Systems Thinking and Design in Education with Sheryl Cababa of Substantial

Hello and welcome to this episode of Conscious Design. I'm your host, Ian Peterman, an author of the Conscious Design book. And today I'm excited to have Sheryl with us. She's the author of Closing the Loop. Always great to talk to another author, as well as the Chief Strategy Officer for Substantial. And yeah, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much. Really happy to kind of be here and talk about my work.

Yeah. So diving into your work, I'd love for you to start because I know you've, like me, you worked for a while and then wrote a book. So how did you— let's go back a little. How did you get into what you do? Strategy, design, what, what got you there?

Yeah, it's, it's been kind of like a non— a little bit of like a nonlinear path, which is, I think, probably really kind of makes sense for a systems thinker.

Right.

But yeah, I, I basically started my career as a graphic designer and a journalist and sort of fell into kind of the tech industry, um, simply by way of teaching myself how to code in the late '90s. And—

That's one way to do it.

Yeah, you can't do that— I don't know, can you? Maybe you can do it these days if you're really adept. I don't think I was an especially skilled coder, but, um, that's how I ended up in the technology industry, and I ended up working sort of for the first half of my career as a product designer. And that kind of taught me just about the intersection of technology and, you know, kind of user experience design, basically trying to design with intention. I feel like at the time, especially in the 2000s, it felt a little bit like a fledgling practice, like encouraging the those who are designing digital technologies to do things like usability testing, you know, just basically any encouraging any sort of interaction with who your end users are. And then I became a consultant, I think about 13, yeah, about 13 years ago. And that was when I really started focusing on design research as I guess, kind of like the discipline in which I felt the most comfortable and kind of took the best advantage of my skills. And so now I really think of myself as a design strategist. And what that means is kind of using the design process and frameworks in order to inform things like business strategy, investment strategy. And I particularly work in the domain of education. when it comes to the work I'm doing with my firm substantial. So that's kind of how I ended up where I am. And a big part of that is basically kind of reinventing my practice every few years, just kind of like thinking about how it can evolve and trying new things. And that's how I ended up essentially thinking about how systems thinking can combine with design thinking to make a really powerful, create a really powerful lens on, um, on creating change.

That's awesome. Yeah, I think it's, I think it's one of those things, being able to kind of wander around in different areas really helps you get an idea because you can start to see those patterns and go, oh, I did this and I used these kinds of things, but they also, you know, apply over here in this other area. And I think that's really valuable because we, I feel like we, we really highlight specialists a lot. Like, oh, you're a brain surgeon. Like, oh, like we, we elevate, which is great, right? We need those. But we also need what you're talking about, this systems thinking, because we have to all put it together at some point, right? We have to combine a lot of things together. So I love the fact that you have taken this path and you've gotten here and then you've written this book, Closing the Loop, and it's this systems thinking approach combined with design. And I think that's, I love that because a design, to me, design thinking was never just for designers, but it feels very much like when you're in school, like I went to design school for industrial design, it's very much like, oh, you're a designer. Well, here's how you're supposed to think. And it's kind of like, it's really good. It's a great thinking process, but it's not like taught to everyone, which, which is a little bit of a bummer. So I love it when, because my book's on, on how to think about design. So it's great when other people are like, yes, and we need to like, let's make more people see this. And I love your approach to it. What, what got you Right? You have your studio, your agency, you're doing that work. What made you decide that you wanted to put this together? I know you were applying these thoughts, these system-level thinking, right, to your own work. But what was kind of your aha, I gotta put this into a book moment to go, yeah, I wanna dive down the path of now becoming an author and writing?

Yeah, it's Yeah. I don't think so. I never really kind of intended to go down the book writing path because I was kind of like, what do I possibly have to say that people would need to listen to or learn from? Although I do teach, so that's something that sort of helps in terms of taking my experiences as a practitioner and sort of— I don't know, it's weird to say applying it theoretically, but having to basically crystallize or articulate the things that I'm doing in my practice or the things my team does regularly within our practice in a way in which you can teach it to others.

Right.

