Many of us have good intentions. We want to have an impact on our society and do good. At least I hope this is the case. My highly subjective research on this topic leads me to conclude that many people have this basic desire, even the people that we consider the most abhorrent. I have talked with people that we would consider, ‘hardened criminals,’ and many of them also will oddly express a desire to see more good in the world. It is all a matter of perspective on what good is, I suppose. Regardless of how many people want to do good, or what percentage of our population has good intent, the most important consideration is how much impact their efforts can have. Can they do good at scale, that is the real question. I think we have definitely seen in our global history people that are capable of doing massive harm at scale, we tend to focus on them. So what does it take to do good at scale?
It takes the same exact things to do evil as scale: the same mechanisms, mobilization, marketing, and evangelism. Whatever the human ambition, the same core principles apply regardless of how valuable your message is to the human species. We can sit around and ponder and scratch our heads and wonder about how certain negative messages, practices, or movements can gain strength, or we can realize the simplicity. Any intent, no matter what the purpose, will gain strength if you apply certain principles of growth to get there. Of course, it helps to have some truth in the message. Truth, as it seems, is easier to mobilize people around, even if it is just a little bit.
Regardless of the rhetoric behind motives, the ultimate test of doing good at scale comes down to our own individual actions. Our own individual actions will have the most significant impact on our ability to do good at scale, far more than anything else. Sure, you can apply all the various principles of growth in your planning, but if your actions do not reflect your intent, then you can forget everything else. If you want to scale your ideas, then you need to scale yourself. If people see you doing, they will believe the authenticity of your message. This is infectious and attractive at the same time. People gravitate toward this in an almost automatic way. It is eerie to watch. To illustrate this story, I will use my experience in a community park clean-up event several years ago.
I volunteered to help pick up a local community park. Giant cottonwood trees surrounded the park. This was late fall, and millions of leaves were covering the park floor. The solution to this great leaf pickup project was to have a local contractor bring his dump truck. Then, a few farmers donated their time to bring their front-end loaders. People would pick up some leaves in their rakes and then drop them into the front-end loader. When full, the tractor would drive to the dump truck and empty the contents, and this process would repeat. The tractors had to stay on the concrete paths because the tires would sink into the soft soil.
Now, unbeknownst to the community event organizers, I was an expert at picking up leaves from Cottonwood trees. This was my primary occupation, working for my Grandparents in Colorado. During my work experience, my Grandfather taught me a technique that he had learned from some laborers who used to do the same tasks that I was now employed to do. They would lay a large sheet and rake the leaves into the sheet. They would then pick up the four sheet corners and throw the leaves over the shoulder by gripping the four corners of the sheet in one hand. They would then run to the trailer and dump the leaves. This method was far more efficient because it only required raking the leaves once onto the sheet. There is far less up-and-down motion when people pick up scoops of leaves and transfer them to a front-end loader.
I went to tell the community organization team that I had a better idea. They did not listen; they just brushed me aside as they were working on the pancake breakfast that would be used to keep the crew motivated. They did not have time for this young man with this wild idea of using old bed sheets to pick up leaves. Why did they need to do that when they had Mr. Smith’s Massey Ferguson? As the morning proceeded, I got more and more frustrated as we slowly lifted each scoop shovel up to the front-end loader and waited patiently until it returned. Many teams would be standing around waiting for their turn to fill one of the two tractors.
I finally decided to start using my idea instead. I talked to a woman who lived nearby. I convinced her to give me an old white tablecloth. Once I procured this cloth, I laid it out on the ground, raked up a pile of leaves, picked them up using the four-corner method, and ran them to the dump truck. I unloaded my leaves. At first, I was largely ignored, but soon enough, I had racking volunteers who would help me fill the sheet faster. Then, I had some other young man who would alternate running duty with me. My mini operation was bypassing the tractors and going straight to the dump truck. We improved efficiency dramatically. The difference was notable; our progress was much faster than the other two teams working with the front-end loaders. Soon enough, other old sheets started to emerge. Then, some tarps. Within an hour, the front-end loaders were abandoned, and now the sheet method was being used. The entire park was void of leaves in less than 4 hours.
The leaders were astonished. Previously, the park clean-up would take the entire weekend, and now they were done in one day before lunch. We had done a great service, and we had done it in a fraction of the time. Soon enough, the leaders did not waste time and started assigning their volunteers to more projects around the park that had been neglected in previous years. We did well that day, and we did this at a greater scale than had been done previously.
This example illustrates my point. No one believed me or bought into my idea. However, when they say what I was doing and that I was engaged in it, they get curious. Then they witnessed how effective I was being, and then, within less than an hour, everyone had adopted my new innovation. This magnifying effect occurred because of one primary reason. I scaled myself and my own impact first. This is the lesson: if you ever want to do good at scale, scale yourself first.
♥️🙏