How to Build (and Fund) a Portfolio of System Change Interventions?

There is a dizzying set of entrenched, interconnected, and intractable barriers to building a better economic system. We could spend years analyzing and debating the “root causes” in an endless loop of what’s wrong and why. Deliberating the shape of the dysfunction. Pointing fingers. Retreating to our camps and our singular theories of change. Becoming discouraged and pulling the proverbial sheets over our heads. Fighting against rather than fighting for.

NCP is an effort to fight forward. Our tactic? The collective.

NCP exists for one singular purpose: to turbo-charge a growing group of system change leaders to aspire, experiment, learn, adapt, work and be together in service of a shared vision for a better economic system.

It is the collective--well-supported, well-cohered--which can chip away at the pernicious cult of hyper-individualism that swings like a wrecking ball through so many of our systems.

It is the collective, aligned behind a shared vision, that will open the horizons on an economy that actually works for more people and for our planet. In fact, as history has shown, it’s often the only thing that has done so.

This Lab Note is an homage to the collective—to people who stand up to work in a different way. It is a glimpse into what a growing group of leaders on the frontlines of reimagining capitalism is doing to build a portfolio of action; to try a new way of collaborating, experimenting, learning and adapting to drive system change.

The NCP Design Team worked together to surface what they believed were the most critical barriers blocking the path to their shared vision. To balance a clear enough analysis of the status quo  while preserving the good uncertainty critical for experimentation and change in a complex economic system. And from that perspective, to begin crafting a portfolio of interventions to address them.

The three key leverage points the team identified are captured in the graphic below, and described in greater detail in reports we’ve written, yes, we’ve written a few along the NCP road.

As often happens when a movement to decommission a system starts gaining traction in different parts of the ecosystem, coincidences emerge. The NCP Design Team’s analysis matched insights from a simultaneous effort launched by the Laudes Foundation as part of its Economic System Map as can be seen below:

While these were two different efforts, engaging different leaders, in different regions of the world, they landed on uncannily similar insights around what’s holding the current economic system in place—at times using almost identical language. While this may not be surprising, it serves as an important signal; and reinforces the team’s understanding of where to focus as they move into portfolio development.

Why does this matter? Because the goals of the NCP Lab are to catalyze and support leaders in driving more transformative, experimental and collaborative ideas towards the shared vision for a better economic system. For it is our deep belief that shifting a system requires that we launch a series of targeted interventions, in various places throughout the system, against different barriers, and that we do so simultaneously. That we do so fueled by a collective coherence for how different efforts and the leaders behind them can best work in more strategic coordination to address shared goals.

For this reason, in the Lab, we are building a portfolio of different ideas, led by different leaders, in different stages of development. A critical piece of the work ahead is understanding what we call the “dotted line connections” among these ideas: how each idea operates independently to address different barriers, targeting different stakeholders, in the service of the shared vision. And also, how the ideas—and leaders behind them--can be supportive of each other, engage in shared learning and adaptation. This is where the magic of systems change dwells: Uncovering inter-dependence among a set of ideas and people. Aligning action, assets and intent of leaders throughout the ecosystem. Building a movement ecology of complimentary tactics and efforts. Striving for a greater coherence where the whole is truly greater than the sum of the parts. Ultimately, it means moving away from a project way of seeing the world to a portfolio way of building the future.

We are weaving together a growing network of field leaders committed to moving beyond individual organizational theories of change and galvanized to manifest a powerful shared vision for the field. They don’t want to work in isolation to do this work. They want to work in partnership with others in the Lab to do this work. The Lab’s value is in its collectivity; and in building the field infrastructure to allow people, ideas and practices to stay in relation with each other over time as they intervene directly to change the economic system.

The next mountain to scale is to design the right model to fund this systems change portfolio. To engage an equally aligned and committed group of funders as co-designers. We envision a fund that will allow for a grounded and experimental approach to collaboration that is missing from the field of economic system change; and that we sense has a few defining features:

• It is built on collaboration - pooling resources and providing the structure to allow the leaders of the portfolio of ideas to stay in relation with each other as they experiment, learn, make decisions about how to adapt their experiments (and resource them) over time.

• It is flexible and iterative - allowing experiments to unfold without trying to assume a multi-year plan for implementation. While the work in the NCP Lab process set a robust trajectory for each idea, grounded in the shared vision they developed, experimentation should wrestle with the uncertainty of these complex issues and learn and adapt as the ideas live their way into reality. 

• It is fueled by facilitated processes with portfolio participants identifying shared problems, learning questions, engaging in reflection and sense-making within and across specific interventions in order to remain adaptive. Neither collaboration nor iteration will happen without active facilitation among ideas and the people driving them.

• It is strengthened by active community building and deepened lines of communication--to strengthen existing relationships and build new ones within the field of economic system change. For we know that increasing the quality and quantity of connections among people throughout an ecosystem is a critical system intervention in and of itself.

• Its funding is flexible, and where decision making about disbursement of the funds is made by portfolio participants themselves, and as a community. This allows for leaders on the frontlines of change to adapt their efforts as new opportunities or challenges emerge. Adaptive challenges require an adaptive ecosystem of change makers fueled by an equally adaptive funding mechanism.

We know that our understanding of what constitutes a portfolio for economic system change will change as we build it with our community. We know there are many bold experiments in system change portfolios and funding in play now, in various issue areas and geographies. We know acting our way into this kind of collective system change will require imagination, intent, experimentation, and the questioning of beliefs and practices we have always relied on.