On Nonlinear Impact

Throughout my life I’ve met many different types of people, some content to lead a simple life, some striving for something more. A simple life, with family and friends, is absolutely a wonderful aspiration that can be fulfilling for many. There are however some who for some reason need to find meaning in something more than the simple life, who have a need to have “impact”, whatever that means for them. Having an impactful life is quite a nebulous and difficult to define aspiration, and what it means will be different for everyone. Does one define impact through community/public service; educating future generations and passing on learnings to help propel future generations forward; or through making scientific discoveries and inventing new things; or perhaps building businesses to give people jobs and help grow economies? Whatever the endeavour, for someone to have impact and achieve that “something more”, what this seems to translate to is having an outsized impact on the world around us, creating more for others than you consume for yourself. For this I use a mental model of Nonlinear Impact.

This notion of Nonlinear Impact I think of as the ability for a person to have a disproportional impact on the world. In it’s most simple form, it could be that someone performs one simple good deed that changes another persons life for the better, and that person then “pays it forward”, creating a ripple of positive impact. At it’s most profound, someone could solve a complex scientific challenge like nuclear fusion or faster-than-light travel, which would bring widespread multi-generational positive impacts to all people, our planet, and the ability of our species to perpetuate into the stars.

We need people to strive for more, we need people to feel the need to discover, invent, build, and grow, this yearning for more is the engine-room of our future evolution. Understanding what nonlinear impact is can help someone increase their influence and effectiveness, and help them fill that void they so desperately need to fill.

Conceptualising Growth

So lets explore different types of growth with example impacts, starting with no growth, just a steady state. From the simple chart below, we intuit a change in something (our x-axis) over time (the y-axis). In this scenario we have no change, we have a stead state, our “impact” does not influence our “something”. An example of this could be in Replacement Fertility for a countries population. Assuming every person had one child (e.g. 2 children per couple), there was no mortality, and ongoing replacement children, a population would remain stable, no growth.

💡 In reality a populations steady state replacement fertility rate is around 2.3 children per couple these days, to account for mortality and non-child bearing people. For a population to grow it needs to have a rate higher than this.

From the next simple chart below, we intuit growth of our “something” over time. As time passes by (our y-axis), our something (the x-axis) grows at a steady linear rate. In this case an impact creates a positive change, equal to all previous changes. A simple example here might be given our children pocket money. Every week we give them $5, and they pop it into a piggy-bank or a jar, and not spend any money. Each week their something, in this case their savings, increases linearly by $5. Eventually they will have enough money for that toy or game they desperately need, but there is no way for them to accelerate this outcome, it is purely a function of time (assuming they don’t go blow $20 on lollies every month!).

Next up lets consider Compounding Growth. The most obvious example here is that of compounding interest on a savings account, where interest at each time-step is calculated on the combination of principle plus the preceding interest.

Coming back to our previous example of replacement fertility rates, a persons impact on their countries population could be bearing many children, meaning more workers, more income generation for the economy, and more children to create more children, a flywheel of sorts for population growth, compounding over time as more children are born above the replacement fertility rate.

Lastly, everyones favourite type of growth, Exponential Growth, characterised by a rapid and an ever increasing growth in our something (our x-axis) over time (the y-axis). A classic example here is the adoption of social media services, for example the growth in Facebook usage. When it launched in 2004 it had about 1 million users by the end of that year. By 2006, Facebook had 12 million users. In 2008, it reached 100 million users. By 2010, Facebook had 500 million users. In 2012, Facebook surpassed 1 billion users.

Translating into impact

Now we understand these different types of growth, lets turn our attention to where we can see the impacts of this effect. The most prominent place to see the results of nonlinear impact would undoubtably be in the scientific community, where generation after generation of scientists “stand on the shoulders of giants”, to not only expand, but accelerate, our accumulated knowledge across domains such as physics, chemistry, biology et cetera. The impact of new discoveries grows exponentially over time. Lets consider some events over the preceding 5000 years that have build on the knowledge generated by others:

3000 BCE - 1 CE: Early Foundations

• 3000 BCE: Development of writing systems in Mesopotamia and Egypt
• 2600 BCE: Construction of the Great Pyramid of Giza, demonstrating advanced engineering
• 240 BCE: Eratosthenes calculates the circumference of the Earth

1 CE - 1500 CE: Gradual Progress

• 150 CE: Ptolemy proposes a geocentric model of the universe
• 1450 CE: Johannes Gutenberg invents the printing press, facilitating the spread of knowledge

1500 CE - 1800 CE: Scientific Revolution

• 1543: Nicolaus Copernicus proposes a heliocentric model of the solar system
• 1687: Isaac Newton publishes “Principia Mathematica,” describing laws of motion and universal gravitation

1800 CE - 1900 CE: Industrial Revolution and Beyond

• 1803: John Dalton proposes atomic theory
• 1859: Charles Darwin publishes “On the Origin of Species”

