A quick glance at the news headlines says it all: Our society is at a turning point. A radical transition is underway — from a world that has brought climate crisis, distress, division, and conflict — to a new world that must be in far better human and ecological balance. But what exactly should define this new world, and how do we get there — together?
A good friend learned to drive on ice as a young woman. Her father was determined that his two daughters should be able to manage if they ever found themselves on snow or ice. Because steering, turning, braking, and maneuvering on ice is completely different from driving on a regular road. In fact, many of the maneuvers you need to master are the exact opposite of normal driving.
At the time, our friend asked her persistent father why this was necessary. What were the odds that she would ever need to drive on ice? But many years later, when she was pregnant with her first child, it happened: She found herself in a dangerous situation on an icy road. And all the training she had received was ingrained in her — she and her child survived.
Today, many leaders and organizations feel as if they, too, must learn to drive on ice. We live in a world that alternates between drowning and burning. A world where many of the systems and institutions we have built no longer serve our best interests. A kind of inverted world, where the public sector must become faster and better at handling uncertainty, and where private businesses must work for sustainability as much as for profit. A world where some of the most innovative organizations are philanthropic foundations and associations that have realized they can create experiments and trials to build a bridge to another, better world.
But it is also a world where we face a collective action problem. Who should be the first to adopt more sustainable behavior? How do we bring everyone along? What political, strategic, and communicative approaches can truly mobilize change?
We believe that the transition must be collective. Because we cannot create positive change on a large enough scale unless everyone is involved.
A Paradigm Shift
The big question today is not WHY transition is necessary, but HOW it can be realized. That is the question that remains largely unanswered. Many good intentions have not been fulfilled because too many people and organizations are stuck in outdated ideas about how scaled, irreversible, positive change happens.
Whether it is about new missions and strategies, organizational development, or personal leadership — transition is the red thread that weaves through it all.
Throughout our own careers, we have been part of significant shifts in how public and private actors approach change. From the time when “user-driven innovation” was the new black, and it was revolutionary to place citizens and customers at the center of systematic innovation. Or when the answer to change was to build innovation labs and teams that would transform organizational culture with creativity and user insight as their fuel. And then came the era when digital “disruption” was the answer, and decision-makers flocked to Silicon Valley to learn about the singularity that was supposedly imminent.
Today, we are in a different place. We recognize that rethinking individual services or products is not enough.
We recognize that much of the thinking and legacy we carry from the 20th century must be discarded if we, as organizations, societies, and humanity, are to thrive in this new millennium.
It is a paradigm shift
Now, more than ever, innovation is about long-term, systemic transformation to entirely different values, structures and ways of being in the world. We may need to extend the planks a little longer — but not much longer. There are, of course, existing practices that contain the seeds of the future we need. But we must quickly unlearn certain things and learn new ones.
As our friend realized, a completely different approach is required when the ground beneath us changes. Today, we are driving on ice more and more often.
Three Horizons for Mobilizing Transformation
We observe that three major questions preoccupy organizations that have recognized the need for transition and are beginning to organize a portfolio of efforts around a long-term mission for a radically different future:
- What should we stop doing?
Which models, practices, and behaviors are no longer relevant and no longer serve us? This may involve phasing out entire institutions and organizational elements or unlearning practices that will not be needed in the emerging world. - What should we do much more of?
Where do we already see “pockets of the future” that point in the direction we want to go? What activities and initiatives are already promising and just need light, nourishment, and energy to flourish and scale? - What should we experiment with?
Where do we still lack good answers? Where are the hypotheses we need to test, the partnerships we need to try, the experiments we need to conduct to learn what the future demands?
Futurist Bill Sharpe calls these three questions the “Three Horizons.” This is one of the most widely used frameworks today when organizations seek to engage with the ecosystems of actors that must collectively move to realize transformation. But structuring initiatives and portfolios according to frameworks like the Three Horizons is one thing — building the organizational and leadership capacity to successfully implement transformation in practice is another. It requires seeing the world in a new way, seeing people and organizations in a new way, and leading in a new way.
New Worldview, New View of Humanity, New Leadership
David Graeber and David Wengrow — an anthropologist and an archaeologist — wrote a book a few years ago titled The Dawn of Everything. Among many insights, they highlight a fundamental human trait: We are political, social beings capable of imagining radically different ways of living together — and even realizing them in practice. In other words, there is no natural law that says we must all live in cities, submit to rulers, or become unfree and unequal.
Our social arrangements are ultimately up to us. We are born with the ability to envision other futures — and we have the capacity to create them. The moment we see the world differently, we also give ourselves new possibilities for action.
In our conversations and collaborations with leading institutions, businesses, and foundations both domestically and internationally, we have seen three major and essential domains emerge over the past several years. Each domain has a set of new characteristics that we believe must be taken seriously.
New Worldview
We see a world of actors connected in ecosystems of stakeholders — not sectors or silos. However, these ecosystems are partially locked, and when they do move, it is often towards a world that is not necessarily improving. This calls for a new, more systemic perspective on what is needed to create lasting, sustainable change. So, how do we collectively build the missions that can mobilize all actors toward a shared, preferred future — and what capacity and governance are required?
As the leadership team of the Danish Design Center, we built three missions for sustainable transformation in the early 2020s, focusing on circular economy, ethical digitalization, and youth well-being. Here, we practically explored what it takes to design an organization capable of working toward long-term, mission-driven transformation.
In our current collaborations with leading foundations and organizations — both private and public — we likewise see more and more embracing mission-oriented innovation as the approach that can provide direction for efforts to achieve sustainable transformation. This shift raises new questions about how to design, govern, and evaluate success at a level beyond individual projects or an organization’s own scope — namely, at the portfolio level.
New View of Humanity
Organizations are the social technology we humans have invented to create value together. But what types of institutions and organizations can truly reflect the complexity of our world, foster meaningful communities, and unlock colleagues’ imagination and creativity? How do we create innovation cultures that enable top-tier interdisciplinary problem-solving? What kinds of organizational innovations are needed? What entirely new types of institutional structures — cutting across today’s silos and sectors — will we need to build?
From our experience, a powerful approach is to ask a fundamental question: What do we believe about human nature? Our own experience as top executives has shown that our view of humanity is the foundational perspective that unlocks entirely new ways of leading and organizing — and that can liberate our traditional structures, unleashing the creativity, innovation, and problem-solving skills that the world so desperately needs.
New Leadership
We cannot mobilize people to embrace a better future without rethinking our leadership paradigm.
So, what does it mean to lead ecosystems of actors in efforts to create effects that genuinely improve the world? How can leaders spark new movements within their own organizations, and what exactly is the role of leadership in more liberated, self-managed, and experimental organizations? What kind of personal leadership is required, and how should we educate the leaders of the future?
We are seeing more and more leaders realizing that their strategies, organizations, and personal leadership must evolve if they are to keep pace with the challenges they face — both now and in the near future. So therefore…
Collective Transition Is Necessary
We founded Transition Collective because we see a collective action problem. Who should be the first to change behavior when it comes to consumption, transportation, and lifestyle? And just as importantly, who should be the first to rethink their strategy so that it becomes mission-driven, their organization so that it becomes truly human-centered, and their leadership so that they can navigate complex ecosystems?
We are two individuals who, with our experience, passion, and energy, work with other collectives — large and small — to realize the transformations we collectively dream of.
Because, in the end, you don’t create change by fighting the existing system. You create change by building a better model.