What I Brought Home from Orvieto: 7 Seeds for Transformational Decision Making
How do we tackle problems that feel too big for any one plan to solve?
Earlier this month, I had the chance to gather with an extraordinary group of researchers, policy innovators, and systems thinkers at the Creative Insights for Transformational Human Decision Making summit in Orvieto, Italy. The summit brought together people from across disciplines and geographies, all asking the same big question: How do we tackle problems that feel too big for any one plan to solve?
The conversation moved far beyond traditional policy. We talked about trust, culture, local wisdom, and the stories people tell themselves about what’s possible. The thread running through it all was simple: lasting solutions do not come from force or coercion. They grow through relationships, shared meaning, and the right conditions for many small experiments to flourish.
I was invited to share what I’ve learned from my doctoral research on subcultural movements, my two decades building Common Change, and my work on place-based networks that help people act together in ways that go deeper than rational self-interest. Here are seven seeds I brought home from Orvieto — ideas I think matter for anyone trying to make real change in their community, organization, or system.
1. Trust is the Real Currency
People in every session circled back to one word: trust. Not as a warm, fuzzy idea but as the actual currency that makes systems work. If trust is low, the best-designed policy stalls out. If trust is strong, communities can experiment, fail, learn, and keep moving forward.
Trust is not something you install from above. It lives in daily relationships, in stories shared around a table, in the simple acts that prove people will show up for one another. Hofstede’s cultural research shows us that levels of generalized trust differ dramatically between societies, which shapes what is possible. Fukuyama’s work reminds us that high-trust cultures can collaborate more easily without needing layers of rules and enforcement.
If we want resilient systems, we need to start with the bonds that hold people together.
2. Plural Experiments Beat Perfect Plans
One phrase that stuck with me: “We don’t need the answer. We need many answers growing in the same field.”
Complex problems do not resolve through a single, grand strategy. They shift and adapt in response to what we try. The people in Orvieto talked about the power of Minimum Viable Policies and Programs (MVPs). These are small, local tests that can be adapted as we learn what works and what does not.
In an ecosystem of plural experiments, one pilot might fail but spark an idea that thrives elsewhere. This is how nature works. Forests do not place all their bets on one species; they spread risk and share nutrients across the system. Our institutions should do the same.
3. Culture Eats Rationality for Breakfast
We love to believe that people act rationally. We tell ourselves that if the incentive is right, behavior will follow. But sitting in Orvieto, I heard story after story that confirmed what my own research shows: people rarely act from pure self-interest. They act from trust, identity, culture, and place. They act from the stories they inherit about who they are and what is possible for people like them.
This is why culture is not window dressing. It is the soil from which every policy grows. A brilliant plan will wither in toxic soil. But if the cultural conditions are healthy, even a modest idea can bear fruit.
Our work in Common Change has taught me this firsthand. When people feel a sense of belonging and a narrative that connects their action to something larger than themselves, they give more, share more, and stay when things get hard.
4. Governance Needs a Second Track
One idea that came up again and again was that formal institutions are necessary but not enough. Big problems need what some call a “Second Track.” This means informal, trust-based, cross-sector spaces where people can test new ideas, build unlikely coalitions, and do things too risky for the main system to absorb right away.
In Orvieto, we looked at how these Second Track spaces can act like pilot fields, testing new ways of deciding and acting together. When they work, they feed insights back into the larger system, giving it a path to evolve without breaking.
For years, Common Change has functioned like a Second Track. We did not try to build a massive new institution. We built a living network where people could practice generosity in real time. Over time, these experiments changed how people think about money, belonging, and trust.
5. Relational Networks Are the New Infrastructure
If you take away the buzzwords and strategy documents, you see that the real infrastructure for change is not technology alone but the human network underneath it. Algorithms can push information faster. AI can help us see patterns we might miss. But when the room was quiet in Orvieto, it was clear that what people rely on, in the end, is other people.
These human networks are not accidental. They need tending, just like an ecosystem. If a network loses trust, connections rot. If a network is alive with mutual support and learning, it becomes a resilient web that holds communities together when the official structures fall short.
We need to invest in these networks. And we need people who know how to tend them — people who can spot weak ties, connect nodes that do not see each other yet, and help ideas cross-pollinate.
6. Place Still Matters — Maybe More Than Ever
In a globalized world, it is tempting to imagine solutions that scale everywhere. But one truth that surfaced in Orvieto is that place still shapes what works. A Second Track process in Northern Europe looks different than one in the American South. What works in an urban neighborhood might not take root in a rural community.
This is not a flaw. It is reality. My dissertation focused on how place and local context create the frame for collective meaning-making. In Common Change, we see how different communities design giving circles that reflect local values and relational norms. The soil is always specific.
When we build systems that honor place, they are stronger, more trusted, and more likely to last.
7. The Stories We Tell Shape What We Build
In the final hours of the summit, we kept circling back to one idea. People want to know: what story are we asking them to live into? A policy is not just a rule. It is a story about who we want to become together.
Second Track experiments work best when they offer people a new story to step into — one that feels hopeful, honest about the mess, and grounded in human connection. Narrative is not the final step after the work is done. It is the way we see the work, share it, and invite others to help it grow.
This is why I am committed to building not only networks of people doing the work, but also the pathways that carry the stories of that work back into communities, funders, and institutions that need to see what is possible.
One Final Thought
I did not come home with a perfect plan to fix what feels broken. None of us did. But what I did bring home was this: if we want to solve problems that do not have easy answers, we need to create the conditions for many people to experiment, learn, and adapt together.
That means investing in trust. Tending to culture. Building networks that hold strong when the world shakes. And telling stories that remind us who we are and who we might still become.
I hope these seeds from Orvieto help you think about what you might grow in your own corner of the world. If you are reading this and want to keep exploring these ideas with me, I invite you to stay connected. There is much more to say — and much more to do — together.