Field Notes on Changemaking (Q2 2026)

Field Notes on Changemaking (Q2 2026)

In this second installment of Field Notes on Changemaking, I again step back after a quarter of essays and conversations to reflect, synthesize, and help build shared memory for an emerging profession. These field notes serve two purposes. First, they provide an overview of the content generated during the quarter, helping you decide what source material is most worth your time. Second, they offer my reflection across that material to identify emerging patterns, refine working hypotheses, pose the next set of questions, and invite you to shape the coming quarter of inquiry. One unexpected gift of writing these notes is that they force me to examine not only what I published, but how my own thinking has changed. What has changed in how I understand changemaking? Q1 ended with eight questions that I believed would shape the next phase of my work. They remain the living research agenda behind The Changemaker’s Handbook, my doctoral research, and the conversations within this growing global community. * What builds legitimacy at scale? * Can we create transformation without social movements? * How does power actually move? * How do we design for impact—not merely moral correctness or agreement? * Why do changemakers continue to serve, against all odds? * What would it mean to professionalize changemaking without flattening it? * How do we build the infrastructure this emerging profession lacks? * And how do we reduce the unequal cost of change? Q2 certainly advanced some of those questions. More surprisingly, it reorganized them. Regardless of whether I was speaking with Dr. Laura Mae Lindo about public service, Dr. Whitney Austin Gray about public health, Andrew MacLeod about trafficking and institutional courage, Dr. Dominique Hes about regenerative design and story, or reflecting on gender, mothering, fathering, and invisible work, I found myself pulled further upstream. Questions about legitimacy became questions about trust, standards, and story. Questions about social movements became questions about adoption. Questions about power became questions about relationships, institutions, and narrative. Even my longstanding interest in transformation infrastructure began to feel incomplete. Infrastructure, I realized, is itself dependent on something more fundamental: the conditions under which it can emerge, be maintained, and ultimately become ordinary. Rather than asking how we create change, these conversations probed what makes change possible. If we better understand the conditions that allow transformation to spark, spread, and endure, perhaps legitimacy, adoption, professionalization, and even power become more intelligible as consequences rather than starting points. That, I now believe, was the central discovery of the quarter. Q1 questions were pointing toward a more fundamental one. The quarter in review The quarter opened with a milestone in my doctoral research into changemaking: three essays that captured some of my findings. What are changemakers for? Are all people changemakers? and How can we recognize one — or know that we’re “it”? introduce the function changemakers serve in society, the six attributes they appear to share, and why the world benefits from a diversity of contribution — not merely a diversity of people. I also revisited the origin story of my own work. Rather than recounting a biography, Why I Care explores why I have spent two decades trying to professionalize changemaking, and what experiences convinced me that the world needed better transformation infrastructure. For Mothers’ Day and Fathers’ Day, I stepped outside my usual territory to explore two forms of contribution that get trapped in biology and gender. To All Who Choose to Mother the World argued that mothering is best understood as a choice: caring for what is vulnerable. What Are Fathers For? drew on my global audience and 50+ answers to what fathering had contributed to your lives. Your responses suggested that fathering may be less a category of person than a category of care: helping people trust themselves, understand the world, and participate in it with integrity. The LIVE conversations extended those themes in unexpected directions. Dr. Laura Mae Lindo challenged the way we educate changemakers for public service, arguing that we devote disproportionate attention to methods over the formation of the practitioner. If changemakers themselves are one of the variables shaping outcomes, that imbalance matters. Dr. Whitney Austin Gray showed how public health increasingly succeeds not by persuading people to make better choices, but by making healthier conditions inevitable. Standards, buildings, and environments become forms of invisible changemaking when they make flourishing easier than harm. Drawing on decades of international humanitarian work, Andrew MacLeod took us into some of society’s most difficult territory: human trafficking, gender-based violence, untenable social norms, and institutional failure. My subsequent reflection explored a question that stayed with me long after the recording ended: what happens when a problem is not merely difficult, but socially and psychologically avoided? Finally, Dr. Dominique Hes brought many of the quarter’s themes together. We discussed regenerative design, story as infrastructure, representing Nature on fiduciary boards, and why she increasingly believes our greatest challenges are no longer technical, but narrative. This conversation changed something in my own thinking. I now see story not primarily as communication but increasingly as infrastructure. 