Matthew Bishop (MB): Hello, this is Books Driving Change with me, Matthew Bishop. And today I'm talking with François Bonnici, co-author with Cynthia Rayner, of The Systems Work of Social Change: How to Harness Connection, Context, and Power to Cultivate Deep and Enduring Change.

Obviously, this is a book that goes right to the heart of the mission of Books Driving Change, where we're looking at how do we build back better in this moment of crisis that the world is facing. And this book, I highly recommend it because it is full of great practical insights and wisdom, and some great case studies that I think many people will not be familiar with. And also, some very big thoughts about the way change happens globally and the way systems change could be brought about going forward. 

But François, I wanted to start by asking you, as I ask all of our guests, in a sentence - given our audience of people who are either engaged in social change work or considering it - why should they read your book?

François Bonnici (FB): Thank you, Matthew, for having me. I'm delighted to be on your podcast, and hello to everyone listening. Probably the same reason that I would want to read the book. Initially, Cynthia and I wrote it, and we thought, well, if we're the only two people who learn from this, then that's almost sufficient. 

So as both a practitioner and an academic and also working in the foundation space, and really a bit paralyzed by the overwhelming challenges we have, the complexity of it, and the narrative around systems change, that we didn't feel like we necessarily could take that back to working on a day to day basis. And so the book is called “systems work,” to imply and emphasize the day to day work we all need to do, and to emphasize that to achieve some kind of future systems change that we aspire to, whatever that might be, it's about the process of change. And it's about the people who are involved in that process of change that we wanted to emphasize. So we really hope it's a very practical approach, one that is rooted in 200 years of social change making, deep case studies, hundreds of interviews with experts. But coming away with both stories that move, that inspire, and a set of practical tools and lessons at the end of each chapter. So we hope it will be a contribution to the collective journey many of us are on to try and understand what do we mean by, and how do we do, this work towards the deeper systemic change, what we call deep and enduring change. And I'll unpack a bit further with you where we go with it.

MB: I want to start just by asking you a bit about how you and Cynthia came to write this book, which obviously came out of your work together at the Bertha Centre in South Africa. But, and I should say before we go further, that you are now currently head of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, which is funded by two of the founders, or the founder and his wife, of the World Economic Forum. [That fact] is in itself quite an interesting focal point of discussions about the role of the system, and how you do systems change, and whether top down organizations can really deliver that. But how did you come to write this book?

FB: It's been a long journey. It's been five years. And so it started pre-COVID and got revised and updated during COVID, for reasons I'll explain. But I had started the Bertha Centre at the University of Cape Town as the first center for social innovation in Africa, dedicated to understanding approaches to social change that were innovative, that thought about social enterprise, that looked at what movements were doing. And we very quickly recognized the superficial approaches, or even the kind of service delivery type mindset, was not getting to the deep challenges and structural and systemic barriers that lay in my home country, South Africa, from hundreds of years of history. And that no fantastic solution was going to undo all of that. 

And that was a great barrier, actually a source of failure, for both myself and projects that Cynthia and I had worked in and organizations we'd worked for. Many organizations we worked with had these deep frustrations. But we also saw amazing organizations overcoming that on a day-to-day basis; overcoming the systemic and structural barriers around stigma, around poverty traps, around lack of opportunities, and turning that into agency.

So at the time we started exploring, and researching, and working with global collaborations, like the Rockefeller Social Innovation Fellowship. We did a piece of work commissioned by the Schwab Foundation, when we were at the Bertha Centre, called Beyond Organizational Scale, looking at how social pressures create systemic change. And what we found happening in the global conversation around systems change was quite different to what we were seeing with organizations we were working with, initially in South Africa, and then we were looking and working with organizations in Latin America, and India, and even in the U.S.

MB: When I was reading, one of the things that hit me was, there seems to be this real difference of opinion as to what systems change is, and how you do it. In the sense that a lot of people view it as a kind of fixing a system with a top down approach, and you found, fundamentally, a different experience on the ground with people doing the grassroots work.

FB: I think that's right. And I think we had quite a frustration with even the term “systems,” because we all do mean very different things. And if you ask someone sitting at the World Economic Forum or if you asked grassroot activists, you're going to get very different answers. And so I grew a little bit allergic to the term, and then ended up writing a book on the topic. And it's not to discount any of them. And I think what we talk about in the book is that these challenges have complexity, they have scale, and they have depth. And what we had seen was that the focus of the conversations were around scale - if we can solve problems, and that everyone is doing it in a particular way, that is systems change. 

If we can do it in that complexity lens, where we have levers, and we can intervene in a system, and we are able to shift the balance of actors and systems and relationships, that is a form of a complexity view of systems change.

But what we felt wasn't part of the conversation was really the steps. And that we felt that both those other dimensions and approaches could represent a perpetuating of the system of actors of power -  if the existing actors, who are architects and gatekeepers of a system, are the ones redesigning it. And so what this book seeks to do is really emphasize a depth component; and more than just say this is an additional component, say it's also the critical necessary one to take all those three lenses on how we are strategic and start to meet the bottom up with a top down.

