10 powerful tools for change-makers

There is a growing wealth of tools available for getting change happening in human systems.  They come from a range of fields from education to linguistics.

If you’re serious about sustainability, then you know that the real work isn’t in the technology – it’s in shifting the change-resistant human systems we call “business” and “the economy”.

Some tools I keep coming back to are:

1. The fundamental conversation sequences and skills supporting innovation adoption  of the  Generative Innovation model explored in The Innovator’s Way.
2. Crafting more effective messages by using the 4MAT framework for human learning to meet different information needs.
3. Understanding core human motivations and needs using the frame work of Myers-Briggs temperament types.
4. The “how of the how” of using language effectively to share new possibilities and get thing done delivered by Ontological Coaching.
5. Understanding the emotional barriers to change outlined in Martin Seligman’s work on learned helplessness.
6. The way new practices transfer into communities through Innovation Diffusion.
7. How human biology can support or limit change-making, beautifully explained in Greg Berns’ great e book Iconoclast.
8. Practicing the emerging craft of pull leadership, recently documented in Multipliers (amongst other sources).
9. Transferring ideas and understanding better using Gardner’s model of learning intelligences, especially as adapted in the Thought Leaders process for capturing IP.
10. Practising entrepreneuring as a process of managed experimentation using hypothesise/test/measure approaches fromThe Lean Startup.

The main game is changing the human systems that make and deliver the products and services we use – we have all the inventions we need.

What are the tools that you use to add craft and science to your change-making processes?