Giving Compass' Take:

• Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, calls for philanthropists to encourage nuance and compromise - rather than extreme responses - to tackle extreme challenges. 

• How can funders help to build relationships and productive conversation around big issues? 

• Read about successfully creating collaborative solutions. 

As I begin my seventh year as president of the Ford Foundation, I find myself reflecting on all that has changed in our world since 2013. If asked to encapsulate this tumultuous period in a single word, a reasonable observer might rattle off a list of possibilities—aberrant or abhorrent, appalling or inhumane—or they might reject the question entirely. Too much has happened, too quickly, for one term to perfectly capture it all.

If pushed, however, one might gravitate toward a telling adjective: “extreme.”

This is the age of extreme weather and extreme inequality. The age of extreme hate groups, extreme nationalism, and extreme populism around the world. The list goes on.

The business case for the extreme is well documented. The loudest voices garner the most coverage and clicks, while media companies and social networks reap the rewards. And these extremes beget more extremes, coarsening our discourse and dividing our societies.

The problem is that “extreme” is not just a descriptor of gathering crises for our planet—or the political personalities most breathlessly covered in the news and amplified in the echo chambers of our newsfeeds. Extreme opposition seems to have entered the playbook of leaders in every category. In this worldview, it’s all or nothing, good or evil, the best or worst.

Nuance and complexity, meanwhile, are nowhere to be found. And our extreme challenges remain extremely unsolved.

In the boardrooms of businesses and museums, on committees and campuses—and everywhere in between—seeking common ground has been replaced by a retreat to our corners. Like fighting fire with fire, the fiery is met with fiery, and no one seems willing to turn down the temperature. Nuance is a concession no one seems willing to make.

To begin with, we need to reestablish incentives that encourage our leaders to seek more nuanced solutions and reject unproductive extremes. For instance, the way we measure value has lifted up quarterly earnings without fully accounting for environmental or social costs. The way we delineate political districts and decide elections favors ideological purity over persuasion. And the way we practice philanthropy too often allows for the obscenely wealthy to whitewash or greenwash their reputations through charity, rather than dismantling the systems that make their charity necessary in the first place.

We must also recognize the ways in which a patient, inclusive, and nuanced approach already has resulted in more productive conversations and constructive solutions.

We can see how our capitalist systems have broken down, while alsoappreciating that markets have helped reduce the number of people around the globe who live in poverty.

Read the full article about nuance in the face of extreme challenges by Darren Walker at Ford Foundation.