Thank you to those who resonated with the last post and answered the call to Contribution Design. This series is for people who work in complexity: social innovators, policy architects, ecosystem leaders, scientific inventors, community-centered organizers, and impact funders who make efforts to move beyond futility and result in systems change.
Please help me fill a major gap in my knowledge. I skipped the first half of American kindergarten. I just slid in with the crowd in January after the most important norms had been established. This may have created a fundamental disorientation in my understanding of how to be in this world.
I’m told I missed a critical life-defining exercise when you are handed a crayon and a sheet of paper and asked:
What do you want to be when you grow up?
I hear that children say they want to be a…
I’ve never heard children say they would want to be a…
This exercise tends to result in kids describing how they will contribute – helping people through scientific exploration, community work, or creative expression, often influenced by expectations.2 We want to motivate children to become good people, not grow up to lie, mislead, or be compromised in a job in a system that seems corrupt or meaninglessly futile.
When we pause and reflect on where we’ve gotten to in our careers, it is often compared to these kindergarten standards. We started out wanting to help, but it is so hard to help, so we might abandon the original plan and figure out how to survive and game the system. Later on, we say we want to change direction, we want more meaning and purpose, and we want to make more of a contribution, but we can’t figure out how we got caught in a system.
Let’s invite those inside and outside the power structures to see themselves as Contribution Designers.
Contribution design begins with multiple stakeholders describing the risk and opportunity of change efforts through multiple perspectives, modeling, and narrative making. We shift our attention from objects to relationships. Contribution design process recognizes that all stakeholders, not just those with capital and access to resources, must see themselves contributing to and benefiting from great transitions.
What goes wrong – how do we start out wanting to help, only to get trapped in a system that doesn’t let us contribute?
In the West, contribution is a fundamental concept at the heart of understanding and engaging with the world. The English word can be traced to Latin roots. Contribute comes from the Latin verb “contribuere,” which is a combination of two parts:10
The prefix “con-” (also “com-” before certain letters), meaning “together” or “with.” Like confirm, constitute, or congratulate.
The verb “tribuere,” meaning “to give,” “to grant,” “to bestow,” or “to assign.” Like giving money to a nonprofit. Or the dark side of tribute: sending a small child from your district into the Hunger Games arena.
When combined, “contribuere” literally means “to give together” or “to bring together.” In Latin, it was used to convey the idea of giving something (such as money, resources, or effort) jointly with others for a common purpose or to a common fund.
We’re not supposed to contribute alone.11 We cannot make the change we need as solo jet fighters, doctors, veterinarians, or YouTube content creators. We can’t think about contributing without recognizing our role as co-contributors and other sentient and non-sentient beings.
Our idea of self, individuality, and the Latin origin naming of contribution comes from a specific Western framework that has only existed within the smallest fraction of history.12 The systems of industrialization and democracy and the varieties of capitalism we observe are a tiny percent of systems organized over epochs.13 We have much to learn from indigenous practice, which acknowledges the ecology of creation, including the essential elements of earth, sun, water, and air, and all the beings that inhabit them with a sense of connection, respect, and responsibility towards all aspects of creation.14
Yet, we do not all agree on how to work together on this grand change project. Some demand radical change, challenging historical and systemic inequalities that shape unfair structures within society.15 Others do not want to change, or they want to return to an imagined memory of a time that better served them.16 The methods that require us to first “align on the vision” or “define a mission” assume we’ll get to the starting gate of consensus to move in one direction: a clear sense of shared values, moving towards one North Star. If we work on complex system challenges, people likely disagree with the diagnosis and are quite opinionated about where to intervene.
To be sure, we need to include the voices of people who do not typically get a seat at the table and recognize wisdom practices and elders. However, it is cruel if we only do so in carefully controlled community engagement exercises that allow for voices to be added, but the decisions are pre-decided or unaffected. If we haven’t recognized the history of the systems that got us to this place and our roles, networks, and access to help first understand and demystify what might feel like an intractable mess.
