level.6 Just as an entrepreneur creates and scales a new venture or company, a norm entrepreneur creates and scales a new culture. What I love so much about this concept is that it’s inherently democratic: anyone can be a traditional entrepreneur, anyone can be a norm entrepreneur. No matter if you are an intern or an entry-level employee, you can help to shape culture. The norms that you create can be both formal and informal. On the formal side, you might push for a culture that ensures equal pay for all employees. On the informal side, you might try to create a norm that improves the start of all virtual Zoom meetings by inviting each participant to do a quick check-in on how they are doing.
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- [note::I engage in this kind of intrapreneurship a lot (e.g. establishing Slack norms, Treble Clef Thursdays). What does this say about me?]

A theory of change should fundamentally answer three questions: 1. What is the impact or change that you’re hoping to make? 2. What is the mechanism, the actions through which you can pursue and make that impact or that change? 3. How will you know when you’ve achieved that change?
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Creating a theory of change model shifts your change leadership efforts from a strategy challenge to an execution challenge. It helps you connect where you are now with where you want to be, and it helps you understand what it will take to get there. A thoughtful theory of change model clarifies what action to take and when to take it, and provides confidence that what you do on a daily basis is in line with your vision for change and your strategy to achieve it.
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The first step is identifying your long-term goals. Where do you want the world to be in the future—say, twenty years from now—because of this change you are leading? Let’s use a global reduction in single-use plastics as the goal we want to eventually achieve. Next, we do backward mapping and connect the preconditions necessary to achieve that goal. In other words: What would have to be true in the world for that outcome to become a reality? In our example, we might say there needs to be decreased demand among consumers for plastic and also decreased plastic production among the companies. For there to be less plastic in the world, both of these conditions would need to be met. From there, we identify some of the basic assumptions underlying our view of the change we are pursuing. What would have to be true to have decreased plastic demand and decreased plastic production? We might need to assume that there are adequate material substitutes for plastic, that if and when we reduce plastic production, there are other materials that can take its place. We might also need to reach a point where people in general believe it’s a worthy goal to try to reduce plastic use. If neither of these assumptions are true, it’s hard to imagine we would ever reduce the amount of plastic in the world. Next, we think about our initiative’s interventions, laying out the change work that we will do in pursuit of that desired change. What are the tangible activities that you’ll actually do on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis? To reduce plastic use, maybe we’ll launch a social media campaign targeted at consumers, encouraging them to reduce their plastic consumption. Maybe we’ll go around to local coffee shops and try to encourage them to no longer offer plastic straws. Or maybe we’ll go and lobby Congress for plastic-related policy changes. Then the final step is to develop indicators to assess the performance of our change initiative. What will we measure that will tell us that, yes, we are on the right track? Perhaps it’s a percentage reduction in plastic use among a target group of consumers. Or maybe it’s measuring the number of coffee shops that eliminate straws due to our efforts.
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“loss aversion bias,” the pair show that people often focus more on what they have to lose than what they have to gain. These biases can make leading change especially challenging, because changemakers, inevitably, are questioning the status quo and shaking up the accepted norm.
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Berger attributes this to people’s natural “anti-persuasion radar”: a feeling that they were being told what to do and having their freedom to decide impinged upon. One of Berger’s suggestions for overcoming this instinct is to ask questions instead of telling people what to do.13 By posing questions, you give people the feeling that they have an ability to decide for themselves—even if you are the one proposing the two options. How might you apply this to your own change initiative? Try to drive buy-in by shifting the listener’s role from thinking about all the reasons you are wrong to giving them the freedom to decide their own approach based on questions in which you help lead them. Offer two solutions instead of one. That way instead of deciding on change versus no change, which will activate status quo bias, you can see which of your changes they prefer. This invites potential change cynics to step up and give answers instead of being told what to do. And, remember, the endowment effect means we tend to love our own answers, because… well, they’re ours.
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- [note::I remember coming across this concept in a parenting subreddit lol]

Asking for Less You might also need to ask for less in service of a greater change. When Dean Rich Lyons was leading an initiative to clearly articulate and put greater emphasis on the role of culture at Berkeley Haas, he faced a lot of pushback, especially from faculty members who saw culture as hard to measure, or even unimportant. Lyons knew that he wouldn’t be able to get every faculty member on board in support of his culture initiative, so instead of asking for 100 percent of faculty to actively support his change efforts, he shifted his ask. He told faculty who didn’t like his change that they could believe whatever they wanted and that he wouldn’t force them to, for instance, teach about culture in their own classroom. But he made one clear reduced ask: No matter what you do, promise that you won’t disparage the Haas culture in front of students. That was it; that was his only ask to stubborn faculty members. He got 100 percent commitment to his ask by offering a way to engage that didn’t require much of any one individual yet ensured that a bunch of potential detractors didn’t get in the way.14
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- [note::"Make the change small"]

Inspired by tools like the business model canvas, which takes the old-fashioned concept of a business plan and transforms it into a one-page strategy, the Changemaker Canvas does the same. It helps changemakers take change initiatives and break them down into smaller, manageable blocks. You will identify concrete steps and actionable activities to help you make your idea an impactful reality. The Changemaker Canvas attempts to help you balance the big picture of the world you are changing with the small changes that will get you there.
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The canvas is broken down into six sections: Vision, Opportunity, The Four S’s of Change, Action, Community, and Approach.
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“Why statements” need three things to work: They must be compelling, authentic, and personal. A why statement should get others excited about the change you are leading; after all, if you aren’t excited about it, why would they be? Second, it must be true to who you are. You can’t fake it, especially since you will need to lean on it when times are tough. Finally, your why statement should be unique to who you are. Bring your own self into this. Your changemaker work is an extension of who you, as a person, are. Lean into this.
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- [note::I need a "why" statement for my website.]

The second block in our canvas, vision, connects back to many themes in this book. In chapter 4, we learned how to paint a picture for others to follow. Is your vision a clear and compelling one that will inspire others to want to join you? Is it aspirational? Does it activate our curiosity, wonder, and excitement? Consider bringing in the long-term goals you identified in your theory of change model and raise them up here to articulate what your change will make possible.
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In one clear, powerful sentence, explain what the change is that you are creating. You can’t possibly explain everything, so instead focus on the essence of your change and leave others eager to learn more. Curious for a few examples? Here are some that students have used: • Using gamification to get more children to read. • Educating and inspiring students in Mexico City to be changemakers. • Reducing food waste on campus through awareness campaigns.
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To help changemakers like you understand a problem, our canvas breaks down problem identification—or, as I prefer to call it, identifying the “opportunity” for change we seek to lead—into three distinct parts: the core problem, the consequences of the problem, and the root causes of the problem. All three are separate yet crucially connected aspects of recognizing an opportunity for change.
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I define the core problem as “one succinct sentence describing the precise issue that you are addressing.” As I work with changemakers, they often struggle with whether the change they are working on should be at a hyperlocal level, a community level, or a state, national, or even global level. They wonder whether it should be broad in its scope or more narrow. This tool purposefully provides room for any and all of those options, but I encourage changemakers at the start of their change process to shoot for a core problem that is inspiring yet achievable.
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Consequences are the negative implications that the identified problem brings about if not addressed. Put another way: If we don’t solve the core problem, then what would happen as a result? Changemakers sometimes conflate the core problem with the consequences. But because there are often so many consequences to an unsolved problem, trying to address all of them all at once usually will spread us way too thin, such that we’ll be unable to realize any change at all. Identifying the consequences gives us a road map for how we will measure the success of our change initiative and how we will determine downstream areas for future work, should we be successful in first addressing our core problem. (If the consequences fail to become a reality, we will know we were successful in driving change in our root problem.)
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It is helpful to think about consequences from both the individual level (what happens if each individual fails to get the support they need and deserve) as well as the organizational level (what happens if the company fails to fully support its employees).
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It’s essential to pinpoint the underlying issues that are causing the core problem that you have identified. Often these root causes are social, legal, historical, cultural, environmental, or technological, reflecting greater systemic issues. In fact, it’s this very systems lens that encourages us to identify these root causes up front. By identifying them, you can start thinking about what those systems to change might be and where your greatest points of leverage might lie.
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- systemic change, leverage, social change,

Here you will list one to three crucial indicators that you will use to measure the intended impact of your project. In other words, how will you know if you are actually on the right path to achieving your change? You can bring in both qualitative and quantitative measures here, but focus on identifying just a couple of the most essential measures that will inform whether you are indeed making the substantive impact you hope to create through your change. It’s important to have a measure for both the level of adoption (how many people are participating) and the difference (if any) the interventions make.
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For those who have an idea of the change they want to make but aren’t sure how to implement it, LA-based design firm verynice created an incredible resource called Models of Impact, in which hundreds of ways we can embed impact into any type of initiative have been identified.3 For instance, one of its models is “employment for traditionally excluded populations,” like Jean Guo’s Konexio pursues, and another is advocacy, which Dolores Huerta has pursued in various forms throughout her career. Or you might pursue a conditional discount to reward behavior, as Hummus Bar in Kfar Vitkin, Israel, does. The restaurant has a set price on the menu for its hummus plate, but it offers a 50 percent discount to parties who are mixed Jewish and Arab, to encourage connecting and finding community over food.
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However, I believe that more isn’t always better, especially when it comes to leading change. I teach changemakers “smart scale,” not “scale at all costs.” How will you scale your initiative beyond a minimum viable project? Though your project need not end up scaling—and certainly not right away—thinking about this from the very beginning will help you design a change project that can scale. Whether or not you yourself will lead the scaling, and whether or not you might create a replicable model for others to follow, lay out how you will ensure scalability from the start.
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- scaling, scalability, strategic planning, social change,

It’s imperative that you ensure that your project continues for the long term.
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- [note::Disagree (in some cases)]

Rarely has an insight rendered me speechless, but physician Paul Batalden’s observations on systems did just that. “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets,” he says. This means that if a process or network is giving us results we don’t want, it’s not the system’s fault; we must go change the system.
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- favorite, discipline, systems change, achievement, habits, systems,
- [note::YES]

