Asymmetry.

Perhaps the most relevant concept in understanding the full brace of change that is this new century is “asymmetry.” The simple Webster definition is: not identical on both sides of a central line. In other words, it is a mistake to try to understand something that is asymmetrical by using false equivalence. This is much easier said than done. The human animal is preconditioned to think in terms of balance and symmetry. For example, when we look in the mirror or at someone on the street, we tend to “see” a balanced face, whereas if you were to draw a plane through the middle of the face you would see that it is “not identical on both sides of a central line.” We simply want to “see” balance. 

The harm in seeing balance in a face is negligible. The harm in seeing balance where it does not exist in many aspects of our world this century is disastrous.

Already this century, I have reviewed several books which discuss the reframing that is required in a world of asymmetry: military (“Drift,” “It Worked for Me”); terrorism (“The Art of Intelligence”); business (“That Used to be Us,” “Imagine,” “Boomerang,” and “What would Google Do?”); finance (“All the Devils are Here,” “A Colossal Failure”); education (“Fire in the Ashes”); medical / pharma (“End of Illness”); media (“Cronkite”); law enforcement (“Murder in Amsterdam,” “The Secrets of the FBI,” “In the President’s Secret Service”). In each case, failure came from trying to understand both sides or both actors as equal. 

Terrorism gives us perhaps the best insight: in the past where our enemies were states, military might was the best response. Today where our enemy can act anywhere in the world in seconds with beyond-nuclear potential for harm – bio or digital – it is hard to see that huge military outlays are a sufficient (or appropriate) response.

“It’s Even Worse Than It Looks” helps us understand the asymmetry of today’s American politics. Congressional and bipartisan scholars, Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, clarify and propel earlier books of this election cycle – “Our Divided Political Heart” and “Do not Ask What Good We Do” – by helping us reframe the dynamics between the political parties. 

The asymmetry comes not from proportion of the electorate (both Democrats and Republicans can call on fairly equal number of followers) rather the asymmetry is measured by intent. When the Republicans made their primary objective defeat of Obama rather than the historical intent of each of the parties that has been focused on the best interests of the country, politics became asymmetrical.

In every chapter of this book, Mann and Ornstein, document the ways in which the Republican Party became “the insurgent outlier in American politics and as such contributes disproportionately to its dysfunction.” No matter how much FOX or MSNBC seem to create false equivalence – e.g., both sides lie – our spiraling failure to come to grips with what is in our country’s best interest cannot be shared, it is not equal. “The culture and ideological center of the Republican Party itself, at the congressional, presidential, and, in many cases, state and local levels, must change if US democracy is to regain its health.” 

The weakest part of the book – given the above unilateral requirement for the Republican Party to reform – is the concluding chapter with a series of prescriptions for a cure – from change in senate filibuster rules to overturning Citizens v. United. One section, however, can be acted upon by all citizens and will perhaps go the furthest in goading the Republican Party to change: RESTORE PUBLIC SHAME.

The country needs the remaining (if dwindling) opinion leaders from institutions like the military, churches, universities, foundations, business, the media, and public life AND EACH AND EVERY ONE OF US to denounce those who profit from bombast and lies and to denounce the television and radio networks and print outlets that give them airtime and web and print space, with the legitimacy that flows from them. We need to demand truth in the public square and not give the moral permission that Rudy Giuliani endorsed at the recent Republican Convention in Tampa: “not every fact is always absolutely accurate.” We must simply point out that then it is NOT a fact. 

4 of 5 stars

A fascinating President who deserved a less subjective biography. Monroe by himself is due five stars, but the fawning, blind-eye treatment by Unger diminishes rather than elevates. I can't think of one situation where Unger finds fault in his hero. If recent historical biographers (from Vidal to Ellis to McCullough to Chernow) allow us to see and relish in the founding generation -- warts and all -- why isn't James Monroe, who certainly deserves to be in the pantheon of greatness, afforded this honesty. For example, while many of his contemporaries were embracing manumission either personally or as the requirement of a great nation, Unger simply states: "Monroe had no strong objection to slavery." This is particularly concerning because the conversion of the economy in the South from the tobacco base in the days of the framing of the Constitution to the cotton base in the early 1800's changed slave existence dramatically on Monroe's own lands -- from a crop delicate enough to require worker contentment to a significantly more brutish existence. Unger passively even observes: "Cruelty replaced paternalism across the South." Thus, the Missouri Compromise, reached in Monroe's second term, which extended slavery to the new territories is favorably viewed by Unger, as a furthering of Monroe's Era of Good Feelings, rather than the seminal foreshadowing of the Civil War. 

