There is another, even broader, consequence to more rapid and complex change. In addition to the need for almost all organizations to adapt, adjust, accelerate, and get ahead of the curve, we collectively face perils and have wonderful possibilities that transcend what any single enterprise can handle. The perils include climate disasters, unexpected pandemics, man made chemical/biological/nuclear vehicles of mass destruction, and systemic racism. The possibilities include all sorts of improvements in public health, from the elimination of deadly diseases to the easing of suffering at a massive level.

Avoiding the perils and taking advantage of the opportunities requires action from many individuals who are not necessarily part of any unified organization. Fighting diseases, eliminating poverty, addressing political movements—these all require challenging the status quo and mobilizing significant support from a diverse groundswell of individuals and organizations.

We tend to think of all these efforts as social causes that have little in common with corporate strategy exercises, restructurings, mergers and acquisitions, and the other topics discussed in this book. But while there are some differences in the details, these causes face many of the same potential pitfalls as corporate change and can benefit from many of the same solutions.

Ultimately, it is all about our ability to lead change in a complex and increasingly changing world, to survive and thrive despite the multitude of barriers. The complexities certainly can vary greatly depending on the threat or opportunity, and on the number of people and organizations involved. But at some level, the dynamics of producing meaningful change—the problems and solutions—are always the same because human nature is human nature, modern organizations are modern organizations, and the world really is becoming more and more interconnected with a rate of change and level of uncertainty that is unprecedented.

So what does the research on change inside organizations tell us about social change involving large systems of enterprises, groups, individuals, governments, and more?

Quite a bit, actually.

Lessons from Organizational Research

To review briefly, the three most important lessons we have learned about prospering in a more rapidly changing world are these.

First, unlike even a century ago, life is now driven in so many ways by large formal modern organizations—and they have been designed primarily for efficiency and reliability, not for innovation and speedy change.

These enterprises are a very new phenomenon, unknown for 99.99% of the time that Homo sapiens have roamed the earth. No longer does a small family or tribe provide housing, food, healthcare, safety, and all sorts of other products and services to its own members. These needs are now served by a multitude of formal organizations that evolved after the industrial revolution and are designed around a hierarchy of jobs and managerial processes. This organizational form was invented of necessity to take advantage of the industrial revolution and the possibilities of much larger-scale production and distribution of better goods at lower prices. In this design, efficiency, reliability, and stability were key goals, while constant innovation, change, and agility were not.

Because of ever-growing interconnectedness among enterprises and nations, social change is impossible without the help of lots of these organizations—not just businesses, but governments, NGOs, foundations, and more. Though in some ways there is much diversity here, all these entities are based on the modern, century-old form, which, with its emphasis on standardization and stability, easily serves up a great many barriers to change of significance. Any single enterprise can throw up dozens of difficult barriers.

But with social change, we are not talking about single organizations. We are literally speaking of tens, hundreds, or thousands of government units, businesses, and foundations, and hundreds of thousands or millions of people who need to collaborate or act in some new ways. This scale of cooperation is not intuitive to human nature.

Thus, it is not total hyperbole to say that the challenge facing big social change efforts can be like trying to move most of the Rocky Mountains to Tennessee. And in many cases, the biggest obstacle to making more progress on these wildly difficult goals is the fact that those involved often greatly underestimate this reality about the sheer magnitude of the task.

A second (more encouraging) lesson from change research is that truly remarkable results are possible.

Even inherently optimistic people can completely surprise themselves in terms of what they and their organizations can accomplish with the right understanding of how to go about complex change in a rapidly moving world. That understanding starts with an appreciation of the necessity for and power of diverse masses, who want something to happen because their hearts are in it, and who make a difference by helping to lead change.

These are people whose Thrive Channel is activated and many of whom help activate Thrive in others. These are people who take new action, and encourage others to take it, which achieves better results—results that are recognized and communicated and celebrated. That, in turn, helps foster more action, more results, and growing momentum until changed mindsets start to emerge. Then eventually come changed habits, then new norms, values, and hence culture, which helps make change truly sustainable.

Focusing on building momentum in this way is as relevant, if not more so, in social versus organizational change. When the focus instead slides to an all-or-nothing approach, and does not create or celebrate successes along the way, large-scale social initiatives can struggle to make headway beyond endless talk.