6 working hypothesis Here are the arguments occupying me after this exceptional quarter of learning: 1. The world is not short on solutions; it is short on transformation infrastructure This has been a recurring argument in my work for several years, but the conversations this quarter have refined what I mean by it. Again and again, I encountered fields rife with technical knowledge: we know how to build healthier buildings, reduce suffering, and restore ecosystems. We know a great deal about learning, leadership, and human flourishing. Yet the existence of good ideas remains a remarkably poor predictor of their adoption. The bottleneck, increasingly, appears to lie elsewhere. Transformation requires far more than evidence. It requires legitimacy, coordination, institutions, incentives, governance, relationships, and people willing to sustain difficult work long after novelty has faded. In other words, it requires infrastructure. This quarter has strengthened my conviction that changemakers are often less in the business of generating solutions than of building the social architecture through which transformational solutions become ordinary. 2. Stories are transformation infrastructure Dr. Dominique Hes offered that our greatest challenges may no longer be technical but narrative. While at first glance, that can sound like a call for better communication, it is much deeper. Economics is a story. Leadership is a story. Organizations are stories. Even many of the systems we experience as fixed are, ultimately, stories that have become institutionalized over time. They shape what we notice, what we value, what we consider possible, and which futures appear legitimate before a single decision has been made. Stories do not merely describe reality. They determine what reality becomes thinkable. If that is true, stories are not decorations around change. They are part of the infrastructure through which change becomes possible. They determine which solutions feel inevitable, which feel threatening, and which remain invisible altogether. I increasingly suspect that one of the changemaker’s most important responsibilities is not merely to tell better stories, but to help societies inhabit stories capable of supporting the futures they hope to build. 3. Invisible work remains our greatest blind spot One pattern reappeared across remarkably different conversations: we consistently celebrate visible achievements while overlooking the quieter work that makes those achievements possible. Dr. Laura Mae Lindo spoke about the formation of practitioners rather than simply the methods they use. Dominique described herself as “mycelium,” quietly connecting people and ideas beneath the surface. My Father’s Day inquiry revealed that what people most remembered were rarely grand gestures. They remembered someone who believed in them before there was evidence, helped them trust themselves, or quietly expanded what they thought was possible. Perhaps invisible work feels difficult to value precisely because, when done well, it dissolves into the success of others. It leaves stronger institutions, healthier cultures, more capable people, and better decisions, but rarely obvious credit. If changemaking is to become a profession, we may need far better language — and ultimately better infrastructure — for recognising, supporting, and rewarding the forms of contribution that currently remain almost impossible to see. 4. Safety may be a prerequisite for transformation I did not begin the quarter intending to think about safety. Yet by the end of it, I could no longer ignore how often it appeared. Healthy buildings create conditions in which people flourish. Good educators create conditions in which people can experiment and learn. Difficult conversations require conditions in which people can speak honestly without punishment. Father figures, in many of the responses I received, were honored for empowering us to venture into the world with confidence. Even outside my formal work, a doe chose to raise twin fawns on my land. Watching frightened creatures repeatedly choose my space has made me wonder whether safety itself deserves more attention within changemaking. Safety not as the absence of challenge but as the presence of conditions that afford presence, experimentation, growth. If transformation requires people to leave behind familiar identities, institutions, and ways of working, perhaps creating safety is not peripheral to changemaking. Perhaps it is one of its core competencies. 