Research Process & Bibliography

The question that guided our research was “what are the qualities we might foster within and around us to persevere through challenge, activate our potential, and shape the direction of change?”

Over a two year period we interviewed over 150 Social Entrepreneurs, educators, spiritual innovators, system leaders, and visionaries from a wide variety of disciplines. The changemakers we spoke with are successfully navigating a world of accelerating change in ways that yield a positive impact in their own organizations and in the systems in which they operate.

We utilized Action Research, a methodology that seeks to include the researchers' subjective and intersubjective perspectives in the sense-making process (Kemmis & McTaggart 2005), to guide our inquiry and analysis.

In addition to the 60-90 minute interviews, the researchers engaged in iterative reflective conversations on our findings, and developed a conceptual framework to illustrate the findings. The second year of the action research involved iterating and prototyping the model and associated practices with school leaders from the UK and the US. After each prototype, we paused and reflected, and sought to understand and refine what we were developing in collaboration with these changemakers.

We then sought multiple rounds of feedback on our learning from a ‘wisdom council’ who met quarterly, reviewing the results of our data gathering, analysis, and the findings, and offered feedback. We also engaged a data analysis interrater who reviewed the interview transcripts, conducted a review of the data analysis process, and ultimately confirmed the accuracy and consistency of our results.

The action research and prototyping process continues through iterative cycles of inquiry - reflection - design - application - and feedback. 

A bibliography from our research process can be found here.