Some priorities for putting together a changemaker team: • Don’t simply accept anyone who expresses an interest. Take time up front to think about how you want your team to fit together across roles and responsibilities. • Going solo? Consider your “zone of genius.” Think about what your core skills are and where you can make your highest-level contribution. Reflect not just on what you are good at but also what gives you energy. As much as possible, design a team that allows you to do the work you’re great at and that inspires your highest-possible personal contribution. If you don’t have any specific collaborators in mind yet, that’s totally fine! Sometimes, the early stages of a change initiative mean starting up by yourself. Take the time now to envision what the other roles on the team would be. If you are great at setting a vision, you might need someone else who can be COO to take care of operations. If you are great at finance, you might need someone who has a passion for and skills in marketing and PR. Identify the most important jobs to be done to make this change happen, and evaluate what an ideal team and division of roles and responsibilities would be. • Have a team on board? Rather than taking an emergent strategy toward roles and responsibilities, have an up-front and honest conversation with your team. Discuss what everyone’s areas of highest contribution are, as well as what everyone’s time commitments will look like. Find where there is overlap and where there are gaps. Failing to do this was a mistake I made in the early days of StartSomeGood. My cofounder, Tom, and I were both good at the vision part and not so good at the operations. Comparatively, though, Tom was better than I was at vision, and I was less bad at operations, which led to a rough division of labor—albeit collaborative—along these lines. Had we done this exercise earlier, we would have realized that getting a hands-on COO should have been our top priority! • Discuss how you will work together. A helpful tool here is having everyone on the team create their own personal user manual.7 If each member of the team understands how the other members work, it will make working together easier. Have each person on the team write a one-page outline of how they work and how to best work with them. It might include, for instance, “I have parenting duties, so I won’t be able to check emails after 5 p.m., but I will always check in first thing when my kids wake me up at 5 a.m.!” or “I tend to be very black-and-white in my first reactions to new ideas, so if I fail to see the nuance in an opportunity, please give me time.” These outlines might cover personality traits, pet peeves, preferences on work environment, communication and conflict styles, and much more. Taking the time to create these user manuals up front can significantly reduce future awkwardness and increase collaboration efficiency so that your team can operationalize the change as effectively as possible.
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There’s also the additional benefit of the “social proof” that comes along with evangelists, a term coined by Robert Cialdini in his book Influence.8 It’s a social phenomenon that occurs when someone is unsure of the correct way to behave, so they look to other people for clues to confirm the correct behavior. In times of uncertainty, we tend to look to authority figures. So if someone is trying to figure out whether or not to be part of your change initiative, they might look and see who else is supporting you. If you have an impressive list of evangelists on board—whether formally, in an advisory board, or informally, through a green-lighting of your project—that’s crucial social proof information, which may encourage others to follow the evangelists’ lead in backing you.
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Ask yourself two key questions as you engage the community in your change. The first is: Whom are you serving? And the second is: How do you know that this will be a positive change for them?
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Instead of guessing what type of change people most need, ask them—or, better yet, involve them in leading the change with you.
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How can you leverage what others are doing and not reinvent the wheel? How can you use a smart division of labor to do what you do best and be part of a larger solution, rather than trying to do everything yourself?
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- [note::Coalition building]

“Life shrinks or expands according to one’s courage.”1
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Can you find that courage calling out from inside you? The courage to stop thinking of changemaking as something that other people do, and tell yourself that it’s now something you do. The courage to stop waiting until things are perfect before you begin to lead change and instead to commit to taking action right now, even if that means embracing some failures along the way.
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“Changemaker Skills,” Ashoka, https://www.ashoka.org/en/collection/changemaker-skills.
- Location 3939
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Scott Brinker, “Martec’s Law: Technology Changes Exponentially, Organizations Change Logarithmically,” Chief Martec, June 13, 2013, https://chiefmartec.com/2013/06/martecs-law-technology-changes-exponentially-organizations-change-logarithmically.
- Location 3942
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Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: The Untold History of People Power (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2005).
- Location 3956
-

Martin E. P. Seligman, Learned Optimism (New York: Knopf, 1991).
- Location 3960
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Tyler Tervooren, “Finally, a Simple Way to Tell Smart Risks from Dumb Ones,” Riskology, https://www.riskology.co/smart-risk-equation.
- Location 4001
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E. P. Hollander, “Conformity, Status, and Idiosyncrasy Credit,” Psychological Review 65, no. 2 (1958): 117–27, https://doi.org/10.1037/h0042501.
- Location 4005
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Gwen Yi, “To Lead Is to Let Go: Why I Fired Myself as CEO of Tribeless,” Medium, December 5, 2018, https://gwenyi.medium.com/to-lead-is-to-let-go-why-i-fired-myself-as-ceo-of-tribeless-3f4c4eb46c.
- Location 4013
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Scott Shigeoka and Jason Marsh, “Eight Keys to Bridging Our Differences,” Greater Good Magazine, Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, July 22, 2020, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/eight_keys_to_bridging_our_differences.
- Location 4055
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Matthew Kelly, The Long View: Some Thoughts About One of Life’s Most Important Lessons (North Palm Beach, FL: Blue Sparrow, 2014).
- Location 4087
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The Flux Report: Building a Resilient Workforce in the Face of Flux, January 2014, Right Management, https://www.rightmanagement.co.uk/wps/wcm/connect/350a18c6-6b19-470d-adba-88c9e0394d0b/Right+Management+Flux+Report+Spread.pdf?MOD=AJPERES.
- Location 4100
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Stephen J. Zaccaro, “Social Complexity and the Competencies Required for Effective Military Leadership,” in Out-of-the-Box Leadership: Transforming the Twenty-First-Century Army and Other Top-Performing Organizations, James G. Hunt, George E. Dodge, and Leonard Wong, eds. (Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing, 1999), 131–51.
- Location 4103
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Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze, “Using Emergence to Take Social Innovations to Scale,” 2006, https://www.margaretwheatley.com/articles/emergence.html.
- Location 4142
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Damon Centola et al., “Experimental Evidence for Tipping Points in Social Convention,” Science 360, no. 6393 (June 8, 2018): 1116–19, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aas8827.
- Location 4144
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Mark Wilson, “The Magic Number of People Needed to Create Social Change,” Fast Company, June 22, 2018, https://www.fastcompany.com/90176846/the-magic-number-of-people-needed-to-create-social-change.
- Location 4146
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Jane Wei-Skillern, David Ehrlichman, and David Sawyer, “The Most Impactful Leaders You Have Never Heard Of,” Stanford Social Innovation Review, September 16, 2015, https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_most_impactful_leaders_youve_never_heard_of.
- Location 4151
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Andrés Tapia, “The Inclusive Leader,” Korn Ferry, https://www.kornferry.com/insights/this-week-in-leadership/the-inclusive-leader.
- Location 4195
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“Introduction,” re:Work, Google, https://rework.withgoogle.com/print/guides/5721312655835136.
- Location 4205
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Charles Duhigg, “What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team,” New York Times, February 25, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html.
- Location 4206
- collaboration, group_performanceeffectiveness, 1resource,

Amy Edmondson, “Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams,” Administrative Science Quarterly 44, no. 2 (1999): 350–83, https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999.
- Location 4209
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“Identify Dynamics of Effective Teams,” Guide: Understand Team Effectiveness, re:Work, Google, https://rework.withgoogle.com/guides/understanding-team-effectiveness/steps/identify-dynamics-of-effective-teams.
- Location 4211
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Markus Baer and Michael Frese, “Innovation Is Not Enough: Climates for Initiative and Psychological Safety, Process Innovations, and Firm Performance,” Journal of Organizational Behavior 24, no. 1 (February 2003): 45–68, https://doi.org/10.1002/job.179.
- Location 4213
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Amy C. Edmondson, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2019).
- Location 4217
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Maura Kessel, Jan Kratzer, and Carsten Schultz, “Psychological Safety, Knowledge Sharing, and Creative Performance in Healthcare Teams,” Creativity and Innovation Management 21, no. 2 (June 2012): 147–57, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8691.2012.00635.x.
- Location 4219
- psychological safety, 1resource, creativity, knowledge sharing, group_performanceeffectiveness, innovation,

The Social Intrapreneur: A Field Guide for Corporate Changemakers, Allianz, IDEO, Skoll Foundation, and SustainAbility, 2008, https://www.allianz.com/content/dam/onemarketing/azcom/Allianz_com/migration/media/current/en/press/news/studies/downloads/thesocialintrapreneur_2008.pdf.
- Location 4245
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The Social Intrapreneur, https://www.allianz.com/content/dam/onemarketing/azcom/Allianz_com/migration/media/current/en/press/news/studies/downloads/thesocialintrapreneur_2008.pdf.
- Location 4259
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“The Three Types of People You’ll Meet When Implementing Change,” Innov8rs, September 23, 2018, https://innov8rs.co/news/the-three-types-of-people-youll-meet-when-implementing-change.
- Location 4269
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For more information on the model and its development, see “What Is Theory of Change?,” Center for Theory of Change, https://www.theoryofchange.org/what-is-theory-of-change.
- Location 4283
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Alison Beard and Jonah Berger, “Mastering the Art of Persuasion,” episode 753, HBR IdeaCast, August 11, 2020, https://hbr.org/podcast/2020/08/mastering-the-art-of-persuasion.
- Location 4289
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Jonah Berger, The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone’s Mind (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020).
- Location 4291
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“Case Study: The Berkeley Haas School of Business: Codifying, Embedding, and Sustaining Culture,” Berkeley Haas Case Series, cases.haas.berkeley.edu/case/berkeley-haas-culture.
- Location 4293
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“Models of Impact,” Verynice, http://www.modelsofimpact.co.
- Location 4301
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Donella Meadows, “Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System,” Donella Meadows Archives, Academy for Systems Change, https://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system.
- Location 4304
- 1resource/article, systems change,