It’s ok to ask why it’s so hard to contribute when we reflect on those kindergarten aspirations. I’ve finally come to terms with my kindergarten knowledge gap and the lack of a contributing identity. I lost my way, meandering through the filter bubbles and silos of finance and entrepreneurship and nonprofits and the internet and design and academia and finance again. But this path permitted me to color in, around, outside, and underneath the lines. Still, at least I know I’m not supposed to collapse my identity into any of those fields, any one of these disciplines.
I’m just supposed to convene a table and ask deeper questions about how we got here as the starting point.
So first, draw a circle.
That first circle represents the table, or all the tables, where we convene, design, and make decisions together. Multiple table conversations might be happening in the space you are operating in. How do you learn about the tables you do not yet know about? What are those discussions all about? Who has historically been left out of these discussions? Who do you know that could get you access to those tables? Where are the tables currently trapped in rectangular zoom grids? Where are the tables linked in Slack Forums or WhatsApp groups? Where are all of the places where we make decisions together in the face of uncertainty?
Those adept at steering or facilitating decision-making forums can boldly unmask the power structures and financial schemes that have shaped our current state. Shedding light on the covert tactics that influenced historical decisions reveals our path dependencies. Challenging power is no easy task; crash the gates with a dismantling agenda, and you’ll meet fierce resistance, potentially stalling change. Conversely, avoid making waves, and no change follows.
Next up in Contribution Design, we’ll ask, Who gets to design?
Sources:
1. Lorenz, Taylor. (2023, November 7). Camps teaching kids to be YouTubers are cropping up across the country. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/07/kids-youtuber-influencer-camps-creators-learn-how/
2. Kelly, A. (1989). ‘When i grow up i want to be…’: A longitudinal study of the development of career preferences. British Journal of Guidance & Counselling, 17(2), 179-200.
3. Porter, J., Boyd, C., Skandari, M. R., & Laiteerapong, N. (2023). Revisiting the time needed to provide adult primary care. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 38(1), 147-155. Beaton, E. E. (2021).
4. No margin, no mission: How practitioners justify nonprofit managerialization. VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, 32(3), 695-708.
5. Semuels, Alana. (2019, November 20). ‘They’re Trying to Wipe Us Off the Map.’ Small American farmers are nearing extinction. Time Magazine. https://time.com/5736789/small-american-farmers-debt-crisis-extinction/
6. Kohli, Laura. Opinion: Should teachers teach to the AP test? (2024, March 19). Opinion: Should Teachers Teach to the AP Test? Enloe Eagle’s Eye. https://enloenews.org/7100/opinion/opinion-should-teachers-teach-to-the-ap-test/
7. Bryant, Chris. (2023, October 6). Opinion: Private equity vets Are coming for your kitten. Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-10-06/cost-of-living-crisis-private-equity-vets-are-coming-for-your-kitten?embedded-checkout=true
8. Thomas, Carly. (2023, August 29). MrBeast says he’s “Dying Mentally” filming weekly content for later this year. Hollywood Reporter. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/mrbeast-mental-impact-filming-weekly-content-youtube-videos-1235577639/
9. Bishop, S. (2018). Anxiety, panic, and self-optimization: Inequalities and the YouTube algorithm. Convergence, 24(1), 69-84.
10. Contribute. Online Etymology Dictionary. https://www.etymonline.com/word/contribute
11. Killeen, C. (1998). Loneliness: an epidemic in modern society. Journal of advanced nursing, 28(4), 762-770.
12. Santos, B. D. S. (2016). Epistemologies of the South and the future. From the European South: a transdisciplinary journal of postcolonial humanities, (1), 17-29.
13. Graeber, D., & Wengrow, D. (2021). The dawn of everything: A new history of humanity. Penguin UK.
14. Cordova, V. F. (2007). How it is: the Native American philosophy of VF Cordova. University of Arizona Press.
15. Collins, P. H. (2022). Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the politics of empowerment. Routledge.
16. Wuthnow, R. (2018). The left behind: Decline and rage in rural America. Princeton University Press.
