I am going to build on Matt Wilson’s excellent post about cynicism. I agree that overcoming cynicism is the first step – but what a big step it is! In this post I’ll talk a bit about leaving cynicism behind, about the psychological traps that are inherent in this decision, and how I personally experienced this at Net Impact in Portland.
My communications background spawned my interest in how people organize themselves and work with information technologies to make good decisions. I picked workshops at Net Impact that related to my areas of greatest interest – how to measure the impact of business decisions and how to share impact information with stakeholders to best support the common good. I went to workshops on integrated reporting, employee engagement, impact investing, organizational learning, innovative balanced scorecards, and other things on that theme. The results were mixed.
I’ll start with my cynic hat on: the workshop on employee engagement featured a rep from Southwest Airlines, whose much-studied rise to success was based on the competitive niche of getting people out of cars and into planes, massively increasing the carbon footprint of intercity travel in the US. The most sustainable thing Southwest could do is get people out of planes and back into cars again, but they don’t engage employees who think that way… I disappointedly snuck out of that session before it finished. I also left part-way through the workshop on creating a personal portfolio of “social impact investments” when I realized the gaping disconnect between the workshop content about evaluating the impact of the investments themselves from the systemic impacts of the personal investment goals brainstormed by the audience: fly to the tropics every winter, buy that second vacation home, the fancier car, and other first-world consumer fantasies. Investing money “in an impactful way” does not validate your wasteful lifestyle choices, people! There was a broader understanding of systemic issues decidedly missing here.
I don’t want to be a cynic or contribute to the cynicism of others – I agree with Matt Wilson (and Lord Hastings) that it is a huge barrier to progressive action. But my experience of Net Impact was that a relentless tide of positive optimism competed for attention with critical, realist discussion, and from my examples above I think there are legitimate reasons to be critical. Without a real, critical discussion of Southwest’s role in the carbon economy, or of the lifecycle costs of our investment/consumption habits, we ignore “the elephant in the room” and it becomes easy for people with dissenting views (like me) to feel isolated and cynical. Substituting “everything is great” for “everything is hopeless” hardly strikes the balance that is required to tackle the complexity of sustainability problems.
The important point I want to make is that giving up cynicism doesn’t have to force a personal choice between full blown cynical gloom and an obstinately positive attitude. Blind positivity is the first psychological trap when you try to get over your cynicism. For a really excellent summary of the trap that positive thinking sets for us, see Barbara Ehrenreich’s (brilliantly animated) talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5um8QWWRvo. In this respect I think Net Impact could offer more value to participants by offering structured “360° feedback” sessions to companies, organizations, or individuals to help them broaden their understanding of how to improve, rather than the panel discussions where everyone is applauded for making an upbeat presentation about whatever positive work they want to highlight.
On the bright side, my best experience at Net Impact was attending a workshop on organizational learning hosted by Libbie Landles-Dowling of Bridgespan consulting group. The focus was on how to systematize the incremental learning and critical feedback process in every project and consulting engagement, and make this information available to an organization in an accessible, searchable way. It was the most useful angle for tackling the psychological traps I have described here – it allows a whole organization to make critical reflection a core part of project work, and help make decisions based not just on our belief that we are doing the right thing, but on the best data that we can muster about what has worked well in the past. This workshop, and other sessions that focused on how to engage with stakeholder groups in ways that allow you to get at the root of problems, made the conference worthwhile for me.
However, once you start down the critical appraisal road, the complexity of issues can become overwhelming, and we fall into the next psychological trap: “analysis paralysis”. An MBA-friendly analogy is the case competition – you have to start with research and get all your issues sorted out before making a plan of action. Experienced case crackers warn about “analysis paralysis” – getting stuck on trying to find the “perfect”, mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive set of issues that describe the problem at hand. Cynicism in daily life comes from a sort of “analysis paralysis” – it is very easy to dwell on all the reasons why different ideas haven’t worked in the past, and to wait around for the “perfect big idea” to come along. To get past this stage you have to hold your nose and take the best course of action you can with the information that you have available. Be prepared to work iteratively, fail many times successively, and keep learning on the way (this is what Design Thinking is supposed to help with). This trap gets me the most, and I blame that on an undergrad steeped in marxist economic critiques and post-modernist cultural studies: heavy on the criticism, but light on decisive plans of action!
Cynicism is rooted in fear that leaders of social change or sustainability movements are inappropriately positive about their missions – perhaps naively, for lack of experience; perhaps deliberately, to hide a personal interest in attracting funds and followers; or perhaps because they are blinded by their own ideological beliefs. Ideology is the most common, and most insidious cause for cynicism – the most passionate, zealous leaders, no matter how well intentioned, seem more prone to be fundamentally misguided or blind to the shortcomings of their vision. Cynics think that uncritically taking direction from these leaders will lead to a disappointing or destructive outcome, far from the ideal of “doing good by doing well” or whatever other catchy phrase Porter and Kramer have coined that motivates us to get on the sustainability train.
It’s difficult to keep far enough ahead of the torrent of writing on the subject to critically appraise anyone’s claims to being progressive or sustainable. Sometimes you have to go with your gut and hope for the best. As a result of attending Net Impact and reflecting on my experience there, I now feel much more focused on what I am looking for in a potential employer, and how to ask them about it. I know not ask really soft-ball questions like “what do you do about sustainability”, because most companies now have a well-rehearsed ‘elevator pitch’ about how green they are (I guess I remain cynical about these elevator pitches). I will ask “how will you get me involved, as an employee, in finding out where the problems are in the sustainability of your strategy? How will the company incorporate this learning at every level into its strategy? What sustainability problem are you facing now that you expect to still be working on in twenty years?” These are the questions that will get a bit more real information about their future vision. Overall I would recommend Net Impact to anyone who is ready to roll up their sleeves and take action, and perhaps even inspire some die-hard cynics to do the same.
