Catalyzing Transformation

Catalyzing Transformation

Making System Change Happen

Sandra Waddock

Catalyzing Transformation: Making System Change Happen

Copyright © Business Expert Press, LLC, 2024

Cover design by Charlene Kronstedt

Interior design by Exeter Premedia Services Private Ltd., Chennai, India

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other except for brief quotations, not to exceed 400 words, without the prior permission of the publisher.

First published in 2023 by

Business Expert Press, LLC

222 East 46th Street, New York, NY 10017

www.businessexpertpress.com

ISBN-13: 978-1-63742-508-4 (paperback)

ISBN-13: 978-1-63742-509-1 (e-book)

Business Expert Press Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior Collection

First edition: 2023

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For

The extended Bounce Beyond Team, especially founder, Steve Waddell, and

Ian Kendrick, Peter Jones, Indra Adnan, Karen Downes, Jonny Norton,

Lesley Southwick-Trask, Zenda Ofir, and others.

Because you are the coauthors of these ideas.

For

All who would make the world a better place, system transformers

and musicians!

For

My mentors: Dave Brown, Stan Davis, and, most of all, Jim Post

For

Alan and Ben: You light up my life.

Description

Here’s how to make purposeful system change happen!

The world faces a multitude of crises that demand transformative changes in how we live and do business. Yet a core question is, how to make purposeful transformation happen? Catalyzing Transformation shows the way through the following:

•Innovative organizing processes that anyone can use to catalyze purposeful whole system transformational change for a better world.

•How transformation catalysts work to organize purposeful, self-aware transformation systems that can tackle complex systemic challenges.

•Three processes: connecting (seeing, understanding,

and making sense of the system), cohering (cocreatively developing shared goals and action plans), and amplifying (implementing, evaluating, and elaborating effective transformative action).

•Design guidelines for leaders stewarding change efforts in context-appropriate ways.

Whether you catalyze social change, responsible businesses, activists, policymakers, or students of change, Catalyzing Transformation can help!

Keywords

transformation; system change; catalyzing system transformation; change agent; leading system change; stewarding change; flourishing; social imaginaries; ecological civilization; processes for system change

Contents

Testimonials

Foreword

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1 A New Social Imaginary

Chapter 2 Core Concepts for Transforming System Transformation

Chapter 3 A Context of Cultural Myths

Chapter 4 The Value s Proposition

Chapter 5 What Needs to Change in System Transformation

Chapter 6 Transformation Catalysts: Connecting, Cohering, and Amplifying Transformation Systems’ Work

Chapter 7 Catalyzing Transformation (T-) Systems

Chapter 8 Design Guidelines and Principles for Catalyzing Transformation

Chapter 9 Stewarding and Catalyzing Systemic Change

Chapter 10 Synthesis: Transforming System Transformation

Notes

References

About the Author

Index

Testimonials

For those becoming aware of our society’s need for deep transformation, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the enormity of the challenge and confused as to how to engage most effectively. This book sheds much-needed light on the fog of our great transition, showing how the very process of transformation itself needs to be transformed in our current crisis. By explaining various categories of change agents, crystallizing concepts such as a ‘transformation catalyst,’ and distinguishing between different forms of leadership, Waddock helps illuminate the terrain that might just lead to a life-affirming civilization.—Jeremy Lent, Author of The Patterning Instinct and The Web of Meaning

This is a must read for anyone who is serious about supporting change toward achieving a better world. Sandra Waddock masterfully provides an accessible account of important concepts that together will reshape your thinking about how meaningful change comes about. The book challenges us to take systemic change seriously and will be an important guide for change makers for many years to come.—Dr. Ioan Fazey, Professor of the Social Dimensions of Environment and Change, University of York, UK

It is increasingly clear that the next decade must be one of systemic change if we are to avert climate catastrophe and ascending authoritarianism in the world. Sandra Waddock provides the requisite roadmap for change makers everywhere to realize the transformational change required.—Stuart L. Hart, University of Vermont, author of Capitalism at the Crossroads

"Our world is wracked by interconnected polycrises—ecological, economic, political, social, and spiritual. Catalyzing Transformation is more than an urgent call for action across these fronts; it is a playbook on how to think about and undertake systemic social change. Sandra Waddock draws from her multidisciplinary scholarship and practical experience to build a coherent and compelling model of transformational change and then gets into the nitty-gritty of how to bring it to life. Whether you are a student or professor, manager or consultant, change designer or doer, there’s gold herein. Reading and reflecting on this book will variously challenge assumptions, stretch your mind, stir your heart, and ultimately equip and embolden you to take a more comprehensive and creative approach to what you do to make a better world."—Dr. Philip Mirvis, Babson Institute for Social Innovation, and coauthor of Sustainability to Social Change: Lead Your Company from Managing Risk to Creating Social Value

