THE THREE VARIABLES:
CHANNELS, ENERGY & LEVERAGE
CHANNELS, ENERGY & LEVERAGE
The Three Essential Variables of Changemaking. The first stage of our journey together as budding changemakers is to understand how social entrepreneurs size up change these variables — dynamic channels, energy (systemic) and leverage. These core concepts are central to an understanding of nearly everything in this book. Everything else revolves around these three variables.
Channels are cause-and-effect pathways that connect intentions with results—the routes upon which potential gets trapped and/or released. Referred to as "channels" in the field of social psychology, they can take on many forms:
Channels have a starting point (an on-ramp) and an ending point (an off-ramp), as well as barriers and facilitators in between that serve as gates, which can open and shut naturally or manually, operated by human gatekeepers who intentionally release and redirect and close off the flow of energy. For the change maker, specific channels within systems pinpoint where potential gets trapped.
Channels are most powerful when multiple pathways are in play, and especially so when they can double back upon themselves in the form of “reinforcing feedback loops.” Mary Gordon’s Roots of Empathy program, where a “nudge” in the form of a baby in a classroom eight times per year sets off a chain reaction. A school playground is another example of both multiple and repeating channels. The playground is a “place channel” where students and teachers gather. The daily routine of recess is a “time channel” repeated daily over the course of a school year. These channels reinforce one another and thus can produce a multiplier effect.
Energy consists of two sets of forces—those that drive change and those that restrain change that operate within domains. These forces arrive at a standoff, also known as a social equilibrium. Somewhere in this stand-off is where energy can get trapped.
Social situations, groups and even individuals are all systems that fall in and out of balance, or equilibrium. In a school, for example, an understaffed playground can fall into disrepair, a poorly taught class (in the form of a group) can lapse into mediocrity and individual students can drift into a state of apathy in the face of the debilitating dynamics of poverty.
The change maker is focused on what the social entrepreneurs Roger Martin and Sally Osberg systems call “unproductive equilibria,” especially the restraining forces within these systems. Once these restraining forces are identified and located and understood, the change maker is in a good position to reverse them. Thus, the system itself, rightly diagnosed, can become a powerful variable for the changemaker. In fact, it is the system itself that is the “x factor” of positive change. This is because the system itself is in a state of tension that is hard to gauge and out of view until you try to change it.
Leverage is anything that can be used to influence, lift or lighten the process of change. In our parlance, it can take the form of a catalyst that infuses the right channels with the right force at the right time and place whether it is in situations, groups or individuals.
A catalyst is what gets change started— that supplies a certain amount of new energy that can release and/or redirect the energy already existing within a system, energy that has settled into a state of equilibrium. Even leverage as small as a nudge can change the course of subsequent events.
So far, we know that channels are the pathways of change, and the systems surrounding these channels are their power supply. All we need now is an agent to serve as the catalyst, to release and redirect the flow of the energy within the system. Once leverage is applied, the barriers and facilitators within channels take on special importance because they can grease the skids. A key to changemaking is in knowing how to manage these barriers and facilitators. In its simplest form, the change maker “re-channels” energy.
With this in mind, the skillful change maker knows intuitively that any state of equilibrium, no matter how unproductive and stable, is not all powerful. And that when change, when it does come, can be both rapid and extensive.
To make this abstract notion more concrete, let’s turn to Kurt Lewin’s famous metaphor of a large and influential physical pathway (literally, a channel) --the Mississippi River and how a changemaker can alter its course.
Channels are cause-and-effect pathways that connect intentions with results—the routes upon which potential gets trapped and/or released. Referred to as "channels" in the field of social psychology, they can take on many forms:
- as groups and teams;
- they can operate within the minds and hearts of individuals (i.e., the ways that they make sense of who they are and the wired around them. Let’s call them internal channels.
- physical form, such as a school playground or temporal form, such as a school’s daily schedule or yearly calendar. Let’s call them environmental channels.
Channels have a starting point (an on-ramp) and an ending point (an off-ramp), as well as barriers and facilitators in between that serve as gates, which can open and shut naturally or manually, operated by human gatekeepers who intentionally release and redirect and close off the flow of energy. For the change maker, specific channels within systems pinpoint where potential gets trapped.
Channels are most powerful when multiple pathways are in play, and especially so when they can double back upon themselves in the form of “reinforcing feedback loops.” Mary Gordon’s Roots of Empathy program, where a “nudge” in the form of a baby in a classroom eight times per year sets off a chain reaction. A school playground is another example of both multiple and repeating channels. The playground is a “place channel” where students and teachers gather. The daily routine of recess is a “time channel” repeated daily over the course of a school year. These channels reinforce one another and thus can produce a multiplier effect.
Energy consists of two sets of forces—those that drive change and those that restrain change that operate within domains. These forces arrive at a standoff, also known as a social equilibrium. Somewhere in this stand-off is where energy can get trapped.
Social situations, groups and even individuals are all systems that fall in and out of balance, or equilibrium. In a school, for example, an understaffed playground can fall into disrepair, a poorly taught class (in the form of a group) can lapse into mediocrity and individual students can drift into a state of apathy in the face of the debilitating dynamics of poverty.
The change maker is focused on what the social entrepreneurs Roger Martin and Sally Osberg systems call “unproductive equilibria,” especially the restraining forces within these systems. Once these restraining forces are identified and located and understood, the change maker is in a good position to reverse them. Thus, the system itself, rightly diagnosed, can become a powerful variable for the changemaker. In fact, it is the system itself that is the “x factor” of positive change. This is because the system itself is in a state of tension that is hard to gauge and out of view until you try to change it.
Leverage is anything that can be used to influence, lift or lighten the process of change. In our parlance, it can take the form of a catalyst that infuses the right channels with the right force at the right time and place whether it is in situations, groups or individuals.
A catalyst is what gets change started— that supplies a certain amount of new energy that can release and/or redirect the energy already existing within a system, energy that has settled into a state of equilibrium. Even leverage as small as a nudge can change the course of subsequent events.
So far, we know that channels are the pathways of change, and the systems surrounding these channels are their power supply. All we need now is an agent to serve as the catalyst, to release and redirect the flow of the energy within the system. Once leverage is applied, the barriers and facilitators within channels take on special importance because they can grease the skids. A key to changemaking is in knowing how to manage these barriers and facilitators. In its simplest form, the change maker “re-channels” energy.
With this in mind, the skillful change maker knows intuitively that any state of equilibrium, no matter how unproductive and stable, is not all powerful. And that when change, when it does come, can be both rapid and extensive.
To make this abstract notion more concrete, let’s turn to Kurt Lewin’s famous metaphor of a large and influential physical pathway (literally, a channel) --the Mississippi River and how a changemaker can alter its course.