So making sure you're engaging in structured thinking as well as thinking about how does this translate into a framework that can be used by others. So I was kind of doing a lot of work in it, like kind of like a couple of domains like global health and education. And that helped me to recognize the shortcomings of just basically what we think about as design thinking and the process that we engage in. And I started looking at systems thinking as a way of sort of expanding you know, how can designers kind of have a broader lens when they're, when they're making these kinds of decisions? It really stemmed from working especially with technology companies and kind of thinking about like these big decisions they're making about emerging technologies. I mean, we're going through it now with AI, right?

Oh yeah.

Where you feel like, oh, there's this trajectory where there's a lot of organizations who are kind of creating and developing these things and putting it out in the world. with this idea, with this lens, with this techno-optimistic lens on it where they're kind of thinking there's a lot of benefit to what I'm doing, but they're failing to basically kind of think broadly about what are the potential unintended consequences of this, what kinds of radiating effects or knock-on effects will there be from making these kinds of decisions. And that's what got me kind of like interested in systems thinking, which has been a practice that's existed for a very long time. I just don't see it that commonly engaged within the design process or design thinking process. And so when I started trying to learn about it, I felt like there's a gap. There's kind of like a gap in the literature about how I as a designer can apply these kinds of frameworks and processes without it totally like taking over my job as a designer. Because like, I have like, I already have existing things I need to deliver. I already have like—

Right.

A very well-defined practice. But how can I integrate some of this into what I'm currently doing? And that's what kind of inspired the book. So yeah, it was kind of like that gap that kind of led me to think, oh, maybe there's something here.

Yeah, I would completely agree with that. It's very— because I think of systems thinking, and it pairs usually with systems engineering. And that's close to IT architecture or You know, like facilities, man, like you're talking about big things that are way, way bigger than a product. We're talking about entire like manufacturing floors, right? That's coming from the hard goods. Like that's if everybody says systems thinking or systems engineering, like immediately that's what all engineers into, you know, mechanical designers and all that they think of is like, oh, it's, you know, not what I'm doing. It's something that happens later with the business and it's— Expensive and huge and I can't possibly, I'm too busy. Like what you say, like I got my stuff to do. I can't possibly think about that. That's like over there. It's like accounting or something. It happens over there.

Right.

I'm done and I'm over here just designing. So yeah, that's, yeah, very accurate. What? Yeah. Oh, go ahead.

Oh no, you go ahead. You're gonna ask something.

Well, with the book, and I kind of think about this sometimes, I'm wondering, like, obviously designers need to understand this, but do you see this as something like your book and combining this process? Is it also something that is beneficial for, let's say, middle manager level or project, like, where designers need it, but what, who else could really benefit that you've seen a gap in? Like, we're missing, we're missing this, this info. Who else would really benefit from it and be able to help? Because designers, right, a lot of times we don't have full decision-making power, right? We're kind of under some sort of management crew. Like, how, how can this apply, or who else could be involved? in thinking through this to really make it as effective as possible?

Yeah, I don't think this is necessarily just limited to designers, and I think, you know, just a lot of the literature around systems thinking is actually related to organizational change management, and there's a reason for that. It's because organizations are really complex sort of entities, and they're systems of their own right. And so the, you know, kind of traditional thinking around systems thinking or systems thinking methodology has been around how can you make change within an organization. So, you know, a classic in that category is Peter Senge wrote The Fifth Discipline several decades ago, and there's like many ideas there that can be applied to the design process, or, you know, anyone who's kind and creating solutions in the broader world. It's interesting because as I've— as my practice has moved kind of into this area of design, almost like design as facilitation rather than design as execution, like really facilitating other stakeholders and sort of the decisions that they're making and using design as a path to their decision-making, it's interesting how— Yeah, I've kind of used some of the techniques from systems thinking in order to kind of think about things that are as discrete as organizational change. So like, a good example of that is there's a framework that I use really often called the iceberg diagram. And it's really oriented around like understanding like the things that you see on the surface is understanding like what is happening now and using that as a jumping off point for change or decision making. And so you might have like—

Yeah.

events on the surface, and then you're looking at patterns and behaviors that fall underneath that. You look at structure, or basically like infrastructure that sort of affects what's going on. And then you look at mental models. So like, what are kind of the belief systems and what have you that are causing people to behave a certain way? And I've used that with organizations to even think about things like, why is there so much attrition? in our organization.