This book is so very timely. Sandra Waddock offers guidance on how to transform systems for a better world—at a time when there are so many systemic crises. This book offers sage advice for anyone who believes that a better future is possible and wants to make it a reality.—Dr. Tima Bansal, Canada Research Chair in Business Sustainability, Ivey Business School

Sandra Waddock has done it again! In this book, she has isolated a key issue on sustainability and tackled it with gusto. While many talk of the need for transformative system change to bring about an equitable and flourishing world, there is not enough follow-on conversation about what exactly that change means and, importantly, how to bring it about. This book fills that enormous gap. In her usual blend of rigorous and yet accessible style, Sandra maps out a comprehensive handbook for anyone who wishes to play a role in catalyzing a new route for organizations and humankind, a route aimed at truly solving our sustainability challenges. Add this book to your toolkit for leading in a climate-changed world.—Professor Andrew J. Hoffman, PhD, Holcim (U.S.) Professor of Sustainable Enterprise, Ross School of Business/School for Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan

"Catalyzing Transformation presents a state of the art, values-based, life-centrred perspective on systems transformation toward wholeness, justice, and a flourishing natural world. A must-read book for anyone looking to be an effective agent of fundamental change."—Reverend Professor Jasper Kenter, PhD, Ecological Economist and One Spirit Interfaith Minister

Conscious, deliberate transformation toward a thriving, ecological civilization is the challenge that will define the 21st century. For those seeking to catalyze transformative change, Sandra Waddock’s new book is the best manual we have so far for getting started.—Dr. Chris Riedy, Professor of Sustainability Transformations, University of Technology Sydney

Sandra Waddock is a leading scholar in both organizational change theory and systems transformations, and she is the perfect guide to the field of Transformations, which can be difficult to encompass because of its broad transdisciplinary scope. Waddock interweaves the core insights and practical wisdom of this emerging field with prose that is both elegant and comprehensible. Her compelling narrative provides us with a way to make sense of the complexity of the challenges we face and the urgency of action, and inspires us with the possibility that we can be effective agents for deep systems change.—Dr. Bruce Evan Goldstein, Environmental Design, University of Colorado Boulder

Foreword

Change the system, not the climate. We’ve all seen the posters at climate rallies, and it’s hard to disagree. After all, climate change, biodiversity loss, marine pollution, and other sustainability challenges are already contributing to the end of the world as we know it. Yet how do we equitably and sustainably transform systems in response to urgent and complex global challenges? The answer is in your hands!

In the pages ahead, Sandra Waddock will help you understand how to make systems change happen. Her theory of whole system change brings together a wide range of frameworks, ideas, and experiences that can be used to generate purposeful transformations. You will be introduced to a language and approach to systems change that is grounded in shared visions and values. This is no wishful thinking. It’s a strategic approach, and your role is critical. Let me explain.

A catalyst is someone or something that causes a change. Catalyzing Transformation involves the processes of connecting, cohering, and amplifying the work of one and the work of many. In chemistry, the catalyst itself does not get consumed in the process. In other words, it does not change. In whole systems change, the catalyst of transformation is part of the system, and it can and often does change. In fact, you may very well change after reading this book, in at least three possible ways.

First, you will recognize the important role that you play in telling new stories. New narratives help to disrupt cultural myths, including those that prioritize competition over cooperation and self-interest over the common good, or those that separate us from nature. Without self-awareness, we perpetuate these myths and wonder why we are not seeing the changes we would like to see. Alternatives exist, and many of them are right in front of you, waiting to be seen. Seeing, however, often takes imagination and practice.

Second, you will understand the importance of actions based on life-affirming values, or values that are intrinsic to all of life. Values such as equity, inclusion, and integrity—or wholeness—are foundational to system change. They are reflected in your stories, narratives, and choices, and they form the basis of principles that support your purpose and goals. When a change process is value-driven, it affects not just one relationship, but many.

Third, with an awareness of how change happens, you will unleash your collaborative capacity and discover ways that you can connect with others and create coherence, or in other words, an alignment and resonance that amplifies your actions and impacts. This is a different way of engaging with and organizing change. As Sandra Waddock emphasizes, it is about stewarding transformative change.

