It’s natural: many of us are programmed to see problems, and are intellectually engaged by finding ways to fix them. But that is also a problem in and of itself, and we’ve got an opportunity to fix that pattern of thinking.

Recently, I was at a “Tzavta”, a type of community salon discussion rooted in Jewish tradition (literally a “connection”) and hosted by a local restaurant that has held scores of these over the last few years. This was the first since COVID with fifty people breaking bread together at big tables, and sharing ideas around what we might be optimistic about (or not) in our city right now.

Almost inevitably, it started with a litany of problems that we’re facing: public health inequalities, a growing mental health crisis, an opioid epidemic that has taken more people than COVID in the same timeframe, and continuing income disparities between genders, among many others. The optimistic note was sounded by former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi, who felt we were at a crucial “sticky clay moment” where several societal factors had been sufficiently destabilized by COVID that some progress could be made — if we acted fast before the clay hardened again. In contrast, the pessimistic note was sounded by Dr. Melanee Thomas, a University of Calgary political scientist whose research helps identify how Canadians think about themselves in politics, and explaining how this is structured by gender, sexism, and racism.

The Problem Lens

When it comes to advancing social progress in our countries, regions, and cities, there is no lack of problems to resolve. Even if the measurement framework for how we might define progress has been well developed and has a factual basis, as it has been with the Social Progress Index elements (50 social and environmental outcome indicators, divided into the three dimensions of Basic Human Needs, Foundations of Wellbeing and Opportunity), we’re often quickly drawn into further parsing of the problems within each element. Unfortunately, that natural proclivity to successfully solve more discrete problems misses the mark when it comes to tackling the root causes of the problems themselves.

Switching to an Opportunity Lens

In contrast, we think that an “opportunity lens” fosters a more creative form of thinking, albeit one that may take more patience and time to implement successfully. That way of looking at the world is one of the fundamental pieces of work for the Progress Engines Collaborative, and why we focus on some of the projects and organizations that we do.

In opportunity thinking, we’re looking for some of the step change solutions that will bypass a series of problems in a single bound — if we tackle the right root causes. Think, for example, about the host of problems that are part of socio-economic inequity. Aspects like poverty, crime, homelessness, mental health and addiction, and many others that follow from the fact that there are significant disparities between the “have” and “have nots” of our society. If taken as discrete problems to solve, the work and complexity seems insurmountable.

Focusing on opportunity-based thinking, imagine what a Universal Basic Income (UBI) does to remove the source of the core problems within socio-economic inequity. With a guaranteed minimum income that is not subject to a means test, all individuals have an agreed floor for societal prosperity, indexed to local living conditions and costs. Anything that a person can then achieve beyond that floor is then less subject to the concept of disparity, and jumps over to the category of opportunity and potential since basic needs are being met through the UBI. The arguments can be complex, but you can see how the basic process would work in a context like Canada.

Building a database of Progress Engines

For us, Progress Engines are organizations and initiatives that embrace or model an opportunity-based design thinking approach at their very core. All of the ones we currently work with are in this category, and we’re constantly seeking to identify new ones as head forward. Know of one that might qualify? Let us know!