Transition Design and Interconnected Policymaking, with Terry Irwin (TRN5-V50)

Transcript: Transition Design and Interconnected Policymaking, with Terry Irwin

[00:00:01 The CSPS logo appears onscreen.]

[00:00:06 The screen fades to Terry Irwin.]

Terry Irwin: Well, I'm really happy to be joining everyone here today. And in the next half hour or so, I'm going to talk to you about the transition design approach for addressing the many wicked problems confronting 21st century societies, and the need to intentionally transition our communities, organizations, and entire societies toward better long-term futures.

Transition design brings together two global means. First, the idea that entire societies must transition toward more sustainable, equitable, and desirable long-term futures, and second, the realization that these transitions will require intentional systems-level change. Now, you can see evidence of these means in the number of transition-related projects and initiatives springing up around the world and the recent rise of what I'll call 'deep systems thinking', and the proliferation of knowledge, tools, and processes for understanding complex systems and systems problems. 21st century societies are facing countless complex problems, things like social and political polarization, climate change, war, forced migration, erosion of human rights, especially women's rights, the increasing gap between rich and poor, and the emergence of a small, uber wealthy, and highly influential group mostly dominated by white men, the increasing gap.

Designers refer to these as wicked problems. The list is very long, and these problems are so ubiquitous that we tend to think of them as global in scope and therefore a step or two removed from our everyday lives. But here's the thing, wicked problems always manifest in place and culture-specific ways because of these characteristics. These problems straddle organizational and disciplinary boundaries. They're multi-scalar and multi-causal. They're comprised of multiple stakeholder groups with conflicting agendas and uneven power relations, and every solution we implement ramifies throughout the system in ways that are entirely unpredictable. It's why so many solutions fail. Every problem is unique and constantly changing, every solution we implement changes the entire system, and perhaps the most important characteristic, wicked problems are always connected to other wicked problems in complex ways at multiple levels of scale. So, learning to see and map these interconnections and interdependencies is really at the heart of systems thinking and we believe is the key to resolving wicked problems. Often, these problems remain invisible to us because we're too focused on the smaller problems right at the end of our nose.

Here's what happens. We view problems within the narrow but manageable context of our departments, organizations, industry sectors, fields, or disciplines, areas like local or national government, policy, the non-profit sector, NGOs, funding and philanthropy, all kinds of industry, and many more. We identify a problem within our organization or sector, and usually, it's urgent, we're all doing triage all the time, and we set about finding a solution for it, and we secretly hope to find that single silver bullet solution for that single problem. This hope runs deep in all of us, that if I just look hard enough, I'll find the right solution, but we often harbour other hopes as well. We often secretly hope it can be solved with either money and/or technology because these are clear, quick, doable fixes, and this is going on in different sectors all the time. The only real difference is that each sector discipline has its own unique problem-solving methodologies, processes, and tools, and these approaches work really well as long as we stay within our own fields of expertise, but trying to collaborate across disciplinary divides or even perhaps across departments in a large organization or government can be challenging to say the least.

[00:04:41 A drawing is shown of six blindfolded scientists touching an elephant, each thinking they are touching something different according to their thought bubbles.]

It's a little like the parable of the blindfolded scientist and the elephant. The problem looks like a different animal depending upon your perspective. So, achieving a shared problem definition, which is crucial to problem resolution, becomes impossible.

But here's the catch, single silver bullet solutions only work on simple problems. When it comes to wicked ones, they're rubbish. Here's basically what happens, we think we're addressing a single problem when we're actually dealing with a problem cluster, multiple interdependent problems whose interconnections remain invisible to us. So, we just keep aiming single solutions at what we think are single problems but are, in reality, pieces of a problem cluster, and we can keep doing this for weeks, or months, or even years, and we might put dents in the problem but despite all the resources and energy we keep investing, many problems resist resolution because we don't see that these seemingly unrelated problems are connected to each other in complex ways within and across sectors. But wait, it gets worse. These problems are also connected up and down systems levels. So, to understand these problems, we have to look upstream, or more precisely, up systems levels.

[00:06:11 A diagram is shown of interconnected orange bubbles labelled "WICKED PROBLEM", blue bubbles labelled "PROBLEM", and white bubbles labelled "SECTOR/DISCIPLINE".]

because this is what we're often dealing with, a complex web of interconnections and interdependencies across sectors and up and down systems levels. This web of connections that involves both material and human interactions is what keeps these problems stuck and extends their consequences into the social and environmental spheres. That's why we call them wicked.