Paul Batalden and Earl Conway, “Like Magic? (‘Every System Is Perfectly Designed…’),” Institute for Healthcare Improvement, August 21, 2015, http://www.ihi.org/communities/blogs/origin-of-every-system-is-perfectly-designed-quote.
- Location 4307
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There are lots of variations of this concept, but a great resource (with helpful templates included) comes from the company Atlassian, which uses these as part of new employee onboarding: “My User Manual,” Atlassian, https://www.atlassian.com/team-playbook/plays/my-user-manual.
- Location 4309
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Leandra Fernandez, “Empathy and Social Justice: The Power of Proximity in Improvement Science,” Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, April 21, 2016, https://www.carnegiefoundation.org/blog/empathy-and-social-justice-the-power-of-proximity-in-improvement-science.
- Location 4314
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Joanna Cea and Jess Rimington, “Designing with the Beneficiary,” Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization 11, no. 3–4 (Summer–Fall 2017): 98–111, https://doi.org/10.1162/inov_a_00259.
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ALEX BUDAK is a social entrepreneur and a professional faculty member at UC Berkeley Haas, where he created and teaches the transformative course, “Becoming a Changemaker.” He previously cofounded StartSomeGood.com and held leadership positions at Reach for Change and Change.org. He teaches, speaks, consults, and advises organizations around the world, with the mission of helping people from all walks of life become changemakers. He’s a graduate of Georgetown University and UCLA and received UCLA’s recent graduate of the year award.
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http://alexbudak.com.
- Location 4337
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http://changemaker.us/resources.
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The underlying concepts in Martec’s law help us understand the growing chasm between the change occurring in the world and our ability as individuals, as leaders, as community members, as organizations, companies, and systems to keep pace.
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As author Rebecca Solnit describes it, “Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky… hope is an ax you break down doors with in an emergency.”
- Location 325
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The first is to become a changemaker yourself. The second is to surround yourself with changemakers. You’ll learn later on in the changemaker leadership section of the book (see here) how to identify fellow changemakers, how to collaborate with them, and how to inspire them to join you on your own changemaker journey. The third and most trailblazing way is to help others around you become changemakers.
- Location 367
-
- [note::Three levers of change:

1. Become a changemaker yourself
2. Surround yourself with other changemakers
3. Help others to become changmakers]

A true changemaker himself, Carr doesn’t do anything the prescribed way. Following an introductory email from me, Carr rejected the norm of an email response and simply called me directly (waiting only about ten seconds from the moment I hit SEND, meaning he couldn’t have possibly read my whole email)! Though we had never met, he told me to come visit him in Fresno, give a talk on changemaking to some students, and have lunch with him and a favorite school principal changemaker friend of his. Despite other commitments, I spontaneously said yes right on the spot, and two days later I made the four-hour drive to meet him. And since then, he’s made a point of sending emails, making calls, and checking up on me regularly to make sure I’m continuing to make change and to see if there’s anything I need. This would be exceptional, except that in the case of Tony Carr, this is ordinary—I learned that he supports dozens of changemakers in the same way. He opens his network, his creative brain, and his bottomless well of inspiration to each of us.
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This was a challenge to her fixed mindset, as she would need to overcome the belief that someone else’s success inevitably comes at her expense.
- Location 391
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- [note::Ashley Lin talks about this in Cultivating Community i.e. Power is not zero sum. Just because someone gains power in a community doesn't mean you have less.]

One of my favorite assignments in my Becoming a Changemaker class is called “Changemaker of the Week.” Students prepare a presentation for the class where they select a person who inspires them, and make a persuasive case for why that person is a changemaker. The choice of person is completely up to them: Their changemaker can be famous or known only by a few. They can be alive or dead. They can lead change in any role or sector. It’s up to students to tell us the story of their changemaker and show how this person embodies the traits, concepts, and characteristics they’ve learned in class.
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Together with his colleagues Jessica Kalip, Callysta Thony, and Angeline Seah, we created the Changemaker Index in early 2019, which is the first longitudinal study of changemakers ever attempted.
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A changemaker mindset starts with a conscious choice, remembering that we have agency in how we respond to changes around us.
- Location 529
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“Injustice prevails where hopelessness persists.
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Effectively questioning the status quo requires two high-level capabilities working together. The first is learning to recognize an established convention worth confronting. The second is having the mindset and skills to take the risk to pursue the change and to bring others along with you.
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Whereas convergent thinking looks for a single right answer, divergent thinking attempts to generate creative ideas by exploring many possible solutions. It’s free-flowing and nonlinear, and these ideas are often generated in an emergent cognitive fashion. Unlike convergent thinking, divergent thinking doesn’t look for judgment right away. Instead, the focus is on generating lots of possible solutions.
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Divergent thinking is a brainstorming process where a single stimulus leads to many possible answers. To enable this process, you might try to write lists with as many ideas as possible or do free writing. You might spend time in meditation or use tools like bubble mapping, or even create artwork to tap into your creative side.
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I’ve quite often found in working with management teams that disagreements that feel personal or systemic during meetings are actually a misalignment on the type of thinking to apply at that moment. If half of the team is practicing divergent thinking and coming up with potential solutions while the other half is applying convergent thinking and trying to decide on a single best strategy, there will be inevitable conflict, no matter how good the intentions of everyone are. It’s therefore helpful when you lead teams and meetings to clearly state when your team should be in divergent mode and when it should be in convergent mode.
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- [note::Super relevant to brainstorming meetings]

Asking the wrong questions. To embrace your curiosity, consider approaching challenges in one of three ways. The first embraces your inner three-year-old: Approach a challenge with a childlike wonder and curiosity. Ask “Why?”—a lot. Practice a beginner’s mind and try to see things in a fresh light. The second approach asks yourself: What would my replacement do? Sometimes we get so stuck in the way we’ve always done things that it’s hard to zoom out and imagine that someone else might look at a challenge from a vastly different perspective. It’s a wonderful and empowering question to ask, to put your ego aside for a second and look at a situation anew, through the eyes of someone else. Finally, consider leading with the question “How might we…?” This question, a foundational part of the “design thinking” methodology, is a brilliant one. Notice that the question asks might, not should, which is an invitation for divergent thinking and new ideas and perspectives. Also note that it’s about we, not I or you, so it’s inherently an invitation for collaboration and for diverse ideas to be considered. Language matters, and these questions can help you tap into your own latent curiosity.
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- [note::Reminds me of "Just try it" in George Lucas documentary. Also: "What woud thd main character of your life do in your situation?"]

Curious changemakers benefit from taking part in a diverse array of activities, even if they come at the expense of efficiency. The benefits of, say, reading a book on anthropology or having a conversation with a food scientist might not be clear in the moment, but they broaden our perspective and open up new possibilities for insight down the line. We need to give ourselves permission to think expansively, not just efficiently. As my grandmother would often say, “Nothing is ever wasted,” meaning that every new experience we have and each new thing we learn might end up becoming valuable at some point in the future, helping us make new and interesting connections.
- Location 702
- pluralism, insight, intellectual diversity, creativity, divergent thinking, ideas, connections,
- [note::AKA have a pluralistic mindset and seek to find value in every experience.]

There’s a deceptively simple and incredibly powerful tool developed by entrepreneur Tyler Tervooren called “the risk quotient” that helps aspiring leaders get perspective on which risks are worth taking.16 Begin by identifying a risk and then quantify the potential rewards and potential losses on a 1-to-10 scale. The risk quotient is equal to the potential reward divided by the potential loss. If the risk quotient is greater than 3, then according to Tervooren, it’s probably a risk worth taking. (I told you it’s deceptively simple.) The concept can be applied to risks large and small, across the full spectrum of change efforts we seek to lead. The risk quotient helps us gain clarity as to whether or not questioning the status quo is worth our time.
- Location 802
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- [note::Risk quotient = Potential Reward / Potential Loss]

Idiosyncrasy credits, as conceived by psychologist Edwin Hollander, are earned through either conformity or competence. Hollander defines these credits as the “positively disposed impressions” an individual acquires from other group members.18 You can gain these credits in two ways. The first is by going with the majority on issues that you don’t feel strongly about—so that you can then apply your credits toward leading change on issues that do matter to you. If you earn a reputation for questioning the status quo on anything and everything, you’re more likely to be seen as a contrarian than a changemaker (remember the example earlier about identifying when and where to question the status quo in planning an event). This might mean going with the flow on what type of accounting software to use or where to post a job opening, so that when you do choose to deviate from the group and speak up about supply chain transparency, people will be more likely to listen because they know you don’t always diverge. The second way to earn credits is by developing and displaying expertise and clear abilities—for instance, by always doing high-level work. In other words, members of a group will be more accepting of someone taking a risk or pursuing a new path if they know that they generally are part of the group and that they are competent and talented. You can start building up these credits now so that when the time comes to zig while others are zagging, you can put all your idiosyncrasy-credit chips on the table to influence those around you to join you down this new path.
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- [note::Acquiring idiosyncratic credits and gaining buy-in from a group:

1. Conform with group during low stakes decisions
2. Build a reputation of having clear expertise and abilities]

In a terrific study titled “When Risk Seeking Becomes a Motivational Necessity,” University of Waterloo professor Abigail Scholer and colleagues look at how we can motivate others, especially in decision-making positions, to pursue new ideas.19 Their findings show that we can reframe a new idea or a new change initiative by, instead of viewing it as a risk itself, flipping the narrative to view not pursuing it as the greater risk.
- Location 851
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- [note::Emphasize the risk of inaction instead of the benefit of action]