Despite, rather than because of, this lack of subjectivity, "The Last Founding Father" is a great read and does put Monroe in his proper place in history as a result of the impact of his actions and sacrifices. Though Unger is lavish with his praise of Monroe, he often feels compelled to take it even a step further by undergirding his thesis of Monroe-greatness with a diminishment of those around his central figure. "Washington's three successors -- Adams, Jefferson, Madison -- were mere caretaker presidents who left the nation bankrupt, its people divided, its borders under attack, its capital city in ashes." Well ... Monroe was a significant player in both the Jefferson and Madison administrations and much of the opportunity for Monroe's Era of Good Feelings was laid in these prior administrations. Is Monroe great because of timing or personal contribution? A less biased biographer would have found more in the balance. 

But perhaps the most blatant case of compliment by diminishment comes around the foundational "Monroe Doctrine." Unger seeks to destroy any assertion that Monroe's proclamation was not entirely his own creation. Especially not John Quincy Adams. He calls the suggestion "ludicrous" and demeans Adams diplomatic experience. He states that Monroe's eight years as a diplomat was far more taxing than Quincy Adam's five years of "dinners, balls, parades, receptions in St. Petersburg, Russia with his friend the czar." But, hidden in the notes for the chapter is this draft proposal from Adams: "the American continents by the free and independent condition which they have assumed, and maintain are henceforth not to be considered as the subject of future colonization by any European power." That is the essence of the Monroe Doctrine ... the fact that it came from a open recommendation of his Secretary of State should not be hidden by his biographer or be diminished as mere "parroting" of an earlier Monroe warning. If Monroe is to be valued in the wisdom he showed in his formative ministerial roles, can he not also be valued in listening to his own ministers? Harlow Unger, I think you protest too much. 

Unger does present a very interesting contemporary current in Monroe's evolving view of the role of government. Monroe was present at both the American Revolution (staff to Washington) and the French Revolution (American Ambassador). At first, like Jefferson he fails to distinguish the two. This unified view frames revolution as about the expansion of human liberties. As a result of Napoleon's policy reversal re Spain and Florida, however, he understands something which was never fully comprehended by his mentor: protection of national interests was the raison d'etra of all governments, whether born of revolution or not. Expansion of individual liberties had simply been a by-product of the American Revolution because it was essential in uniting the American people and, therefore, in the national interest. Tyranny -- indeed Napoleon -- had been the by-product of the French Revolution, because it was essential for maintaining the unity of the French people. The US foreign policy still struggles with this lesson. The core outcome in revolution is what brings unity (beyond throwing the bastards out). We can't assume that it will always be democracy, even in the headiest revolution in the Middle East. 

Parallels abound between Monroe and later Presidents. Monroe was central to expanding exponentially the territory of the United States (Louisiana Purchase which he negotiated with Talleyrand) as was Polk (Mexican War). Monroe sought permission from the President to lead a army in the War of 1812, as Teddy Roosevelt had petitioned Wilson during the First World War. Monroe failed to adequately pass the baton to a successor (John Quincy Adams v. Andrew Jackson) like Clinton to Gore which served to create a vacuum wherein many of his successes were reversed.

Monroe was a states rights republican who was, in John Quincy Adams words, "strengthening and consolidating the federative edifice of his country's Union, til he was entitled to say, like Augustus Caesar of his imperial city, that he found her built in brick and left her constructed of marble." 

I'll be the first to admit that the audience for this book is pretty narrow. In addition to McKinsey alums looking for a shout out, the folks like me who are intrigued by the art of management and those folks interested in the (I'd argue contradictory) impulse to contract management's accountability out to MBA gunslingers, are pretty rare birds.

If you are in one of those categories, you will greatly enjoy Duff McDonald's "no-agenda" relaying of the history of McKinsey and consulting. 

First, the short-falls: General Motors in the 90's; AT&T wireless and Enron were all multi-million dollar clients; and McKinsey totally missed the internet and tech revolution. Too often, to keep a client -- McKinsey "plays the role the (client) company has scripted" -- and this stands in the way of it's ability to eventually deliver quality in many engagements. Maintaining the multiple millions of dollars GM spent in the 1990's on its way to bankruptcy, for example, can blind McKinsey to seeing what the "numbers" are really suggesting.