And here is how we think about the tools and approaches needed at these different levels. So, at the lower levels, we're finding and resolving familiar problems within our own sector or industry, using familiar tools and methodologies. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. If we trace the problems, resisting resolution upstream, to higher systems levels, we're getting into territory in which collaboration across disciplinary divides has to happen, even though it's difficult, and it requires tools and innovative cross-disciplinary approaches. These are new but they do exist. But at the level of a wicked problem, we're in new territory. There are very few existing tools and approaches for addressing these problems. And yet, if we solve for a wicked problem upstream, the positive results quickly trickle downstream and will solve for multiple seemingly unrelated problems simultaneously. This is really the premise for transition design.

Now, I diagramed all this in a very simplistic way. In fact, I've drawn them like we think of them, little separate boxes with their own separate issues. This type of compartmentalized thinking, though, is actually part of the problem.

[00:08:05 A new, more disorganized diagram of orange, blue, and white bubbles is shown.]

because this is more what it really looks like, multiple sectors, industries, and fields of all sizes, represented by the white bubbles, with countless interconnected, interdependent problems overlapping them in the blue and the orange bubbles, and it's this invisible and unexamined web of interconnections and interdependencies across those sectors, and up and down those systems levels, that keeps these problems stuck. And to complicate things even more, these problems are heating up and cooling off all the time, a bit like twinkle lights, and the trick is learning to read complex systems to see which problem clusters are lighting up at any given moment.

So, you get the idea. Now, in order to address these systems problems, we first need a better understanding of systems themselves, how they behave, and how they transition over time. Essentially, we all need to become students of systems, and systems are perhaps best explained by this old joke. Two fish bump into each other, and one says, "How's the water?" And the other says, "What water?" Marshall McLuhan, in his book, War and Peace in the Global Village, said, "One thing fish know nothing about is water, since they have no anti-environment which would enable them to perceive the element they live in." Systems are so ubiquitous and our interactions with them are so pervasive, we don't really see them and therefore we don't understand them very well. Our work at the Transition Design Institute is concerned with how we can all learn to see systems and understand how they behave.

So, we live in a world of systems nested within systems nested within systems. There are transportation systems, infrastructural systems, financial, economic, and communication systems, and all of these are permeated by cultural and disciplinary norms, laws and informal practices, and general ways of doing things. And together, all of these form what are known as socio-technical systems, which are in turn situated within the natural world, and these systems are always in transition because human societies are always in transition, but these transitions have been largely unintentional, full of drift, and we only understand their ramifications in hindsight. We call it history. The question before all of us in the 21st century is whether we can intentionally transition our organizations, communities, and entire societies toward more sustainable, equitable, and desirable long-term futures, because the long-term futures we're currently transitioning toward aren't necessarily the futures we want, but transition design argues that we can intentionally change these transition trajectories toward futures we do want.

[00:11:18 A graph is shown displaying the increase in the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in different countries.]

Now, I know that sounds like a monumental undertaking, but recent history taught us something about transition trajectories. Remember that all of these countries started out at more or less the same place, and we learned that because of systems dynamics, small changes in the present can make a big difference in where you end up in the future. We think that addressing wicked problems is actually a strategy for intentionally shifting the transition trajectory of our organizations, cities, and societies toward better long-term futures. But in order to design for sustainable societal transitions, we need to change the way we think about problems and solutions, because that in itself is a wicked problem. We take a single solution to a single problem approach that often involves small groups of disciplinary experts solving problems as quickly and profitably as possible for relatively small, elite audiences. We're looking for silver bullet solutions that hit very small targets, but wicked problems are moving targets, or perhaps big tangled messes is better analogy. So, a single silver bullet solution won't put a dent in a wicked problem. In fact, often times, it makes it worse because every wicked problem, as I said before, is connected to other wicked problems. So, traditionally conceived solutions address only tiny pieces of something much bigger. Let me show you what I mean.