1900 CE - 1950 CE: Modern Physics and Biology

• 1905: Albert Einstein proposes special relativity
• 1928: Alexander Fleming discovers penicillin
• 1944: Oswald Avery identifies DNA as the genetic material

1950 CE - 2000 CE: Space Age and Molecular Biology

• 1953: James Watson and Francis Crick describe the structure of DNA
• 1969: Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin land on the Moon
• 1990: The Hubble Space Telescope is launched

2000 CE - Present: Digital Age and Beyond

• 2003: The Human Genome Project is completed
• 2012: The Higgs boson is discovered at CERN
• 2015: LIGO detects gravitational waves
• 2019: The first image of a black hole is captured
• 2020: mRNA vaccines are developed for COVID-19
• 2025 prediction: Artificial General Intelligence is achieved, SkyNet is activated 😉

5000 years ago humans were inventing writing, 2000 years ago we were building an understanding of our place in the stars, 400 years ago we where inventing the mathematics used to describe the fundamental forces of the universe, 200 years ago we laid the foundation for modern medicine, 50 years ago we put humans on the moon, 5 years ago we took photos of a blackhole in a galaxy 55 million light years away, and right now we are having huge success in teaching sand how to think and talk like a human! Human knowledge and development truly has been exponential, and if you are reading this you were born at a very opportune time in the life of this universe!

Mental Models

Lets now think about some mental models that can help us achieve nonlinear impact in our own lives. Mental Models give us some generic frameworks that can help us understand and take advantage of the world around us.

💡 To learn more about Mental Models, start with the Farnam Street blog, and also their 4 volume book set covering in depth a wide range of models.

Second Order Thinking

The first Mental Model to consider being Second-order thinking.

“And then what?”

Second-order thinking forces us to think further through a decision or action so we consider the trailing effects and consequences of the choice we make. In this mode we dive deep into what comes next, play out various scenarios, consider what the unintended consequences of a choice could be, to help us arrive at a better outcome before we’ve committed to a path.

An example here might be the use of standardised tests in the education sector. Our first order of thinking here might be that this approach to validating student knowledge will make it easier for people to measure performance in a uniform way across various boundaries, to help identify areas/schools/students who need help to improve.

However if we consider the second-order impacts, such as “teaching how to pass the tests”, or funding preferences being based on scores, or exacerbated mental health issues with less capable students, then we are forced to consider our options and weigh the pros & cons.

To use Second-order thinking to help achieve nonlinear impact, we should ask ourselves questions like:

1. What are the immediate effects of this action/decision?
2. What might be the secondary effects that arise from these immediate effects?
3. How might this impact different stakeholders over time?
4. Are there any potential feedback loops that could amplify or diminish the impact?
5. What unintended consequences (positive or negative) might arise?
6. What assumptions am I making, and how might the outcomes change if these assumptions are wrong?

When using these questions, it’s important to:

1. Be open-minded: Consider both positive and negative potential outcomes.
2. Think across time scales: Consider short-term, medium-term, and long-term effects.
3. Consider different perspectives: Think about how various stakeholders might be affected or react.
4. Look for connections: Try to identify how different effects might interact with each other.
5. Embrace uncertainty: Recognize that you can’t predict everything, but thinking through possibilities can help you prepare and adapt.
6. Iterate: As you answer these questions, new considerations may arise. Don’t be afraid to cycle back through the questions with new insights.
7. Seek diverse input: These questions can be even more powerful when discussed with a diverse group, as different people may see different potential outcomes or connections.

Systems Thinking

Systems thinking is another mental model we can use to consider the impacts of our actions and decisions. Here we consider the “forest for the trees”, we look at the environment around our decision or action as a holistic system, and focus our thinking on:

1. How are things connected to each other, what flow on effects happen based on our chosen path?
2. Are there any feedback loops that could make the situation better or worse?
3. How will the system adapt based on the action or change I make?
4. Will the system as a whole benefit from the decision I make?

The manufacturing industry might be an example where systems thinking is required. When considering how to optimise the flow in a manufacturing facility, just considering a single component or step of a larger supply chain might give us isolated improvements, but this new optimised step may now cause an imbalance in the overall system. Instead we should consider the whole interconnected system, where materials come from, how they are processed and assembled, and how are they distributed. Car manufacturers from the Henry Ford days, to the Toyota Production System, and now the Tesla Gigafactories, have constantly strived to optimise the system as a whole to lower costs, speed up production, and minimise failure.

To use Systems thinking in the context of aiming for nonlinear impact, consider the following types of questions:

1. What are the key components or elements of the system we’re considering?
2. How do these components interact with each other?
3. What are the main feedback loops in the system? Are they reinforcing (amplifying) or balancing (stabilizing) loops that you can leverage?
4. What are the boundaries of the system? What’s included and what’s excluded?
5. What are the inputs and outputs of the system?