5. Roles often obscure contribution The Mothers’ and Fathers’ Days essays unexpectedly converged on the same insight. We often notice who gets to perform a role while overlooking the contribution itself. The responses to my Fathers’ Day question came not only from fathers, but from grandfathers, stepfathers and uncles—as well as mothers, grandmothers, siblings, and aunties. From professors, mentors, coaches, advisors, and people entirely unrelated by blood. The same pattern appeared elsewhere this quarter. Meaning-makers, translators, conveners, standards developers, and even someone formally representing Nature on a board all contributed in ways that conventional leadership language struggles to recognise. Professionalising changemaking may therefore require us to become less attached to titles and more attentive to impact. What contribution is being made? What conditions does it create? What becomes possible because someone chose to play that role, regardless of whether society has an established name for it? I increasingly suspect that understanding contribution may ultimately prove more useful than refining categories. 6. I am ever more willing to let my own life serve as data This is perhaps the most personal shift of the quarter, although not for autobiographical reasons. Having long viewed my life as an ongoing experiment, I find myself increasingly treating my experiences as data rather than something separate from the work. Writing about mothering and fathering, observing wildlife in my space, reflecting publicly on fear, interviewing practitioners whose work has shaped my own, and paying closer attention to what repeatedly captures my curiosity have all become ways of testing ideas against lived experience. Rather than weakening the rigor of the inquiry, I suspect this strengthens it. Theories are easier to hold when they remain abstract. They become more trustworthy when they survive contact with life. Field Notes have become part of that process. They document not only what I think, but how my thinking changes. In time, I suspect that evolution may prove just as valuable as any individual conclusion I reach. While I argue that the world is not short on solutions, I also increasingly suspect it is not merely short on transformation infrastructure—it is short on the conditions from which transformation infrastructure itself grows. I offer these not as conclusions, but as working hypotheses. My hope is that they become more robust—or are proven wrong—through the conversations, experiments and practice we share in the coming quarter. The questions I start Q3 with: * What conditions reliably precede transformation? * Which stories have quietly become infrastructure? * What competencies allow changemakers to steward those conditions? * Which forms of invisible work deserve recognition, support, and professional infrastructure? * How do we create conditions without becoming controlling? * If changemaking is a profession, what exactly are we stewarding? Perhaps the legacy of changemakers lies not only in the interventions they make, but in the conditions they leave behind. What questions should we pursue together in Q3? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Beyond solutions — our story problem: Interview with Dr. Dominique Hes

I had the honor of interviewing Dr. Dominique Hes — regenerative design pioneer, educator, co-author of Designing for Hope, and one of the biggest influences on my own thinking over the past two decades. “We have become very good at changing the stuff. We have paid far less attention to changing the story.” — Dr. Dominique Hes That distinction (and how it came to matter to Dominique) framed almost everything we discussed. For years, Dominique has worked across science, engineering, architecture, and regenerative development. Yet she increasingly believes that: Our greatest challenges are no longer technical. They are narrative. Because economics is a story. Planning is a story. And so is law. organizations. and markets. Even many of the systems we experience as fixed are, ultimately, stories we collectively agreed to live inside. Stories are infrastructure. That conversation led somewhere neither of us expected: the regenerative brain. The possibility that our collective excellence in analytical, literate, reductionist thinking has left us less practiced at noticing, relationships, presence, and seeing wholes. Perhaps regeneration requires a different way of paying attention. “Listen with the intent to learn.” — Dr. Dominique Hes Listen not to reply, persuade, or defend, but to understand. That feels rare. And vital. Another lovely moment came from me asking Dominique, What kind of changemaker do you consider yourself to be? “I’m mycelium.” — Dr. Dominique Hes Not a profession. Invisible infrastructure in healthy forests. Connecting ideas, people, and places. Moving nutrients where they are needed. It struck me because invisible work was one of the themes of my Field Notes for Q1 2026. Perhaps some of the most important changemaking resembles mycelium far more than the visible leadership we tend to celebrate. Nature on the Board We also explored one of Dominique’s newest experiments: serving as the Voice of Nature on the board of Regen Melbourne. Not symbolically. Practically. She reads every board paper twice: once as Dominique (the left-hand page in her notebook) and then again as Nature (the right-hand page). Her description of the moments when the two disagree—and how that practice has changed the board’s governance — was one of the most thought-provoking parts of our