So, we find a problem and we set about solving it in the same way we've solved other similar problems dozens of times before. Sometimes it works but often it doesn't, and here's why, we frame the problem in too small of a context, so we end up developing solutions that address symptoms of a much bigger problem. If we ask why childhood asthma in certain areas is on the rise instead of the single solution, we have to expand the problem frame, but doing this reveals a new, unexpected, and more complex problem, and if we keep moving up systems levels, we inevitably will arrive at a genuine wicked problem that has manifested in place and culture-specific ways, and we find that it is connected to a host of other wicked problems that are unique to that particular place. And when we compare our original solution to that root wicked problem, we see that, at best, the solution is a band-aid, and at worst, will prolong problem resolution or even make the problem worse. And of course, looming over most wicked problems are large societal structures like capitalism, which prioritizes growth and profit over the concerns of people and planet. This is what happens when we frame single problems in small contexts and create single solutions within disciplinary or departmental silos.

So, my point is this, we need to think in terms of system solutions, and acupuncture is a useful metaphor. So, if needles are the solutions, we know intuitively that it will take multiple needles situated in strategic and often counterintuitive places in the system, repeatedly over long periods of time to transition that system, the human body, back into health and balance. This is the mindset and practice we need to adopt when addressing wicked problems and policy to address wicked problems. But here is the good news, although our socio-technical systems are riddled with wicked problems that are currently directing our transitions toward unsustainable futures, these problems are rhizomatic and interdependent. And because of this interdependence, if we address any single wicked problem, the positive effects ripple throughout the entire system, solving for multiple other problems simultaneously and thereby changing the system's transition trajectory.

But to leverage these systems dynamics, we need to frame wicked problems within much larger contexts than we normally would, and we need to banish the thought of single solutions to single problems. So, in the past few years, we've been working on an approach reframing wicked systems problems within radically large systems contexts that include the past, the present, and the future, and we do this by working with the stakeholders connected to and affected by a particular wicked problem. So, we're leveraging the wisdom that is already within the system by gathering stakeholders' knowledge about the problem and their hopes for its resolution. Their responses in a workshop are aggregated into a series of maps that together create a systemic understanding of that problem, and these maps function a bit like the acupuncture map, and it helps us do two important things, first, identify leverage points within the system, places where solutions have the potential to solve for multiple issues simultaneously, and second, to guide the solutioning process over the years-long transition toward problem resolution.

Now, I'm going to show you some tangible examples from a recent project as I walk you through just a few of the steps in the transition design approach. For the past few years, we've been working with the Nasdaq Center and eight other research partners to address the wicked problem of a lack of funding for minority entrepreneurs in the U.S. and the U.K. Now, you can read more about the project on the Nasdaq Center website, and I made a series of six videos which go into greater depth on each of the steps. The work involves bringing together as many stakeholder groups as possible who are connected to and affected by the wicked problem.

[00:17:58 A slide is shown with the text:
"1. Mapping the problem"
"Integrates diverse stakeholder perspectives to create a shared understanding of the problem. Systems maps enable us to identify "zones of opportunity for" systems interventions (solutions) that solve multiple issues simultaneously".]

In step one, each group maps the myriad interconnected issues that make the problem wicked and keep it stuck, but from their group's own point of view. We then aggregate these different and opposing perspectives to form a systems view of the problem, and that also does two important things. It facilitates an understanding of the problem among stakeholder groups. And second, it enables us to identify zones of opportunity where solutions, or what we call systems interventions, have the potential to solve for multiple issues simultaneously. But to do this, we need to understand the systems dynamic within the systems problem. Especially, we need to understand that rates of change are different between archetypal societal sectors in which solutions are always implemented.

[00:18:59 A slide is shown with text that reads:
"Wicked programs are comprised of countless issues that always manifest in 5 archetypal sectors of society

• POLITICAL, LEGAL & GOVERNANCE ISSUES
• SOCIAL ISSUES – How we think and behave can change slowly or quickly
• USINESS & ECONOMIC ISSUES
• ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
• INFRASTRUCTURE/TECHNOLOGY/SCIENCE ISSUES".]

So, think of wicked problems as constellations of interconnected issues that arise, always arise, within these five archetypal sectors of society. Any solution we implement is always situated within one of these sectors, whether we realize it or not. But because each sector has its own anatomy and rate of change, and they are connected to each other in complex ways, these dynamics of change need to be taken into consideration when designing system solutions.

We created this diagram to help explain the relationships between these archetypal sectors of society and how they affect the efficacy of solutions. So, because of these systems dynamics, we need to develop entire solution ecologies around a keystone solution such as policy. And by ecology, I mean solutions situated in multiple sectors that are interconnected in ways that amplify and scaffold each other. We think this actually suggests a new kind of specialty, that of a systems ambassador whose role is to broker connections between projects and initiatives to form a solution cluster. Now, for those of you who are interested, the diagram can be downloaded from my academia.edu page.

