Two loops

Caspian Almerud
4 min readJul 24, 2019

--

As I’ve previously written about, change never happens without a perceived need for it. In order for it to be perceived, there need to be people seeing it. And those people need to act on the change that they want to bring about. There are a bunch of things that need to happen after that, in order to create change, and that’s what I’ll talk about today.

When someone has an idea, they get a number of choices. The derivative of the choices is a basic one: Am I acting on this, yes or no? If yes, the person or group of people start an innovation process. They start creating and prototyping. They become innovators.

Innovators start a new loop.

When that’s done, when the product or the idea is finished, the group of people who’ve brought it about, they need to start talking to people about it. They need to create a tribe, a group and a network. Before that happens, they’ve usually got a group of really early adopters already, but they need to find some more people. That’s the network phase.

Networkers make sure that those who need to know about each other do so.

When the network is built and has grown strong enough, you’ll get a community. This community is formed around the product or concept, and they all practice or use it. They’re a community of practitioners. That’s where you start hitting the market of regular adaptors, and you’re moving towards some sort peak for the product, yet with some time to go.

The community of practitioners are a group that are actively taking part of the new loop.

When there’s a stable community of practitioners, you’ll see people starting to illuminate others about the phenomena that’s been created. They’ll act as lighthouses, showing the larger group of regular adaptors towards it, and sort of lead the way.

The people acting as lighthouses will illuminate other people about the loop.

What’s important to remember now is that at this stage, the innovation has become mainstream. Regardless of whether it’s an app, a product, process, a system for quality checking pharmaceuticals. It’s gaining in market share. That means something else, probably worse, has to die off. That process comes in some steps as well. First off, you need to realise that the peak is hit, and that whatever system, product or concept you’ve been working with is on its way to die. There are some people who then decide to become stewards of it, looking at a larger perspective and decide to ride with the old system, yet acknowledging the new. The stewards often protect the new from the old, making sure that the new can grow. Some people will also take the role of hospice personel for the old system, making sure that it dies with dignity. These two roles will become ever so important.

The stewards take care of the old loop just enough for it to sustain itself.
The hospice makes sure that the loop is dying with grace.

Because in the next step, there are two functions for the old system and the new system to work their best together. One group are the bridge builders, and the other is the composting team. We’ll start with the bridge builders. They are the ones making sure that the people who’ve stayed in the old system for this long dare to take the step over to the new one. As I’ve previously written about, change isn’t comfortable for most people. Especially if they don’t understand why it’s brought about. The bridge builders make sure that the transition is easier for people from the old to the new.

The bridge builders makes it easier to move from a dying loop to a new loop.

The composters make sure that what’s good from the old system is reused. They take care of knowledge, and transfer it in to the new so that they don’t have to make the same mistakes as the old system made.

The composters make sure that the good parts of the dying loop are sustained in the new loop.

In order for the composters and the bridge builders to be able to do their job, they need the stewards and hospice people to let them know what’s good and what’s not within the system. They’ll be experts on the current state of it, and they’ll probably have been in the system for quite some time.

The full two loops.

All and all, you’ll have a model with two loops that are constantly overlapping each other. There’ll be roles that are more attracting toy your person and some less attractive. The important part is to gain the self knowledge to understand where you thrive, and where in the process you’ll need help.

This model has been thought to me in the Art of Hosting trainings in Karlskrona twice. It’s a mental model to use when thinking about change. I’ve taken some liberties in the descriptions of the model, which is important to note.

--

--

No responses yet