Applying TaiChi Principles to Behaviour Change

I have spent the last few days at a conference on evaluating Behaviour Change in the Sustainability arena. It was an Open Space facilitated conference which was great as it meant that you got to meet lots of amazing people. There was some a general consensus about how hard behaviour change is not just to measure but to influence - the issue for both comes down to - we can never be sure what actually causes the change.

I got a real sense of earnestness and some anxiety in the room about understanding the effectiveness of our actions. This made me start thinking about the amount of energy expended by these people and the drive that they had, to keep on pouring all this energy into creating the change they want to see in the world. Although this seemed quite admirable it made me think of TaiChi and the principle of using others force to your own advantage instead of expending your own energy. When someone does TaiChi well it is effortless, it creates more energy than is uses. I wondered how this concept could be applied to behaviour, organisation or any kind of social change and what these principles could mean for the long term outcome of such work.

In TaiChi is important to understand where energy is being used by the other so you can turn it to your advantage. Currently with change we are most usually applying energy or force from the outside upon a system or we use agents within the system to apply force on our behalf. What would happen if instead we identified where the system already expended its energy and used that? For example if one wanted to influence grassroots social change around sustainability in a country like China how about investigating where the culture invests its energy, respect and heart and work out how to use this to your advantage. In recent times in China, Confucius and other classical philosophies have been experiencing a resurgence in popular culture - why not understand how nature fits into this and surf the energy to achieve your own outcomes?

Look for the energy in the system that you are working with and find creative ways to use that energy to create the change instead of trying to bring your energy to bear on the system from without. This method may even have the added bonus of making the change sustainable as the removal of your self from the system will not affect the energy of the system, the change will be integrated. How often does change stall when the change agent/ sponsor withdraws their drive and energy?