Upstream

We’ll never run out of room upstream.

Downstream efforts are narrow and fast and tangible. Upstream efforts are broader, slower, and hazier—but when they work, they really work.

Good intentions guarantee nothing.

How can you detect problems before they occur? How can you measure success when success is defined as things not happening?

Pro athletes play hard. Injuries are gonna happen. You can’t change that. That mind-set is an example of what I’ll call “problem blindness”

Pro athletes play hard. Injuries are gonna happen. You can’t change that. That mind-set is an example of what I’ll call “problem blindness”—the belief that negative outcomes are natural or inevitable.

When we’re blind to a problem, we treat it like the weather. We may know it’s bad, but ultimately, we just shrug our shoulders. What am I supposed to do about it? It’s the weather.

When we don’t see a problem, we can’t solve it. And that blindness can create passivity even in the face of enormous harm. To move upstream

“Teachers thought that the kids [who failed] would think, ‘I need to work harder,’” Duncan said. “Sometimes that happens. But the majority of fourteen-year-olds, if they fail, interpret that as: ‘I don’t belong, I’m not good enough.’ They withdraw.”

“It’s the difference from ‘I put the work out there and I assign the grades’ to ‘My job is to make sure all students are succeeding in my class. So I need to find out why they’re struggling if they’re struggling.’”

To succeed upstream, leaders must: detect problems early, target leverage points in complex systems, find reliable ways to measure success, pioneer new ways of working together, and embed their successes into systems to give them permanence.

You can’t solve a problem that you can’t see, or one that you perceive as a regrettable but inevitable condition of life.

Inattentional blindness leads to a lack of peripheral vision. When it’s coupled with time pressure, it can create a lack of curiosity.

We grow accustomed to stimuli that are consistent.

People with a fear of needles, for instance, might be asked to look at images of needles, or to handle needles, so many times that eventually their irrational fear yields.

People with a fear of needles, for instance, might be asked to look at images of needles, or to handle needles, so many times that eventually their irrational fear yields. The needle has been destigmatized. Normalized.

once something is coded as a “problem,” it demands a solution.

People voluntarily hold themselves responsible for fixing problems they did not create.

The upstream advocate concludes: I was not the one who created this problem. But I will be the one to fix it. That shift in ownership

The upstream advocate concludes: I was not the one who created this problem. But I will be the one to fix it.