Right.

And, and doing that kind of analysis gives you sort of these different pathways to potential solutions that could result in going down the path of the design process, or it could result in things like just different policies, like within your organization. Or if we're thinking about the space of education, for example, different, like actual policies in education at the governmental level. So that's, I think it's really interesting because I think there's lots of people who just like work within organizations who can benefit from systems thinking, and it's not just designers necessarily.

Right. One of the things, and I think you mentioned in your book a little bit, at least in the beginning, I was seeing something about how planning, right, using this, because when you think about systems, It requires, at least if to me, it requires thinking a little bit more long-term than we often do. And you mentioned earlier the unintended consequences, right, of what we're doing. And a lot of companies don't do that. So how do you think about that relative to, you know, things like you might have a couple-year business plan, right? We usually think in these pretty short-term things. Is it something where— it'll help or can help us really look long-term? How do you see time and time in that long-term playing with systems?

Yeah, it's a really good question because oftentimes if you're trying to think about long-term or long-term planning, it sort of flies in the face of how decision-making happens. Right? Because like there's so much short-termism. A good example of that is quarterly earnings. Like when you're working for a company and they're chasing quarterly earnings or they have these like kind of metrics that inspire quarterly confidence, it might not actually be in line with what you should be doing long term. which could mean like slower growth, kind of like more thoughtful decision-making. And so those are like some of the things that kind of need to be interrogated. You, within an organization, might not be able to do that much about something like quarterly earnings. But I think I—

Right.

I also like to tell people, like, you know, the first step is awareness, is like kind of knowing how and why decisions are being made and understanding where you can have potential influence or impact. And also, you know, using it as a form of communication like this. It's really important to like consider the potential harm, or like, you know, raise your voice about the potential harm of things that, you know, your organization is doing, even if like it feels like you can't do anything about it. So I would say It's one of the things that I do. Like, I'm a consultant, right? So one of the things that I do is, like, even if there are certain things that are not within my scope of work, you will very likely get something from me or my team that is oriented around, like, here are some other recommendations. And that comes for free. I love that. Because, like, usually those are oriented around things that fall outside of the scope of what we're doing but could have a relationship with kind of like long-term thinking or some of the long-term analysis that we are doing within the course of a project or within the scope of a project. So I think there's always room for like engaging more in long-term thinking, even if there's a sense like that it's hard to do anything about it right now, because at some point that, you know, switch is gonna flip and I don't know, like, I kind of— you see all these systems thinking issues in the world, like, we're looking at sort of like the climate change that we're all experiencing right now, right? And you see cities like Phoenix with the heat increasing, kind of making acute decisions about their environment, which are oriented more towards like long-term thinking about this being something that, you know, the new normal has to be addressed in terms of like, how do we kind of create strategies that are not just kind of thinking about things as like these very specific acute events, but know that this is like a long-term thing we're going to have to deal with. And so, you know, reacting and responding to that sort of thing, I think, is starting to happen for a lot of people, and that involves systems thinking.

Hey, it's Ian here. So glad you're enjoying this episode of Conscious Design. If you want the full scoop on Conscious Design, what it is, how we do it, how you can do it, then check out our book. We wrote it so creative entrepreneurs like you can code social and environmental responsibility right into your brand's DNA. You can download the first chapter for free. Link is in the description. Enjoy the rest of the episode. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share. Right. Yeah, I think that's a— there's, there's 2, 2 things. One, I love that you kind of pointed out the quarterly earning metric because I like, I see those some quarterly earnings, right? And they come out. I think it's like Macy's had a bad quarter and some other, some other Target or somebody— Target's having a bad quarter or something like that. And they're, they're just like, stock is dropping. And you have to know that Their CEO is getting hounded by their board right now to make immediate changes to next quarter, right? They're just, they're very reactive kind of metrics. And it's you bringing that up. I hadn't really thought about it because you're like, oh, quarterly, you know, but it is such a systematized, it's a system that's in place that kind of forces a short-term reactionary. Like once you IPO, you're now, you are now definitely tied to this quarterly system, whether the long term is there, which I think might play to, because I haven't really thought about it till now, but probably plays to why those larger companies become less nimble and less interested in risky R&D, long-term strategy. They're just Quarter, it's hard to beat that if you're at a quarter-to-quarter ratio. Like if that's your, that's the speed that you can think, then you're kind of trapped a little bit in how, what you can do.

