---
title: "How to Change the World"
date: 2012-09-24
description: "$( document ).ready(function() { // Handler for .ready() called. $("
canonical_url: https://idratherbewriting.com/2012/09/24/how-to-change-the-world/
---
# How to Change the World
For example, about a month ago, my wife attended a school open house with my oldest daughter. As they passed by my daughter's previous school teacher's classroom, my wife stood aghast to see the classroom door lined with trading cards, mostly basketball and baseball trading cards. In the middle of the door were paper basketballs cut from orange construction paper. The MVPs (most valuable players) of the classroom had their name on a paper basketball, posted on the sport-card-lined MVP door.

What's wrong with that? Nothing, except that all the sports trading cards were of men. Not a single woman. At first I didn't really see what a big issue this was. After all, no one really watches the WNBA (Womens National Basketball Association), do they? Do they even have female sports trading cards? I wasn't sure. If they did, you'd probably have to get the cards through special order from an online store.

After a quick online search, I did in fact find WNBA trading cards. I suggested that we get a pack of these cards and politely give them to the teacher with the suggestion that he mix it up. We thought about this for a while and planned to do it, but in the end we got distracted with other things.

A few weeks later, my wife mentioned she was attending a *Women in the Scriptures* discussion panel near BYU. It sounded interesting, so I decided to go too. For a long time, I've wondered why we don't have more stories of women in the scriptures, particularly in the Book of Mormon, which lists just two women by name (more are unnamed).

The panel was not particularly enlightening, but it did make me think more deeply about the issue. The panelists had varying responses, some more conservative than others. One panelist asserted that stories of women are everywhere, we just have to read carefully to find them. Other panelists were more realistic. Some of the audience members expressed their appreciation for the panel and noted that it was a message more women needed to hear.

It wasn't long before I started looking at the world with a little more sensitivity toward women. And sure enough, little inequalities kept popping up everywhere. I have four daughters, so I am surrounded by women. (Even my cat is female!)

It didn't take long before one little incident set me off. In this case, it involved a church music program that had an all-boys song but not an all-girls song. Coupled with an imbalance in a weekly scouting program for boys, but only a twice-a-month activity program for the girls, I was soon fuming. It seemed so unjust! Why hadn't I seen it before! In fact, I was hardly aware of it previously.

I thought for a few days about what to do and finally decided to send an email to a leader with requests for change. I knew email isn't always the best route, but writing does allow for asynchronous exchange on a more thought-out level, and it's convenient and easy.

As you can guess, the email exchange heated up with replies and responses, and before long, I started to regret having ever sent the email. It was clear that no one was going to change a single thing. Now all I have is a lingering awkwardness near several people.

Ironically, at the same time I was emailing requests for this change, I was responding to requests at work about why we weren't changing our decision to shut down a website. Users had been accustomed to a certain website tool that we decided (well, not me, someone higher up) to discontinue. Discontinuing this site really upset a lot of people, so much that one person called me and pleaded with me on the phone not to shut it down.

I was polite and explained that I was just the technical writer. I wasn't the right person to talk to, but I could relay the message. It didn't seem to register with the user. He didn't know who else to talk to, and he continued to explain why the site needed to stay up, and how there weren't any equivalents with the new tool.

I acknowledged his concerns, and I logged a bug in JIRA to add the missing functionality to one of the new tools. I even emailed several leaders. However, the JIRA item and my request seemed to fall on deaf ears.

I'm sure you can empathize with a similar scenario from your own life. Have you ever been frustrated by a system, policy, or other limitation that you wanted to change? Maybe you dislike the homework policy at your kids' school. Maybe you think the STC needs a different model. Maybe you want your homeowner's association to stop requiring everyone to use the same paint. Maybe you are fed up by the bureaucratic approval workflows for content at your work. Maybe you want more dedicated bike lanes in your city streets.

When you find yourself in this scenario, how do you go about trying to change the system? How can you become an agent of change to improve the system you're in, rather than resorting to passive aggressive behavior?

## Change and Emergence

Change is an interesting topic. Recently I've been listening to [A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson](http://www.audible.com/pd?asin=B002V0KFPW). One fascinating chapter is the birth of life, what *scientists* call the miracle of creation. This is the point where bacteria began to intelligently combine to form more complex life, ushering in the pre-Cambrian era and thousands of varieties of trilobites and other organisms. Prior to this era, bacteria remained in a similar state for millions of years. But at some point something happened -- something changed -- and life evolved to the next stage.

Time and again, Bryson describes a phenomenon of emergence. Small, unintelligent parts somehow, without any kind of external direction, suddenly form into something more complex and intelligent.

I think change in society must occur the same way. We may try our best to change the system, but a host of variables may not align at the time, and as a result, our effort has no effect. But when the timing is right, change happens in wonderful ways.

Change in any system is complex, but in this post, I want to identify a few factors that contribute to change. I believe at least three main factors have to align before change occurs. You have to present the **right information** to the **right people **at the** right time**. If you present the right information at the wrong time, or present the right information to the wrong people, or present the wrong information to the right people, or present the right information at the wrong time, your efforts will get little traction.

It is better to approach your efforts strategically by making sure that you align these three elements before starting your crusade, whatever it might be.

## Right Timing

Let's say that you want to change something in a software application. In a calendar application I support, I dislike the way the reservation feature works. It's confusing, misnamed, displays poorly, and is the cause of constant problems among users. I would like to change it. I am in contact with the right people to make a change. As a technical writer, I'm in frequent meetings with the solutions manager. However, it's not the right time to propose the change. Ideally, it would have been better to propose the change while developers were first coding this feature -- before it was released.

Making changes post-release is ten times more costly than before the release. Now that the functionality has been out and in practice among users for about two years, the window of a major change may be completely passed. Additionally, I don't have compelling information to present. A user's comment here and there, a few forum threads, and some general frustration from my perspective is all. Since I don't really have these three elements aligned, it's not worth it to pursue change.

Here's another example. Let's say that you want to change a policy in your organization. The best time to propose the change is before the policy is printed in a guidebook and widely distributed. Once the announcement, training, and familiarization of the policy has settled in, it's going to be ten times harder to change the policy than if had you caught the group during a moment of discussion, while they were still in draft mode.

Now if you make a change post-publication, the group may have to issue a formal retraction and clarification. They may scramble to provide a logical justification for their oversight. They have to protect an image of correct leadership.

I'm referring to these three elements -- right information, right time, right person -- as if it's just a matter of coordinating your attack, but of course it gets more complex. Many times you may not know when policies are being formed. You may be blind-sided by new programs or policies.

For example, we had a recent off-site at work. It involved a ropes course. In reality, none of my team wanted to go. We were all so busy, and it was far away, and the ropes didn't seem like a good fit for our team. But the activity had already been planned and announced and scheduled. We were never consulted in the ideation stage, only in the post-announcement stage. By then, it was too late to suggest an alternative activity. The only feedback we were asked was to RSVP.

A big reorganization at my work happened much the same way. We never saw it coming until it was upon us, and by then it was too late to do much of anything but accept it. None of us knew that leaders had been meeting behind closed doors for weeks, planning and architecting the new structure.

Department budgets take place in similar patterns. If you have an initiative to pursue, you need to find out when your department is planning its budget, because unless you can get your initiative factored into the budget for the upcoming year, you may not have the ability to pursue it once the budget is finalized. Once budgets are finalized, good luck trying to squeeze in a new project.

If timing is so critical, how do you figure out when these key planning moments take place? Most likely you're in the dark because you're too far down the food chain to be considered important enough to include. Policy formation often takes place at the executive level, and executives don't usually stop by common worker cubes to ask for opinions.