However, in a world full of talkers and blowhards, McKinsey is supremely capable of bringing the focus back to the data and research, and usually to efficient effect. Modeling this rigor is a great gift to leaders - no matter what sector they find themselves in. 

Management guru, Gary Hamel referred to the machinery of management as one of humanity's greatest inventions in his 2007 book, "The Future of Management." If McKinsey hasn't in fact invented many of the bold ideas of management, since it's founding in the 1920's by James O. McKinsey, it has certainly helped clients understand them and carry them out. And for that, alone, they have made a mighty contribution.

Charles Duhigg has done us a great service. In "The Power of Habit," he has transformed us into informed actors potentially in control of our habits rather than unwitting accomplices in our own undoing. What we choose to do with this knowledge is the potential of our individual revision to Covey's "Seven Habits of Highly Successful People."

We see that habit is on the simplest behavioral psychology level -- stimulus - response. It consists of trigger, routine and reward. And "all" one has to do to move from a "bad" habit to a good one is understand the trigger and reward and then substitute a more desired behavior for the routine. The bulk of his 400 pages is dedicated to how to analyze and substitute for this "ALL." 

The book is divided into three parts - Habits of Individuals, Habits of Successful Organizations and Habits of Societies. I'll leave it to others to draw larger lessons from the first two. I want to focus on Habits of Societies, more specifically on Duhigg's description of "How Movements Happen." By examining the power of social habits he shows how you can fill the streets with protestors who don't know one another and might be there for different reasons, YET are all moving in the same direction. Social habits are why some initiatives become world changing movements, while others fail to ignite.

At root is what Duhigg describes as a three part process:

First, a movement starts because of the social habits of friendship and the strong ties between acquaintances.  This is perhaps the simplest and most universal of steps forward.  Whether we are building on Seth Godin's teachings in "Tribes" or just instinctually reaching out beyond ourselves, we almost always start with friends and like-minded individuals.  The problem is when the expanding circle stops with just those who think, act (and often) look like us.  This isn't the beginning of a movement but rather a club or worse, for community engagement, a debating society.    

Thus, the second key element.  A movement grows because the habits of a community and the weak ties that hold neighborhoods and clans together.  In the various communities I have worked with, this lack of pushing engagement beyond the familiar -- a homelessness coalition made up of just shelter providers; an early childhood initiative of childcare and preschool organizations and funders; a poverty reduction task team without business or education representation; and on and on -- is the central reason why "good ideas" fail to gain traction.  In my earlier blog posting on the Seven Habits of Highly Successful Communities, I refer to this as habit #4 -- "keep the circle open."  Unlike the narrow efforts described above, this habit recognizes that a community effort must be just that—the work of the whole community. While you can’t force anyone to participate, you absolutely cannot keep out anyone who wants in. This is an inclusive process that takes everyone’s perspectives into consideration but is not held hostage by any one idea or agenda.

Third, a movement endures because a movements leaders give participants new habits that create a fresh sense of identity and a feeling of ownership. I've written extensively about the means of going about and developing these new habits which can be developed by catalytic leaders to further community ownership.  See specifically "Community Governance for Collective Impact." 

Usually, only when all three parts of this process are fulfilled can a movement become self-propelling and reach a critical mass.  

There have been a lot of business books that intend to tout the destined silver bullet of success and leadership of a particular company or leader. From the 1970's "The IBM Way" to the 2010's "What Would Google Do?" (reviewed here). Usually, they are simply variations on MBA 101. Refreshingly "Inside Apple," Adam Lashinsky's strong account of this very successful corporation does in fact present us with a unique way of doing business. Throughout, you are challenged with approaches to business aspects as diverse as product development to human resources where the central question isn't "how?" (does it work for Apple) but "why?" (hasn't it been adopted by a broader range of businesses).

To be sure, Apple (during its two incarnations with Steve Jobs at the helm) is an outlier to the financially driven quarterly results of most corporations in both practice and utter abnegation of employee democracy. See my review of Walter Issacson's wonderful "Jobs" if you need any additional background on the supreme-one-of-a-kind nature of Jobs as leader/despot. 

