Richard Tafel: 5 Steps for Systems Change
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Rich Tafel:
Rich Tafel is founder of The Public Squared, a public policy training program for nonprofits and social entrepreneurs.
For the last decade, Tafel has provided strategic policy advice to nonprofits on a variety of causes, including AIDS programs for Africa, civil rights programs Latin America, and education and health care reform in the United States. He is a guest lecturer in Urban Health and Advocacy at Johns Hopkins University.
Prior to his international consulting, Tafel founded the Log Cabin Republicans in 1993. During his tenure, the Log Cabin Republicans went from an unknown entity to a well-known brand in American political life. At the height of the culture wars, he debated the likes of the Reverend Jerry Fallwell on Larry King Live. He has appeared on most major political TV programs and fought for appropriate AIDS funding and equality for gays and lesbians. He testified before Congress on the need to support the Ryan White Care Act. In 1999, he authored Party Crasher: A Gay Republican Challenges Politics as Usual. Tafel has also been appointed by Governor Weld (R-MA) to manage the adolescent health programs of Massachusetts.
Tafel's work in the public policy arena for social justice causes is inspired by his faith. After graduating from Harvard Divinity School he served at the University Chapel. He is an ordained minister in the Swedenborgian Church. He is a certified coach through Franklin Covey and certified through the International Coaching Association. He's an alumni of the Prince of Wales, Business and Sustainability Program, Cambridge College.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Richard Tafel: My sense is that right now in the world all of our systems are breaking down. The faith systems are breaking down, education systems, healthcare systems, environmental systems. So the global leader for social change is going to have to understand how to change systems.
Most social change programs today are symptoms-based. But I can say as a young man in the ‘80s working as an AIDS buddy—where you volunteered, they died after two months; you volunteered, they died after two months—you very quickly said, "Wow, we can kind of do a better job of burying people or we’re going to have to get involved with systems change." So what does that mean? We had to learn about government policy on drugs, discrimination laws. . . . That particular epidemic was so dramatic that it almost drove us to that conclusion.
Much of the work that I do with social entrepreneurs and clients, it feels a lot like the Titanic is sinking and they’re bragging about what beautiful, clever lifeboats they’re putting off the side for a small group of kids who get rescued from this school, from this broken healthcare system, in this lucky place. And we kind of laud these people getting into the lifeboats. And we’ve gotten bigger lifeboats and faster lifeboats and prettier lifeboats, but the reality is a lot of people are going down. And there’s a great line in that story of the Titanic where the captain says . . . he asked the band to play to allay fear. I think a lot of what we say is social change and non-profit is allaying fear. We’re pretending like we’re doing something, but we’re not dealing with systems. So let me offer five possible ways that you might change systems.
One, I use an expression when you’re approaching the problem of trim tab. And this expression, trim tab, is the little rudder on a boat that when you change it, it changes the whole system. So the first thing I ask a global world changer is, what one policy or one rule, if you change this one, it would change the whole direction of the ship? And that really helps us focus on where we’re going to go in.
The second thing that I often say as we’re playing this strategy out, I suggest that you embrace the status quo to change the system. In the mid-‘90s I debated gay marriage. Now what was interesting at that time was that even the gay community criticized me for pushing an issue that was too soon. "Don’t talk about it, it’s too early." All my debates were with religious leaders, from Christian right groups in the Republican Parties. And instead of saying, "I want this right. We deserve this right"—that’s a change and it sounds like you’re taking something from the system, the conservative system—instead, I talked about love and property rights and kids and being able to go to funerals and inheritance. I talked in the terms of a conservative traditional system.
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