Hi Ian. This write-up made me even more excited to follow the work of the EIP in the coming years.
One thing I wanted to ask for more information about was the “system-centered” approach you detailed towards the end of the post. I’m not sure I see entirely the difference between an approach which “seeks out and prioritizes the highest-impact opportunities without artificial boundaries on scope related to issues, audiences, or interventions.” and using a mish-mash of interventions from the traditional improvement strategies.
Is the proposal that e.g. instead of coming to an organisation and saying “we think you need forecasting”, there should instead be more of an open-ended analysis of their structure, needs, incentives, etc., to tailor both *which* interventions/products to implement *and* (as usually done) how to implement them? And that before even coming to an organisation you will have carried out an analysis like the one in this post, and by doing these two things, be issue-, audience-, and product-agnostic?
I am not familiar with too many examples or case studies of carrying out large changes in organization, but in an area I *am* familiar with, performance psychology, one of the large limiters on this kind of approach is resources. As a one-person operation, you don’t have the capacity to play around with approaches, and have to specialize in one issue/implementation, e.g. mindfulness in athletes. Do you expect that the EIP will be structured so as to, and have the resources to, do the needs analysis of relevant institutions, and then have individually specialised, expert staff on demand to deploy as the needs analysis suggests, or that you will have general competency staff at these different levels?
I see that these issues might be things that will be considered and dealt with in due time, and if you think they are not timely for the current state of EIP, that’s fine.
Sorry for missing this comment earlier! Some brief responses below:
Is the proposal that e.g. instead of coming to an organisation and saying “we think you need forecasting”, there should instead be more of an open-ended analysis of their structure, needs, incentives, etc., to tailor both *which* interventions/products to implement *and* (as usually done) how to implement them? And that before even coming to an organisation you will have carried out an analysis like the one in this post, and by doing these two things, be issue-, audience-, and product-agnostic?
Yes, that’s basically right. As part of this, and as we’ve written about before, it’s also important to make a distinction between trying to help an organization be more effective at what it’s already trying to do, vs. trying to shift an organization’s priorities to be more aligned with those of humanity/society as a whole. If you’re not confident that there’s sufficient alignment on the latter front, it may be premature or unwise to try to increase its technical capabilities through means like forecasting.
Do you expect that the EIP will be structured so as to, and have the resources to, do the needs analysis of relevant institutions, and then have individually specialised, expert staff on demand to deploy as the needs analysis suggests, or that you will have general competency staff at these different levels?
I mostly expect that EIP will not be deploying or running programs itself, at least in the near term. Instead, we have three resources we can leverage to make things happen: 1) funding, via relationships with funders in the EA community as well as outside of it; 2) talent, via relationships with 80,000 Hours and other entities providing direction and guidance to people looking for impactful ways to make a difference in their careers; and 3) our network of experts and practitioners who either study important institutions or are directly part of their orbit. Via the combination of these, we can both a) identify existing interventions/campaigns/ideas that can be boosted through dollars/people/knowledge/etc., and b) generate ideas for new interventions that we can help get off the ground by recruiting leaders and/or facilitating funding for them.
Hi Ian. This write-up made me even more excited to follow the work of the EIP in the coming years.
One thing I wanted to ask for more information about was the “system-centered” approach you detailed towards the end of the post. I’m not sure I see entirely the difference between an approach which “seeks out and prioritizes the highest-impact opportunities without artificial boundaries on scope related to issues, audiences, or interventions.” and using a mish-mash of interventions from the traditional improvement strategies.
Is the proposal that e.g. instead of coming to an organisation and saying “we think you need forecasting”, there should instead be more of an open-ended analysis of their structure, needs, incentives, etc., to tailor both *which* interventions/products to implement *and* (as usually done) how to implement them? And that before even coming to an organisation you will have carried out an analysis like the one in this post, and by doing these two things, be issue-, audience-, and product-agnostic?
I am not familiar with too many examples or case studies of carrying out large changes in organization, but in an area I *am* familiar with, performance psychology, one of the large limiters on this kind of approach is resources. As a one-person operation, you don’t have the capacity to play around with approaches, and have to specialize in one issue/implementation, e.g. mindfulness in athletes. Do you expect that the EIP will be structured so as to, and have the resources to, do the needs analysis of relevant institutions, and then have individually specialised, expert staff on demand to deploy as the needs analysis suggests, or that you will have general competency staff at these different levels?
I see that these issues might be things that will be considered and dealt with in due time, and if you think they are not timely for the current state of EIP, that’s fine.
Sorry for missing this comment earlier! Some brief responses below:
Yes, that’s basically right. As part of this, and as we’ve written about before, it’s also important to make a distinction between trying to help an organization be more effective at what it’s already trying to do, vs. trying to shift an organization’s priorities to be more aligned with those of humanity/society as a whole. If you’re not confident that there’s sufficient alignment on the latter front, it may be premature or unwise to try to increase its technical capabilities through means like forecasting.
I mostly expect that EIP will not be deploying or running programs itself, at least in the near term. Instead, we have three resources we can leverage to make things happen: 1) funding, via relationships with funders in the EA community as well as outside of it; 2) talent, via relationships with 80,000 Hours and other entities providing direction and guidance to people looking for impactful ways to make a difference in their careers; and 3) our network of experts and practitioners who either study important institutions or are directly part of their orbit. Via the combination of these, we can both a) identify existing interventions/campaigns/ideas that can be boosted through dollars/people/knowledge/etc., and b) generate ideas for new interventions that we can help get off the ground by recruiting leaders and/or facilitating funding for them.