Making an Explicit Choice: The Status Quo vs Real Change

Here’s the uncomfortable truth about social change: most people who say they want it are also getting something out of keeping things the way they are.

That’s the core message of Chapter 9 of Systems Thinking for Social Change. David Peter Stroh calls this stage “Making an Explicit Choice.” It’s Stage 3 of the change process, and it might be the hardest one. Because it asks people to stop pretending they can have everything and actually choose.

The Problem Within the Problem

Earlier chapters showed how to align diverse stakeholders around a shared vision and a picture of current reality. But Stroh says common ground isn’t enough. There’s a deeper challenge: aligning people with themselves.

Think about it. Most people are pulled between what they deeply care about and what serves them right now. A homeless shelter director wants to end homelessness. But they also want to keep their organization funded. A politician wants better outcomes. But they also want to keep voter support. These goals aren’t the same. Sometimes they directly conflict.

The question Stroh raises is simple but hard: how do you help people make an explicit choice in favor of what they most profoundly want?

Systems Are Perfectly Designed for Their Current Results

This is one of the most powerful lines in the book. “Systems are perfectly designed to achieve the results they are achieving right now.”

At first, that sounds absurd. Why would anyone design a system that perpetuates homelessness or undermines children’s ability to learn? Nobody sat down and planned that. But that’s not what the statement means.

It means people are getting something out of the current setup. They’re receiving payoffs. Benefits. Rewards. Not the results they say they want, but results that serve some other need they might not even be aware of.

In the homelessness example, the payoffs of the existing shelter system include: reduced visibility of the problem (people are off the streets), reduced severity (some form of shelter exists), good feelings for providers and funders (they’re helping), and continued funding for the organizations involved. None of those are bad things. But they create a case for keeping things exactly as they are.

Meanwhile, the costs of real change are significant. Investing in permanent housing is expensive. Closing shelters means losing jobs and missions people have built careers around. Citizens might have to accept formerly homeless people as neighbors. Homeless people themselves face the fear of adjusting to permanent housing.

These payoffs and avoided costs combine into what Stroh calls the “case for the status quo.” And this case is strong enough to override the case for change, even when everyone agrees that change is needed.

Building the Case for Change

So what goes on the other side? The case for change includes the benefits of actually achieving your vision plus the costs of doing nothing.

Benefits of ending homelessness (not just coping with it): reduced costs for emergency services, hospitals, and substance abuse treatment. Reduced unemployment costs. Access to state and federal funding for meeting best-practice requirements. And the satisfaction of actually solving the problem instead of managing it.

Costs of not changing: all the above costs keep growing. Lost funding from failing to meet government best practices. Lower quality of street life leading to economic decline.

Stroh recommends laying all of this out in a cost-benefit matrix. Four quadrants: benefits of changing, costs of changing, benefits of not changing, costs of not changing. When people see it all side by side, they finally understand why change isn’t happening despite their best efforts. The hidden case for the status quo has been winning all along.

Both/And Solutions or Real Trade-offs

People naturally want to have their cake and eat it too. Keep the benefits of the status quo while also getting the benefits of change. And sometimes that’s possible. Stroh mentions approaches like Polarity Management that help find both/and solutions.

In homelessness, for example, there’s room for a continuum of care: street outreach, emergency shelters, transitional housing, rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing. All of these can coexist. The key is that the overall system needs to be incentivized to move people toward permanent housing as fast as possible. Not just keep cycling them through the system.

But more often than not, people have to make trade-offs. They have to decide if what they aspire to is worth giving up at least some of what they have.

No pain, no gain. No free lunch. Investing now for the future. We all know these phrases. But when it’s your organization, your funding, your identity on the line, it hits different.

The Hard-to-Stomach Decisions

Stroh shares a great example. Lyndia Downie ran Boston’s Pine Street Inn, one of the most respected shelters in the country. She discovered that 5 percent of homeless people in her shelters were taking up more than half the beds on any given night. These were the chronically homeless who needed permanent housing most.

Committed to Housing First, she convinced her board to completely transform the organization’s mission. From emergency shelter provider to real estate developer and landlord. That meant closing some shelters and shifting resources to buying homes instead. She called it a “hard-to-stomach” decision for both the board and staff.

Another example: the COO of a nonprofit providing healthcare to homeless people reviewed a systems map with other stakeholders. Then she went back to her own president and board and asked, “What might we have to give up as an organization in order for the whole to succeed?” Stroh says he’d never heard the question put so boldly. And it’s enormously powerful.

Sometimes the biggest sacrifice is letting go of your self-image. Iowa’s education agencies had to give up being solely responsible for students in their geographies and embrace interdependence. A food safety regulator had to shift from enforcer to educator. A public health department had to go from expert to community facilitator. Each of these identity shifts opened up possibilities that weren’t available before.

Making the Actual Choice

Stroh outlines two moves for helping people commit. First, weaken the case for the status quo. Second, strengthen the case for change.

A systems map does the first part naturally. When people see how their current thinking and actions lead them away from their stated goals, the case for staying put starts to crack. The emergency shelter system diverts attention and resources from ending homelessness. Separately optimizing parts of Iowa’s education system undermines the state’s overall outcomes. Enforcement-based food safety makes cooperation harder, not easier.

Strengthening the case for change goes deeper. Stroh draws on Otto Scharmer’s concept of “presencing” from Theory U. It’s about connecting people with the source of their highest future possibility. Not just asking “What do we want to create?” (which can be ego-centered) but asking “What is being called of us?” (which is more authentic).

Then there’s active visioning, based on Robert Fritz’s creative process principles:

• Separate what you want from what you think is possible.
• Focus on what you want, not what you don’t want.
• Focus on results, not process.
• Include the consequences you want.
• See the vision in the present tense.

When people connect deeply with both the failure of the status quo and the pull of a real vision, they can make an explicit choice. Not a half-hearted one. A real one. With full awareness of what it costs.

When People Still Don’t Agree

The four steps don’t guarantee alignment. Sometimes you still can’t find common ground. Stroh offers three fallback options from Chapter 6:

• Collaborate indirectly. Address others’ concerns, then try to influence them through respected third parties.
• Work around them. Not everyone has to be on board.
• Work against them. Through advocacy, legislation, or nonviolent resistance.

There’s also good news from Everett Rogers’s research on the diffusion of innovations. You don’t need everyone. Just 15 percent of a population (the innovators and early adopters) can build enough momentum for others to follow.

And sometimes people look clearly at both options and deliberately choose the status quo. That’s valid too. Stroh only asks that they make peace with that choice and accept everything that comes with it. Including the future they’re giving up on.

The Vision Becomes Real When People Name the Cost

This is the chapter’s quiet message. A vision isn’t real until people acknowledge what it requires them to sacrifice. As long as everyone pretends change is free, nothing moves. The moment someone asks “What are we willing to give up?” the conversation shifts from fantasy to commitment.

That’s what making an explicit choice means. Not just picking the better option on paper. But looking at what you’ll lose, sitting with that, and choosing anyway. Because what you care about most deeply matters more than what’s comfortable right now.

Book: Systems Thinking for Social Change by David Peter Stroh | ISBN: 978-1-60358-580-4 | Chelsea Green Publishing, 2015

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