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Big impacts from little causes: the mysteries of change

What if we could uncover the hidden causes that were responsible for rapid widespread changes and use this knowledge to tackle the challenges of development and poverty?

In his 2000 book The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell shows how many rapid, large scale changes were in fact disproportionately caused by a few small and select causes.

To support his point, Gladwell explored a number of interesting case studies to demonstrate these hidden drivers of change at work. A few examples included:

A 64% drop in murders and 50% drop in total crime in New York City between 1992-1997
A sudden 500% increase in the number of children born with syphilis between 1995-1996 in Baltimore

This challenge of producing large scale change through small but targeted interventions is fundamentally the same one faced by the international development community in its pursuit of development effectiveness.

The process by which this kind of change occurs, how, why and what affects its likelihood of occurring remains largely a mystery – described by some as the “black box of causality”.

What makes The Tipping Point so interesting is its bold attempt to describe exactly how the “black box” works. Gladwell proposed that a few critical factors combine to allow change to take on “epidemic” features, thereby enabling it to spread quickly and on a large scale. These factors include:

Particular types of people who play a disproportionately large role in driving change, eg: “connectors” (people who connect different groups of people), “mavens” (people who play a knowledge-brokering role by collecting and dispersing large amounts of information), and “salesmen” (people who are effective at persuading others to change their behaviour);
The “stickiness” of messages, ideas or behaviours being spread; and
The influence of context – how the smallest differences in the environment of human beings can influence their behaviour.

In development, this description is known as a “theory of change”. Theories of Change are closely related to the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) concept of “program logic” – they explain why a change will occur, while program logic explains how a change will occur.

To illustrate this idea, consider the following simple example of a water supply program that desires to improve health in a village:

Program Logic: The program will help build a village water supply system, providing villagers with access to clean drinking water, which will therefore improve their health.

Theory of Change: Villagers acquire diseases from drinking contaminated water.

Gladwell’s theory of change raises thought-provoking implications for similar large-scale, rapid changes that are visible and prevalent in the development field. That is, are there a similar set of small, select factors driving the spread of HIV/AIDS in Papua New Guinea, or the conflict currently besetting Timor-Leste? If indeed there were, and aid was targeted at addressing these factors, could this make a substantial impact in addressing the problems?

Similarly, on a positive note, what are the drivers of change behind the rapid economic growth of China and Vietnam, or the phenomenal recent rise in awareness on climate change issues? Could these drivers be harnessed to positive ends to address other challenges of development and poverty?

What is certain is that such opportunities cannot begin to be grasped without a greater and more deliberate effort to learn about how the “black box” of change works.

Theories of change are critical to this effort, as are M&E tools that assist the ongoing improvement of knowledge and practice against these theories of change – that is, M&E for learning as opposed to accountability.

Warin Nitipaisalkul wnitipaisalkul@hassall.com.au