A third major lesson from our organizational work is that people totally underestimate the power of the Survive system that is hardwired into all of us.

Leaders, managers, and employees miss how often they try to make change happen, yet fail to do so because they inadvertently overactivate Survive, create anxiety and anger, and stress out others and sometimes themselves. Overheated Survive then swamps the Thrive impulse needed to bring about agility, innovation, adaptation, and change.

This problem is even more acute within the context of social change where the threats faced often permeate all aspects of life, both personal and professional. Furthermore, in some cases the threats can be very much directed at physical safety, which triggers an immediate and strong Survive response, easily overwhelming Thrive.

The solution here is not to turn overactivated Survive into underactivated Survive, to go “from Survive to Thrive.” Even very sophisticated people fall into this trap both while trying to make their enterprises prosper and while attempting to drive broad-scale social change. What's needed is a healthy and appropriate activation of both Survive and Thrive.

Broad-Scale Social Change: Wonderful—and Disappointing

We have not done sufficient research to say with confidence what the norms are today for big social change initiatives. But from what we have seen, even “success” cases too often leave people disappointed.

And there are many successes. One can find a remarkable track record over the last few centuries in driving down infant and maternal deaths, in reducing unbearable poverty, in greatly increasing literacy, in improving the quality of life, and in curtailing violence and warfare. Yet despite this reality, it is easy to find stories from the recent past that are discouraging in their outcomes and, even more so, in the missed opportunity to make faster and better progress.

Here's a typical example. A consortium consisting of a UN agency, a major foundation, a few NGOs, and a couple of businesses makes a joint commitment to wipe out worldwide new cases of a certain disease. This is a terrible malady for which there is no cure but there is a vaccine, and it is not very expensive.

A committee puts together a plan with clear timelines, responsibilities, budgets, and policies for how the work will be done. The effort is launched with press fanfare.

Bureaucracy and politics both among and within the participating organizations creep into the process from the start. Nevertheless, some dedicated people and generous funding drive results that are carefully measured on a country-by-country basis. Within 5 years, progress is clearly being made. Within 10 years they are in sight of their goal of no new cases. And then, mostly because of epidemics in only a few countries, the numbers stop going down and actually start going up. Sadly, it becomes clear that they will miss their target completion date.

So the committee develops a new plan and creates a new budget. Money is taken away from some players and reallocated to existing organizations and a few new ones. The donor agency that is providing the most funding tries to convince the group that a better governance structure is needed to hold people accountable. The structure they have in mind gives less power to the U.N. agency. The agency resists and wins that battle.

Implementation begins again with a goal of eliminating new cases of the disease in five years. Progress is made in year one, less in year two. Explanations of why this is happening vary depending upon whom one asks. Some say the people in charge have been naive from day one regarding the difficulty of making anything happen in a few poor and war-wrecked countries. Some say the task is doable but the need to keep the money coming is a significant, perverse incentive that is slowing victory (which would end the distribution of funds). Some say that it is all about governance and accountability. And still others point fingers at certain key players whom they believe are simply not equipped for the work.

At the end of year five, they miss their target a second time.

Incredibly, in a world where money can dry up very quickly if targets are missed, the funding agency does not quit. But it does hire a well-known consulting firm to look into the situation and offer analysis and advice. The consultants conduct interviews and collect a lot of data. People maneuver to avoid blame and to position themselves for continued involvement. The consultants write a long report recommending a new governance structure—which, yes, does align closely with the beliefs of the funding agency.

Plan three is launched with a new governance structure and a more explicit hierarchy of authority and responsibilities. The new timetable says victory comes in three years.

It does not.

Why? Some very smart people were involved. There was generous funding. A known medical solution was available.

Supporters would say that what they did accomplish was extraordinary and it certainly had an impact on many millions of lives. Is this not victory? Critics retort that the opportunity cost in time (many years) and money (billions of dollars) dedicated to this one initiative was too high in a world with so many other needs. Critics also say a sustainable solution is essential. That begins by stopping all new cases, because the world is so interdependent that failure in even a single country threatens everyone. Also needed is a well-designed contingency plan to spot any subsequent flare-up immediately so as to deal with it when it is small and relatively easy to contain.