But it would be too easy to dismiss Apple as the lighting strike of a unique personality. And, it is in those transformative areas of generalization that "Inside Apple" is a story less of "business success" but rather one of "aspirational success," which in many ways is available to all of us as individuals, organizations and communities. Apple, except in the period of Jobs' absence when it nearly tanked, is a business not designed to make profits but to make wonderful products. The zen of Jobs is that when you focus on making wonderful products, profits will follow -- check out Apple's recent capitalization.

Wonderful products (versus profits) taps into the emotional, which in turn unleashes focused passion and commitment. In communities, we can garner that same level of transcendence in the aspiration to achieve truly great things. Also, when the target is on product versus profit, there is a natural alignment of tasks necessary from design to logistics. It is profoundly telling that in Apple designers, engineers, retail employees did not have P&L responsibility -- because worrying about cost would have prevented the elegant solutions for which Apple is known. Rather, it was the responsibility of the C-level to make sure there was enough money to be able to afford "delight."

Contrast this to how constrained we approach every issue in community. It is no wonder we achieve, at best, status quo because we have never given ourselves the clarity of outcome that every Apple employee takes for granted. Those communities that target truly exceptional results are constantly amazed how surely the resources to achieve those aspirations (like profits to Apple) flow to them.

If rational, balanced thought ultimately loses in the marketplace of ideas for America's future, E. J. Dionne's disappointing "Our Divided Political Heart" may serve as an object lesson into why. Dionne confronts the passion and the historical fiction excesses of the Tea Party and recent conservative radicalism with such a cool, emotionally inert equanimity that one's nodding agreement quickly turns into nodding off. 

Dionne's central frame -- that we Americans have been struggling with the twin Angels of individuality and community since before our founding -- is not only accurate but is also the font of our unique strength. We have a profound history of moving the pendulum back and forth over the central balance between these two natures, perhaps most concretely in the Hamilton/Jefferson (commercial/agrarian) tug-o-war early in our history. The historical antecedent to the current Tea Party period is not, as they would enshrine, our revolutionary period but rather the 30 year aberration of high-individualism and robber-barons know as the Guilded Age that ended in the early 1900's during the presidency of Republican Teddy Roosevelt. 

Sam Harris does a masterful job of setting up the need, the value and the rationale for his premise -- that Science can serve as the neutral referee in a moral landscape so presently marked by polarization. He then, in the precision that only a neuroscientist could bring to bear, spends the rest of the book undercutting and unwittingly disproving his thesis. Largely by being unscientifically blinded to his own prejudices, Harris sets up the strawdog of religion to his science talisman. He refers to faith-based religion as "that great engine of ignorance and bigotry." For every neuro-transmitter Harris identifies, there are equal parts leap of faith to some future "provable" fact. The people who must act in this moral landscape are in essence being asked to trade in their priests, mullahs and televangelists for a new set of all-knowing arbiters. (With a hell of a lot more jargon, to boot.) In this way, Harris is skipping down the path Christopher Hitchens plowed in his "God is not Great." 

What is one to make of this? Quite a bit, I think. For I believe, Harris' description of the moral landscape we confront today is powerful and instructive in its own right. If we come at it from a different scientific vein -- the anthropologist -- to understand rather than to impose a different/substitute moral order, I think Harris has helped us see the flaws in our present rubrics without having to embrace an equally inadequate set of commandments. 

Let us look at the trap of moral loggerheads we face in western societies. Harris cites Christian v. Secular in the US and Muslim v. Irreligious in Europe as the polar ends of the conservative - liberal, right - left continuum. Unfortunately, it has grown to be much less continuum and more a valley separating two uncompromising peaks. If from the right the authority is God, then there are right answers to questions of meaning and morality. Meanwhile, the left with the preponderance of postmodernism in the Universities seems to hold that no objective right answers exist. 

Thus, on the one side you have religious correctness for even the wrong action, while on the left you have profound doubt leading to inaction. Knowing what the creator envisioned empowers the right to impose; not knowing or doubting anything can be right, forces the left to surrender and lay supine in the face of the "right." Religion defines moral right in terms of a hereafter reward versus human benefit in this world. Present suffering doesn't matter. In fact, it is seen as cleansing them of their sins. Harris thus explains how a suicide bomber or a pope denying contraception to the poor are just different points on the same religious mandala. 

