True Leadership Means Wrestling Away the Steering Wheel
We need social change leaders who are ready to tackle systems that perpetuate injustice.
The social innovation movement in America must develop a new type of leader who is ready to tackle complex, unjust systems at their roots.
Ask a social change leader in the US how they measure their organization’s success, and you’ll hear about more beds for the homeless, more meals for the hungry, more education for kids, and more healthcare for the sick. You’ll hear how they provide these services cheaper, faster, and more effectively than ever before.
What you’ll hear is that the social sector treats symptoms.
Providing charity to people in need is and will always be necessary. But until the public sector actually changes the rules that perpetuate injustice, we are operating under a delusion that we are really changing the world.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German minister who led religious opposition to the Nazi party and a pacifist who studied Gandhi, explained his radical decision to participate in numerous efforts to assassinate Hitler this way: "If I see a madman driving a car into a group of innocent bystanders, then I can't, as a Christian, simply wait for the catastrophe and then comfort the wounded and bury the dead. I must try to wrestle the steering wheel out of the hands of the driver."
What a great image for our social sector today. We applaud ourselves for aiding innocent bystanders after they’ve come to harm—and we should—but it’s time for leadership that wrestles away the steering wheel.
There are social entrepreneurs leading the way.
Robert Eggers founded DC Central Kitchen during the inauguration of President George H. W. Bush by taking food from events to feed the hungry. Over the past twenty years, the program has fed thousands weekly. Moving beyond charity to systems change, he developed a cutting-edge job-training program for those he fed to work in restaurants. And seeking even greater change, today Egger is creating a political action committee to reward policy leaders who change systems.
If we consistently produce hundreds of thousands of homeless, hungry, uneducated, and sick people, we must ask what broken systems do we need to change? Is it our capitalist system? Our welfare state system? Our political system?
We need leaders who take on real change, which means replacing systems that perpetuate injustice—otherwise, we’re just perpetually comforting the wounded and burying the dead.
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A look at the innovative *Weekend Movement in Malaysia.
Q&A with Dhaval Chadha of Cria Global.
COMMENTS
BY Ash Roughani, California Moderate Party
ON January 10, 2012 06:03 PM
Political gridlock on issues like the debt where bipartisan leaders have already reached consensus is the biggest injustice we currently face. The challenge is even more stark in light of the impact on future generations. Real leadership comes from the bottom and that’s the only way we can confront our problems.
We need to get past the “us vs. them” mindset and brace ourselves for a new era of shared sacrifice. We’re the only ones who can fix the problems for which we’re all partially responsible. It’s time to acknowledge the legitimate interests of those with whom we disagree. After all, we live in a pluralistic society. Placing the blame with a single group is not a sustainable path forward.
The problem isn’t necessarily the political system, so much as our own failure to organize ourselves into a coalition that transcends political ideology. We are the freest country in the world and in the middle of technological revolution, so we really don’t have any more excuses.
BY D.J. Wong
ON January 11, 2012 10:43 AM
THANK YOU for provoking us to rise to the occasion of our times. Brilliant challenge to the status quo when things are not working! We need many more people to step up to wrestle the steering wheel away from the crazies. Otherwise, we live with the conditions that we create with our own apathy, cynicism, etc. My important question based on you reading is what can my life contribute toward making our world a better community? What action is most important for me to rise up to ‘wrestle the steering wheel’?
With appreciation for where our world is today and what did NOT happen!! Thank you to the heroes who stepped up in the past.
BY Carl
ON January 11, 2012 11:41 AM
Non-profits need to finally get involved in actively pursuing political agendas that are outside of their traditional comfort zone.
It’s one thing for a non-profit devoted to fighting homelessness to advocate for additional funds to run and manage shelters. But teaming up with developers and investors to lobby for tax-credits that would encourage additional construction of low-income housing, now wouldn’t that be a wonderful and radical change.
BY Garry Haywood
ON January 15, 2012 02:22 AM
There is a problem here. Who funds social innovations?
The ultra wealthy philanthropist has no interest in challenging the system that made them ultra wealthy in the first place. The covenants of many foundations strictly forbade political activity. IN UK, as it is elsewhere, charitable status comes with the stipulation that no political activity is to be undertaken.
It is hard to see how a new social leadership of the describe cannot, in some meaningful way be see as political.
This is what makes we want to weep each night before I sleep. I know that tomorrow will always bring more injustice and all we can do is deal with the consequence, never the cause..
BY Kerry Stubbs
ON January 15, 2012 09:57 PM
This is a powerful idea, but not new! It is the basis of the movements of the 60s in civil rights, feminism, anti poverty, etc. We just forgot it for a while through the economic rationalism of the 80s and the greed of the 90s. It has taken the shock of global financial collapse to remind people that real leaders tackle the cause of the problem, not its symptoms.
BY Sydney Frymire
ON January 26, 2012 05:50 AM
You are hitting the nail on the head again. I’ll post this on the Greater Washington Society of Clinical Social Worker’s list serve.
BY Brooke Morrigan
ON January 26, 2012 09:25 AM
I applaud your article on the need for social change, rather than merely trying to alleviate the symptoms of injustice and inequality. Thank you!