These points are well taken. What is indisputable is that achieving the results quicker and with fewer resources employed is dearly needed—not only in this one case, but many like it, where the focus is narrow, the time and resources employed are very big, and the opportunities ignored in the process are large.

What is striking to us is how much the basic approach used in this case to a very large-scale change is similar to the norm in single enterprises today, and how much it produces most of the same unwanted effects.

This global health initiative utilized data-driven managerial processes, without the early engagement of large numbers who wanted to make this happen because their hearts were in it, without sufficient Thrive-activation, and without remotely enough people taking the lead in making things happen in thousands and thousands of locations around the world.

Perhaps even more so than in organizational change, social change is ripe for engaging the many, tapping into their emotional connection to a cause, and galvanizing want-to-based action. But that did not happen here. As a result, the elites on top did not have sufficient and timely information on what was occurring in nearly 200 countries. Even if they had, how could they have processed that information, made centralized decisions, and successfully directed enough others to act?

A relatively small number of select people had to deal with thousands of governmental units from across the globe, yet their understanding of the culture and politics and history and quirks in all those organizations and communities was very limited. Consequently, they were making decisions all the time that inevitably were going to run into barriers. They were taking actions that seemed rational but that were triggering parochial politics, rumors, fear of the unknown, and then overheated Survive responses, especially in some of the most challenging countries.

The centralized decision-making also made it impossible to react quickly to new information about what was changing, evolving, working, or not working—when, for example, a communication campaign was not being received well or when a procurement and supply chain needed to respond to some new political reality.

True, it is amazing they achieved what they did. But much can be accomplished with a sort of brute force if you have smart people, proven technology, and many resources. However, given the scale of the challenges facing humanity, this brute-force approach is not sufficient. We need smarter, faster, more resource-effective, and more sustainable solutions.

Was there really an alternative? Success stories, when you can find them, suggest there is. And it will sound familiar to readers of this book.

#1. Diverse masses of people are inspired to take opportunity-based action, with a real sense of urgency, because they want to make something happen. Their hearts are deeply in it. The Thrive side of their human nature is well activated.

Probably the best examples of inspiring diverse masses are the various successful political movements that even in the face of highly stacked odds, came out on top. What all of these movements have in common is that they find ways to activate Thrive even in the midst of immense challenge or crisis. They may employ humor and pranks, as in the Otpor movement to overthrow Slobodan Milošević in Serbia. Or political movements may engage the compelling visions of a better future, as in post-apartheid South Africa, triggering positive emotions of joy, belonging, and enthusiasm, which are critical to activating and sustaining action.

#2. To a degree, management and controls and small elite groups and funding are relevant, not least as a force both to support action and to keep it from swinging into chaos. In fact, the lack of an ability to establish functioning processes, essentially management and control, is a key factor in the less-than-ideal outcomes of many political movements. One example is the Arab Spring, where in many cases the vacuum created from the changes instigated by the movement was filled with something other than what the founding members of the movement would have wanted. Nevertheless, centering the whole organizing force around management and controls, as a frustrated group increasingly did in the case of the vaccine, is not the solution.

#3. Pushing for change from a small controlling group will never work as well as a pull from a broad group that is inspired to want to see change happen. Hierarchy and analytics are neither the spark that catalyzes change nor the key energy source that can create seeming miracles that benefit humanity.

An example that provides real optimism for what is possible, even when navigating global complexity, is the effort to reverse the depletion of the ozone layer that started in the late 1980s.

The ozone “shield,” discovered by two French physicists in 1913, was subsequently found to filter out 97 to 99% of the Sun's medium-frequency ultraviolet light, which, if it reached the surface of earth, could do irreparable harm to human life. In 1976, it was found that this protective shield was being depleted.

A compelling visual (although scientifically inaccurate) of an ozone hole, combined with an easy-to-understand benefit, helped inspire voluntary action from citizens. This action created urgency that led to a global treaty—the Montreal Protocol—calling for a ban on chlorofluorocarbons even before there was complete scientific consensus about the scale of the problem and its cause.

As of this writing, the ozone hole is the smallest it has been since its discovery. The world is on track to meet the target of returning the ozone layer to its 1980 levels, which will be a monumental accomplishment.