When using these questions, keep in mind:

1. Always try to have a holistic view, to see the big picture and how different parts relate to the whole.
2. Focus on relationships and processes, not just individual components.
3. Consider how the system might change over time, not just its current state.
4. Look for circular relationships, not just linear cause-and-effect.
5. Be aware that effects might not be immediate and could take time to manifest.
6. Consider where small changes could lead to large effects.
7. Be open to unexpected outcomes that arise from the system’s complexity.

Strategies

Lets now turn to thinking about the strategies you can use to achieve and maximise your nonlinear impact in the world.

Leverage Points

First we’ll discuss leverage points, how to identify them, and how to exploit them. A leverage point can be a place in an existing system or somebodies life, where a change can have a disproportional output compared to the level of input applied. When applied the use of leverage points can be transformative. Consider compounding interest on an investment, or 30 minutes of exercise / reading a day, if you apply these and stick to them the impact over time can be huge. However the real leverage points we need to exploit for achieving nonlinear impacts from our lives come when we look to change the underlying fundamentals of a system or other peoples lives. When we can change peoples mindsets, or goals of a system, out inputs can be a catalyst for exponentially positive output.

Consider former President of the USA Barack Obama. He campaigned on a mindset shift of “hope and change”, inspiring people on the possibility of transformative progress. Rather then highlighting challenges and issues and riding a wave of negativity, he leveraged the opportunity of a campaign to inspire a positive future, and he went on to win the presidency in 2008. His win was inspirational to the nation and resulted in two terms of positivity inside the US and abroad.

Networks

Building and nurturing networks is our next strategy to address. Making connections in our personal life is incredibly valuable and a necessary aspect of humanity, we are naturally a community-oriented species, we need others in our lives so we can survive and thrive. So this strategy should be obvious, especially in our hyper-connected social-media dominated world today. By building a strong network of people you learn from, people like yourself and also very different from yourself, and people you can help, you can create an exponentially growing graph of connections that you can leverage for spreading word, and getting and giving help. With a strong network you will find opportunities that were not accessible to you in isolation, you will identify chances for collaborations with others, and you will raise your visibility. The network you build will become a multiplier in your equation for achieving impact.

Building a divers network will help you see many new perspectives, give you experiences otherwise difficult to have, and expose you to new information that could help you accelerate your impact.

An example here is that of Reid Hoffman, who some may know as the co-founder of LinkedIn, or as the author of a best selling book on startup growth called Blitzscaling, or as a partner at the Greylock Partners venture capital firm. Reid built an ever expanding network that he leverage through each stage of his career, including:

• Early connections made through studying at Stanford and Oxford universities.
• Working at Apple and Fujitsu.
• As a founder, early employee, or board member of many startups and established tech companies, including PayPal where he connected with Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, and Max Levchin.
• Founding LinkedIn, building a platform that literally expanded his own network but also everyone else that used the platform.
• Joining Graylock Partners, where he is connected with a wealth of startups and entrepreneurs.

Reid’s story demonstrates how strategically building and nurturing networks can lead to nonlinear impact. Each connection and relationship he formed amplified his reach and influence, creating opportunities that would have been impossible through individual effort alone.

Scalable Solutions

Scalable solutions are those that can grow their output, perhaps exponentially, without a directly proportional increase in inputs (resources or effort). They are particularly effective for achieving nonlinear impact because they allow a persons work to reach and benefit a vastly larger audience or solve problems at a much greater scale than would be possible through direct, linear efforts.

Inside AWS, everyone is always super busy, stretched for time, trying to figure out how to have the most impact without dropping the ball. One mechanism we learn about is how to “scale yourself out”. Somewhat akin to scaling out a piece of technology, automatically adding compute or storage or network capacity when it’s needed, what can we as individuals do to service more requests when demand increases (and it is always increasing!)? For Amazonians, we are taught to scale through content creation and through one-to-many delivery. Rather than creating bespoke assets for a customer as and when they are needed, we would create re-usable assets like blog-post, sample solutions, presentation decks, or anything else that could be picked up by our peers and delivered, allowing them to optimise their time. With more time, more assets can be created, and the cycle continues benefiting our peer community and our customers. This resource optimisation helps everyone be more impactful for their customers in the long-run.

When building scalable solutions, consider questions like:

1. How can I use technology like digital platforms (e.g. LinkedIn or Github), automation, or AI to build systems that have a global reach and can connect audiences from different languages or backgrounds?
2. Can I develop a framework or system that can genericise (yes I have officially coined this word) and be applicable to many different contexts? Considering replicability will help you build something that can live on and be useful perhaps outside your initially intended domain.
3. How to develop a solution in a way that encourages collaboration and sharing, such as using the Open Source approach to software development. In the startup ecosystem there is an approach called “building in the open”, promoting full transparency and collaboration for startups, in the hopes of learning lessons early and raising startup success rates.

