By: Michael Kanazawa

In most of my experiences with our ACT process, we’ve been working to accelerate strategic change at corporations. We’ve also worked with our process with public educational institutions, which has always been enjoyable because the end “product” of developing future leaders is so rewarding. One area I haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about is how our process could be applied to social change or to quite literally, change the world.

Two things happened this week that are opening my eyes to the opportunity for our process to help change the world. One was an article about the breakdown between policy changes and real-world impact within our government and the other was a real surprise and practical interpretation of our work from a pet rescue non-profit founder who is looking to change the world. 

The article about the ability of the federal government to deliver results based on policy changes had some interesting parallels to our experiences. In one study, half the respondents believed the government was less capable of successfully executing large projects now than it was a decade ago. In another, it states that the “total disconnect” between policy designers and implementers partially accounted for the broken process. Nearly half of SES respondents said policy was “rarely” designed by those with relevant experience. And then respondents lamented the difficulty of daily tasks such as developing measures and assessing program results. One person stated, “I’m spending more time feeding measurement systems than focusing on strategic decisions and investments that will produce future result.”

Our experience working in the public sector so far has mirrored quite closely the challenges in corporations as well. The results of these studies in the article re-emphasize that observation. And with so much at stake today, like the education of our next generation, how can we help policies like No Child Left Behind deliver greater results? The web site www.ChangeThis.com (started by Seth Godin and now run by 800-CEO-Read) recently published an essay of mine titled, “People Don’t Hate Change, They Hate How You’re Trying to Change Them.” I’ve always thought that the principles in the essay and from our book BIG Ideas to BIG Results.com should apply to social change, but hadn’t spent much time really thinking that through.

Two days ago, while looking at who was blogging about our essay, we found a link from www.SavingPets.wordpress.com and I wondered, why would they be linked to us? Then I found a wonderful post entitled, “Can You Change The World?” by Shel who related the essay to her experiences of how to better engage with the entire community around a non-profit, like a pet rescue operation. I would suggest the post as reading to anyone running a non-profit who would like to know how to be more effective and leverage the best of our BIG Ideas to BIG Results concepts for that type of work. It is very practical and at the same time expansive in thinking through how each of us who volunteer our time and engage with people to spread a good word can actually do better at changing the world. If you appreciate the usefulness of her post, you can always show your support by supporting her non-profit, PetRescue (although do your own research as this is not necessarily an endorsement) or give something to your local pet rescue operation as well.

One of the things I’ve enjoyed most about publishing the book and other related items like the ChangeThis essay is how people take that work, adapt it to their situation, and take it further. In this case, my optimism is growing that in some way the work can truly help change the world!

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