Six weeks to become a certified social innovator!

So here I am, a late entrant to this Evoke business, with only six weeks to save the world. I feel like Flash Gordon in the 80's movie where Ming the Merciless is dismissing the "pathetic Earthlings" and the fate of the Earth rests on "just a man, with a man's courage."

It's a silly movie, and a silly song, but the song just came into my head as I sat down to type - for no reason at all. As I type, it's followed by a book called "Only You Can Save Mankind" which had the tagline "If not you, then who else?" And that in turn led me to some or other story where the reluctant hero gave up trying to get out of fighting the evil monster. He remembered that millions of other people around the world (This was in the 1940's, World War II.) were fighting to the death for what they believed in. It seems that we all look around, waiting for someone else to step forward and take responsibility.

Nobody wants to step forward and say "OK, I'll slay the jabberwocky" or even "OK, I'll clean up the mess." Imagine, did the scarab beetle choose to be the one who collected the dung? Probably not, but someone had to do it.

So anyway, I have to figure out what is the most important message for me personally in the article about innovating in Africa. That's an easy one: Don’t fight culture (If people cook by stirring their stews, they’re not going to use a solar oven, no matter what you do to market it. Make
them a better stove instead.)

I teach English in Taiwan. Every day I am confronted by people doing things that don't make sense to me and have to remind myself that they're not going to change the way they do things just because I tell them to. I need to market my ideas better.

But I left the bit in brackets because I'm not really sure that I agree with it. I'm a teacher, my job is to help people understand what it is they're doing wrong so that they can embrace better ways of doing things. If, for instance, they were burning all their trees to cook stews and stirring the stew was also harming them in some way then making a better stove would only be half of the answer. It's important not to just leap in and find an alternative way of doing something until we take the time to find out what the implications are of the way they do it.

It's the difference between improving a process and replacing a process. More precisely, it's the difference between giving people what they want and what they need. If you let your 'customer' tell you what they want then you're not actually the expert. You're not really contributing much. What do you say if they ask you to help them find a more efficient way of chopping down the trees? Or they stir with wooden spoons made from wood that contains a toxin?

If, on the other hand, you really do know what's best then it's up to you to educate people. Perhaps changes to the diet or to cooking methods would be advantageous as well? Perhaps a more energy-efficient cooking method would free up valuable resources? Maybe you have an invention, or a new way of doing things, that offers substantial benefits but people are reluctant to adopt it because it means changing their thinking about something.

I face this problem all the time, and the truth is that you can't fight culture. And before you try to change anything you also need a deep understanding of the situation. Very often we come into situations believing that we know everything but in fact we don't understand the reasons why people have opted for a particular way of doing things. I meet a lot of foreign teachers who complain about their schools' methods, but very few who take the time to figure out what's really going on. Maybe stirring ensures that the ingredients mix properly, or maybe the wooden spoon contains a substance that strengthens the immune system.

Or maybe there is some deep emotional reason for stirring the stew. It's really all about emotion, and before we can try to help people we have to know what's really important to them. We have to begin by respecting the culture and trying to understand it, asking what we can learn before we try to teach.

But if we have the benefit of comprehensive local knowledge, and additional experience or skills that make us qualified to offer help, then we have a duty to make our insights accessible to people in the context of their own culture. Saying "hey, you're doing it wrong" isn't going to help. We have to build on what they know instead of knocking it down.

Instead of "you do this, but we can give you this" we have to say "you do this, and we can help you to do it better" - even if it means moving the focus away from the immediate problem.

I teach English to people who have been exposed to very old-fashioned methods that don't really work. They don't want me to tell them that they have just wasted 5-10 years doing the wrong thing, even though they know that the result is not adequate. (That's why they're in the class. If all that energy had been usefully diercted then they wouldn't need me now as adults.)

I have to build on what they already know, that we both agree on, and eventually lead them to the conclusion that now it's time to try something different. If they tell me that the previous process didn't get the desired result then we can work together to change the process. But it's very difficult to lead them to that conclusion and I've spent seven years learning how to do it. The key is to find out what they really care about before dealing with the issue that's in front of you. Maybe they stir the stew because the meat sticks to the pan, but would much rather be doing something else and will happily use your solar oven if you can solve the sticking problem too.

In order to make people do things differently I have to first change the way they think about the problem. I can't achieve that by fighting them, I have to understand and accept their culture and help them to identify the deeper problems for/with me. Then they define the solution and my job is to find or invent them a way of achieving their real goal that is affordable/attainable.

Every culture has core values that can't be compromised. You can't fight them, but working in Asia I have learned that energy can either be opposed or harnessed. Force against force (your will against the culture) results in something getting broken. Force redirected (your will plus the culture) results in the outcome you want. I learned that by listening to my Taiji teacher, instead of trying to fight him. Nowadays, I don't tell people how to use English. I ask them how they do things in Chinese, and in the process of answering my questions they learn about how I think and what they need to do differently in order to make me understand.

Now that I've figured out how to market something that doesn't fit their learning culture, I'm able to help people achieve goals that have eluded them for years. (For decades, in some cases.) I am making change in the world, one student at a time, and fostering a better cross-cultural understanding.