conversation. What is hope? We finished on hope, which is in the title of Dominique’s book and at the heart of her work. Not hope as optimism, but hope as a practice of contribution, one relationship at a time. If you’ve been following the recent conversations here — from Laura Mae Lindo, Whitney Austin Gray, Andrew MacLeod, and now Dominique Hes — you may notice a thread emerging. Again and again, the work comes back to the same question: How do we create the conditions in which better futures become not merely imaginable — but normal? Dominique’s answer is both deceptively simple and profoundly challenging: Perhaps to expand what is possible, we must change our stories. References * Designing for Hope (2015) by Dr. Dominique Hes & Dr. Chrisna du Plessis: https://www.booktopia.com.au/designing-for-hope-dominique-hes/book/9781763874909.html?srsltid=AfmBOor4mU4litT-1fW7VPrEDuHkx_CPiZ2G5tqNjOQq8isD1fYkTstd [https://www.booktopia.com.au/designing-for-hope-dominique-hes/book/9781763874909.html?srsltid=AfmBOor4mU4litT-1fW7VPrEDuHkx_CPiZ2G5tqNjOQq8isD1fYkTstd] * Mycelium Seed, Dominique’s Substack: https://myceliumseed.substack.com [https://myceliumseed.substack.com] * Regen Melbourne: Nature on the Board https://regen.melbourne/gazette/dominique-hes-nature-on-the-board * Change the Story, Change the Future: A Living Economy for a Living Earth (2015) by David Korten. https://www.amazon.com/Change-Story-Future-Living-Economy/dp/1626562903 [https://www.amazon.com/Change-Story-Future-Living-Economy/dp/1626562903] * Right Story, Wrong Story (2023) by Tyson Yunkaporta. https://www.amazon.com/Right-Story-Wrong-Tyson-Yunkaporta/dp/1922790958 ▶️ Watch or listen to Changemakers Handbook on Substack, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/changemakers-handbook-with-elena-bondareva/id1828981728 [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/changemakers-handbook-with-elena-bondareva/id1828981728] https://open.spotify.com/show/4MGxEQM72DhSvpURHo7IQS?si=e6cef2e629474b12 [https://open.spotify.com/show/4MGxEQM72DhSvpURHo7IQS?si=e6cef2e629474b12] https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/about [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/about] Thank you to Susan Kain [https://open.substack.com/pub/susankain1], Regina Pistilli [https://substack.com/profile/4747169-regina-pistilli], Fiona Gray [https://substack.com/profile/194699914-fiona-gray], Luke Middleton [https://substack.com/profile/147714644-luke-middleton], Tim McIntosh-Hannah [https://substack.com/profile/107395590-tim-mcintosh-hannah], Sarah Patterson [https://open.substack.com/pub/seepatts], Fiona Gray [https://substack.com/profile/194699914-fiona-gray], Dawna Jones [https://substack.com/profile/8346336-dawna-jones], Laurie McGinley [https://substack.com/profile/16488806-laurie-mcginley] and all others who joined us live because conversations like these are always richer for our shared curiosity in real time. If this conversation resonates, please subscribe, share it with someone who thinks deeply about change, and join us for the next LIVE conversation to help build a shared body of practice for changemakers. Changemakers’ Handbook is an audience-supported publication focused on professionalizing chaangemaking in a post-solutions world. Consider subscribing to join future live conversations and to access all posts. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

What are fathers for?

I thought that writing something that went beyond biology and stereotypes for Mothers’ Day was hard. Then I started thinking about fathering. For Mother’s Day, I found myself writing about mothering as a choice: a way of caring for what is vulnerable. It felt surprisingly coherent. Fatherhood felt different. More contested. More uneven. More shaped by personal experience. What are fathers for? In a moment when many men seem increasingly uncertain about masculinity, fatherhood, and their place in society, I wasn’t sure I knew how to answer. Partly because my own experience refuses to fit neatly into any story I know how to tell. So I asked my audience: What is something a father or father figure gave you that would have been difficult to receive elsewhere? More than fifty responses arrived from around the world. Some people answered immediately. Others took days. A surprising number struggled to answer at all, and that, too, felt significant. One person responded: “A longing for a father… If I had my father, I wouldn’t long for one in others.” Another wrote: “There is something uniquely painful about being hurt the most by the person who was supposed to love you the most. Whatever fathering is, people seem to notice both its presence and its absence. Your answers were remarkably varied Some named values: “Integrity. Work ethic.” — Sujatha “Humility.” — Jeff “Patience.” — Rick “Counsel.” — Jim “Compassion.” — Alex “High standards as a man, father, leader.” — H.G. "Discipline." - Gunther Others described confidence: “Belief — my Dad always believed in me, sometimes when I didn’t.” — Davina “Confidence in life.” — Mukt “Confidence in my abilities.” — Andrea One respondent described learning to build and repair almost anything alongside her father before concluding: “That confidence in turn birthed resilience.” Others