So, this is a detail of a final problem map that we created for the Nasdaq project. And as you can see, it's very large and it contains all stakeholder perspectives and responses about the lack of funding for minority entrepreneurs. Now, these solid boxes are what we call emerging categories that arise out of our analysis of the responses, and we cluster similar responses around these categories. Here, you see that all stakeholder groups cited a lack of access to social capital as a keystone issue connected to the problem. A second and unsurprising problem category was racism and otherness. Because responses are coded, they're anonymous but are coded by stakeholder group and unedited. The map provides valuable insight into each group's perspective on the problem, but it also shows us where there is consensus on an issue among stakeholder groups.

[00:21:36 A slide is shown with the title "THEMES THAT EMERGED IN STAKEHOLDER PROBLEM MAPPING" above text that reads:

SOCIAL ISSUES THEMES

• LACK OF ACCESS TO SOCIAL CAPITAL
• PROBLEMATIC MINDSETS, BELIEFS & NARRATIVES
• RACISM & 'OTHERNESS'
• MINORITIES' LACK OF CONFIDENCE IN THE SYSTEM
• PROBLEMS RELATED TO SOCIO-ECONOMIC STATUS
• LACK OF ROLE MODELS & SUCCESS STORIES

POLITICAL/LEGAL ISSUES THEMES

• BARRIERS RELATED TO IMMIGRATION & CITIZENSHIP
• MINORITIES' LACK OF REPRESENTATION, POWER & ABILITY TO INFLUENCE POLICY
• LACK OF AWARENESS OF PROGRAMS & INCENTIVES
• LACK OF TRUST & CONFIDENCE IN SYSTEMS
• INEQUITABLE ACCESS TO RESOURCES & SUPPORT
• DISCRIMINATORY LAWS, LICENSING, REGULATION & OVERSIGHT (OR LACK THEREOF)
• LACK OF AWARENESS OF PROGRAMS & INCENTIVES
• ABSENCE OF LEGAL PROTECTIONS FOR MINORITIES
• INEQUITABLE ACCESS TO RESOURCES & SUPPORT"

BUSINESS/ECONOMIC ISSUES THEMES

• DISCRIMINATORY LENDING, EVALUATION & METRICS
• DISPARITY IN INCOME & ADVANTAGES
• PROBLEMS RELATED TO LENDER STAFFING
• LACK OF ROLE MODELS, MENTORS & SUCCESS STORIES
• SCARCITY & INEQUITABLE ACCESS TO RESOURCES & ASSISTANCE"

INFRASTRUCTURE/SCIENCE/TECH ISSUES THEMES

• DISCRIMINATORY SYSTEMS & PRACTICES
• INEQUITABLE ACCESS TO EDUCATION, TRAINING & SUPPORT
• LACK OF TRUST IN INFRASTRUCTURAL SYSTEMS
• LACK OF, OR SKEWED DATA".]

These are all of the categories that arose out of that problem map, and it provides a quick overview of what the stakeholder groups considered problematic in each of these five sectors.

And by separating issues in this way, it gives us an early indication of the types of solutions that might be required in each of these sectors. The map also helps us identify what we call feedback loops, a dynamic in which different issues connect, feed into, and amplify each other. Here, we see how attitudes, cultural norms, and systemic racism combine to affect or create discriminatory lending practices, metrics, as well as discriminatory laws, licensing, regulation, and oversight. And here, we see how a lack of and skewed data exacerbates problems in practically every area of the venture capital and funding industry. This is a good example of how surprises emerge when we leverage the knowledge within the system through stakeholder engagement. In this project, every single stakeholder group cited data as a keystone problem category, and the results of our research led Nasdaq and JPMorgan to immediately launch an initiative called Data for Good to help develop new, better metrics for funding, increased diligence, and accuracy in recording results, and the elimination of legacy redlining practices in data analysis.

[00:23:18 A slide is shown with the text:
"2. Mapping stakeholder relations"
"Mapping the relations of conflict between stakeholder groups (barriers to problem resolution) and relations of alignment (where near-term solutions will have broad support) shows us where the low-hanging fruit in the system resides".]