It seems to me that instead of attacking the "hereafter" focus of religion and seeking to substitute the calculations and prescriptions of science as the trier-of-fact in our set of moral hazards, wouldn't it serve to look at the other side of that "hereafter v. present human impacts equation" and seek to make clear and potent the human benefit/detriments of decisions. If loss aversion is at the root of conservatism and this compels an acceptance of social inequality, wouldn't the more appealing approach be to demonstrate how benefiting "those" folks redounds to all of our self-interests. If one is not able to reconcile the tension between personal and collective wellbeing, there is still no reason to believe that they are generally in conflict. Isn't that what Henry Ford, that paragon of conservatism, did with the $5 / day wage? Isn't that the apolitical "outcome challenge" we are seeing in a growing number of communities?

Attacking religious over-reach in service of the hereafter sets up the wrong manifesto. In fact, it plays into the "limits mentality" to the extent that the most powerful societies on earth spend their time debating issues like gay marriage and immigration instead of nuclear proliferation, genocide, energy security, climate change, poverty and failing schools. Rather shouldn't the left be more focused on actually achieving something with clarity and transformative human benefit so that it can leaven the narcotic of a thousand virgins with the glory of now. 

The late Stephen R. Covey has left a powerful legacy. His "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" is THE self-improvement primer to a successful life. The habit -- "begin with the end in mind" -- is at the root of all of my "Working Differently" efforts. (See my take on the 7 Habits as it applies to community transformation).

"The 3rd Alternative" could have been so much more. I think Covey is right to try to modernize the Hegelian philosophy of thesis-antithesis-hypothesis. Though he fails to mention nor credit Hegel, there is a powerful need in today's polarized debate to insert this process leaven of humility. That, in fact, truth (solution) is an amalgam of multiple points of view. As Covey correctly states: this is not compromise but actually something beyond; something transcendent of the ideological or strategic limits so far permitted.

I have always enjoyed the sense of surprise and wonder in our Working Differently communities, when people who saw themselves as polar opposites in seeking community solutions discover that what was truly at polar opposites was their preconceived notions of each other.  The point of intersection will never be in the knee-jerk slogan but rather in the aspiration.  (Don't contend about big or small government -- these are just potential tools.  Focus rather on what your community can/should be.)  For it is here -- in the "what to we want?" -- that business person and social worker can see their own role and each others' value in the solution more clearly.    

This transcendent sense of something other than narrow points of view is the missing piece in "The 3rd Alternative."  It is what, in the end leaves, this effort inert.  For Covey fails to deal with two corseting postures in today's arena.  First, there is not universal value in solutions. And, second there is a profound diminishing in our belief that solutions are achievable. These two constraints may be mirror images of each other, but their cancer affects our individual, organizational and community urge to act. And this passivity keeps us out of the arena and therefor unaccommodating to a "3rd Alternative."

A pretty good sign for the value received in a book is how many blog postings can you get out of it. If you count this book review, "Decisive," has generated three postings for me -- a good return.

In their book "Decisive," Chip and Dan Heath suggest that to make the most effective choices we need to go beyond the way we have traditionally made decisions individually or in group environments. They identified four “villains” of decision making that interfere with making good choices: narrow framing, confirmation bias, short-term emotion, and overconfidence. I look at these "villains" through a complex systems, collective impact community lens athttp://www.workingdifferently.org/4/p... There I show show how the habits developed in working differently communities help vanquish these villains (See: Seven Habits of Highly Effective Communitieshttp://www.workingdifferently.org/4/p...).

They then introduce the WRAP process to help us become better decision-makers by vanquishing the Four Villains: Widen your options; Reality check your options; Attain distance before deciding; and, Prepare to be wrong. Though they spend most of the book describing the process, it isn't until the "Case Studies" at the end of the book that the authors truly breath life into WRAP. Which is the subject of another blog.

The ground the brothers Heath stake-out is pretty much the anti-Blink (Malcolm Gladwell) and the non-neuronic How We Decide (Josh Lehrer). It is a self-help check list / process that comes together in the last chapter. It is definitely worth reviewing in the face of important decisions. 

A quote from Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman" greets us even before we get to the Prologue. The irony is that Pink's central theme is the refutation of the perception that the Internet and all of its on-line access and data have brought us to a death of sales or to a post-sales world. In fact, we are, rather, in an age of ubiquitous sales.   We all are in sales now and it is certainly no longer simply the province of the "Willy Lomans."