spoke about safety: “A safe place. Acceptance. Reassurance. Rescue.” — Sara “The space to make my own decisions (and mistakes) without fear of judgement... the room to grow.” — Anthony “Security.” — Nick, Jennifer “A grounding presence.” — Paul “Unconditional support and always a safe place to land.” — Lynn “Unconditional love and support in all my decisions, even the ones he disagreed with.” — Eric One surprising answer stayed with me: “To know what it feels like to be delighted in.” — Tiffany Interestingly, this question is attracting attention far beyond my inbox. Dr. Sanjay Gupta (CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent) has just interviewed the author of the new book Dad Brain, exploring the growing body of research on how fatherhood changes men’s brains and behavior. Who fathers us? What struck me was not just the variety of answers, but who people were talking about. Fathers, certainly. But also grandfathers. Professors. Mentors. Advisors. Stepfathers. Coaches. People who were not necessarily related to them at all. One responded opened with, “I don’t think these things are inherently masculine.” He then proceeded to describe a grandfather who taught him generosity, courage, emotional openness, humor, advocacy, and how to love with his whole heart. That response helped clarify something for me. Perhaps fathering is less about who performs it than what is contributed. Our parenting norms aren’t universal Nature itself seems remarkably unconcerned with our assumptions. Male seahorses carry pregnancies. Emu fathers incubate eggs and raise chicks. Across the animal kingdom, parenting responsibilities are distributed in countless ways. Perhaps humans are not so different. Perhaps fathering is not a category of person but a category of care. Again and again, people described fathering as modeling a way of being in the world. Sometimes that meant trust in themselves: confidence, self-reliance, resilience, ambition, a sense of worth or the room to grow. Sometimes it meant trust in how the world works: how to build, fix, compete, endure, recover, or make sense of things. And sometimes it meant trust in how to participate with integrity: how to love, how to treat others, how to stay calm, how to stand for something, how to be strong without becoming hard. And perhaps the strongest evidence that it matters is that people notice when it is there — and when it is not. So this Father’s Day, consider thanking or honoring the father figures who helped you trust yourself a little more, understand the world a little better, and participate in it a little more wisely. And to every single person who chooses to father the world: Happy Father’s Day! May you know that your care mattered, often in ways you may never fully see. Changemakers’ Handbook is an audience-supported publication focused on professionalizing chaangemaking in a post-solutions world. Consider subscribing to join future live conversations and to access all posts. Image credit: Leo Lachnit [https://pixabay.com/users/lehoooo-10987317/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=3872809] and Lisa Yount [https://pixabay.com/users/lisaleo-3220940/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=9140074] from Pixabay [https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=3872809] This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Why I Care

Almost two years ago, I published a piece called Why I Care. Change-maker’s Handbook (the book) came out in late 2023. I was starting to mine my twenty years of changemaking experience for patterns and lessons that may benefit others, interviewing practitioners, and shaping my PhD research. Re-reading this piece now, I am struck by how many of the themes that would later emerge in my research were already present within it — not as theory or findings, but as lived experience. Most of you would have never seen this essay, so I thought I would share it again. After the original piece, I’d like to tell you what I now see differently. _ _ _ Why I Care (2024) The baby in the photo, I was born and raised in Moscow. Now Russia, then the traumatically imploding Soviet Union and the West’s sandbox for crude experimentation in forging a democracy and a market economy from scratch. Unlike many other countries — including those of the former Soviet Union — Russia had no history of either. This was like teaching a child to swim by throwing them into the deep end: there was no muscle memory to trigger. Raised by two university professors and a veteran of one of WWII’s all-female front-line battalions, I witnessed what it meant to strip a society of its value system without meaningfully replacing it. Once-respected professionals, my mom and dad were now paid in towel fabric, plates, and promises because anybody who relied on the government was, well, instantaneously overboard without a life raft. Surgeons, police officers, and scientists were bartering on street corners. In shame, nobody was making eye contact. I was not yet seven when I — clad in layers that kept us somewhat warm via sheer bulk, not smarts — first held my parents’ spot in lines for bread, sugar, or butter in the pitch black of winter mornings. Those were, indeed, separate lines with none of the efficiency