Humans Managing Impermanence
Inspiration for this blog post:
Discussion about building integrations on NTEN community forum
Everything changes, the Buddha taught. Impermanence is a foundational teaching of Buddhism. Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us that “[i]mpermanence is what makes transformation possible.” Social justice work is powered by this view of impermanence - to believe that the world can change to be more just, more fair, more equitable.
Impermanence is also a state of being for nonprofits. Through program evaluation we learn what is working and what needs to change. Funding sources go up and down and can come in unexpectedly (ie. Mackenzie Scott money) or through months of work fostering relationships or applying for grants, and these funding sources can have a major impact on programmatic work. New leadership comes on staff and takes the programming and the organization in a different direction. And what is needed to serve our constituents can change based on a myriad of variables impacting their lives - social, economic, political, environmental, etc.
Automation of processes may seem to buckle in the face of change. When we let a computer take over the tasks it is because they are rigid and definable enough that decisions can be made based on a finite set of rules and expectations. Automation is best built on top of stability if it is to live into the old phrase “set it and forget it.” But this doesn’t mean that automation and impermanence are mutually exclusive. Building automations on top of impermanence is just a different orientation. It requires a lot of patience. It can be frustrating to build something that works under one set of circumstances but that needs to be updated based on new circumstances. Updating automations based on changed circumstances has the potential to leave behind a bunch of tech debt. When change occurs, there is always a period of settling into the new reality, and during this time we learn things that we never could have known before and these new experiences often lead to changes in our automations.
Building automations on top of impermanence requires humans to devote time and energy to this work. It is a dance between the automation, the changing circumstances, and the human orchestrating the technology. Perhaps through machine learning automations will be able to react to changing circumstances in ways we can’t even imagine. But for most nonprofits, this is not on the roadmap. So for now, automations (which includes things like system integrations) need a driver who can have at least some amount of their attention on the road and on the dashboard.
Want to incorporate impermanence and other mindfulness teachings into your data & technology work for social justice? Join us in New York in April 2024 for a full day of mindfulness, deep work, and professional development at the Learn, Use, Love Gathering.