organization she cofounded, Tribeless, received worldwide attention for its first product, the Empathy Box. The Empathy Box, which has now been used in over thirty countries, is a facilitation and connection tool to help teams and groups practice empathy, respect, and mutual understanding, and she had become the face of it.
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The Empathy Box, which has now been used in over thirty countries, is a facilitation and connection tool to help teams and groups practice empathy, respect, and mutual understanding,
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“Leadership isn’t about pretending you have it all together, or telling others what to do,” she told me. “It’s about humility and vulnerability and trust, and being willing to put yourself last.”2
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changemakers don’t find a muddled middle ground of semiconfident and semihumble; rather, they challenge themselves to do “both, and”—remain confident, courageous, and self-assured yet also humble, trusting, and open to working with and learning from others.
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Humble CEOs were found to have reduced pay disparity between themselves and their staff, they hired more diverse management teams, and they gave staff the ability to lead and innovate. Humble leaders have less employee turnover, higher employee satisfaction, and, most crucially for my dear skeptical executives, they improve the company’s bottom-line performance.
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In addition to findings on corporate strategy and market positioning, the data show that the leaders of “great” companies had two traits in common: fierce resolve and humility.
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Collins uses the metaphor of a mirror and a window. When a nonhumble leader receives praise, even if it’s meant for their team, that leader will look in the mirror and take the praise for themselves. And when a nonhumble leader receives blame, even if it is meant for them, they will look out the window and project the blame onto others. A humble leader, meanwhile, does the opposite. When praise comes in, even if it’s meant for them, they will look out the window and share that praise with their team. And, conversely, when blame comes in, even if it isn’t meant for them, they will look in the mirror and take the blame themselves.
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According to Pew Research Center, from 1958 to 2021, the number of Americans who say they trust the federal government “always or most of the time” has plummeted from 73 percent in 1958 to under 25 percent today.7 Meanwhile, 71 percent of Americans say trust in each other has been shrinking, with 70 percent saying that this decreased trust makes it harder to solve problems together. Sixty-two percent of respondents say that people are more likely to look out for themselves rather than help someone else, and over one-third of people don’t trust their employer.8 While there are variations by country—for instance, Swedes have much higher levels of trust9—overall the trend is clear: Trust in institutions, in organizations, and in each other is plunging. Trust has never been more critical, yet trust has never been more absent.
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For changemakers, it’s important to fully appreciate that trust is nuanced, in order to effectively apply it in service of our change efforts. Trust consists of three interrelated aspects, or pillars: 1. Trusting ourselves. 2. Trusting others. 3. Earning the trust of others. Each one is important on its own, but to fully make trust a superpower, it’s imperative that you are able to build upon all three pillars, which are mutually reinforcing. Having only two will leave the foundation of trust wobbly. If you have the first and the second pillars without the third, you risk becoming isolated from your teams and your collaborators, remaining an individual contributor rather than a leader who regularly brings out the best in others. If you have the first and third pillars without the second, you risk coming off as arrogant or aloof, potentially landing on the side of confidence with attitude. Finally, if you have just the second and third pillars but not the first, you are never able to fully lean into your own talents, insights, and expertise, limiting your impact and contributions to your team’s collective efforts.
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- [note::I think I struggle all three of these, mostly trusting myself and trusting others. More recently, though, I've come to understand how essential trust in others is to managing projects and building communities.]

their crucially important article “Stop Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome.”
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I shared three specific approaches with him to help him become a changemaker who learned to trust others: Start small. Many changemakers are overwhelmed by the idea of losing control over their projects and see trusting others as the first crack toward that loss. Instead of telling them to go all in, I advise changemakers to start with small trust leaps. Give collaborators room to contribute one small part of a project in their own way. Then, if that works well (it usually goes far better than expected), give them a slightly bigger project next time. Trust isn’t binary. As the Russian proverb that was often quoted by Ronald Reagan during US–USSR nuclear disarmament talks advises, “Trust, but verify.” Give a bit of trust, confirm that it was warranted, and then provide a bit more trust the next time. Be clear on the “what” and flexible on the “how.” Imagine you want to plan an event on the topic of sustainable cities and you want to delegate the planning to someone but you aren’t sure how much control to cede. Outline the vision and the nonnegotiables, while giving lots of room for flexibility and creativity on how that plan is actually achieved. You might tell your collaborator that you want it to be held in a modern setting, featuring a panel with four speakers—two men and two women—and that you want at least fifty people in attendance. This is the “what,” and this is crystal clear. But the “how” for achieving it is left up to the person you are learning to trust. Perhaps they will recruit speakers through their networks or perhaps through cold emails. Perhaps they will advertise through Facebook, or perhaps they will create an email campaign. Those details don’t (and shouldn’t!) matter to you. You have outlined what the end results will be, and in doing so, you are allowing yourself to trust someone else to execute on that vision in their own way—a way that might be even more effective than your suggested path. Protect against the downside of risk. Even if you start small and remain clear on the what and flexible on the how, it can still feel really scary to take a trust leap, especially if it’s an endeavor that means a lot to you. Here you can focus on protecting against the downside of risk. In other words, figure out what the worst-case scenario might be if someone were to flake on you and proactively plan ahead to overcome it. As you learn to trust people, you need not do so blindly. As you get more comfortable with trusting others, you’ll get better at judging how and when to trust. But in the meantime, prepare for what will happen if your trust isn’t warranted. For instance, if you delegate someone to plan that event on sustainable cities, perhaps you give them a deadline of completing all plans two weeks in advance. That way, in an absolute worst case, where your colleague falls through, you can still pull off the event on your own. Protecting against the downside allows you to take away your trust before it’s too late, should things go…
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- [note::Very applicable to me!]

When people lack information about what’s going on, they tend to make up stories, trying to connect whatever dots they can discern. When people make up stories, they tend to make themselves both the heroes and the victims of their own stories. It’s incumbent on you, as someone worthy of earning trust, to help people tell the right stories.
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As a changemaker looking to gain the trust of others, being vulnerable—being human, being our full selves, and being open and honest—is an incredible way to get others to feel comfortable around us and to trust us. As changemakers, we often think that we need to wear armor and appear invincible. Yet it’s often that armor of invulnerability that repels others from being able to trust us.
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I advise changemakers looking to develop trustworthiness to be hard on ideas but soft on people. Leading change often requires ruffling feathers and pushing forward ideas and visions that are uncomfortable to others. But while forging an agreement might not be easy, we need not be disagreeable in the process of pursuing it. The most trust-inducing conversations are ones where people can speak their minds and where teams can wrestle with ideas. But it’s crucial to challenge the ideas—with new approaches, concepts, visions, possibilities—while separating those ideas from the people sharing them.
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helping you understand what your default approach to conflict is, through understanding and applying the Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument, or the TKI model.19 It’s a simple but powerful tool to provide you with self-awareness about your default approach to conflict and disagreement.
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- [note::This sounds like an valuable thing to engage with - per Rose and my conversation about my deeply rooted avoidance of conflict with my family, I have a hunch that I more readily default to compromise than collaboration.]

It may seem paradoxical, but the very best collaboration happens when you are high on both assertiveness (looking out for your own needs) and also cooperativeness (looking out for your partner). This is “collaboration” on the TKI graph. You try to find a win-win solution that completely satisfies both your concerns and your teammate’s concerns.
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To be a great collaborator often means going slow at first so that you can go fast later. The initial steps of leading with values and focusing on alignment are not quick. Nor should they be if they are done well, where each party is fully engaged. But by spending time up front in a collaboration to align and discuss values first, you’ll be able to make future decisions much more quickly.
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you can get lucky and get to the same outcome quickly through force of will or persuasion, but if your collaborators don’t feel part of the process and bought-in as full participants, your change is unlikely to stick. Many changemakers prefer to be the first person to share their opinion or ideas; this is the confidence part, which is important. But equally so is the humility to hang back and to let others share their ideas first. Your collaborators are likely to suggest ideas you wouldn’t have thought of. And if they suggest an idea that you would have raised yourself anyway, then that’s even better. You can praise them for their terrific idea and let them take credit, while enjoying the fact that you’ll still get the outcome you want.
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- [note::"It's the outcome that matters, not who takes credit."]

Start strengthening your humility muscles by putting the mirror-and-window concept into practice. The next time you receive praise, see if there are others whom you can share that praise with. The next time you see someone on your team receive blame, see if there are ways you might take responsibility. Then reflect: How do others respond when you show up with greater humility?
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a mindset of going beyond yourself. The four parts to this mindset are practicing servant leadership, practicing ethical leadership, engaging in long-term thinking, and developing and applying a vision. Put another way, it’s serving others (servant leadership) in the right way (ethical leadership) for the long run (long-term thinking) toward a meaningful goal (vision).
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The idea stretches back to philosopher Lao-tzu, who twenty-six hundred years ago taught: “The highest type of ruler is one of whose existence the people are barely aware… The Sage is self-effacing and scanty of words. When his task is accomplished and things have been completed, all the people say, ‘We ourselves have achieved it!’”1
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What does servant leadership look like in practice? When I meet with direct reports, I consider my top priority to be doing whatever it takes to help them do their best work. I ask them what is getting in their way and how I might be able to intervene to help. Instead of thinking I know best, I actively look to serve others; I trust that they know best what they need, I listen to them, and then I take action. This means that my role as a manager could be anything from having a difficult conversation on my colleague’s behalf, helping them strategize a big pitch, or even smaller actions like making sure that they have access to booking a conference room. It’s being an offensive lineman to block whatever might be getting in the way of their growth, to allow them to become stronger and more capable in their work. It all starts with the conscious choice to serve others.
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- management, servant leadership,

If you’re looking for a way to begin practicing servant leadership, consider starting with Grant’s concept of the “five-minute favor.” Ask yourself: “What is something I could do for someone else, with no expectation of reciprocation, in five minutes?” Perhaps it’s making an email introduction between two people who you think would really enjoy meeting one another, or writing a note to a colleague, manager, or friend to thank them for their hard work. In just five minutes, you can begin becoming a servant leader by serving others.
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- [note::This reminds me of Stephanie's (RD's) notes of gratitude. Even though they took less than 10 minutes to write, I still remember them after all this time.]

There are three keys to becoming effective, ethical leaders today: authenticity, consistency, and inclusive engagement.
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- [note::1. Being authentic - Our actions reflect those we would encourage of others
2. Being consistent - Our actions are an accurate representation of our own moral beliefs
3. Being inclusive - Our actions include engage all kinds of stakeholders, regardless of belief, status, background, etc.]

Change takes time. Many changemakers with whom I work are naturally impatient, a trait that serves them well in many instances, because this restlessness leads to action. But forging real, lasting change is a marathon, not a sprint.
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- [note::Yesss - I have had to learn this. Change requires strategic, deliberate action. In the same way it's best to let communities grow organically, you have to let the change simmer and not try to force it to occur.]