Yeah. Yeah. It's really, it's really super interesting because if you think about it, it doesn't, I think for most organizations, most companies, especially if you're public, it works that way, but it doesn't always have to work that way. I mean, a good example of that is Amazon for like the first decade or so of its existence. was like reporting quarterly losses like all the time, but basically saying we're pouring this into R&D. And so you will eventually see the profits. And somehow that story was convincing enough that they were getting away with losses for a really long time. But I don't think that's— that just doesn't feel all that common. And I also think there's like an incentives issue, right? Like, And this is like a systems thinking thing that comes up for me all the time. For example, like UPS just had, you know, they have like a union deal that they just brokered.

Yeah.

And when the news that it was going in that direction came out, which benefits their workers, you know, like it is actually good long-term strategic thinking for the health of the company, their stock went down. And it's because the idea that they might be having to pay more for their employees is not something the market likes to hear. And I was just like, how are we in the grips of like this market that, you know, when I hear that news, I'm like, okay, that's good. That's actually good for probably the long-term health of the company. But when the market hears it, it was like, oh, their stock went down. And it's just, it feels really kind of like What are we actually incentivized by here, and how do we actually try to fly in the face of that or kind of change, you know, what the— those demands that are kind of put upon us? And I don't have an answer for that, but it is something like, if you like engage in systems thinking, you see this stuff all around you, and it's kind of like, yeah, what could be done about that? There's probably many different avenues. There's no singular solution, which is another systems thinking tenet. Right.

Right. Well, it's more, and correct me if I'm wrong, but to me systems isn't about I must take road A. Systems is about we're at point A and we need to get to point B. There's 30 roads to choose from. 10 of them probably can make it. Like, which we just gotta pro and con it and figure out what the best way to get there is. Not, oh, there's one option. We're just gonna go straight. And then I hope it works out.

Yeah. And what combination of things can work to create— you know, I talk a lot about like creating a theory of change. So a theory of change is worthwhile when there's lots of different effort taking place, right? If you think about like, I live in Seattle, and we have like a really large unhoused population here. And Yeah. So it's what we would call a wicked problem, which if folks are familiar with that term, it's a term that Horst Ritter kind of coined in the 1970s as he was talking about planning and the kinds of problems where there isn't really a singular sort of solution. They tend to be really complex. And You know, like, I don't think there's necessarily an end to problems. There's just like sort of like increases or reductions in sort of things that we're seeing. And it— that's a good example, like cities, like you need to take many different angles and different types of interventions in order to kind of make a dent or to problem solve for something like, you know, why do we have such a large unhoused population in our city?

Right.

And it's not easy. It's actually, it's so complicated. But having like a theory of change is really meaningful because that helps you kind of understand how things are connected and what kinds of changes you're making might affect other things. One thing that I really like from Peter Senge is he says yesterday's Yesterday's solutions are today's problems. So you always have to kind of think about like the new problems that you're generating and be able to anticipate and potentially solve for that as well.

Right. Yeah, I think a couple of things. One is that really like we oftentimes, if we aren't thinking about the system, we go, here's a problem, there's one cause, one solution, right? We just have this One in, but reality, when you look at the problem, we'll take homelessness. There isn't just like one cause. It's not like there's one homeless generator sitting somewhere just generating. It's, there's multiple reasons, there's multiple inputs to cause the problem in the first place. And I think we, we like to, you know, bucket and go, oh, the problem is homelessness. But then you really break it apart. Oh, well, okay. Some people it's because they ran out of money, some kind of, people because addiction, some people it's a health problem. Like, you know, it, you can quickly start to separate it out and realize, oh no, there's like a bunch of reasons. Yeah, they'll, there's like one bad state of I'm homeless, right? But how you get there is actually, well, can be a broad range of things. And there's, so there's, there's not like a solution. Right. Because that's like the symptom, right? And we're, Where homelessness is the symptom of many problems. And I think sometimes we don't, we don't always take those steps back and look at the whole system and go, oh no, the problem is actually like 5 steps before then.

