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Want to make an impact? It's time to adopt a framework of transformational change.
I am inspired by passionate people who are driven to transform their part of the world. I am driven by the flicker of true social change–the possibility of community transformation. Life made better. An eternal optimist, I see things for how they could be and seek the spark for transformation.
Transformation is the brand of many of our mission-driven clients. One client told me, “I am aiming for a bullseye, but as long as the dart lands anywhere on the wall, I’ll know we did it.” By “it,” she means changing health and educational outcomes for children. By “we,” she means the entire community. That is the beauty of transformation. It takes many people, an alignment of opportunity, a landscape ripe or ripened over time.
Are you like us?
Are you aiming to redesign the public benefits system? Eliminate hunger in your highest need zip code? Reduce education disparities by race? Are you working tirelessly to transform your community? Then transformation is your brand too.
What is transformational change?
Over the last ten years leading VIVA, I have seen leaders assess, make, or hesitate on big bets for social change. More often than not, these change efforts lead to improvements in one way or another, but not necessarily to transformation.
Transformational change is about realizing a vision of what is possible. It is change that alters the DNA of a community for the better. A specific initiative or funding stream may come to an end, but there’s no going back to the status quo. Transformational change ushers in a new way of thinking, doing, and being. Transformation is not something that can be controlled. It is a wave made of billions of molecules traveling in the same direction.
The belief in the power of transformation–the power of possibility–is what fuels forward progress in our communities and our world. The vision can become a reality through partnership, patience, and collective perseverance–when the conditions are right.
What is needed for transformational change?
In partnership with community members, mission-driven organizations strive to achieve a transformative vision, but transformational social change only occurs under certain conditions.
First, change happens in those moments in time, born out of crisis or opportunity, when the economic, political, or cultural conditions create an environment that’s favorable for change.
Second, the people and organizations that will lead transformational change efforts--the change leadership team--also need the right conditions. They must be able rise above the normal state of being overworked and under-resourced in order to do this challenging, collaborative, fluid work.
How do you do that? It takes:
- Clarity, capacity, and the ability to mobilize your team.
- Partners with the skills to advance the vision in the political, financial, economic, cultural, social conditions you face.
- Deep understanding of the community needs created by conditions that demand change.
Learn more about our approach to mobilizing teams.
When these conditions are not in place, good work can still happen–but transformational change? The dart often falls short of the wall.
Being a consultant to a community transformation effort is like having a front-row ticket to the Olympics. The moment is now, yesterday, and tomorrow. Preparation and will-building are years in the making. Success is sweet and failure stings. It is vicious. It is gorgeous. It is power-shifting. And, just like a wave, what rises falls only to begin again.
Transformation takes persistence, patience, and nimbleness. It cannot be perfectly scoped in advance. It cannot be written in a vacuum as a response to a publicly posted proposal process.
Transformation is HARD!
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This blog was written to empower those fearless, inspirational, mission-driven people seize the possibility for transformative change. You may not end up in the precise place you envision right now, but you can land somewhere close. And that’s worth riding the wave.