Jocelyn Ling Malan, an expert in design and innovation, who says to think of your first jobs as a series of hypotheses to test that will inform your career: Do I like working in a small company? Do I prefer working in a fast-paced environment? Does a career in writing feel as fulfilling as the courses I took? This reframe of the job search from being finite to infinite helps students develop a new perspective on the decisions they then make in pursuit of that exciting first job.
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Rich Lyons, former dean of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, defines vision in a simple but powerful way: painting a picture of the future for others to follow. Your ability to paint that picture and to articulate a future-oriented vision that is clear and compelling is crucial to your ability to lead.
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- buy-in, vision, leadership,

Instead of framing the questions as a problem/solution, we asked, “What is the future you are creating?” and “How are you creating this future?”
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- [note::Problem/solution: "What is the problem we're trying to solve? How are we going to solve it?"
v.s.
Envisioned Future: "What is the future we want to create? How are we going to help create it?"]

From there, ask the question “Why?” to get at the root of your vision. I’ve used this approach intuitively in my coaching of changemakers for years, but I learned after the fact that my approach is quite similar to the “five whys” interrogative technique developed by inventor Sakichi Toyoda and used throughout Toyota Motor Corporation.
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- [note::Reminds me of Angela Duckworth's top-level goals]

Steve Zaccaro, professor of psychology at George Mason University, has dedicated his career to trying to answer the question “What is it that allows some leaders to adjust better to change than others?”5 His work focuses on flexibility and shows that the concept is a nuanced one, that there are, in fact, three different kinds of flexibility: cognitive, emotional, and dispositional. All three of these are crucial for you as a changemaker, both for your own well-being and in support of the change projects you lead.
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Cognitive flexibility. Zaccaro identifies cognitive flexibility as “the ability to use different thinking strategies and mental frameworks.” Think of this as being able to hold multiple potentially conflicting strategies or scenarios in mind at the same time.
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Emotional flexibility. Per Zaccaro, this is “the ability to vary one’s approach to dealing with emotions and those of others.” It allows you to support a wide variety of emotional responses.
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Dispositional flexibility. This is “the ability to remain optimistic and, at the same time, realistic.” Put simply, dispositional flexibility is the ability to find optimism while being grounded in reality.
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Educator and author Stephen Covey might not use the word self-care, but he’s created the best analogy I know to explain why it matters; he calls it “sharpening the saw.”15 Imagine that you are sawing down a huge tree. It’s likely you would just keep sawing and sawing and sawing until the tree finally falls. That’s how most of us approach change; we keep going and going without stopping to think too much until the job is done. But Covey teaches us to question the status quo and think differently: “We must never become too busy sawing to take time to sharpen the saw,” he advises us. A saw’s blade dulls over time. The more it is used, the weaker it gets. As changemakers, it’s easy to feel guilty about taking any time for ourselves when we are so motivated to lead change, especially for others. But if you don’t care for yourself, if you don’t establish these crucial self-care practices, you will end up like I did during my time with StartSomeGood: sawing and sawing and sawing, becoming both less effective and more exhausted with each passing day. The practice of sharpening the saw encourages us to take a break from the work, metaphorically sharpening our saw through self-renewal, so that we can get back to sawing much more effectively.
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- [note::Great analogy - Sharpening the saw = stepping away from the work to be done & taking time for yourself
This could also be used as a decent argument for improving meta-skills (e.g. speaking, decision-making, productivity, etc.)]

I define leadership as “the ability to make meaningful things happen through and with other people.” This definition focuses on the act of leadership. Sometimes leadership happens through others. Sometimes it happens with others. Sometimes it’s a combination. But it’s always a meaningful act, and it’s always done in cooperation and concert with others. (Leadership does not happen alone in a vacuum.)
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The first step in reinventing leadership is to stop waiting for permission.
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- impact, favorite, leadership, agency,

Ibarra conducted research on the most important leadership competencies, and based on surveys and analysis, she identified the six most crucial skills. They are: • Collaborating across organizational units and functions • Inspiring and motivating others • Getting buy-in/support • Providing strategic direction • Making decisions under conditions of uncertainty/ambiguity • Influencing without authority I love this list, because every single one of these—except perhaps, in some cases, making decisions under conditions of ambiguity—are leadership skills you can do regardless of your title. Collaborating, inspiring others, providing direction, influencing without authority: These are all things that you can start doing right now. You don’t need anyone’s permission to do them; you simply need to give yourself permission to lead.
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- [note::How can I most effectively upskill in these areas?
Note: these are all skills you can become exceptional at without having any position of authority.]

So if we know what bad leadership looks like and what good leadership feels like, why do we have such an abysmal state of leadership in the world? I believe it’s because for too long we have mistaken leadership as something bestowed upon someone because of title. But leadership is something we do. It’s not something we are.
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- leadership, power, favorite,
- [note::"Leadership is something we do, not something we are." - LOVE this]

“Experimental Evidence for Tipping Points in Social Convention,” they conducted experiments within social networks where they had “confederates”—people in on the study—change behavioral norms.6 Their findings, as summarized in a Fast Company article, “The Magic Number of People Needed to Create Social Change,” show that “only 25% of people need to adopt a new social norm to create an inflection point where everyone in the group follows.”7 This means that leading change through a network is much more accessible than many of us think, and that the influence any of us as individuals can have is likely much larger than we would imagine.
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- [note::Huh, good thing to keep in mind i.e. you only need to influence a fraction of the people for an idea to eventually propagate through a whole network.]

and wonder why this generation hasn’t produced the next Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, or other singular leader, this is actually a deliberate and strategic approach that shows what’s possible through
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Instead of a single changemaker, today’s social movements increasingly look toward and are led by networks of many changemakers to effect positive change.
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- [note::But how do we make sure coordination between each of these changemakers is effective?]

In the Stanford Social Innovation Review piece “The Most Impactful Leaders You Have Never Heard Of,” Jane Wei-Skillern, David Ehrlichman, and David Sawyer outline four specific principles to follow.
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- [note::1. Focus on trust, not control
2. Focus on humility, not brand
3. Be a node, not a hub
4. Focus on mission, not organization]

I break down leading with purpose into a model of three V’s: vision, values, and victories.
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As a changemaker, can you continually paint that picture of the future for folks on your team and help them connect each of their individual parts to the overall vision you are creating together? That’s the first step in leading with purpose.
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Leading with values means giving your team a way of working that connects them to something greater.
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Celebrating small wins and creating a sense of progress is what is meant by leading with victories.
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Lean into your curiosity, and instead of asking leading questions to force a conversation to where you might want it to head, embrace the unexpected that can arise through a catalytic question like “What might happen if…?” or “What is just one more possibility I might not have considered yet?” These questions invite divergent thinking.
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Stop waiting for permission to be a leader.
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- leadership, agency,

Changemaker Challenge • Reflect on some of the worst examples of leadership you’ve experienced: moments where leaders frustrated you or let you down. Come up with a list of negative traits and use them as inspiration to reinvent your own leadership, and choose to create a style in opposition to these.
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There are four keys to embracing microleadership.
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- [note::1. Believe It, Be It - You are a leader, so act like it!
2. Give Yourself Permission - If you wait for permission to be a leader, you will never have it
3. Serve Others - Look for small opportunities to demonstrate leadership through helping others
4. Take Action - Continuously take action again and again and again. Social change is not possible without it.]

Changemaking usually requires bringing together lots of different people, from different backgrounds, collaborating across sectors and silos, and working across, through, and around hierarchies.
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One’s ability to influence others irrespective of title or authority is often referred to as “lateral leadership.”
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I believe lateral leaders need to embrace three leadership tools: seeing the best in others, building alliances, and asking others for advice.
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To see the best in others, I love the insight Liz Wiseman, author of the book Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, provides us. She says the critical question for “multiplier” leaders is not “Is this person smart?” but rather “In what ways is this person smart?”7 “The job,” she and fellow author Greg McKeown write in a related article, is “to bring the right people together in an environment that unleashes their best thinking—and then stay out of the way.”
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INFLUENCE SUPERPOWERS
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- [note::Ways of influencing people:

1. Relationships
2. Vision
3. Empathy
4. Passion/Positivity
5. Making it safe for others to take action with you]

sometimes people will join your change initiative not because they particularly care about the specific change you are leading but just because they care about you.
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The second superpower is vision. We define vision as painting a picture of the future that others feel called to follow. Can you paint such a vibrant and exciting future that someone can’t help but be excited to join? Remember to make it clear and compelling and use the power of aspiration, of helping others see what’s possible and believe that they can help make it a reality with you. Use vision to bring everyone along—from the NASA janitor to the executive team whose buy-in you require—to imagine this new future with you.
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When attempting to influence, empathy is required to actively seek to understand what’s in it for the other person and why they should care. As changemakers, we often fall in love with our own ideas, but empathy forces us to see things from another’s perspective and understand that perhaps they like the idea but feel scared to join, or they want to help but perhaps not at the level we might be asking.
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Our workplace-composting hero, Sebastien, whom we met in chapter 6, made passion and positivity his influence superpower in encouraging a new behavior throughout his office. He galvanized others to join him in his composting efforts in part through his sheer excitement, and that same enthusiasm started a chain reaction. His first supporters were called to join him because of his passion, and then they themselves transmitted that same zest in rallying their own networks to join in.
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many of the people you will meet along your changemaker journey are more scared than you are to take action. How can you proactively make it safe for others to join you?
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This reminds me to connect back to Jim Collins’s mirror-and-window insight (see here). I tell them that I know they are taking a risk to join me on this change initiative. And I promise that if the initiative fails, I will take all the blame and make sure that they don’t receive any negativity for having trusted me. And meanwhile, if it succeeds, I will make sure they get credit. Here, the power of humility ensures we make it safe for others to join us.
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Influencing can sometimes feel sleazy, but by practicing influence superpowers like investing in relationships, employing empathy, and making it safe for others, you can influence effectively in honest and transparent ways.
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organizational psychologist Andrea Titus have done terrific work on identifying six keys to becoming an inclusive leader.4 Let’s start by reviewing what their research says are the traits that the least inclusive leaders have, so that we can be aware of these noninclusive traps.
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- [note::NON-inclusive leadership traits:

1. Overpowering others
2. Displaying favoritism
3. Discounting alternative views]

Now that we’ve identified the traits of noninclusive leaders, let’s turn our attention to the six key traits Bourke and Titus identified and explore how each of these connects to aspects of the changemaker mindset we’ve already learned.5
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- [note::Inclusive leadership traits:

1. Visible commitment to inclusion
2. Humility
3. Curiosity about others
4. Cultural intelligence
5. Effective collaboration
6. Awareness of bias]

Humility. In the words of Bourke and Titus, this means to “admit mistakes and create the space for others to contribute.”
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Steve Zaccaro’s “emotional flexibility”
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Cultural intelligence.
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- [note::How do I grow this in my own life?]

