Newsletter #6: Knowledge is Power-

–But Relationships are the Wheels.

It’s human to believe that if someone else has the same information we have, then they will see things the same way.  As individuals and organizations, we promote information we believe that others need to make a change (that we would like them to make). In government and non-profit, it’s education and outreach. In business, it’s marketing.  

Earlier, we covered the “Iceberg” systems model and how our mental models drive the rest of the system –whether it’s individual or macro systems.  

The Iceberg tells us that if we can change the underlying thinking, we can change the system.  So why don’t people change their thinking when given new information?  

What we know may not be as powerful as what we value and who we trust.

The hybrid seed corn adoption study from Iowa State in the 1920’s and 30’s would be the birth of rural sociology and the Diffusion of Innovation model first published by Everett Rogers in 1962. 

(Note the institutional bias: farmers who didn’t get on board with what the university promoted were “Laggards”.)

You may have seen a version of this same model with a gap between the innovators/early adopters and the majority.  I think that gap also exists between the majority and the “laggards” -to whom we will now refer to as traditionalists.  Those gaps exist at either end of the spectrum for almost parallel reasons, which relates to values.

While knowledge is key, our values and relationships also influence our propensity to change.  Each of those factors may carry different weights for each of us and vary depending on the situation. 

Our values, like the thinking in the iceberg model, are rarely visible above the waterline.  In a broad brush-stroke of what I’ve seen in over 15 years of being back in farming is that the innovators have a value set that includes a possible future that the rest of us may not see.  Likewise, at the other end of the spectrum, the traditionalists may feel the need to hold on knowledge, skills, or even an identity that they feel others are walking away from.  Understanding values is challenging, even when we are trying to do it for ourselves.  But knowing someone’s guiding principles can decode their decisions and actions, helping you interact with much greater empathy.

Relationships may be more visible, but their influence varies.  I know innovators and traditionalists who genuinely don’t give a shit what other people think about them.  They are very comfortable being outliers.  Not to say that they don’t have close personal relationships, but that peer pressure may not be a factor.  

People in the majority may be there because they value safety in numbers and inclusion in the larger community.    

So what’s it look like when these factors compete against knowledge and change?

A farmer acquaintance who, like me, grew up during the 80’s farm crisis, told me that his family survived the crisis by starting an auction service.  He spent his grade-school and high-school weekends arranging other farms’ tools and machinery in neat rows for sale as other neighbors gathered to commune and scout for bargains.  

This isn’t about one type of farming over another, but I’m told that the economic reality of small Wisconsin dairy farms in the 80’s or early 90’s was that transitioning to organic was key to survival.  

While carrying tools to display on a flat wagon for the auction, my friend heard one farmer in a group declare, “I’ll go out of business before I’ll ever go organic.”  Two years later, my friend laid out that farmer’s tools and machinery for auction.   That farmer preferred to lose his farm than to violate a value set that we will never know or to be “voted off the island” by his neighbors.  Chances are, he went down doing what he thought was right because it’s what all his neighbors were still doing.

Where does that leave us?

Understanding  relationships in complex systems is just as critical as knowing the details of how parts of the system work.  Collectively, we’ve put 90% of our focus on understanding the parts.  It’s time to start seeing the relationships and facilitating some new ones.  For those of you who think that’s hard to quantify and slow, there are change initiatives and programs in ag that are older than people on this list and those initiatives and programs have yet to hit the adoption tipping point.  Maybe it’s time to see and work on our system through the relationship lens.

Find a Way,

Ryan