I think Daniel Pink does a much better job here than in his recent "Drive" by avoiding unhelpful jargon and the creation of distinctions without a difference.  In "Drive," he insisted on creating such a tower of babble -- "motivation 3.0," "type-I," "ROE," "if/then contingent rewards," vs. "now/that rewards" -- that we saw the cracks in his premise and not the solid surface of his recommendations and their scientific underpinnings.

As I say, "To Sell is Human" is much stronger. And for our work in communities and community systems from education to economic development, I think there are three particularly apt concepts and tools.

First, none of us -- especially those seeking to engage folks from multiple sectors or to attract and align resources -- can afford to think derisively of sales or sales people. We can mock the no-longer extent or unsuccessful sales practices, perhaps best embodied by the sport-coated pushy car sales person, but we can't separate ourselves from the need to understand, practice and embrace our ever-present role of "moving others." 

And second, as I’ve discussed before in my blog (http://www.workingdifferently.org/4/p...), it is crucial in this new pervasive environment of “sales” that we pivot from challenging folks to do something that we want them to do, but rather, frame all of our attempts to move people into a challenge for them to do something that they want to do. 

Third, the Pixar Pitch! In order to move others, we need to become much better at clearly stating what it is we want and where it is we want people to go. Pink presents the Pixar Pitch as a prime tool in thinking about this. Pixar Animation Studios, starting with Toy Story, is one of the most successful studios in moviemaking history. Pixar has produced 13 feature films that together have grossed $7.6 Billion. Six of these movies have won the Academy Award for best animated film. And the company has amassed a total of 26 Oscars in all. How do they do it?

There are probably a number of interrelated reasons, but no one will discount the stories themselves. Pixar story artist, Emma Coats has cracked the code and argues that every Pixar film shares the same narrative DNA – a deep structure of storytelling that involves six sequential sentences:
1. Once upon a time there was …
2. Every day …
3. One day …
4. Because of that …
5. Because of that …
6. Until finally …

Take for example the plot of Finding Nemo. 
1. Once upon a time there was … a widowed fish, named Marlin, who was extremely protective of his only son, Nemo.
2. Every day … Marlin warned Nemo of the ocean’s dangers and implored him not to swim far away.
3. One day … in an act of defiance, Nemo ignores his father’s warnings and swims into the open water.
4. Because of that … he is captured by a diver and ends up in the fish tank of a dentist in Sydney.
5. Because of that … Marlin sets off on a journey to recover Nemo, enlisting the help of other sea creatures along the way.
6. Until finally … Marlin and Nemo find each other, reunite and learn that love depends on trust.

This six-sentence template is both appealing and supple. For it allows pitchers to take advantage of the well-documented persuasive force of stories but within a framework that forces conciseness and discipline.

Now, let’s bring this to a community example where you are seeking to dramatically improve early childhood reading outcomes. 

1. Once upon a time there was … an education crisis haunting our schools and communities across North America.
2. Every day … large percentages of our children were not achieving proficiency in vital literacy skills to the point that some in our community even doubted whether they ever could.
3. One day … we developed a simple and shared definition of what children had to know in order to be ready for school.
4. Because of that … our early childhood centers and parents became better at helping all children enter kindergarten ready to learn 
5. Because of that … teachers were free to work more on skill development for each individual child.
6. Until finally … every child, irrespective of ethnic or economic circumstance, became a proficient reader by the end of third grade.

The final concept that Pink leaves us with is the distinction between problem finders and problem solvers. In a community context, a problem solver may say that we don’t have enough funding to do what are programs are set to accomplish, whereas, a problem finder may see that the issue isn’t doing more of what we are doing but the need to work in completely different ways. Here is the central core lesson of what it means to be creative in our communities – to truly work differently … TO UNDERSTAND THE IMPORTANCE OF PROCESS.  A whole line of research has found that people, most disposed to creative breakthroughs in art, science or any endeavor, tend to be problem finders. Problem finders sort through vast amounts of information and inputs, often from multiple disciplines or sectors. They experiment with a variety of different approaches. They are willing to switch directions in the course of a project and they often take longer than their problem solver counterparts. But in the end, a transformative outcome is achieved. Think of the George Bernard Shaw quote (famously attributed to Robert Kennedy): to see those things as they are and ask why (problem solver), or see things that never were and ask why not (problem finder). In the work of working differently to achieve collective impact, we rely on the creative, heuristic, problem finding skills of artists more than on the reductive, fragmented activity bias of problem solving technicians