the closeted optimist's guide to change
DESCRIPTION
My short talk on the nature of change and foundations as changemakers for the GEO National Conference in Seattle on March 13, 2012.TRANSCRIPT
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The Closeted Optimist’s Guide to ChangeFoundations as Changemakers
GEO National ConferenceMarch 13, 2012, Seattle, WA
Eugene Eric Kim <[email protected]>@eekim on Twitter
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We are all trying to change the world for the better.
How do we do this?
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We all want to facilitate change, but in order to do that, we must change ourselves.
Change starts with the individual.
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How many of you have made a memorable, lasting change in your life in the past three months?
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Change is hard.
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“Almost always the men who achieve these fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change.”
—Thomas KuhnStructure of Scientific
Revolutions
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People don’t change. The old guard dies...
... and the new guard’s mindset takes over.
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Meyerowitz's (Suggested) Hypothesis
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Meyerowitz's (Suggested) Hypothesis
Applied Today
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Change seems to happen in generational
increments.
What if there’s no new guard?
Will this be fast enough?
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What does this all mean for institutional philanthropy?
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How does change happen?
1.You need to want it.2.You need to practice
it.3.You need structures
that support it.
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The Mont Fleur Scenarios (1992)
Helped guide the peaceful, economically successful ANC leadership transition in post-apartheid South Africa
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What would happen if foundations aligned around a common vision for how to change themselves and the world?
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What would happen if, in addition to planning, foundations played, in addition to analyzing, foundations experimented?
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What would happen if there were structures in place that supported these experiments in changing how foundations work?
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“It is far too late and things are far too bad for pessimism. At such times, it is no failure to fall short of realizing all that we might dream; the failure is to fall short of dreaming all that we might realize.”
—Dee Hock
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Acknowledgements
Photo on slide 3 by nattu (CC BY 2.0).Photo on slide 6 by Raymond Larose (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).Photo on slide 7 from HiLoBrow.Photos on slide 8 by aussiegal (CC BY 2.0) and Eugene Eric Kim (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).Photos on slide 9 by Paul Townsend (CC BY-NC 2.0) and from NASA and the National Archives.
Photos on slide 10 by David Shankbone (CC BY 2.0) and from Al Jazeera English (CC BY-SA 2.0) and Wikimedia Commons.Image on slide 11 by José-manuel Benitos (GNU FDL 1.2).Photo on slide 12 by Trey Ratcliff (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).Photo on slide 13 by Adam Baker (CC BY 2.0).Photo on slide 14 by World Cup 2010 – Shine 2010 (CC BY 2.0)
Thanks to Kristin Cobble for her thought partnership, to Amy Wu Wong for her delightful drawings, and to H. Jessica Kim for her helpful feedback.
[email protected] / @eekim on Twitter
http://groupaya.net/@groupaya on Twitter