This book provides you with a vocabulary, a framework, and tools to start you on your journey to redefining the very nature of change itself. As a catalyst for transformation, you contribute to what I describe as quantum social change—a conscious, nonlinear, and nonlocal approach to transformations that is grounded in our inherent oneness. Putting these tools into practice, you will recognize that no matter which sector, community, or issue you are engaged with, your values, choices, and actions are vital to the transformations needed for global sustainability. When it comes to catalyzing systems change, you matter more than you think.

—Karen O’Brien,*

Professor of Sociology and Human Geography

University of Oslo, Norway and Co-Chair,

IPBES Transformative Change Assessment

Having just finished Catalyzing Transformation: Making System Change Happen, I now face the challenge of introducing you to it. The best way to write a helpful foreword is to encourage readers to start reflecting on the most important question that will arise for them as soon as they begin reading: what is it about Sandra Waddock’s insights in this book that inspire hope?

For that’s what these pages do. One can’t make it through more than a few pages into the first chapter without feeling that, even with the insanely difficult challenges before humanity, we are not stuck, and we are not doomed. Dr. Waddock does not force readers to optimistic conclusions. Instead, with her calm style and careful analysis, she shows why we desire in the end to live in a thriving, just, sustainable society—what she calls an ecological civilization.

Then, one by one, step by inexorable step, she pulls the necessary pieces into place: Change agents exist. Systems are changeable; they can be transformed. The persons and organizations that change them are transformation catalysts. And we can indeed study, comprehend, and therefore increase the frequency and power of their catalytic effects. Before readers even leave the first chapter, they will already see the book’s trajectory unfolding.

In short, Catalyzing Transformation is a large-scale roadmap for systemic change. Sandra Waddock rightly describes the long-term target as an ecological civilization, a way of organizing human society that is fundamentally based on fully ecological principles. Humanity will not get there by means of incremental changes, or even using reformative ones, but only by bringing about the transformation of human society—through civilizational change. This is a highly significant and ambitious thesis, one that deserves our closest attention. Suffice it here to say: the evidence fundamentally supports Sandra’s case.

What makes these pages worthy of widespread attention is that, unlike most books about systemic change, the author does not just vaguely wave her hands in the direction of something greater. These pages offer a specific, detailed, plausible, and, I believe, reliable roadmap to get us to that destination. At EcoCiv.org, where Sandra is a board member, we call it the VBR method: Sandra starts with a vision of the final outcome, a new social imaginary. She then backcasts to the present, spelling out the cultural myths that have produced the global climate crisis. She tells us what needs to change in our approach to economic systems, and what are the broader dimensions (including even the metrics) that have to change.

Finally, her roadmap presents the details of how the necessary changes are achieved: the catalysts for change; who and what the transformation catalysts are and how they work; the values that undergird their policies and actions; and the methods they use. Rarely have I read a book driven by a breathtaking vision that is so concrete and specific about the means for achieving it.

Please take them seriously; these principles really work. Over the past eight years, I have led an international organization that seeks to be a transformational catalyst in Sandra’s exact sense. The guidelines she offers in her closing chapters are the ones we have followed in dozens of events in 10 different countries around the world. Connect, cohere, and amplify are not abstract ideals for us; they are the daily bread of our work. Of course, much more needs to be said about these crucial transformational activities to make them maximally useful for leaders in specific regions and sectors. But she is right: on the ground in Beijing and Berlin, in South Africa and South Korea and South Sudan, what you will read here is exactly what transformational catalysts do, and do well, when we are most successful.

It is rare that a single book offers both a comprehensive vision and specific guidelines for action. Sandra Waddock’s book does precisely this. Please read it carefully, share it with your friends, and mail it to leaders of organizations that you believe can really make a difference. Humanity really can make the transition: from a civilization characterized by unsustainable consumption to a sustainable civilization based on genuinely ecological principles. You hold the framework in your hands.

—Philip Clayton, PhD†

President, Institute for Ecological Civilization

* Karen O’Brien is Professor—Institutt for sosiologi og samfunnsgeografi at the University of Oslo. Her recent books include You Matter More Than You Think: Quantum Social Change for a Thriving World and Climate and Society: Transforming the Future (with Robin Leichenko). Karen has been named by Web of Science as one of the world’s most influential researchers of the past decade. Karen is currently co-chair of the International Science-Policy Platform for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) transformative change assessment.

† Philip Clayton is President of EcoCiv, the Institute for Ecological Civilization. He holds his PhD from Yale University; has held guest professorships at Harvard, University of Cambridge, and University of Munich; and is the author or editor of several dozen books and some 300 articles on science, ethics, and religion.