of Western food banks. As it relegated people to shuffling huddles, I looked Need in the eye before I could recognize its power over everybody in my world. It would be years before I understood the meaning of eating pancakes for dinner every night of the week. By the age of eleven or twelve, I was responsible for growing (often to be canned) our annual supply of vegetables, fruit, and berries during the summer. I still can’t throw food away. At school, we routinely sat for hours on end without teachers, who were forced out into the fickle market economy to make ends meet. There were no extracurricular activities. Playgrounds got dismembered for parts. All the parents were so preoccupied with surviving that as children, we were raising ourselves. I remember acknowledging that change was non-negotiable. Still, I knew in my gut that it need not callously decimate people’s lives. Before even hitting my teens, I remember the Moscow intersection where I first committed to finding better ways to do it; ways that did not pull the rug from under people’s feet; ways that protected the environment as well as human dignity; ways that reinvigorated rather than decimated; that unlocked possibility rather than entrenched despair. My postgraduate research at Cornell University allowed me to delve into broad-spectrum change, and I have not stopped since. I was in my 20s when, on a flight, I first wrote down my purpose, “To mobilize people to imagine and create realities far better than they have experienced.” Curiously, this has not changed for me. I don’t know if this is atypical. I accept that one’s purpose may change with time, and I wish we knew more about this; one of my standing invitation for social sciences research. Even if it took me years to see it clearly, my purpose has been my compass for over three decades. May I suggest that you have a lot to gain and nothing to lose by giving a go at distilling yours. Section 1 of my book, Change-maker’s Handbook [https://www.amazon.com/Change-makers-Handbook-Everything-meaningful-business/dp/B0CP8T4Z6F/ref=sr_1_1?crid=27J3JJ7GUB8J5&keywords=elena%20bondareva&qid=1701565531&sprefix=elena%20bondareva%2Caps%2C150&sr=8-1], focuses on purpose and can guide you. It may mean all the difference in the impact and contentment you experience as a changemaker, and I would love to hear from you whether it does! https://open.substack.com/pub/changemakershandbook/p/playlist-purpose-is-fuel-for-changemaking?r=1i4aw7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web [https://open.substack.com/pub/changemakershandbook/p/playlist-purpose-is-fuel-for-changemaking?r=1i4aw7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web] _ _ _ When I wrote this piece, I was trying to explain myself and my commitment to better equip changemakers for their vital work. Today, I find myself asking a different question. Not why I care but why some people repeatedly find themselves caring in this particular way. The distinguishing feature is not compassion. Many people are compassionate. It is not intelligence. It is not idealism. It is not even a desire to help. What keeps catching my attention is something more specific: an inability to fully look away once certain forms of harm, contradiction, or unrealized possibility become visible. A tendency to keep asking: * Why is it like this? * Why do we accept this? * Could this work differently? * What would it take to change it? Those questions have followed me for most of my life. Increasingly, I wonder whether they have followed some of you as well. I’ve been working on something that explores that possibility. More soon. Changemakers’ Handbook is an audience-supported publication focused on professionalizing chaangemaking in a post-solutions world. Consider subscribing to join future live conversations and to access all posts. Are you a changemaker? https://open.substack.com/pub/changemakershandbook/p/how-to-spot-a-change-maker-signs?r=1i4aw7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web [https://open.substack.com/pub/changemakershandbook/p/how-to-spot-a-change-maker-signs?r=1i4aw7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web] Most are not changemakers https://open.substack.com/pub/changemakershandbook/p/most-people-are-not-changemakers?r=1i4aw7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web [https://open.substack.com/pub/changemakershandbook/p/most-people-are-not-changemakers?r=1i4aw7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web] What are changemakers for? https://open.substack.com/pub/changemakershandbook/p/what-are-changemakers-for?r=1i4aw7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web [https://open.substack.com/pub/changemakershandbook/p/how-to-spot-a-change-maker-signs?r=1i4aw7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web] Purpose as fuel for changemaking https://open.substack.com/pub/changemakershandbook/p/playlist-purpose-is-fuel-for-changemaking?r=1i4aw7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web [https://open.substack.com/pub/changemakershandbook/p/playlist-purpose-is-fuel-for-changemaking?r=1i4aw7&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web] This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

What are changemakers for?

