Mission Ladder
towards net-positive value creation and system-level change.
#1
After various efforts in the metadesign space to bridge purpose, missions and the creation of networks of value in Nokia, Orange, Qwant and Brickchain, I discovered the Mission-Driven business concepts, thanks to Armand Hatchuel, professor, Centre de Gestion Scientifique, Mines Paristech, late 2018, and engaged from 2019, on a journey to explore what it could mean to help develop the impact of mission-driven business, through generative frameworks. Various discoveries could not have been possible without boouncing ideas my sparring partners Nicolas Geraud and Alexandre Simon.
As a designer passionated about how people learn and engage, I speculated on the idea that there wasn’t yet clear pathways for a company to become mission-driven and develop impact. Relating to the design ladder, I had the intuition that conceptualising some level of ambition could help companies find their way up. In November 2019, I presented a first prototype of a mission ladder at the Communauté d’innovation Renault. It initially had 6 levels, and 7 columns (type of missions, normative tools, generative tools, governance, business paradigm, myths and rituals, morality). At level -1: a company runs a business and creates value without awareness or care for potential externalities. At level 0: a company runs a business, in a ‘passively responsible’ way, at least complying to the norms and regulations. At level 1: a company sees itself as a hero, legitimate and in capacity to define and engage in some missions to tackle some socio-environmental challenges, usually within their core business capacity. And as the company reaches some level of success, it realises its own limitations and the necessity of some form of partnership to pass its impact ‘peak’. The company is then opened to access level 2 where some form of shared value and shared governance help grow the impact. At this level, if/when the impact is not ‘satisfying’, then coalitions aim for a some system-level change at level 3 where companies, finance, citizens, governments operate in some form of co-determination, acknowledging the concept of commons. At that point I also considered a level 4 as one for frugality and regeneration, but havent investigated further so far.
This summer 2020, in some collective sessions, I have been introduced to the Spirale Dynamics of the psychologist Clare Graves. This model came as a response to the research questions: 1. Why do people behave as they do? 2. Why do they think what they do? Why do they think as they do? And ultimately, what is a healthy personality? He found out that they are multiple answers, and the answers evolve over time. He defined 8 levels along a spiral going back and forth from being centred on individual to being centred on collectives. For each, a type of vision of the world, a driving fear, and a dominant form of governance. And from the last 2 levels, the ability to think systemically and define new paradigms.
While I conceptualised the Mission Ladder before knowing Graves’ model, I had the intuition there could be corresponances and did try to map them. So far, the matching inspires further investigation. The matching goes as follows: level -1 is red, level 0 is blue, level 1 is orange, level 2 is green, and level 3 is yellow. From there, a promissing road opens to detail and consolidate various concepts for each level, starting with some business models. This is a long journey, yet exciting if only it inspires companies to engage in moving up the ladder. So I’m introducing the work in progress so far, hoping to get feedbacks to test and finetune the model with you.