Acknowledgments

This book would not exist at all without Steve Waddell’s imagination, ideas, insights, and community organizing skills as well as the contributions of the rest of the extended Bounce Beyond team. I am forever grateful for his inclusion of me in these ways of thinking, and want to acknowledge Steve’s deep contributions to whatever is good about this book (and, of course, any problems or flaws in thinking here rest entirely with me). Steve is the founder of Bounce Beyond (www.bouncebeyond.global), the former SDG Transformation Forum, and Networking Action. He is an undisputed global thought leader around system transformation. When the global pandemic brought about by COVID-19 and the lock-ins began, Steve used all of his community organizing skills and insights about system transformation to bring together an eclectic group to begin thinking about how the world’s economic systems might bounce beyond today’s flawed economics toward more pluralistic and well-being/flourishing-oriented economics.

That insight combined with Steve’s deep understanding of large system change processes, ideas on which we have been collaborating over many years, has resulted in a plethora of coauthored and individually authored papers on which the present book relies. Steve’s genius was to bring together a group of transformational change agents, who each in their own ways contributed to the content of this book. Since no one truly writes a book alone, I want to sincerely acknowledge all of the intellectual contributions of the Bounce Beyond team (and beyond) to this book right up front. It would not have been possible without Steve and the rest of the Bounce Beyond team’s insights and contributions since 2020. That said, of course, the interpretation, framing, and synthesis of these ideas, and any associated mistakes, issues, or problems, belong to me.

Because the Bounce Beyond team itself has evolved since its inception, I also want to acknowledge insights generated from all members of the team during our many meetings, conversations, and initiatives over the years. At the time of writing, the team consisted of Steve Waddell, Ian Kendrick, Jonny Norton, and Lesley Southwick-Trask. Previous members other than me (hoping no one has been left out) include Indra Adnan, Karen Downes, Peter Jones, Zenda Ofir, and in the extended team, Stuart Cowan, Ned Daly, Tim Draimin, Ioan Fazey, Meenakshi Gupta, Jasper Kenter, Jean-Louis Robadey, and Coro Strandberg. To this list I add key members of the former SDG Transformations Forum, who contributed in so many ways, especially Tony Cooke, Bruce Evan Goldstein, Glenn Page, and Chris Riedy.

Also, I particularly thank Patricia Kambitsch of PlayThink (https://playthink.com/) for the terrific artwork that accompanies this book. Patricia really opened my eyes to the true power of art to reveal the core of what is really important in processes like the ones described in this book. She immediately got what was needed to explain the complicated path of system transformation in readily accessible ways. Thank you, Patricia!

Beyond Bounce Beyond, there are others whose insights, support, and good work needs to be acknowledged, including many who commented on earlier drafts of this book or whose ideas have influenced and informed my thinking over many years: Laura Albareda, Bobby Banerjee, Philip Clayton, Tony Cooke, Domenico Dentoni, Four Arrows (aka Donald Trent Jacobs), Ioan Fazey, Ed Freeman, Jody Fry, Irene Henriques, Andy Hoffman, Tony Hodgson, Chris Ives, David Korten, Petra Kuenkel, Chris Laszlo, Jegoo Lee, Ju Young Lee, Jeremy Lent, Daniel Hart London, Josep Lozano, Manuel Manga, Judi Neal, Isabel Neusse, Glenn Page, Michael Pirson, Edwina Pio, Kate Pitrew, Andreas Rasche, Kate Raworth, Chris Riedy, Andrew Schwartz, Robert Sroufe, Erica Steckler, Katherine Trebeck, David Wasieleski, Michael Weatherhead, and Maurizio Zollo, among many others. Importantly, I want to acknowledge the late Malcolm McIntosh whose passion for system transformation inspired me from the beginning. Though it was many years ago, I carry with me always the inspiration offered by my own mentors L. Dave Brown, Stan Davis, Jerry Leader, and (most centrally) Jim Post, my former dissertation chair so many years ago and friend to this day, plus all of the intellectual shamans in the book by that name so many others who could not be included there.

There are so many others whose work was inspirational from my intellectual past to name (or even remember!), so please forgive me if I have omitted you. I have been inspired by the commitment, insights, and work of the folks associated with SIM (the Social Issues in Management Division of the Academy of Management), IABS (The International Association of Business in Society), the Humanistic Management Association and Network, the Transformation Conferences, and more recently the IPBES assessment on transformation, particularly Chapter 2. Then, there’s always my support network, which includes Judy Clair, Dawn Elm, Marta Geletkanycz, Jeanne Liedtka, Priscilla Osborne, Tish Miller, and the entire SAMW (Summer