MB: And why do you think we've got to this position where even at a moment like this with COVID, and the World Economic Forum, and the great reset and all that, there's this very top down approach to social change? That, at least in terms of the general discussion, it is about how Biden's going to spend 3.5 trillion on infrastructure, and it's these big numbers, big change, very industrialized approach. And I think everyone that's been on the frontline in some way or another, quickly recognizes the very people who so much as these activities are intended to benefit, are the last ones to get asked what they think should be done or given any power to say that. How have we got to that situation?

FB: Chapter one of the book actually covers the industry of social change. And I do think there are some deep historical roots, both in terms of the industrial era, but also the kind of postwar period. We talk about the Green Revolution and how some of these big moments in history of social change reinforced certain practices, approaches, mindsets. But also how funding flows, etc. 

I think one of the big pieces of all of this is the power concentrated in both public and private sectors and how that is dissipated and fragmented in what remains, the “plural sector.'' I much prefer [the term] to “third sector” or “nonprofit sector,” because of its plurality. But because of its plurality there isn't the collective power for decision making - an authority to really state and influence how social change strategies happen. And they've been recipients of decisions and systems and structures and flows for so long that they've become dependent on it in a way. This is not a new narrative but perhaps looks at it in a new light. So we're somehow at that moment of recognizing that, if we just continue on that pathway, we're not actually going to change any of the rules of the game.

But those of us who work in this sector are also complicit in it in a way. So there's also a bit of a self critique in all of this; that actually, the fact that those of us who work somewhere in the sector, often have our livelihoods and careers dependent on the fact that these problems continue to exist. So in a way, the big shift for me was recognizing that the role or purpose of not for profit, social enterprises, social change making organizations is quite far removed now from the delivery of goods and services that can improve people's lives. And really, I quite strongly have seen that the ability to create agency, to empower and equip both people who experience particular problems or are invested in communities - whether they work for an organization or volunteering in a particular community somehow - [is extremely important]. That the purpose of social purpose organizations needs to shift. 

And I won't go too much into detail now, because I know you will want to unpack a lot of that. I've taken your question, and I've gone a bit further. But we are in a position of a great imbalance of power. And the heart of it lies there. But also not recognizing the real intrinsic value of many of these local organizations - whether they be larger networks, or local and small - in creating social capital, in fostering social cohesion. And that we don't have a good way to value and recognize, during this time of COVID, how critical that's been - [looking at] issues of trusts and social capital and being there for each other. And recognizing and having empathy with one another. And so I think that a lot of the book focuses on ultimately social capital and relational value, and how we build that, and how important that is for these longer term aspirational outcomes we have. 

MB: That's actually a very helpful framing, because as I read the book, I kept thinking this is really about how do you empower people. Not the vast majority of the population, but the people on the ground, who are the ones that are supposed to be being helped by so much of the activity - whether it be government, or nonprofits, or even business now that it's supposedly finding its social mission. But really, it's about that some of these things that are there in the dialogue, the popular conversations, amongst the elite are around networks, platforms, etc. But here, your book was really about empowering the people, the masses, and really giving them the ability to harness some of those tools and things in a different way. And there's lots of inspiring examples, so maybe just talk to a couple of them. I found the Slum Dwellers International a fascinating example of networking in action, but you'd say it's more than that. And then maybe talk about one other case that you particularly found very, very inspiring.

FB: You hit the nail on the head in terms of practically talking about what kinds of discussions are happening at the global level or in actors of powers - the network organization, background organization. And we actually see some of those same practices at the grassroots - using digital platforms, using those kinds of approaches, but with a different set of actors. And we'll talk later about how we might connect the micro and the macro. 

But Slum Dwellers International, an incredible organization I've been following for years, comes originally out of India, had their global headquarters in Cape Town down the road from us, and we ended up working with them at the Bertha Centre. So we got to know a lot about their work. They have, in many ways, quite a traditional and well-known approach to having a federation - in which its members are actually the representatives and leaders of the organization. And the organization itself is some kind of federation secretariat. And it's federated across the world, because these movements of people who live in informal settlements - slums, favelas - self organize and elect their own leadership. And there's a really important history of Jockin [Arputham] and Sheela [Patel], who actually have been part of the Schwab Foundation, who were founders of that movement, but served as very different kinds of leaders than we generally have held up to be the change making leaders that we've spoken about over the past couple of decades. 

In the same spirit, I actually would love to talk about Nidan, and more specifically, about one of the other case studies from Bihar in India, that was created in the spirit and traditions of SEWA [Self-Employed Women’s Association] - a self-employed women's collective that works with over 1.2 million women across India, through their cooperatives. And in the spirit of that worked with the street vendors, the informal workers and street vendors in India. So as you probably know well, 90% of India's workforce is in the informal economy. All labor law to protect, support, and uphold rights for workers only covers 10% of the workforce. And therefore street vendors were, in particular, at risk from municipalities and cities trying to clean up and impose hygiene standards, or corrupt officials seeking to extort and impose abuses on street vendors.

An Nidan has been really interesting in terms of, at the core, what it does is not to try to help solve any of these problems - simila