“Context is everything.”
Alvin W. Gouldner, The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology (1970)
Every change-maker walks into a space already spinning, rules, relationships, rituals, and unwritten norms all in motion, orbiting toward either a certain or chaotic gravity, with rhythms that sync or clash. This universe is your context. None of us starts with a blank canvas. No matter how much we’d love that luxury, you’re stepping into a living, breathing ecosystem.
You can’t work with a universe you haven’t observed. You can’t redirect it if you haven’t listened to it. Jacqueline Novogratz puts it nicely: “To be a change-maker, you need to understand the web you’re trying to reweave.”¹
Understanding your universe guides you through three critical steps to make sense of the context you operate in:
1 Know Who You’re Orbiting With
Learn to read the people around you, the ones you’ll build with and the ones who quietly hold the levers of progress or resistance.
2 Map the Tangibles
Get clear on the visible structures and mechanics: the services, processes, policies, systems, and data. This is the physical landscape you must navigate.
3 Map the Intangibles
Decode the invisible forces: culture, fears and motivations, power dynamics, rituals, and stories. These are the political and social dynamics you must navigate. They are the undercurrents that will either carry your change forward or quietly drown it.
References
Gouldner, A. W. (1970). The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. Basic Books.
¹ Novogratz, J. (2020). Manifesto for a Moral Revolution: Practices to Build a Better World. Henry Holt and Company.