Accepting redundancy
Why worldchangers need a genuine Plan B
I confess. I am one of those people with a degree in “international development”. There are many of us: goodhearted, well-meaning, privileged graduates of well-resourced universities who have been set up for a career in helping those less fortunate through working in international NGOs, the United Nations, bilateral aid agencies, development banks, philanthropy, and development consultancies.
Most likely, our dream at 18 was some version of to “change the world”. Interestingly the curriculum — at least in my day — included no course on the inner work of letting go and getting out of the way. Nor on understanding oneself as part of the problem.
In this field, I have noticed there is a familiar and recurring conversation that goes something like this:
“If we achieve our mission, we will be redundant.”
“Yes, that is the paradox of our work.”
“We will work ourselves out of a job.”
“Yes, but these problems won’t go away in our lifetime.”
Usually it ends there.
Sometimes it continues like this:
“It doesn’t seem right that our career depends on the continuation of problems.”
“Many jobs depend on the continuation of problems. A doctor’s job depends on patients getting sick. A lawyer’s job depends on the continuation of crime and conflict. Why should it be different for us?”
Whenever I have encountered this conversation, it has had a theoretical air about it, as if it’s a thought experiment, but not a real threat. I haven’t experienced this proceeding into a sincere conversation about what happens after redundancy. At worst, a job will be lost, and another will be found in the same line of work. It seems that underneath this talk of redundancy is an assumption of continuity. When I chose my field of study, I myself was sub-consciously making this assumption.
Here is what this conversation is missing.
#1: Redundancy is not when the problems have gone away
Redundancy is not when the problems go away, but rather when you are no longer needed to work on them. In the context of international development or social change work, it is when there is capacity within a country or community to address its own challenges or within a system to change and heal itself. It is when local NGOs and government institutions are delivering the services. It’s when local peace-builders are working on conflict dynamics instead of international mediators. It is when community-based coalitions and self-help groups form through which people express their own voice and learn from each other. And this kind of competition is if anything only getting stronger in the development field.
#2: This is the voice of outsiders
Only outsiders can afford to be complacent about the continuation of problems. If you are affected by a problem, and have felt it on your own skin, you will want to solve it for real. You will want to root it out and prevent it from recurring. You will mean business. There are many complex reasons why social problems persist, but one institutional dimension of it is that local stakeholders are often not the decision-makers and managing the resources. And the people who are don’t have enough skin in the game.
This doesn’t mean that there is never a role for outsiders. Vibrant places always have an influx of and exchange with outsiders. But in the development context, it is a smaller, more complementary role and a different power dynamic than what is currently playing out. Most likely, it is more focused on channeling resources, supporting capacity-building, stimulating local agency, and facilitating knowledge exchange, learning, and fresh perspective. This is not a role that puts the outsider at the center. And, it depends on an invitation.
#3: There are different levels of “solving problems” and sometimes there are trade-offs between them
When we talk of “problems being solved” as if it is one thing, we are failing to acknowledge different forms of problem-solving. One of the consequences of how the international development sector is set up is that there are incentives to alleviate symptoms rather than addressing root causes or working on prevention.
We tend to believe that both are needed — we must treat symptoms while also doing the harder work of prevention and root causes, and this is mostly true. The problem is that we overlook that there is at times a trade-off: When we benefit from and reward treating symptoms we can disincentivise work on root causes. In other words, allowing root causes to remain in place ensures a steady flow of symptoms and hence prevents redundancy for the development profession.
We benefit from working on symptoms in two ways:
The first is psychological: The feeling of strength, gratification, and affirmation from helping others can create an existential dependence on the persistence of need. Projecting one’s own vulnerability onto others can make one feel stronger. This can blind us to the strength and potential of those we are trying to serve.
I encountered this phenomenon in 2007, when I, as part of a Reos Partners team, supported a senior group of leaders in the children’s sector in South Africa in the context of a new initiative called the Leadership and Innovation Network for Children (LINC). LINC was aimed at improving the quantity and quality of care given to South African children at a time when the estimated number of children who had lost one or both parents in South Africa was approaching four million, largely due to the hiv/AIDS pandemic. The LINC programme led to multiple outputs, including scaling and government roll-out of a particular model of community based child care and multiple new partnerships and collaborations. However, the programme evaluation emphasized that among the biggest impacts of the programme was to shift the mindsets around rescuing and vulnerability. The two key shifts were for those who were working in the sector close to burnout to realise that they could step out of their rescuer role and ask for help, and a shift in mindset from viewing children as passive and vulnerable to understanding them as protagonists who can be a part of the solution. It was assessed that these mindset changes contributed to the resilience and effectiveness of the sector overall. Since then, I have witnessed the same penny drop in relation to refugees, low-income families, troubled youth, and other victimized groups: Oh! They are the protagonists of their own story!
The second way in which there can be a trade-off between symptom work and prevention work is economic: Whether it is government funding, philanthropic funding or business-driven solutions to social problems, there is a market for alleviating symptoms. Symptom alleviation tends to be easier to measure, to count, to scale, to predict, to create delivery mechanisms for and hence to fund.
