Recently my compost container’s carbon filter needed replacing. I grabbed a little Philips to detach the filter from the container’s plastic lid. The screwdriver size seemed right. But when I tried it on the tiny screws, they wouldn’t budge.
Wrong tool, I thought. Our local hardware store knows everything about tools. They can get me the right one.
As I stood at the store counter, the owner handed me the magnifying glass he was using to inspect the container lid. “Wrong approach,” he said. “Those are security screws. They’re meant to keep you from removing them. You can use a special screwdriver to pry them out, but you’ll ruin the lid. And there’s no need. See here, pinch the filter in the center, pull hard, and it slides out.”
Got it. I had a “good” tool, what I lacked was solid knowledge of the nature of the problem.
New Resource: Trends Analysis
Many social change organizations prepared strategic plans or scenario plans to be ready for 2025. Some groups are finding these plans too static to support good decisionmaking in the current volatile, chaotic environment.
“Foresight” approaches can infuse greater flexibility and resilience into an existing plan. Since WW II and before, governments and industry have deployed Foresight to make their planning more robust. Increasingly, nonprofits and foundations are using Foresight approaches, too.
A new resource available on our Resources Page walks you through Trends Analysis: a straightforward yet powerful Foresight approach you can undertake with your team (pencil + paper + people only – no special equipment or training required). It can help you see the current environment and its challenges more clearly and better prepare you to weather future uncertainty.
What We’re Reading in Policy, Politics, and Strategy
Grappling with Systems Collapse: How Social Sector Leaders Can Respond, an article by Liz Ruedy, Tom Glaisyer and Rachel Reichenbach in Stanford Social Innovation Review. The authors call upon social sector leaders to think creatively now about how to influence the future that emerges from the current chaos. They provide four mental models for considering how to approach this.
Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe’s 2018 meticulous and page-turning “narrative non-fiction” account of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The book leaves the reader with unsettling questions about life in a community where combatants cease active “warfare” but keep violent secrets hidden and suspicions close at hand. (You may have seen the 2024 television adaptation, which has garnered both accolades and litigation.)
ICYMI
About eight times per year we publish analyses and tools on our Resources Page and here on our blog, Cog & Gear. These and other tools drawn from our strategy and measurement / learning practice are available for download:
- Using “Defensive Advocacy” Concepts in Planning and Communications
- Learn More from Training Surveys: Try this Survey Model
- What We Learned from Trump I: Advocacy Lessons and Resources from 2017-2020
Watch This Space
Stay tuned for these topics in the coming months:
- Amicus litigation as an advocacy and organizing tool
- Futures Wheel, a Foresight method for “playing results forward”
- How consultants view your RFPs (the RFP “Decision Matrix”)
