LEYLA ACAROGLU
MakE
CHANGE A handbook for creative rebels and change agents
LEYLA ACAROGLU
Let’s be honest, the world is a little bit broken. and who better to help fix it than designers and creative thinkers?! That’s basically what this handbook is about - Its not the ‘why’ you should make change - that should be pretty bloody obvious - This book is about training your brain to Actively
MakE
CHANGE Make Change is a handbook for creative rebels and change agents. Offering a grab bag of mental tools and practice opportunities, this handbook guides us through an essential exploration of human behavior and how to change it, covering the basics of psychological, behavioral, social and cultural theories on change. Proposing that social and environmental sustainability should be a core driver, rather than additional component of all creative endeavors. Make Change will help you craft intended interventions into existing systems, and empower you to enact positive change through the things that you do in the world.
make change happen. SAMPLE ONLY TO DOWNLOAD THE FULL BOOK GO TO UNSCHOOLS.CO
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MAKE CHANGE
LEYLA ACAROGLU
of engaging their communities with positive cultural, social, and environmental
INTRODUCTION
change and to actively participate in the construction of a more socially equitable world. So, that’s my agenda, and one I am proud to say permeates all the work that I do (if you want to check out some of the things I have done or am up to at the moment please visit www.leylaacaroglu.com).
Whatever the type of change you’re interested in - social, cultural, political, personal, or environmental – (all change should be both sustainable and creative – right…?) the ideas contained within this handbook are for you. There are a few key ingredients needed in order to understand and successfully effect change – starting with the important act of getting your head around the cognitive, cultural and social conditions that both resist and allow for change to happen. Over the following pages you will discover a range of approaches from psychology, the behavioral sciences, economics, business, and sociology that combine to provide an overarching context for change. The one constant thing in life is change! There exists a limitless universal flux where everything is shifting and evolving around us, including us - meaning that change can be elusive and hard to pin down. But make no mistake, we can and do already all affect change in the things we do. Every action, intended or otherwise, participates in the formation of ourselves, of other people, and the way we interact with the world around us – we are literally making the world up as we
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new”
go along. Designers design change. Business influences change. People change
- Socrates
each other. Basically, change is everywhere, ever present and constant, whether we know it or not. This handbook is a proactive approach to encouraging the direction of creative power and influence in a way that generates positive social, environmental and cultural change. In exploring the fascinating world of change, beyond the notion of just ‘changing behaviors’ and individuals, the provocation is for the creative rebels and change agents out there to rise up and start to deploy more tactical methods
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MAKE CHANGE
WHAT IS CHANGE?
LEYLA ACAROGLU
all it’s the things we do that define our participation in the world, not just what we think. But I will say, the very first and crucial step to change is thinking differently! This change-centric approach is by all means a cultivated one, whereby I mean that you have to work at wanting to make change because it’s not always easy – in fact it can definitely hurt sometimes - and frankly often requires some measure of failure along the way. I’m a strong believer that failing hard and fast early on creates better, stronger results later. In saying this, it should be noted that change is also one of the easiest things to make happen if you have the right tools
Think for a moment of all the ways change occurs in our day-to-day lives.
and resources.
We change address, music taste, location, underwear, ideas, partners, schools,
One of the legacies of the field of change theory is the idea that changing
nationalities, cars, governments, jobs, clothes, perspectives, money, the subject,
behaviors will lead to social change – so allow me to start there with our core
and our minds... We change and reinvent ourselves constantly, we change the
question –how can we affect change?
world around us, and ultimately we change the planet through the things that we choose to do - or the things that we choose not to. Change is everywhere - and always was. In 500 BC, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus found that “the only constant in life is change”, that “stability is an illusion”, and in his opinion “there is a constant universal flux”. If, as Heraclitus says, change is constant, then it is also chaotic – “an inescapable paradox, yet a beautiful necessity, critical to all life” [1]. It is from this perspective that change is approached throughout this handbook. Never lose sight of the fact that we are all changing constantly and that the world is changing around and with us. When we get to its root, the word change means to ‘make’ or to ‘become different’, no matter if we’re talking about objects, people or the natural world. Change encompasses all these concepts although they develop at varying speeds: change can be constant, progressive, static or slow.
“Ultimately all change effects boil down to the same mission: can you get people to start behaving differently?”
I propose being change-centric as a way of defining an agenda, the objective and outcome to effect positive social change in and through the things
- Heath & Heath, IN SWITCH
that you do – a change-centric practice if you will. Throughout this handbook a variety of theories and practice approaches are explored, designed to help build a stronger mental toolkit that can be adapted, deployed and explored by any practitioner interested in contributing to positive change through their work – after
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[1] Graham, D.W. Heraclitus. 2011, acessed 14/5/2013; Available from: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ sum2011/entries/heraclitus/ > Heath, C. and D. Heath, Switch: How to change things when change is hard 2010, London: Random
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BEHAVIOR CHANGE
LEYLA ACAROGLU
self-identity were introduced as major influencing factors in how people approach change. More recently, sociologist Elizabeth Shove and her colleagues have proposed the idea of Social Practice Theory, where norms and structures rather than individuals are the main drivers of change. It positions individuals as agents who actively perform practices in the course of everyday life that then create collective conventions. These conventions or norms shape society and are how routines and rituals are formed – making practices the target of a change
In an attempt to answer the question ‘how to make change’ we start in the realm of Behavioral Change. Here, the first thing we notice is that there are
endeavor means that you influence the individuals who carry them out and thus are able to change behavior en masse.