In the non-profit sector, this is primarily a question of donor requirements, criteria, and reporting. But it is even more acute for those taking a business approach to changing the world. In “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World”, Anand Giridharadas demonstrates multiple examples of new socially entrepreneurial business initiatives that “do well by doing good” through seeing symptoms of underlying systemic problems as business opportunities. People experiencing poverty, insecurity, volatility, and lack of public provision are seen as a market and meeting their needs (especially through new technologies) is an investable opportunity. Prevention will literally be bad for such symptom-treating businesses and their investors.
Coming back to the doctors and lawyers, this imbalance exists similarly in the medical and legal fields. Both health and justice have certain professions working on treating symptoms and others working on prevention. Generally those working on symptoms (eg. surgeons, judges and lawyers) are more highly acknowledged, revered, and far better paid than those working on prevention (dieticians, sport teachers, community justice workers, etc.). These systems are also in need of transformation towards valuing prevention and enabling protagonism of patients and victims.
In both the identity sense and the financial sense, much is set up to depend on the continuation of symptoms. We think the problem depends on us, but in reality, we are depending on the problem. If we are serious about achieving profound change and putting ourselves out of a job, we need to first be present to and vigilant about these trade-offs. We need to be willing to forego a self-image as saviour or hero and to reject the economic rewards of prioritising symptoms over prevention.
There will of course still be a need for some to work on alleviating symptoms. But this work needs to continue without disincentivising or undermining the work on root causes. For that to happen, we need to take a systems change approach.
The work of systems change
Talking of “root causes” can be helpful to distinguish from symptoms, but it may also erroneously connote a linear chain of cause-and-effect that has somewhere a singular root source that can be “tackled”. In reality, social problems (as opposed to technical problems) are more complex than this, and require a systemic approach. The aspiration of such an approach is to reshape and regenerate systems in such a way that the problems are not recreated.
In social change and development work, this includes seeing the ways in which we ourselves (and the communities and institutions we live and work in) are part of the problem. It means seeing the locus of the problem not only as where the impact is most felt, but in the cultures, mindsets and power structures that contribute to reproducing it and which we are a part of. This breaks with the dichotomies of North and South, and of rescuer and needy. It requires humility because we are no longer on the outside helping, but rather on the inside taking responsibility and acknowledging complicity.
In such an approach, actors working on different parts of the system become interdependent peers and co-creators who are all participating in a problematic situation and all have a role to play towards transforming it. It is the difference between, for example, seeing poverty as a problem of the poor, and seeing inequality as a problem in which we all participate in myriad ways. Transforming global inequality requires action by many different stakeholders at different parts of the system collaborating in inter-connected ways. Some of these stakeholders will be working on alleviating suffering, others on shifting power structures, policies, and financial systems, some will be in the North, others will be in the South. Each has a role to play depending on their context, background, and experience. All of them will recognise that inequality is a shared global problem that exists within countries as much as between them.
I once facilitated a process where a group of stakeholders mapped the system of unsustainable consumption. They identified the patterns, structures, and mindsets of this system, and I then asked them to identify the patterns and structures they participate in and the mindsets that are alive in them. As they did so, I asked how they felt. Some said guilty, ashamed, responsible, and then someone said “powerful”. Realising that we are a part of the problem also means that we have a legitimate part to play in the solution, in contributing to the system changing from within.
We all need a genuine Plan B
There is nothing wrong with having to make a living. But with our eyes wide open, it is time to take the redundancy conversation in a new and braver direction. The implication of the above reflections is that there are two ways to work legitimately on development and social change: By invitation because someone is genuinely asking for your help, and by complicity because you are working on changing your role and the role of your community, organisation, sector, nation, race, or other system that you are a part of.
Whether we are doing systems change work or symptom work, to be authentic, worldchangers need a Plan B that assumes no continuation of the problems we are currently working on. I believe that I still have a lot of work to do on systems change, but I still practice imagining myself beyond it. Perhaps I will run children’s camps and open a healthy bakery. This Plan B is not an image of myself as self-centered or wasting my potential. These are still forms of contribution, of using my talents towards the well-being of others, but they are far more local and less grandiose than what I am doing now. The image of my Plan B still brings me joy — I find it attractive.
An attractive Plan B ensures that our existence is not attached to the continuation of problems and social need. It allows us to do social and systems change work genuinely, and to truly mean it deep down when we say we are working for change and that we hope to work ourselves out of a job. While working for change, I will do all I can to ensure it is meaningful enough to delay Plan B, and impactful and sustainable enough to bring Plan B within reach.
In the development field more than anywhere, both individuals and organisations need the capability to re-imagine and re-invent themselves. When our work is about helping and problem-solving, we need to have the courage to ask ourselves and others “am I still needed here?” If yes, by all means let’s get on with the work. If no, it’s time to start re-inventing yourself and transitioning to Plan B.
Anything else is — however good-hearted and well-meaning — unfortunately colonial.
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For examples of systems change work, see:
Conducive Space for Peace, working to transform the international peace-building system
Sustainable Fashion Lab, working to transform the fashion industry
RINGO, supporting International NGOs in their process of transformation