Edmondson defines psychological safety as “a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking,” “a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass, reject, or punish someone for speaking up,” and “a team climate characterized by interpersonal trust and mutual respect in which people are comfortable being themselves.”8 Google adds to this definition, asserting that when psychological safety is present, members of a team “feel confident that no one on the team will embarrass or punish anyone else for admitting a mistake, asking a question, or offering a new idea.”
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How can you establish and reinforce the presence of psychological safety in your teams, whether or not you are the formal leader? Here are some suggestions based on Edmondson’s research and some tactical approaches that have worked well for my teams.
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- [note::Ideas for improving psychological safety:

1. Frame each challenge as a “learning problem” rather than an “execution problem.”
2. Acknowledge your own fallibility.
3. Model curiosity.]

The first suggestion is to frame each challenge as a “learning problem” rather than an “execution problem.” When challenges are presented this way, we can acknowledge uncertainty (which will no doubt be there in any change effort you pursue!) and lean into our interdependency. When a challenge is simply about execution, its focus on converging—without time to diverge—might be efficient, but it will often exclude other voices, perspectives, approaches, ideas, and connections that could be leveraged in pursuit of learning about a problem.
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The third suggestion is to model curiosity. Instead of watching us as leaders provide the “correct” answer, seeing us instead lean into curiosity and powerful questions sets the stage for others to feel comfortable putting forward their own ideas. It reinforces that we are pursuing learning, not just execution, and by showing ourselves to be curious, it inspires this same approach in others.
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Here are some strategies you as a changemaker can use to ensure that everyone on your team feels psychologically safe. These tools are based on what I’ve experienced in my own work.
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- [note::Author's suggestions for improving psychological safety:

1. Give EVERYONE a chance to put ideas forward before making a decision
2. Embrace Zaccaro’s “cognitive flexibility”
3. Celebrate failing forward
4. Be watchful for absolute unison on the team, especially for an idea you yourself proposed.]

You can create this environment in multiple ways: during a meeting, as you go around the room inviting everyone for their input; sending out a survey before or after you meet; or leveraging other tech-enabled platforms to let everyone add their voice to the conversation.
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Next, celebrate failing forward. One of the values important to my team at Reach for Change in Sweden was that we would “proudly and consciously fail forward.” We would open every single weekly team meeting by going around the group with answers to two questions: What was your win of the week (the thing you did that propelled us closer to our goals)? And how did you fail forward last week?
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In this case, consider asking someone—even if they agree with you—to take the opposite position and point out potential flaws in the idea. At worst, you’ll gain some new perspectives that will strengthen the existing idea. And you will signal to others that you want the strongest answer, not just the easiest answer, which will encourage them to take risks and put bold new ideas forward.
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- [note::Nice idea - "delegated red teaming"]

introduce what I call the changemaker impact equation: (MINDSET + LEADERSHIP) x (ACTION) = IMPACT This simple equation shows that your impact as a changemaker is a function of the sum of your mindset and your leadership multiplied by the action you take.
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I’ve distilled these insights down into six lessons, which I will share with you in this chapter. You’ll develop the art of agency—the ability to simultaneously feel frustration or despair while also believing you can go do something about it. You’ll learn how to first fire bullets, then cannonballs—to first take lots and lots of small actions to give you confidence when it comes time to make a big, bold move later. You’ll see how to reduce resistance to action by reframing problems and leveraging existing resources. You’ll learn how to validate your ideas and then use the “lean startup” methodology to start small and iterate quickly. Finally, you’ll learn how to know when it’s time to take a leap—and why it’s never a good idea to go discount skydiving!
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“Inaction is an action.”
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insights from Morten Hansen and Jim Collins: First fire bullets, then fire cannonballs.4 Through their review of big organizations, the authors help us see that often what looks like one single big bet on a strategy is actually the sum of lots of small tests, which then provide the confidence to go big.
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often with change initiatives we think we have one single shot and it’s a make-or-break moment. Samar was envisioning one contentious meeting with his boss where he would lay out his entire refreshed curriculum and give his manager an ultimatum to let him try all of these techniques or else he might leave. That would be far too much pressure on everyone involved and would be unlikely to provide his best shot at hitting the target. Instead, I encouraged him to think about how he could try some smaller tests to gain confidence and feedback before going big.
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the essence of lean startup methodology is helping figure out if a proposed idea is worth pursuing as quickly as possible.
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The lean startup is built around a cycle called the build-measure-learn loop. The cycle begins with an idea. It could be an idea for a startup business, a feature, or even a technique; think of Samar’s more efficient swimming stroke. We take that idea and build a “minimum viable product”: the smallest, simplest test that will allow us to get feedback from users as to whether this idea has potential.
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Minimum viable products come in many different forms: • Dropbox cofounder Drew Houston had a vision for a file-syncing app, but he knew that building it would be incredibly costly. So he filmed a video mock-up showing what his app would do and he posted it to Reddit for feedback. People seemed to love the idea, and this initial feedback buoyed his confidence that the app was worth creating. • Pebble was one of the first-ever smartwatches—way ahead of Apple Watch. Would people want a smartwatch? Its founders weren’t sure, so they launched a minimum viable product; they put the concept out on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter, inviting people to back the product and receive a watch months later for doing so. Not only did Pebble pre-fund all of the manufacturing costs, but it also became the most successful campaign to that point in Kickstarter’s history, showing that there was, indeed, demand for its watch.
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In the lean startup methodology, there isn’t anything like failure, only “validated learning.” If you try to launch an after-school tutoring program for middle schoolers but no one shows up, this isn’t a failure. This is an insight for you: that your idea didn’t quite land. You’ve validated that a tutoring program for middle schoolers isn’t the approach to take. Based on the data you have collected, you can then use these insights—this validated learning—to go back to the beginning of the cycle again and come up with a new idea. Maybe you will try an after-school tutoring program for high schoolers instead. Or maybe you will try a weekend-tutoring program for middle schoolers.
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The lean startup helps us test, not guess.
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I made two big, scary leaps that day: one out of a plane, one into a change I cared deeply about pursuing. It may never be perfectly logical to jump. After all, what person in their right mind would say it’s a good idea to jump out of a plane? (Certainly not my mom.) And there are always reasons that would make us feel it’s better to be safer, to take the easy path, and to never put our idea out into the world.
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- [note::Skydiving as a metaphor for publishing your ideas]

From there, she did surveys to discover what store associates really needed, and then launched a petition to call on Walmart executives to change the company’s policies. She’d expected a few hundred signatures. But Davis had tapped into a collective need. To her absolute shock, she gathered over one hundred thousand employee signatures. “To have a group behind you, giving you support, it makes a huge difference,” she said. “There is power in numbers.”
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- grassroots advocacy, collective needs,
- [note::Are the largest collective needs the most invisible? This story definity involved some form of plurastic ignorance.]

Davis didn’t set out to be a vocal leader, but by taking many successive small steps, she was able to grab the microphone with the power of thousands behind her.
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- [note::"Change happens in small steps."]

NOBL (pronounced “no-bell”) Collective is a group of organizational psychologists and change management experts who help individuals and teams lead change. They have identified “the three types of people you’ll meet while implementing change,” which is a helpful place for us to start as we begin thinking about how to lead change when change is difficult.3 These are labeled as champions, cynics, and fence-sitters.
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NOBL suggests that we “get champions involved,” by delegating projects and decision-making to them, supporting their ideas (when possible), and showing appreciation for their enthusiasm.
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Champions help build a movement.
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Cynics are those who actively oppose change. NOBL recognizes that “cynics’ negativity can be annoying,” but engaging with them and trying to convince them can often be a huge time suck when it comes to leading change. Here’s the magic: “cynics are just disappointed idealists.” Perhaps they have gotten their hopes up about change only to be let down. Unlike a fence-sitter, a cynic is at least actively engaged with the change effort so spend your time delivering “something that matters” to your cynics, because actions will speak much louder than words. And if you are successful, your greatest cynics, once won over, will often become your greatest advocates.
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- social change, cynicism, favorite, stakeholder engagement, feedback solicitation, change_management, 1socialpost-queue,
- [note::These archetypes are not mutually exclusive - personally, I've noticed I tend to oscillate between both "champion" and "cynic".]

When a skeptic expressed disappointment at a missing feature, I didn’t tell them why we had deprioritized it. Instead, I thanked them for their feedback and then as soon as that feature shipped, I would send them a note to ask them to help us test it out. Some of the cynics who authored some of the angriest of emails ended up becoming among our strongest and most ardent supporters once we proved to them that change was, indeed, possible. Optimism in action often won over even our harshest cynics.
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Fence-sitters are those who aren’t sure what to think when it comes to change. NOBL suggests leaving the fence-sitters to others. “Get some small wins on the board,” NOBL advises, “and then let the champions and converted cynics take care of the fence-sitters.” Just as we learned in the video of the dancing guy, once there is momentum, even the most persistent of fence-sitters will often come around.
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the goal of norm entrepreneurship, which defines or creates specific behavioral standards such that others within the community follow them.5 Legal scholar Cass Sunstein adapted this concept from the nation-state level to the individual level.6 Just as an entrepreneur creates and scales a new venture or company, a norm entrepreneur creates and scales a new culture. What I love so much about this concept is that it’s inherently democratic: anyone can be a traditional entrepreneur, anyone can be a norm entrepreneur. No matter if you are an intern or an entry-level employee, you can help to shape culture. The norms that you create can be both formal and informal. On the formal side, you might push for a culture that ensures equal pay for all employees. On the informal side, you might try to create a norm that improves the start of all virtual Zoom meetings by inviting each participant to do a quick check-in on how they are doing.
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- [note::I engage in this kind of intrapreneurship a lot (e.g. establishing Slack norms, Treble Clef Thursdays). What does this say about me?]