I have repeatedly spoken and written about purpose. Across earlier posts, I have argued that purpose is fuel for changemaking; explored the idea that each of us possesses gifts, experiences, and motivations that point toward particular forms of contribution; and written about superpowers, mandates, and the strange experience of feeling repeatedly drawn toward work that is neither convenient nor obviously rewarded. Those ideas remain central to my thinking. Yet the deeper I go into this work, the more they seem to point toward another question entirely: What are changemakers for? This may sound obvious, odd, or both. We tend to think of changemakers as individuals with causes, ideas, wounds, gifts, convictions, and projects. We ask what drives them, what problems they are solving, and how we can help. All useful questions. But if changemakers are real — more than a corporate buzzword or aspirational LinkedIn identity, but as people predisposed toward transformation — then another question becomes unavoidable. Why do changemakers exist? Across countries, sectors, professions, ideologies, and generations, some people seem persistently drawn to changemaking. They notice problems others normalize. They imagine alternatives others dismiss. They struggle to disengage from harms they did not create. They continue engaging long after exhaustion, cynicism, self-interest, or social pressure would have persuaded many others to stop. Not all changemakers agree. Not all succeed. Not all are even pursuing the same future. Still, they are everywhere. What if societies require transformation in the same way they require continuity? What if human communities need people who are unusually sensitive to unrealized possibility? People who repeatedly question inevitability. People who become uncomfortable when preventable harm is normalized. People willing to move toward uncertainty in pursuit of a future that does not yet exist. Goodness knows we need them now. Perhaps we always have — whether anybody, changemakers included — recognized the function clearly or not. Human beings are astonishingly capable of normalizing the unbearable. We adapt to institutions that degrade us, incentives that distort reason, technologies that outpace our ethics, economies that drain us, and narratives that shrink our hopes. This capacity to adapt can protect us. But at times, it can also trap us. Changemakers, at their best, disrupt that trap. They are not the whole answer. They are not saviors. They are not automatically wise, ethical, effective, or right. But they may perform a necessary function inside human systems: noticing where reality no longer fits the frame, where harm has been normalized, where possibility has been declared impossible too soon. Studying changemakers reminds me of immune systems Healthy immune systems do not dominate the body. They detect threats, respond to harm, support repair, and help living organisms survive what might otherwise overwhelm them. Without an immune system, the body becomes dangerously vulnerable. With an overactive or misdirected one, the body can self-sabotage. This feels increasingly useful to me as a metaphor for changemakers. A society without changemakers would likely struggle to adapt. A society composed entirely of changemakers would likely implode. The work, then, is not to romanticize changemakers. Nor is it to dilute, silence, or punish them for picking at what others would rather leave alone. The work is to understand what function they perform, what conditions allow that function to become regenerative rather than destructive, and what kinds of support, ethics, relationships, competencies, and institutions might help changemakers serve transformation well. This matters because changemakers are often treated as anomalies. Too disruptive. Too intense. Too idealistic. Too impatient. Too difficult. Too unwilling to accept “that’s just how things are.” Sometimes, all of that is fair. Yet perhaps some of what makes changemakers difficult is inseparable from what makes them useful. The person who cannot stop asking whether the system is solving the wrong problem may prevent pseudo-consensus. The person who balks at existing constraints may chip away until unrealized possibility comes into view. The person who feels responsible for harms they did not create may help an entire society take responsibility. Without changemakers, many necessary transformations may never happen. Purpose, in this sense, is not only personal. It is ecological. The question is not simply, What gives my life meaning? It may also be, What kind of contribution does the world seem to need of me? Changemakers’ contribution seems to be helping systems change before their failures become irreversible. What if that is their function? And if changemakers perform a function within transformation, the next question follows naturally: Do all changemakers play the same role? I no longer think they do. And that realization may prove just as important as discovering changemakers themselves. References: https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/p/how-to-spot-a-change-maker-signs [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/p/how-to-spot-a-change-maker-signs] https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/p/playlist-purpose-is-fuel-for-changemaking [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/p/playlist-purpose-is-fuel-for-changemaking] https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/p/most-people-are-not-changemakers [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/p/most-people-are-not-changemakers] Changemakers’ Handbook is an audience-supported publication focused on professionalizing changemaking in a post-solutions world. Consider subscribing to join future live conversations and to access all posts. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe [https://changemakershandbook.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]