Do gooders anonymous: when you realise your theory of change is a furphy
In my last post I listed some deeply held, unquestioned beliefs that got inverted for me and in me, and wondered out loud what would be next. I kind of already knew, but it’s fresh so didn’t want to include it in the retrospection of the last set of notes. Most of the previously listed inversions were cultivated by multiple inputs and their traction took some time. Not so this one, the inversion was dramatic and sudden. Margaret Wheatley spoke heretical words that I knew instantly were true. The ground had been cultivated for this inversion by sophisticated skeptics that have challenged my comfortable view of the world from inside social change and consulting paradigms. Nassim Taleb ( Skin in the Game and other writing) and Anand Giridharadas ( Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World ) are the most notable for me. And then, in an unassuming little book called So Far From Home: lost and found in our brave new world , Margaret Wheatley said it straight up, “I no long