A theory of change should fundamentally answer three questions: 1. What is the impact or change that you’re hoping to make? 2. What is the mechanism, the actions through which you can pursue and make that impact or that change? 3. How will you know when you’ve achieved that change?
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Creating a theory of change model shifts your change leadership efforts from a strategy challenge to an execution challenge. It helps you connect where you are now with where you want to be, and it helps you understand what it will take to get there. A thoughtful theory of change model clarifies what action to take and when to take it, and provides confidence that what you do on a daily basis is in line with your vision for change and your strategy to achieve it.
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The first step is identifying your long-term goals. Where do you want the world to be in the future—say, twenty years from now—because of this change you are leading? Let’s use a global reduction in single-use plastics as the goal we want to eventually achieve. Next, we do backward mapping and connect the preconditions necessary to achieve that goal. In other words: What would have to be true in the world for that outcome to become a reality? In our example, we might say there needs to be decreased demand among consumers for plastic and also decreased plastic production among the companies. For there to be less plastic in the world, both of these conditions would need to be met. From there, we identify some of the basic assumptions underlying our view of the change we are pursuing. What would have to be true to have decreased plastic demand and decreased plastic production? We might need to assume that there are adequate material substitutes for plastic, that if and when we reduce plastic production, there are other materials that can take its place. We might also need to reach a point where people in general believe it’s a worthy goal to try to reduce plastic use. If neither of these assumptions are true, it’s hard to imagine we would ever reduce the amount of plastic in the world. Next, we think about our initiative’s interventions, laying out the change work that we will do in pursuit of that desired change. What are the tangible activities that you’ll actually do on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis? To reduce plastic use, maybe we’ll launch a social media campaign targeted at consumers, encouraging them to reduce their plastic consumption. Maybe we’ll go around to local coffee shops and try to encourage them to no longer offer plastic straws. Or maybe we’ll go and lobby Congress for plastic-related policy changes. Then the final step is to develop indicators to assess the performance of our change initiative. What will we measure that will tell us that, yes, we are on the right track? Perhaps it’s a percentage reduction in plastic use among a target group of consumers. Or maybe it’s measuring the number of coffee shops that eliminate straws due to our efforts.
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“loss aversion bias,” the pair show that people often focus more on what they have to lose than what they have to gain. These biases can make leading change especially challenging, because changemakers, inevitably, are questioning the status quo and shaking up the accepted norm.
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Berger attributes this to people’s natural “anti-persuasion radar”: a feeling that they were being told what to do and having their freedom to decide impinged upon. One of Berger’s suggestions for overcoming this instinct is to ask questions instead of telling people what to do.13 By posing questions, you give people the feeling that they have an ability to decide for themselves—even if you are the one proposing the two options. How might you apply this to your own change initiative? Try to drive buy-in by shifting the listener’s role from thinking about all the reasons you are wrong to giving them the freedom to decide their own approach based on questions in which you help lead them. Offer two solutions instead of one. That way instead of deciding on change versus no change, which will activate status quo bias, you can see which of your changes they prefer. This invites potential change cynics to step up and give answers instead of being told what to do. And, remember, the endowment effect means we tend to love our own answers, because… well, they’re ours.
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- [note::I remember coming across this concept in a parenting subreddit lol]

Asking for Less You might also need to ask for less in service of a greater change. When Dean Rich Lyons was leading an initiative to clearly articulate and put greater emphasis on the role of culture at Berkeley Haas, he faced a lot of pushback, especially from faculty members who saw culture as hard to measure, or even unimportant. Lyons knew that he wouldn’t be able to get every faculty member on board in support of his culture initiative, so instead of asking for 100 percent of faculty to actively support his change efforts, he shifted his ask. He told faculty who didn’t like his change that they could believe whatever they wanted and that he wouldn’t force them to, for instance, teach about culture in their own classroom. But he made one clear reduced ask: No matter what you do, promise that you won’t disparage the Haas culture in front of students. That was it; that was his only ask to stubborn faculty members. He got 100 percent commitment to his ask by offering a way to engage that didn’t require much of any one individual yet ensured that a bunch of potential detractors didn’t get in the way.14
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- [note::"Make the change small"]

Inspired by tools like the business model canvas, which takes the old-fashioned concept of a business plan and transforms it into a one-page strategy, the Changemaker Canvas does the same. It helps changemakers take change initiatives and break them down into smaller, manageable blocks. You will identify concrete steps and actionable activities to help you make your idea an impactful reality. The Changemaker Canvas attempts to help you balance the big picture of the world you are changing with the small changes that will get you there.
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The canvas is broken down into six sections: Vision, Opportunity, The Four S’s of Change, Action, Community, and Approach.
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“Why statements” need three things to work: They must be compelling, authentic, and personal. A why statement should get others excited about the change you are leading; after all, if you aren’t excited about it, why would they be? Second, it must be true to who you are. You can’t fake it, especially since you will need to lean on it when times are tough. Finally, your why statement should be unique to who you are. Bring your own self into this. Your changemaker work is an extension of who you, as a person, are. Lean into this.
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- [note::I need a "why" statement for my website.]

The second block in our canvas, vision, connects back to many themes in this book. In chapter 4, we learned how to paint a picture for others to follow. Is your vision a clear and compelling one that will inspire others to want to join you? Is it aspirational? Does it activate our curiosity, wonder, and excitement? Consider bringing in the long-term goals you identified in your theory of change model and raise them up here to articulate what your change will make possible.
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In one clear, powerful sentence, explain what the change is that you are creating. You can’t possibly explain everything, so instead focus on the essence of your change and leave others eager to learn more. Curious for a few examples? Here are some that students have used: • Using gamification to get more children to read. • Educating and inspiring students in Mexico City to be changemakers. • Reducing food waste on campus through awareness campaigns.
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To help changemakers like you understand a problem, our canvas breaks down problem identification—or, as I prefer to call it, identifying the “opportunity” for change we seek to lead—into three distinct parts: the core problem, the consequences of the problem, and the root causes of the problem. All three are separate yet crucially connected aspects of recognizing an opportunity for change.
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I define the core problem as “one succinct sentence describing the precise issue that you are addressing.” As I work with changemakers, they often struggle with whether the change they are working on should be at a hyperlocal level, a community level, or a state, national, or even global level. They wonder whether it should be broad in its scope or more narrow. This tool purposefully provides room for any and all of those options, but I encourage changemakers at the start of their change process to shoot for a core problem that is inspiring yet achievable.
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Consequences are the negative implications that the identified problem brings about if not addressed. Put another way: If we don’t solve the core problem, then what would happen as a result? Changemakers sometimes conflate the core problem with the consequences. But because there are often so many consequences to an unsolved problem, trying to address all of them all at once usually will spread us way too thin, such that we’ll be unable to realize any change at all. Identifying the consequences gives us a road map for how we will measure the success of our change initiative and how we will determine downstream areas for future work, should we be successful in first addressing our core problem. (If the consequences fail to become a reality, we will know we were successful in driving change in our root problem.)
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It is helpful to think about consequences from both the individual level (what happens if each individual fails to get the support they need and deserve) as well as the organizational level (what happens if the company fails to fully support its employees).
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It’s essential to pinpoint the underlying issues that are causing the core problem that you have identified. Often these root causes are social, legal, historical, cultural, environmental, or technological, reflecting greater systemic issues. In fact, it’s this very systems lens that encourages us to identify these root causes up front. By identifying them, you can start thinking about what those systems to change might be and where your greatest points of leverage might lie.
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- systemic change, leverage, social change,

Here you will list one to three crucial indicators that you will use to measure the intended impact of your project. In other words, how will you know if you are actually on the right path to achieving your change? You can bring in both qualitative and quantitative measures here, but focus on identifying just a couple of the most essential measures that will inform whether you are indeed making the substantive impact you hope to create through your change. It’s important to have a measure for both the level of adoption (how many people are participating) and the difference (if any) the interventions make.
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For those who have an idea of the change they want to make but aren’t sure how to implement it, LA-based design firm verynice created an incredible resource called Models of Impact, in which hundreds of ways we can embed impact into any type of initiative have been identified.3 For instance, one of its models is “employment for traditionally excluded populations,” like Jean Guo’s Konexio pursues, and another is advocacy, which Dolores Huerta has pursued in various forms throughout her career. Or you might pursue a conditional discount to reward behavior, as Hummus Bar in Kfar Vitkin, Israel, does. The restaurant has a set price on the menu for its hummus plate, but it offers a 50 percent discount to parties who are mixed Jewish and Arab, to encourage connecting and finding community over food.
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However, I believe that more isn’t always better, especially when it comes to leading change. I teach changemakers “smart scale,” not “scale at all costs.” How will you scale your initiative beyond a minimum viable project? Though your project need not end up scaling—and certainly not right away—thinking about this from the very beginning will help you design a change project that can scale. Whether or not you yourself will lead the scaling, and whether or not you might create a replicable model for others to follow, lay out how you will ensure scalability from the start.
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- scaling, scalability, strategic planning, social change,

It’s imperative that you ensure that your project continues for the long term.
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- [note::Disagree (in some cases)]

Rarely has an insight rendered me speechless, but physician Paul Batalden’s observations on systems did just that. “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets,” he says. This means that if a process or network is giving us results we don’t want, it’s not the system’s fault; we must go change the system.
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- favorite, discipline, systems change, achievement, habits, systems,
- [note::YES]