And that's right.

You know, anything, anything we do after that is still going to cause the problem. We're just, we're just like triaging something rather than fixing the root issue. Yeah, it's an interesting thought process because it takes a lot more. I think it's right. You gotta step up high enough and look at a much broader area, which I don't know, it seems scary, I think, to a lot of people.

Yeah.

Because then you're, you're, you're, if we keep it to one problem, then it's, oh, it's, we just have to fix one problem. It's easy, right? It's just one problem instead of realizing it's a whole bunch of things causing it.

Yeah, yeah. And this is something that comes up a lot in domains like healthcare, right? There's all sorts of things. You can think about it as the division between treating symptoms and sort of preventive care.

Right.

And oftentimes, solutions that involve preventive care are in the long term kind of cheaper than the way we sort of solve people's acute healthcare problems now. It's cheaper to spend on things that might prevent you from having chronic illness to begin with. And I'm not talking about individuals either. I'm just talking about the system, right?

Oh, yeah.

Like, prevent people from developing type 2 diabetes rather than having to treat all of the things that happen once people have it and it's dire. And then there's all these other things that feed into it, like here in the US, a lot of people are uninsured. Healthcare is really super expensive. And so the problem sort of becomes worse by all these other inputs that contribute to the systemic problem. So Yeah, I think oftentimes, yeah, we're at the tail end treating the symptoms of various types of wicked problems in the emergency room where it's really expensive and what have you rather than way early on and maybe even before you go to primary care or something like that. I know this metaphor is getting kind of out of control. But yeah, that's kind of—

I think we all relate to health things though. So it's, you know, as a metaphor, if we all, if we all get it, it's good.

Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, I'm, I'm curious because one of the— you brought up the UPS thing and one of— it was interesting to hear your take because I think that that is one. And one of the things that came to my mind working in technology and like I worked in drones and stuff like that. And I've been watching AI and driving is my first thought is it could be exactly like what happened with McDonald's, where McDonald's, as soon as a $15 an hour wage became prevalent in a lot more than just, you know, Seattle, California, and other states, entire states started changing that. McDonald's then turned I think it was like about $1 billion straight into robot development to replace all the workers. And there's still, I mean, they're still probably 5 years out, but it was a huge fueling thing. So one, one of my first thoughts was like, well, this is great for the drivers now, but it also seemed a little bit from like a systems level even for UPS. that cost and partly the quarterly, right? It never helps if your profit goes down or your stocks go down, that maybe that's also going to be where there won't be any drivers. There's going to be Tesla trucks or whoever else makes some semi-trucks just driving around for most of it. So I don't know, I'm curious with your thoughts from a system level. Usually there isn't a great, great live example recently to talk about. But I think this is an interesting— I'm curious what your thoughts are on that, like just from a systems perspective.

Yeah, I mean, I think automation and yeah, it goes beyond kind of like UPS now. They might be using like autonomous vehicles or what have you. I mean, the autonomous vehicles are happening, like they're coming. Like in San Francisco, they're already on the street. It was funny because my partner was telling me the other day there was one of these autonomous vehicle taxis that just drove straight into wet cement and was sitting there stuck. Yeah, I heard about that.

In San Francisco.

And I'm just like, okay, this being a really society-wide thing is a bit of a ways off when these things are kind of doing things like that.

Right.

Um, but that, but that said, I do think like, yeah, there's a certain level of automation that has always kind of like been steadily happening as, you know, part of our, I don't know, part of our working lives, part of like the workforce that we have in front of us. And I don't necessarily, I don't take the automatic position that automation is necessarily bad for us as a society. I think in the short term, yes, there's some forms of automation that are going to take jobs. And the question is, are these really great jobs to begin with if it can be automated? If McDonald's can develop a robot to do that, and what do we do as a broader society?

