The Process of Building a Transformation

The transformations we want are not dreamed or awaited; but worked on. It takes work to interpret what goes on, to project aspirations towards an attainable mid and long-term, to stimulate the convergence of interests, to mobilize willingness and to organize action. The effort to build a transformation is aimed to establish a course and ensure that the process is viable; it emerges from the needs, interests, values and emotions of social groups, and pulls through from among possibilities and restrictions in the pursuit of outcomes that are, to a great extent, uncertain. A complex process is the one that bubbles up in the boiler of change.The detrimental situations we would like to change are many and varied, and so are the ways in which we react to them. In some cases we do not act upon causes and, instead, we try to avoid consequences; in others we attempt to make adjustments in order to mitigate effects; only on certain occasions do we embark on the process of building a transformation.

Building transformation involves many things. To begin with, a key aspect of this construction has to do with the direction of the intended transformation. The viability of the process is equally important, as the willingness to generate a transformation is not sufficient in itself: it is also necessary to act taking into account local and surrounding circumstances, possibilities and restrictions that condition the viability of any change, and render outcomes impossible to anticipate with certainty.

Direction and viability are intrinsically related. When we set a course, we have a certain idea about how likely it is to be attained, and such viability will be influenced by the nature and intensity of the changes in direction that the new course requires.

The construction of transformation occurs within a context of multiple players interacting with one another; each of them having their own needs, their own values, and their changing interests and emotions. It is a complex process the one that bubbles up in the boiler of change.

Anyway, and even if we acknowledge how complex it is to change the present, no situation remains unchanged with the course of time: every situation is ever-changing, sometimes in hardly noticeable homeopathic doses, sometimes through quantum leaps, mostly at slow, yet sustained, steps. There is no uniform transformation pace; instead, there exist acceleration, slow-progress or deceleration periods. The current one seems to be a period of accelerated transformation.

What we carry in our backpacks

Good walkers as we are, we carry backpacks. We usually load them with needs, interests, values and emotions.

(i) Complex and changing needs

An improvement in wellbeing is associated with the satisfaction of needs, a simple expression that hides, however, more than what it shows. There are many and diverse types of needs, some of them basic necessities such as feeding ourselves, taking shelter, communicating, security, among others, and others that are essential to the human condition, such as overcoming helplessness, obtaining recognition and affection, ensuring one’s dignity as an individual. This list is only an example of the vast and diverse universe of needs, which, in addition, vary according to social sector, place, age group, gender, etc.

Necessities have an objective, as well as a subjective, dimension, the latter involving how each one perceives and feels them. Nor do they become stagnated: they evolve as new knowledge thresholds and more effective satisfactors are accessed. The level at which satisfaction is deemed acceptably met is permanently displaced, an understandable fact that, yet, involves having to always live with a certain dose of dissatisfaction. This contributes to displace over time any goal regarding coverage of necessities that plans and programs may have adopted.

(ii) The load of interests

In addition to needs, our backpacks are loaded with interests, changing interests that evolve hand in hand with the needs and urges that drive all human beings. There exist a diversity of interests, some of them being more central than others, felt more or less strongly, crude, moderate or susceptible of being sublimated according to values and emotions.

The social dynamics generates a flow of situations, in each of which a variety of interests struggle to be heard, prevail or, on occasions, just survive. In this struggle, it is the strongest and/or best organized players the ones who tend to prevail.

Interests are expressed and, in turn, channelled through an extensive set of social and economic institutions and regulations. This institutional framework is the result of agreements and impositions decanting throughout history. When institutions are not capable of amalgamating interests, struggles mount into confrontations that are settled by non-institutional means.

(iii) Values

We also carry values in our backpacks. They are principles and rules we have inherited from earlier generations or acquired throughout our own life. Each one tends to believe that their values are true and universal. In fact, however, there are billions of value bearers acting in very different contexts of needs and interests. And even though there are widely accepted values that are inherent to the dignity of the human condition, their interpretation and implementation differ enormously from place to place, from situation to situation, changing and becoming adjusted to the course of time and the evolution of our societies.

This does not ignore the critical role that values play as a supplement and moderation factor of individual interests moving us away from the law of the jungle and “every man for himself”. But it also sends a warning about the manipulation they undergo to smuggle interests that, otherwise, would not be supported in the open. Special mention should be made of the many types of fundamentalisms that deem their own values as superior and claim to be the sole owners of the truth, always.

(iv) Emotions

The heart or the mind of those who carry backpacks are ancestrally stirred by emotions that may help or harm our way forward. Emotions contribute to strengthening our motivation and mobilization for action, but they may also disturb or confuse our reasoning. Emotions add vibration to our determination exalting the value of what is ours. They are indispensable to build a transformation, but it is necessary to see to it that they do not cloud the process of setting appropriate courses and the effort to ensure the viability of the process.

Being a part of human nature, emotions cannot be ignored; they are and will be with us. But their inherent frailty should keep us on the alert so that we call upon them for constructing and avoid that they be used for destruction.

Setting the course and reorienting our way forward

We then see the complexity involved in setting a certain societal course and ensuring the viability of the intended transformation. In essence, transformation is a construction process where we control some variables occurring within certain parameters that condition the course and viability but, paradoxically, also end up being affected by the dynamics of the process they condition. Building transformation requires identifying and weighting a vast array of social needs, interests, values, and emotions, based on which a mid and long-term projection is devised in order to secure the support of those who are called to redirect their way forward.

Reorienting the course is a collective effort that is faced up at all levels, at neighbourhoods and towns, at spaces where specialists and the ordinary citizen try to understand reality, at political and governmental instances, in the world of business as well as civil society organizations, in the sphere of education and the media. From that social magma there emerge inspiring visions and utopias that give way to initiatives, plans and actions that materialize the course.

To be successful, the effort of building a transformation requires generating synergies and supplementing efforts, keeping away, as far as possible, from antagonisms that might deviate and sterilize energies. This is no easy task because it will be necessary to convince those who will eventually benefit from such changes and, at the same time, overcome the resistances of those who might be threatened by them. Some resistances are based on very plausible reasons and others, on spurious interests; some are held in good faith, while there are others that purposefully struggle to preserve new and old privileges.

The process of building a transformation takes place at several stages that, even though have sufficient entity and are singular enough to be recognized as such, are a part of a number of complementary efforts. This includes working to interpret what is going on, project aspirations towards an attainable mid and-long term, stimulate the convergence of interests, mobilize willingness and organize action. If this is to occur, the intended transformation is not achieved without impacting on critical aspects of social, economic and political functioning, which will be the focus of a future article. It is in this sense that it can be said that the transformation we want is not dreamed or awaited, but worked on.