many theories and schools of thought that deal with the mission of how to get
This theory takes a more expansive view of change, approaching it from the
people to start behaving in a new way. For a long time changing behavior has
perspective of collective choices that societies and cultures establish, rather than
been the holy grail of making change. For example, in the 1950’s and 60’s social
individuals opting for doing things their own way. Consider for a moment, how
psychologist Kurt Lewin gave us the ‘Three Stage Change Model’ [2] which
much of your behaviors are actually your choice, and how many are constructed
essentially says that you need to ‘un-freeze’ a behavior, insert a new one and
ways of doing that you have learnt or adopted. Simple things such as how often
then ‘re-freeze’ the desired new behavior. Et voilà: here’s your changed person!
you shower or wash your clothes are often defined by cultural conditions, not
Or is it…? Unfortunately, this doesn’t really work, people are complex, situations
necessarily individual choices.
are diverse, and given that we are not robots, it’s very hard to simply insert a new way of doing something. After all as they say– old habits die hard.
Behavior motivators
After Lewin, Ajzen & Fishbein proposed the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) in 1969 [3]. TRA is a model for predicting behavioral intent based on attitudes and normative social influences such as external forces. The TRA theory presents 3 key constructs for analysis in behavior change: behavioral intention, attitude, and
internal motivations incentives
external motivations incentives
Intrinsic
Extrinsic
responding to self-directed or personal reward
responding to outside reward or punishment
subjective norms. This was then adapted in 1991 to the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), the authors adjusted their model to include the idea that intention and control of individual behavior is rationally based. Contemporary views however examine behavior as intentions that are influenced by attitudes, subjective norms and perceived control. Hardly very rational! This was where the idea of cognitive self-regulation, attitude, intentions related to attitude, what other people think, subjective norms, as well as a perceived level of control over the behavior and
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[2] Lewin, K., The Dynamics of Group Action. Educational Leadership, 1944: p. 195-200. [3] Ajzen, I., The theory of planned behavior. Organizational behavior and human decision processes, 1991. 50(2): p. 179-211. > Benabou, R. and J. Tirole, Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. The Review of Economic Studies, 2003. 70(3): p. 489-520.
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make change! Well, this is where Make Change the handbook ends, but where your creative space begins. The grab-bag of ideas, theories, and examples presented here were selected to help you find new ways of making change and to assist with the implementation of your own ideas. Whilst there are many things that can inhibit change, there are just as many opportunities for embracing it. Pick the ideas that resonate with you and turn them into something that you can apply to what you already do, or create something completely new. Don’t be afraid to fail, stay positive, active and brave. Be creative and curious, be outrageous and honest, fail many times and learn fast, grow with strength and courage, think differently, be rebellious and provocative, make the choice to be the change you want to see in the world. Experience is one of the most effective educators and mechanisms for making you a better change agent and your projects more fully realized and successful. Think of all that you do as pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, whilst each piece might not make sense in isolation, once you start to put them all together you will be able to see the full picture and how all the little parts will have their place in making up the whole. In my opinion, curiosity is the mother of creativity, and from curiosity comes courage. We often undervalue the power of experiences in the making of ourselves and ultimately the world around us. Be a rebel, flip the script on the dogma that
“It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all” - Edward de Bono
dictates and dominates our world, be the positive change that you want to see and never believe that one person can’t make a difference – because we are all changing ourselves and the world we live in everyday. Go on, make change!
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thanks
Leyla Acaroglu is a leading sustainability strategist and provocateur, an expert on life
With great thanks to everyone who has made this possible, and a special mention to Kathleen Waechter, Taya Brendle,
cycle and systems thinking
Heidi Sloane and Yvette King. Knowledge is a fluid and
in design, production and consumption. She is a designer,
transformative thing, without advice, editing, emails, wine and
sociologist, educator and
these women, I may well have gotten lost.
passionate proponent of sustainability in and through
And thanks to you, the reader, the inquisitor and activator
design. She is a well-respected
of change - without you I would not see the point in writing.
international speaker, with almost 1 million views on her TED.com talk. She has won
Leyla Acaroglu, November 2014
Edition 1 Published 2014 by Disrupt Design LLC New York, United States
DOWNLOAD THE FULL MAKE CHANGE BOOK WWW.UNSCHOOLS.CO
Copyright Leyla Acaroglu 2014 All rights reserved For questions or comments hello@disruptdesign.co
and recently completed her PhD in how to make change through creative practice. Her agenda-driven change-centric work challenges people to see the secret life of everyday things and the underlying systems that make up the world. @leylaacaroglu
www.disruptdesign.co www.unschools.co
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several awards for her projects
@disruptdesignNY www.leylaacaroglu.com
make change edition 1, 2014 The one constant in life is change, and we are all constantly participating in it! Asking the question, ‘how can we make positive change in the world’ this handbook, for creative rebels, aspiring change agents, artistic visionaries and inspired thinkers, guides us through an essential exploration of human behavior and how to change it. Covering the basics of psychological, behavioral, social and cultural theories on change. Proposing that social and environmental sustainability should be a core driver, rather than additional component of all creative endeavors, make change helps you craft intended interventions into existing systems, to empower and enact positive world changing outcomes through the things that you do.
UNSCHOOLS.CO we encourage you to share this handbook, when you’re done, lend it out or give it away to someone else printed on recycled paper