#179: David Sengeh’s Radical Inclusion
The more inclusive a society, the more it is perceived as a just society; and just societies are safer for everyone. Simply put, the pursuit of inclusion is in everyone’s interest” – David Sengeh
Good morning my friends
We live in a world of profound change and deepening exclusion. Whilst, in optimistic moments, we will reach for the numbers that prove – to borrow from Martin Luther King Jnr – that “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”, we must also confront the brutal fact that exclusions continue to bedevil our world with devastating results.
It is with these themes in mind, that I turned to David Sengeh’s Radical Inclusion: Seven Steps to Help You Create a More Just Workplace, Home, and World.
/ strategy
Sengeh is Sierre Leone’s Chief Minister. Amongst the politicians who crowd our headlines, he is one of the few we’d all welcome at our dinner table.
His Ph.D. is from MIT, received for his work creating prosthetics for people who lost limbs in war. In 2018, at the age of thirty-one, he was appointed as Sierra Leone’s first Chief Innovation Officer. A year later he became the Minister of Basic and Senior Secondary Education and earlier this year took on his current role.
Radical Inclusion tells the story of his campaign to overturn a government policy that banned pregnant girls from attending school.
If you’re leading change of any kind – personal, organizational, or societal – you’ll take something from his story. It is not an academic account, or even a polished diarist’s, and therein lies its power for us practitioners of everyday life.
Yes, he presents a seven-step model of change – Identify the Exclusion; Listen to Understand and Learn; Define Your Role – why you, why now?; Build a Coalition; Advocacy and Action; Adapting a New Normal and Beyond Inclusion – but the real power is witnessing Sengeh’s moments of everyday challenge and his responses.
His transparency and indeed, vulnerability, make the process more human, more tangible, and, in doing so, he gives us a rare insight into the messy mechanics of change, giving us the hope that we too can accomplish the impossible.
On November 20, 2019 – the day after he had been appointed Minister of Education – he attended an event that was addressed by the president. In the lead-up to Sengeh’s appointment he discussed the ban with the president and thought that he was open to revoking it. In this speech, the president said the opposite. He was emphatic, pregnant girls could not attend school.
Sengeh writes of that moment, “I sank deeper and deeper into my chair. It felt to me like the world had stopped spinning; gravity had ceased to exist, and I was just floating in that auditorium. All of a sudden, I was a key part of a government that was actively supporting a policy that I found deeply objectionable but would be tasked to enforce” and “I wasn’t sure what was more shocking – the president’s words or the loud applause that followed”.
We’ve all had an experience like that; joined a business, excited by a new challenge, and then encountered something that shocked us. We’ve sat in meetings where our boss has said something we disagree with. We know the organisation we’re leading needs change, but we struggle to get people on board, they actively oppose us.
Sengeh contemplates resigning. He is being forced to be aligned with something he fundamentally opposes. More than that, as the responsible Minister it is his job to enforce the policy. He decides to stay. And so, starts his journey of winning the support to change a policy that his president has just declared inviolate.
His starting point was a humbling one.
He reflects “No exclusion can be remedied until you research it, gain a deep understanding of its complexities, and then define it in a way that makes its injustice unambiguously clear to others. So, how many pregnant schoolgirls had I talked to myself? The answer was exactly none”.
How often aren’t we adamant about something but have yet to build the case for it?
As he built his case, the scientist quickly realized that marshaling all the data in the world would not be enough on its own.
He notes, “It wasn’t enough to identify the problem if people didn’t see it as a problem; I needed to summon the data, share the stories behind the numbers, and, more than that, convey the psychological impact”. The scientist quickly realized he needed to speak to peoples’ hearts and minds.
He realized too that he could not only be convinced of the legitimacy of his position, but needed to understand the fears and hopes of those who opposed him.
As he met them, he reminded himself, “We all need to remember that it takes a lot of strength to speak truth to power, to voice something that is in opposition to the views of someone who can affect your life and destiny, so it’s important that those in positions of authority give people all the time and the space that they need to express themselves, however they choose”.
He refined his message. He worked to make it both safe and exciting for others to join him.
In that way of the world, he encounters someone’s story that inspires him. He shares it with his Deputy Minister Madam Gogra who smiles and says ‘she is one of my kids’. He discovers that she has for years run a welfare home for pregnant girls. In his haste to act, he had missed allies right next to him.
His initial efforts were scattershot until a friend pulled him aside and compelled him to create a map of the stakeholders he needed on his side (in his framework, step 4, ‘Build a Coalition’). As he did so, he realized that whilst he might have vocal supporters and opponents, there was a sizeable silent majority that he needed to reach.
He reflects “Often individuals, especially those who aren’t actively involved, are not explicitly aware of the roles they play or how they reinforce the status quo by standing on the sidelines. One effective technique to change that is to take them through a kind of audit: to work with them to help them see what their actions and positions mean in practice”.
The temptation is to make oneself solely accountable for change; but it happens most powerfully when you’ve activated others. Then, they carry the message for you. The temptation is to forge ahead without systematically thinking through who can become allies and how do I bring them with?
Sengeh prevailed. The Sierra Leone government changed its policy. However, his work wasn’t done.
The policy was changed, but on-the-ground practice had yet to follow.
It is a mistake we often make. We do the strategy; we agree the outcomes and then neglect to spend the time on the painstaking work of embedding new ways of operating. Doing so may require confronting those unwilling to change. Winning the moral or strategic victory is just the beginning.
I love Sengeh’s final step – ‘Beyond Inclusion’. He writes “Once the previously identified exclusion has been eliminated and the new normal established, the best way to solidify it is to immediately identify the next exclusion that needs to be addressed…we must always be working toward a more just society by identifying new areas of exclusion and dismantling them…”.
Like the universe in which we find ourselves, freedom must be ever-expanding,
// Self
For today’s self, I will simply share Sengeh’s reflection:
“Change-making is not easy. Those who dedicate their lives to it are fated to be classed as ‘weird’ before they are accepted, if they ever are. You are weird because you are going against the grain and are fighting against something others either don’t see or believe is right. What really helps is your own comfort in being different.”
/// Soul
Sengeh’s strategy is powerful, but it is more so because it is energised by soul, one that says “Inclusion as a social construct is about accepting everyone and recognizing all they can contribute to our homes, schools, and communities—not irrespective of their differences, but because of them. On the flip side, exclusion levies emotional, financial, social, and other costs that affect not just those who are excluded, but those who exclude and work to keep that exclusion in place. The more inclusive a society, the more it is perceived as a just society; and just societies are safer for everyone. Simply put, the pursuit of inclusion is in everyone’s interest”.
He wishes that “Someday, perhaps, we will live in a world where no one is made to feel left out, and most important, where no one feels the need to make others feel left out” and reminds us that “Only when you are a lifelong student of it (inclusion) can you possibly be doing it right”.
All the best
Karl