A great example here is that of Salman Khan, who started tutoring his cousin in math, but then started to create videos of his sessions. He then used a digital platform (YouTube), and built a generic system (Khan Academy), where educational videos can now reach millions of students around the globe. Once videos are created and published, only the cost of hosting and delivering content needs to be covered. Khan Academy covers much more than just math now, and is used across educational institutions in over 190 countries. That is nonlinear impact!

Long-term Thinking

Thinking long-term allows people to make decisions and take actions that may not show results straight away, but can lead to exponential growth and impact over time.

At Amazon we have two Leadership Principles (or LPs as we say) that align closely with long-term thinking called Think Big and Ownership. They’re defined as:

Think Big - Thinking small is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Leaders create and communicate a bold direction that inspires results. They think differently and look around corners for ways to serve customers.

Key points to note for this LP are:

• Be visionary, be ambitions, look for ideas in the adjacent possible just past the border of whats known or normal.
• Look around corners to anticipate needs rather than reacting to current trends.
• Always be customer centric, focusing on those that you serve.
• Set bold and inspirational goals.

A classic example here was the creation of AWS in 2006. Amazon saw a need and found a way to use their existing capability to create a scalable system that could be used by customers all around the world. It was ambitious, absurdly audacious to some even, but Amazon took a long term mindset and invested for their future. Now cloud computing is the norm, and it has allowed entire industries to move forward and better service their customers, spinning the impact flywheel across the globe.

Ownership - Leaders are owners. They think long term and don’t sacrifice long-term value for short-term results. They act on behalf of the entire company, beyond just their own team. They never say “that’s not my job.”

Key points for this LP are:

• Leaders are owners, and everyone is an owner! In every role or capacity everyone has the ability, nay responsibility, to represent the best interests of the company and it’s customers.
• Short term thinking is like thinking small, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, and will not help you achieve big things and have the impact you want.

An example here that everyone already knows, is that of Elon Musk and his car company Tesla. His goal was never just to create an electric car, but rather to push the world in a transition to a sustainable future. He had to be strategic and long-term oriented when doing this, he had to be an owner beyond what would be considered normal for the role he played as founder and CEO, as the technology and resources he needed didn’t exist at the start. To begin with he needed money, and this came from the creation of the Tesla Roadster, a high-priced car targeting a small niche of customers that could afford and wanted a luxury item. Now with the financial means he could produce less costly cars that were more affordable, moving closer to mass market sales. He also needed to build an ecosystem around the technological resources Tesla needed, so he invested in battery technology, as well as solar power and high-capacity charging infrastructure. He didn’t sit and wait for others to create what was needed, if he did then Tesla would not be here today. With patience and persistence, Tesla is now a household name, and regardless of what some say of the environment-impact equation of the current generation of Tesla cars, the long-term vision of the venture has catalysed the entire auto industry towards the sustainable future that was originally envisioned.

The thing to remember here is that long-term thinking allows for the pursuit of transformative ideas that may not show immediate results, but can lead to exponential growth and impact over time.

Challenges and Considerations

On your journey to achieving nonlinear impact in your world, there are going to be many challenges, some predictable and others not, some personal and some related to the system you create or interact with. Accepting that doing big hard things will inevitably be hard, you should aim to push forward anyway. But do consider the following:

1. Nonlinear systems and their resulting impact are inherently complex and can be highly sensitive to initial conditions. Is this the right time, am I addressing the right market, will the current societal or political climate be amenable to what I’m trying to do? Small changes can lead to disproportionately large effects, making it difficult to predict outcomes accurately. This “butterfly effect” means that well-intentioned actions might have unforeseen consequences.
2. Nonlinear systems may have critical thresholds or tipping points where small changes can trigger sudden, large-scale shifts. Identifying these points and understanding how to influence them is key to maximizing impact. Do you have the right network in place, are you using the right platform to action your plan, are you using the right leverage points to accelerate your impact?
3. Nonlinear effects may manifest over different time scales, from immediate to long-term. Balancing short-term actions with long-term goals and consequences is essential. Patience is a virtue, all good things come to those that wait, and all those other well meaning sayings.

Conclusion

To sum things up keep the following in mind when you are thinking about how you can make a mark on the world:

• Leveraging nonlinear strategies such as identifying leverage points, building networks, and creating scalable solutions can lead to exponential impact.
• Long-term thinking is essential for achieving significant, lasting change and overcoming short-term obstacles.
• Grasping the complexity of nonlinear systems is crucial, including their sensitivity to initial conditions and potential for unintended consequences.
• Striking a balance between short-term actions and long-term goals demands both patience and persistence.
• By embracing these concepts, individuals and organizations can create transformative change within their spheres of influence.