Due to its widespread adoption and implementation, the Montreal Protocol has been hailed as “perhaps the single most successful international agreement to date.”

The success of the Montreal treaty has been at least partially attributed to the involvement of stakeholders early in the negotiations. Scientists, the chemical industry, and governments were part of the discussions that led to the treaty. Additionally, by starting with modest goals and demonstrating early success, momentum kept building and the initial targets were revised upward multiple times, eventually resulting in a call for near 100% reduction in the damaging chemicals.

These examples illustrate that the same basic dynamic that creates accelerated, adaptive, successful strategic change inside organizations can also create it across organizations. Some differences in language help hide the similarities, since with large-scale social initiatives one rarely if ever speaks of “M&A” or “sustainable scaled agile.” Even “cultural renewal,” “restructuring,” and “strategy” are not central ideas in this arena. Terms like “policy development,” “partnership management,” or “governance structure,” all of which can sound noncorporate, in fact hide the fact that the challenges and solutions are similar in both the single organization and social initiative arenas because, at heart, it is all about large-scale, complex change in human systems.

A “Social Movement”

Large-scale social change is sometimes talked about in terms of inspiring a social movement. Many of the examples mentioned above fall into this category.

On the surface, social movements seem to be completely different from corporate efforts to strategize, transform digitally, restructure, and so on. Yet some of the most remarkable change efforts we have witnessed inside single organizations were very much centered around the creation of a well-led social movement.

When enough people from enough places start providing some leadership around a shared sense of an opportunity to make their world better, and do so with a positive emotional set, you have the beginnings of a social movement. If they concentrate on visible results, seen and communicated and celebrated, momentum will build. The same is true whether the topic is overthrowing a despotic regime, reducing poverty across a country, or digital transformation at one city's newspaper.

Of course, there are significant differences between, for example, a big restructuring initiative at an automotive manufacturer and a social movement to bring about change in the rights available to a marginalized population. What we are saying is that basic mistakes that undermine success are nevertheless often the same in all these settings, as are some of the basic forces for success.

Social movements and development projects could learn important lessons by studying corporate change efforts. Likewise, companies could learn something useful by studying development projects and social movements. It goes both ways.

For example, social movements initially struggle with the challenge of building sufficient urgency among a broad enough group of people to gain momentum. The findings from corporate change efforts emphasize the importance of articulating an opportunity statement that is forward looking and positively focused. For corporations this means more focus, for example, on what a restructuring effort will enable them to achieve and less about the problems in the current situation. The same principles apply for social movements; acknowledge the current reality, then focus on the dream of a better future.

Corporations have figured out how to “manage” change, at least to some extent. This includes ensuring there are adequate systems, processes, and metrics to coordinate work, keep initiatives from flying destructively out of control, and to honestly evaluate success or the lack thereof. Social movements, except those that are very narrowly focused on a singular easy-to-measure goal, can benefit from more of these systems and metrics.

In the case of development projects, in many ways these are very similar to corporate change efforts. The tactics we have been discussing in this book are equally applicable, just with more stakeholders to engage and a correspondingly greater need for coordination.

Corporate change efforts, on the other hand, can also benefit from studying the tactics used by successful social movements to create engagement and participation. For example, many movements have succeeded through a model of escalating commitment. This is why you receive all those political emails asking you to show support by signing a petition. The small commitment of signing a petition will often lead to larger ones, like making a donation or volunteering your time.

Social movements are also adept at emotional messaging that speaks to the heart. Business leaders would benefit from speaking more to the heart, in addition to the head.

A Social Movement Around Leadership

One could argue that of all the social movements needed in the world today, none might be more important in the long run than one that teaches humanity how to better deal with a more swiftly moving, more uncertain, and increasingly complex world. If we can do that, we put ourselves in a much better position to successfully address all of the other challenges we face across the globe, from ensuring access to healthcare, food, and housing, to addressing climate change and creating a more inclusive and equitable world. That approach would require a lot of change, starting with very basic notions about what leadership is and whose job it is to help provide that leadership. Is it even possible to imagine a rallying cry of “millions leading, billions benefiting?”

Given the way that almost everyone has been taught to think about leadership, the honest answer to our question from many quarters is probably “no”. Nevertheless, best evidence suggests that when it comes to change, it really is all about leadership.