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As I outline in my new book, coming at problems from a non-confrontational stance can be the best way to solve them

By John Marks ’65

By nature, I am an impatient person. I yearn for rapid outcomes, both to my personal problems and to the conflicts that are tearing apart the planet.

In places like the Middle East, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Burundi, where there was—and is—unspeakable violence, Search for Common Ground (the organization I founded and headed for 32 years) was committed to preventing violence.

Still, my colleagues and I realized that even though we were the world’s largest nonprofit group engaged in peacebuilding, we did not have the power to directly intervene.

Instead, we adopted a strategy based on the Japanese martial art of aikido.

Aikido emphasizes accepting an attacker’s incoming energy and not trying to counter it with direct force.

We found that if we took an oppositional, adversarial position to people in conflict, we would be acting like a boxer who tries to reverse the energy flow of an opponent by knocking that person backward by 180 degrees.

John Marks will Bill Clinton — With President Bill Clinton.

We were convinced that such an approach was not an effective way to achieve our goals.

Instead, with aikido tactics, we “blended” with problems, accepted them as givens, and tried to divert them by 10 or 15 degrees.

I tried practicing aikido in the physical sense at a dojo (a place where martial arts are taught), but I did not like having my 6’3” frame thrown around on a mat.

If we took an oppositional, adversarial position to people in conflict, we would be acting like a boxer who tries to reverse the energy flow of an opponent.

However, non-physical aikido provided me with an important conceptual metaphor in my career as a social entrepreneur—a person whose professional life is dedicated to launching ventures that promote positive change in the world.

I came to see that the core ideas that underlay aikido were crucial to my success.

In addition to aikido, I developed 10 other working principles that I believed to be essential parts of social entrepreneurship.

I internalized these principles, and they provide the basic framework for my new book, From Vision to Action: Remaking the World Through Social Entrepreneurship, published by Columbia University Press in September 2024.

They are:

Start from vision—whatever that vision might be. Mine is to resolve conflict in non-adversarial ways.

Be an applied visionary able to produce concrete results one step at a time. (Being a pure visionary is probably only useful in starting a new religion or writing a philosophy textbook.)

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To see possibilities, get involved. The lesson here—drawn from a loosely translated quote by Napoleon Bonaparte—is that by engaging in a project, social entrepreneurs will discover paths forward that they otherwise would not have seen, and that they should be prepared to act on.

Keep showing up. Social entrepreneurs need to stay engaged without dabbling or parachuting. Like a child’s toy windup truck that moves forward until it hits an obstacle and then backs off and finds another way forward, they must be persistent—and adept at finding work-arounds.

Being a pure visionary is probably only useful in starting a new religion or writing a philosophy textbook.

Enroll credible supporters. Social entrepreneurs, by definition, operate outside the proverbial box, so they need to project credibility. Thus, having prominent backers, while not indispensable, can be helpful.

Expect the unexpected. Social entrepreneurs need to be prepared to deal with high levels of uncertainty. If they find it distressing not to know what the outcome will be, they should probably make a different career choice.

Make “yes-able” propositions. As Roger Fisher and William Ury wrote in their seminal book, Getting to Yes, proposals should be crafted so the recipient says “yes”—to the mutual benefit of both parties.

Develop effective metaphors. Social entrepreneurs must be able to communicate compelling ideas if they wish to reframe reality. Extended metaphors in the form of captivating stories can play a key role in breaking up—and replacing—deeply held beliefs.

Display chutzpah (a Yiddish word meaning extreme self-confidence—or nerve or gall). Social entrepreneurship is definitely not a good fit for those who are timid. Overcoming seemingly insoluble problems usually requires a willingness to take risks.

John Marks with Robert Redford and Ben Kingsley — With actors Robert Redford (left) and Ben Kingsley at a 2006 awards ceremony.

Cultivate fingerspitzengefühl—a German word that means having an intuitive sense of knowing at the tip of one’s fingers. This is what one-time basketball star and later U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley was referring to when he said, “When you have played basketball for a while, you don’t need to look at the basket. … You develop a sense of where you are.”

While I used these 11 principles in nonprofit work, I believe they are also applicable to entrepreneurs in the for-profit sector—and, for that matter, to life.

A government major in Arts & Sciences, John Marks ’65 co-authored The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence and The Search for the “Manchurian Candidate”: The CIA and Mind Control. He founded and currently serves as managing director of Confluence International and is a visiting scholar at Leiden University.

(All images provided.)

Published September 23, 2024