What is MJN’s theory of change?
MJN’s mission is to study, design, embody, and scale systems in which justice is normal or normalized. Our goal is essentially to scale systems in which it is possible to authentically practice our values — justice, loving care, and solidarity. When values are mission, we leave no aspect of our minds and businesses unturned. It invites us to look at our values as strategy.
What are the characteristics of a system in which justice, loving care, and solidarity are normal?
Theory of change, in 3 steps
For values to become group norms, we must embody in souls.
Justice is not a silo, program, or time-bound action. Justice must follow each of us wherever we go, and systems cannot change unless we change them. But the truth is, in a society in which injustices are normalized by law, most of us have been programmed to stop noticing them.
When MJN uses the term “norm” or “normal,” we’re asking ourselves: What stated and unstated policies — like compensation, value, systems of health care, or “appropriate” appearance — have we taken for granted as “the way it is”? And how do those codes and policies work against justice?
The most basic thing that we need for change to last is to internalize the concepts, by asking questions, testing out different ways of working together in small safe spaces, and developing a personal understanding of why sharing or giving up power is so hard. When we use the term embody, we often mean these 4 things:
Authentic: Living to and believing in values.
Rooted in lived experience: Being & doing (vs studying/telling).
Recognizing whole personhood: Systems change demands soul change.
Bodily: Soul work is physical.
For values to become to lasting norms, we must embody in the systems we control.
A small group of people can practice new norms without writing anything down. Based on who they are, how they work together, and how they care for each other, those group norms can crystallize without the need for a single concrete word.
But we are all inherently biased, and we also bring our special, amazing personalities to how we work together. If we don't write things down and learn to consistently apply policies, it is very easy for even the most committed group of people to show favoritism, design to benefit themselves over others, or rely too much on individual personalities to drive change. In the end, the new norms that your group operated in will not last, and they won't scale.
To design alternative power structures — such as different business policies, contract structures, and governance structures — we need to write them down, test them, and improve upon them. We study and write them down in a thing we call System Studio. Then we practice them in the thing we call Venture Studio, our home for “programs” run by collective members.
For embodied systems to scale, we must transfer them.
For too long, we have treated the sole purpose of an organization as a tool to produce things, make profits, or take time bound actions. But we think the whole point of human systems — like organizations — should be to serve justice. We still trust that just systems will be better equipped to prevent, solve, or cope with events of injustice — like climate change and wealth inequality — that require shorter term actions that are unique to the situation.
If we scale 1000, or 10,000 organizations willing to test and perfect just systems, we believe we will scale justice: democratic practices that trickle up to formal public systems; anti-bias and pro-Earth systems that lead to narrative change; capacities to decouple wealth from power, a driver of wealth inequality; and circular leadership to better avoid stolen genius and consolidated power.
For us, this is a fundamental reframing of what venture means:
Rather than accelerating businesses or programs, we want to accelerate the development of alternative systems. An alternative system can exist in an organization with any mission or purpose.
Rather than consolidating power structures in a single organization, we want to build feedback loops. We're not yet sure, but we suspect that business scale works at odds with the basic principles of justice.
Rather than maximizing efficiency and standardizing products, we want to enable people’s brilliance and center relationships, in all of their uniqueness. One of our biggest challenges is learning how to distinguish between what is standardize-able, scalable, and human.