Right.

About the fact that, like, you know, we maybe, like, we need to replace, like, these low skill set jobs with something else that is more, like, high quality in terms of, like, people learning, people, like, doing things that they love rather than, you know.

Right.

And I know that sounds, like, very, like, a little bit woo-woo and maybe just, like, way too long-term for us, but that's what sort of systems thinking involves is, like, How do we kind of think about the longer term of this as we think about how automation increases? Well, for example, like with AI, I was hearing like this lawyer on this podcast kind of talk about how, you know, there's a lot of like this generative AI being used now to do kind of like legal analysis. And they were asked like, Do you— sorry, are you afraid? Like, you think like this is going to kind of take, take your job? Like, is this going to take the jobs in the legal industry? And she was like, well, I mean, people were saying that in 1970 about like when the computer was first invented, right? It's gonna like take our jobs. We're not going to have enough to do. It's like, believe me, like as humans, we're going to create things to do for ourselves. Like, we're supposed to be so productive that— by this point that we're not even working 40 hours a week, and many of us are working like way more hours than that. I thankfully have a good work-life balance, so I don't, but many people are. Many people do. Like literally in the technology industry, right? Yeah, it's kind of funny when I was doing research for my book, you know, John Maynard Keynes, the famous economist, he wrote a paper in like 19— I think it was in 1930, sort of predicting that You know, in 100 years, we shouldn't be working more than 4 hours a week because of the march of technology and how it's going to like assist us in the work that we're doing. And I don't know, we're still working that same 40-hour workweek that they imposed in that exact time period. And so like, I think what we need to think about is just like, what does it mean to be productive? And how does that— I know, like, now we're on, like, some tangent like this, reaching far away from systems thinking. But I think, like, this is how all of these things are interconnected.

Well, I think it's— and I think this conversation is actually a perfect illustration of what systems thinking is, because we are talking about— if you're talking about the system of how does a company integrate AI and automation If you actually look at the long, you gotta look at these things, you gotta look at employment, you have to, right? There's these long-reaching implications and impact that you're gonna make. And if we don't go down these rabbit holes and explore every direction, it'll be a surprise and it'll be, oh, I didn't think we'd, but if you'd sat there and had these conversations and dived down, It's not a surprise. You can go, oh yeah, we, in this brainstorming session, we thought about that and here's, now that it's happened, here's 10 ideas on how we can make it better or how we can make us transition through this rough spot we were kind of expecting. And yeah, I think, I think we, it's funny, I talk because I run the podcast, I talk to a lot of people and it's funny how many times Like we, and I prefer the conversational style because it allows us to dive down rabbit holes. But a lot of people even are just, they're apologetic. They're like, oh, sorry, we went down this rabbit hole. And I was like, nope, this is like, we, this is the point. Like these are all connected. It's how our brains actually work. But I think sometimes we're stuck in that, oh, well, we've been in too many meetings where a boss has been like, no, you can't do that. Like, stop going down the rabbit hole. We're here to talk about A, B, and C and only that and ignore everything around. And we kind of, I don't know, I sat in the corporate world for a decade. I got trained mentally, right? How to sit and be a good person in a meeting. And it is very like that restricted box-like frame. And I think that's how we got to where we are in every area from education to sustainability, our planet, right? Is all we were like, oh, well, let's come up compartmentalized. Like if I do something over here, nothing else in the world changes. It just is right there isolated and it's not, it's really, it's not how we think. It's not how the world is. It's not. So it's, I think it's good, like your book getting out there and go, it's a system. Like you can't, this idea that you're gonna work in a box and we're gonna silo off your corporation, it doesn't work. Really funny story to add to your collection of innovation and how it really has expanded. There's my favorite story. I learned it in design history class, I think. But there's this group of people called the Luddites. It was run by this guy, something Luddite. They burned to the point where it was like 1700s or something like that.

Yeah, they burned the looms.