Some priorities for putting together a changemaker team: • Don’t simply accept anyone who expresses an interest. Take time up front to think about how you want your team to fit together across roles and responsibilities. • Going solo? Consider your “zone of genius.” Think about what your core skills are and where you can make your highest-level contribution. Reflect not just on what you are good at but also what gives you energy. As much as possible, design a team that allows you to do the work you’re great at and that inspires your highest-possible personal contribution. If you don’t have any specific collaborators in mind yet, that’s totally fine! Sometimes, the early stages of a change initiative mean starting up by yourself. Take the time now to envision what the other roles on the team would be. If you are great at setting a vision, you might need someone else who can be COO to take care of operations. If you are great at finance, you might need someone who has a passion for and skills in marketing and PR. Identify the most important jobs to be done to make this change happen, and evaluate what an ideal team and division of roles and responsibilities would be. • Have a team on board? Rather than taking an emergent strategy toward roles and responsibilities, have an up-front and honest conversation with your team. Discuss what everyone’s areas of highest contribution are, as well as what everyone’s time commitments will look like. Find where there is overlap and where there are gaps. Failing to do this was a mistake I made in the early days of StartSomeGood. My cofounder, Tom, and I were both good at the vision part and not so good at the operations. Comparatively, though, Tom was better than I was at vision, and I was less bad at operations, which led to a rough division of labor—albeit collaborative—along these lines. Had we done this exercise earlier, we would have realized that getting a hands-on COO should have been our top priority! • Discuss how you will work together. A helpful tool here is having everyone on the team create their own personal user manual.7 If each member of the team understands how the other members work, it will make working together easier. Have each person on the team write a one-page outline of how they work and how to best work with them. It might include, for instance, “I have parenting duties, so I won’t be able to check emails after 5 p.m., but I will always check in first thing when my kids wake me up at 5 a.m.!” or “I tend to be very black-and-white in my first reactions to new ideas, so if I fail to see the nuance in an opportunity, please give me time.” These outlines might cover personality traits, pet peeves, preferences on work environment, communication and conflict styles, and much more. Taking the time to create these user manuals up front can significantly reduce future awkwardness and increase collaboration efficiency so that your team can operationalize the change as effectively as possible.
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There’s also the additional benefit of the “social proof” that comes along with evangelists, a term coined by Robert Cialdini in his book Influence.8 It’s a social phenomenon that occurs when someone is unsure of the correct way to behave, so they look to other people for clues to confirm the correct behavior. In times of uncertainty, we tend to look to authority figures. So if someone is trying to figure out whether or not to be part of your change initiative, they might look and see who else is supporting you. If you have an impressive list of evangelists on board—whether formally, in an advisory board, or informally, through a green-lighting of your project—that’s crucial social proof information, which may encourage others to follow the evangelists’ lead in backing you.
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Ask yourself two key questions as you engage the community in your change. The first is: Whom are you serving? And the second is: How do you know that this will be a positive change for them?
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Instead of guessing what type of change people most need, ask them—or, better yet, involve them in leading the change with you.
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How can you leverage what others are doing and not reinvent the wheel? How can you use a smart division of labor to do what you do best and be part of a larger solution, rather than trying to do everything yourself?
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- [note::Coalition building]

“Life shrinks or expands according to one’s courage.”1
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Can you find that courage calling out from inside you? The courage to stop thinking of changemaking as something that other people do, and tell yourself that it’s now something you do. The courage to stop waiting until things are perfect before you begin to lead change and instead to commit to taking action right now, even if that means embracing some failures along the way.
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“Changemaker Skills,” Ashoka, https://www.ashoka.org/en/collection/changemaker-skills.
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Scott Brinker, “Martec’s Law: Technology Changes Exponentially, Organizations Change Logarithmically,” Chief Martec, June 13, 2013, https://chiefmartec.com/2013/06/martecs-law-technology-changes-exponentially-organizations-change-logarithmically.
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Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark: The Untold History of People Power (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2005).
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Martin E. P. Seligman, Learned Optimism (New York: Knopf, 1991).
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Tyler Tervooren, “Finally, a Simple Way to Tell Smart Risks from Dumb Ones,” Riskology, https://www.riskology.co/smart-risk-equation.
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E. P. Hollander, “Conformity, Status, and Idiosyncrasy Credit,” Psychological Review 65, no. 2 (1958): 117–27, https://doi.org/10.1037/h0042501.
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Gwen Yi, “To Lead Is to Let Go: Why I Fired Myself as CEO of Tribeless,” Medium, December 5, 2018, https://gwenyi.medium.com/to-lead-is-to-let-go-why-i-fired-myself-as-ceo-of-tribeless-3f4c4eb46c.
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Scott Shigeoka and Jason Marsh, “Eight Keys to Bridging Our Differences,” Greater Good Magazine, Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, July 22, 2020, https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/eight_keys_to_bridging_our_differences.
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Matthew Kelly, The Long View: Some Thoughts About One of Life’s Most Important Lessons (North Palm Beach, FL: Blue Sparrow, 2014).
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The Flux Report: Building a Resilient Workforce in the Face of Flux, January 2014, Right Management, https://www.rightmanagement.co.uk/wps/wcm/connect/350a18c6-6b19-470d-adba-88c9e0394d0b/Right+Management+Flux+Report+Spread.pdf?MOD=AJPERES.
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Stephen J. Zaccaro, “Social Complexity and the Competencies Required for Effective Military Leadership,” in Out-of-the-Box Leadership: Transforming the Twenty-First-Century Army and Other Top-Performing Organizations, James G. Hunt, George E. Dodge, and Leonard Wong, eds. (Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing, 1999), 131–51.
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Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Frieze, “Using Emergence to Take Social Innovations to Scale,” 2006, https://www.margaretwheatley.com/articles/emergence.html.
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Damon Centola et al., “Experimental Evidence for Tipping Points in Social Convention,” Science 360, no. 6393 (June 8, 2018): 1116–19, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aas8827.
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Mark Wilson, “The Magic Number of People Needed to Create Social Change,” Fast Company, June 22, 2018, https://www.fastcompany.com/90176846/the-magic-number-of-people-needed-to-create-social-change.
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Jane Wei-Skillern, David Ehrlichman, and David Sawyer, “The Most Impactful Leaders You Have Never Heard Of,” Stanford Social Innovation Review, September 16, 2015, https://ssir.org/articles/entry/the_most_impactful_leaders_youve_never_heard_of.
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Andrés Tapia, “The Inclusive Leader,” Korn Ferry, https://www.kornferry.com/insights/this-week-in-leadership/the-inclusive-leader.
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“Introduction,” re:Work, Google, https://rework.withgoogle.com/print/guides/5721312655835136.
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Charles Duhigg, “What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team,” New York Times, February 25, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html.
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- collaboration, group_performanceeffectiveness, 1resource,

Amy Edmondson, “Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams,” Administrative Science Quarterly 44, no. 2 (1999): 350–83, https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999.
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“Identify Dynamics of Effective Teams,” Guide: Understand Team Effectiveness, re:Work, Google, https://rework.withgoogle.com/guides/understanding-team-effectiveness/steps/identify-dynamics-of-effective-teams.
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Markus Baer and Michael Frese, “Innovation Is Not Enough: Climates for Initiative and Psychological Safety, Process Innovations, and Firm Performance,” Journal of Organizational Behavior 24, no. 1 (February 2003): 45–68, https://doi.org/10.1002/job.179.
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Amy C. Edmondson, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2019).
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Maura Kessel, Jan Kratzer, and Carsten Schultz, “Psychological Safety, Knowledge Sharing, and Creative Performance in Healthcare Teams,” Creativity and Innovation Management 21, no. 2 (June 2012): 147–57, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8691.2012.00635.x.
- Location 4219
- psychological safety, 1resource, creativity, knowledge sharing, group_performanceeffectiveness, innovation,

The Social Intrapreneur: A Field Guide for Corporate Changemakers, Allianz, IDEO, Skoll Foundation, and SustainAbility, 2008, https://www.allianz.com/content/dam/onemarketing/azcom/Allianz_com/migration/media/current/en/press/news/studies/downloads/thesocialintrapreneur_2008.pdf.
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The Social Intrapreneur, https://www.allianz.com/content/dam/onemarketing/azcom/Allianz_com/migration/media/current/en/press/news/studies/downloads/thesocialintrapreneur_2008.pdf.
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“The Three Types of People You’ll Meet When Implementing Change,” Innov8rs, September 23, 2018, https://innov8rs.co/news/the-three-types-of-people-youll-meet-when-implementing-change.
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For more information on the model and its development, see “What Is Theory of Change?,” Center for Theory of Change, https://www.theoryofchange.org/what-is-theory-of-change.
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Alison Beard and Jonah Berger, “Mastering the Art of Persuasion,” episode 753, HBR IdeaCast, August 11, 2020, https://hbr.org/podcast/2020/08/mastering-the-art-of-persuasion.
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Jonah Berger, The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone’s Mind (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020).
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“Case Study: The Berkeley Haas School of Business: Codifying, Embedding, and Sustaining Culture,” Berkeley Haas Case Series, cases.haas.berkeley.edu/case/berkeley-haas-culture.
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“Models of Impact,” Verynice, http://www.modelsofimpact.co.
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Donella Meadows, “Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System,” Donella Meadows Archives, Academy for Systems Change, https://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system.
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- 1resource/article, systems change,

Paul Batalden and Earl Conway, “Like Magic? (‘Every System Is Perfectly Designed…’),” Institute for Healthcare Improvement, August 21, 2015, http://www.ihi.org/communities/blogs/origin-of-every-system-is-perfectly-designed-quote.
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There are lots of variations of this concept, but a great resource (with helpful templates included) comes from the company Atlassian, which uses these as part of new employee onboarding: “My User Manual,” Atlassian, https://www.atlassian.com/team-playbook/plays/my-user-manual.
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Leandra Fernandez, “Empathy and Social Justice: The Power of Proximity in Improvement Science,” Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, April 21, 2016, https://www.carnegiefoundation.org/blog/empathy-and-social-justice-the-power-of-proximity-in-improvement-science.
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Joanna Cea and Jess Rimington, “Designing with the Beneficiary,” Innovations: Technology, Governance, Globalization 11, no. 3–4 (Summer–Fall 2017): 98–111, https://doi.org/10.1162/inov_a_00259.
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ALEX BUDAK is a social entrepreneur and a professional faculty member at UC Berkeley Haas, where he created and teaches the transformative course, “Becoming a Changemaker.” He previously cofounded StartSomeGood.com and held leadership positions at Reach for Change and Change.org. He teaches, speaks, consults, and advises organizations around the world, with the mission of helping people from all walks of life become changemakers. He’s a graduate of Georgetown University and UCLA and received UCLA’s recent graduate of the year award.
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http://alexbudak.com.
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http://changemaker.us/resources.
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