I recently went LIVE with Andrew MacLeod — a former UN official, military officer, politician, and the founder of Hear Their Cries — to explore changemaking in its most confronting terrain:

problems that are not just difficult, but socially and psychologically “unspeakable.”

This conversation carries a content warning: It addresses abuse, power, rape, and systemic failure in humanitarian contexts.

As I metabolize this conversation, I will publish a reflection, please stay tuned.

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The premise

Across my recent work, I’ve been tracing a distinction:

We do not lack solutions.We struggle to scale what works.

This conversation complicates that further.

Because some problems do not fail to spread due to lack of evidence or coordination.

They fail because people do not want to see them.

Why this matters for changemakers

This conversation adds something I have not explicitly named before:

Some of the hardest problems are not resisted by power alone —they are resisted by our own limits of attention, comfort, and moral tolerance.

That changes the work. It means:

* awareness is not enough

* evidence is not enough

* even alignment is not enough

If you are working on change…

This conversation is worth your time if you are grappling with:

* why some issues never gain traction

* how to work on topics others avoid

* the limits of “raising awareness”

* how to stay in difficult work over time

* what it means to create change without recognition

References & further exploration

* Hear Their Cries: https://www.hearthercries.org

* BBC World of Secrets (Season 12) Searching for Soldier Dad: https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/p0nds5d9

* ABC Four Corners: Sex Tourism – My Father’s Secret: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-04/sex-tourism-my-father-s-secret/104056506

* UK Parliamentary Reports on aid sector abuse: https://committees.parliament.uk/work/3401/sexual-exploitation-and-abuse-in-the-aid-sector-inquiry/

The question I’m left with

What happens when the barrier to change is not the system —but what we are willing to see?

Thank you to everyone who joined LIVE —and to Andrew for staying in work that most would turn away from.

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