The loom. They burned the looms. They went raiding and pillaging and burning loom factories till the British Army had to come in and stop them because they thought they were going to lose their jobs because they were the hand loomers. And here we are today. I don't know anybody that can hand loom that I, that I know of. We're all busy. Like, we, we all have stuff to do. So it's, it's kind of one of those weird We like forget those things and we go, oh, it's gonna— the world's gonna end here. But it's— we've been changing technology for so long now, it's, it's gonna keep going. Like, we're, we're gonna keep moving forward no matter what.

Yeah, I mean, the world just changes. It's just like, how do we shape it in a way that I guess it benefits more of us rather than fewer?

Yeah.

And so, yeah, that's something that I oftentimes think about and encourage as well. This is part of why I also just really like futures thinking because using that as sort of like, in some ways, like a planning strategy helps you investigate all of these kind of different potential avenues and bring them to spaces where usually, as you were saying, are limited to like, hey, stay focused. We're focused on this one thing and what we're going to be doing over the next year. And rather, it's kind of forcing you to think about like, okay, in 10 years out, what might be happening? How might we be responding to it? Yeah, one of the frameworks I like the best that is the easiest is the Futures Wheel.

Okay.

And I write a little bit about that in my book where it's like, all it does really is kind of get assumptions out on the table and it helps you kind of think about like, if we made this decision, what's a, what's like a secondary effect? What's like a tertiary effect? And it's really interesting, kind of like the stories that can emerge from that. And especially when you're thinking about like, this decision involves implementing this new technology. In a certain space. So now what's going to happen? Oh, people are going to lose jobs. Well, what happens then? And who is part of that decision-making? And as you kind of like play out there, like build this futures wheel, suddenly like things emerge that you might have to address or different ways of making decisions about what you're doing.

I love that. I love that idea because I'm— I love the idea of like the 100-year business plan. And it's one of those things that just makes you think, right? Because you're, how could we know what's gonna happen in 100 years? Nobody knows what's gonna happen in 100 years. But if you go through the mental exercise of, okay, I do this and then this and then this, and again, you start to broaden it out to, okay, well, what is this market? What do we think that it will do with these? You know, and it's not like we don't know what technologies are being worked on, like scientific reports come out. Like, we, we have a pretty good idea what people are working on. So then it's just, but going through that exercise really forces you to, yeah, think about, all right, we're gonna do this. What does that mean? How do we, and oh, maybe we can align it up with, hey, they're working on this technology over here. If it comes out in 20 years, how do we align like that kind of thinking? is really, I think it's important and we don't do it enough. And so it's, I don't know, it would be great to see more of that. So hopefully more people do the system thinking and read your book and decide that, yeah, we should actually think long-term. 'Cause I think we have solutions for all of these things if we just have a little bit more prep time and we don't, it doesn't become a fire. that we have to put out because that's where it becomes reactive, right? We're just like, oh, we need to not be on fire and that's all we can think about instead of 10 steps down the road where we're gonna, oh well, maybe it would have been better if we'd done this instead.

Yeah, exactly.

Perfect. Well, this has been amazing talking to you. Systems thinking, I love it. I'm glad you've put together a book that combines that with design because it's, it's important and you guys do amazing work. You are proving that it works, right? You're using it with your, with your clients. Uh, before we wrap up, I'd love to just give you some time if you wanna talk about where people can find you, get the book, work with you, all those, all those great things.

Yeah, absolutely. So you can find me on LinkedIn. I'm Cheryl is— I'm the only Cheryl Kababa out there, so, you know, just look me up and feel free to connect with me there. The studio, you know, where I run my research and strategy practice is at substantial.com, and you can see some of our thinking up there. You can get in touch with us there, and you can find my book at rosenfeldmedia.com. That's my publisher, and it's called Closing the Loop: Systems Thinking for Designers. And hopefully this has sparked some interest in integrating systems thinking in your work if you're a designer.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time. It's been— this has been a great conversation. I feel like we could talk about systems design for a long, long, long time. And for everybody listening, we will have links and everything In the description. So check those out, connect with her, look at what she's doing, get her book, read it, and I hope put some systems thinking into whatever you are doing. It'll help you, promise. May take a while, but it will help you. And yeah, it's been, been great chatting. Thanks for being on, on the show.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, this was really fun.