Support Is an Active Process.

This thing I’ve had on my mind about support structures and how they relate to progressive policy. An organization - “organization” (very) loosely defined as a set of related things that create something - isn’t progressive or wile or whatever if their approach to progressive policy is ostensibly no interference.

Cool. You won’t interfere with policy change. Giving a person or persons ownership is a good first step but it won’t actually result in useful change.

Useful change comes from support with requires active commitment and effort to sustain that new plucky for change. If the organization isn’t actively backing the policy change then every other process, processes that may not have considered this new thing, won’t work with them.

This will result in a return to the least energy stare which is the old way.

Let’s outline that.

1. If your organization is lacking something then that isn’t part of existing process.
   
2. If it isn’t part of existing process, existing process won’t accommodate it without lots of active effort.
   
3. Processes don’t change without active effort everywhere.
   
4. In the absence of active effort, process will revert to the previous norm.
   
5. Active effort from one or a small group of owners works only in the areas that can get their attention.
   
6. No active support from outside the owners will result in stagnation and burnout.

Smaller organizations can change this way. If there are 10 people and 1 of them owns and pressest for gushes, that’s easier because that one person can press on EVERYONE.

That doesn’t scale to thousands.

Published on July 7, 2021 – Accessibility