After mapping the problem in step one, step two takes a closer look at the complex stakeholder emotions and relations that underlie the problem and keep it stuck. There are countless stakeholder groups connected to and affected by any wicked problem, and these include both human and non-human groups. Part of what makes these problems wicked is the conflicting agendas among stakeholder groups. Many times, one group's fondest hope is another group's worst fear, and these relations of conflict are often the unseen barrier to problem resolution. But within any wicked problem, we also find relations of affinity and agreement. They aren't always obvious but they are the low-hanging fruit in the system. They show us where we can begin working immediately, creating solutions with broad stakeholder support. This enables us to chalk up quick wins and build bridges between stakeholder groups. Another key factor is understanding the uneven power relations among stakeholder groups and the way in which these imbalances undermine solutions. Every problem is different but this diagram shows the stakeholder group archetypes that we see in almost every wicked problem, and they can be plotted along a power continuum from little power and agency to a lot. Doing this reveals which groups are most adversely affected by the problem, which groups aren't affected at all, which groups really don't care about it, which groups might have the agency and will to help resolve it, and most importantly, which groups are benefiting from the problem and how much power do they have to thwart any solution to attempt to resolve it? And finally, it reveals which groups are invisible because either they literally have no voice or power, or they're simply indifferent to the problem.

Mapping these relations shows us where and why the problem is stuck, and it helps explain why solutions are failing. It also reveals strategies for building coalitions between key stakeholder groups that can disrupt entrenched power relations and open up opportunities for new and different interventions. So, we've worked with stakeholders in both online and in-person workshops with up to 80 people in multiple stakeholder groups, and our analysis of the data shows us where stakeholders are in agreement or conflict and lets us look for that low-hanging fruit in the system. Here, you see that this step validated what stakeholders told us in step one, that there's an urgent need for better data and more equitable funding, lending, and hiring practices. So, in mapping a system problem, this is the type of cross-reference we look for, and tells us we found a keystone issue.

Let's move on to the next step. Once we've mapped the problem and its complex stakeholder relations in the present, we next need to extend the problem frame into the distant past to understand how it evolved over the course of multiple decades to become wicked. The systems maps that emerge show the historic roots of the problem, which always reveals insights from the past that should be informing solutions in the present. But as we know, this rarely happens.

[00:26:54 A software update pop-up appears onscreen.]

Gosh. Sorry, guys, I've got a...

[00:27:10 A slide is shown with the text:
"3. Mapping the historical evolution of the problem"
"Reveals the historic "roots" of the problem; how multiple issues evolved and combined over long arcs of time to form the problem. This reveals insights from the past that can inform the present".]

So, after we've mapped the problem in the past, we next extend the problem frame into the distant future and we ask stakeholders to think deeply and creatively about that future by asking them what they want to transition toward.

[00:27:31 A slide is shown with the text:
"4. Future visioning"
"Helps stakeholders transcend their differences in the present by co-creating long-term visions of a future they want. Enables us to identify common ground that can inform solutions in the present".]

Here, groups co-create visions of long-term futures in which the problem has been resolved and everyday life has become more equitable, sustainable, and desirable. When stakeholder groups glimpse a future on which they more or less agree, it helps them transcend their differences in the present and work together toward that common future. Stakeholder visions can also become databases of ideas about the future that can inform tangible system solutioning in the present. So, we asked stakeholders to imagine the future within the context of everyday life at six different levels of scale: the household, the neighbourhood, the city, region, nation, and planet. Their perspectives are aggregated into a large future vision map that resembles the problem map from step one. We also take the same unedited stakeholder responses and cluster them around these emergent vision categories. So, these maps not only provide a vivid picture of the future that stakeholders want at different levels of scale, but they also contain countless concepts for solutions that can be implemented right now in the present. Because each response is coded to a specific stakeholder group, we can easily see where stakeholder visions are in alignment and agreement. And here's the thing, we always see more alignment in these future visions than we see differences. So, future visions from the Nasdaq project fell into three distinct categories: visions that centered around improving the quality of life, visions related to entrepreneurship and funding equity, and visions that contain tangible solution ideas that can be used in the present.

Now, because time is short, I'm going to skip what would be the next step, which is about designing for the years-long transition toward that desired future, and I'm going to go directly to the last step in which we design entire ecologies of system solutions to address a wicked problem. Now, this differs from traditional problem-solving approaches because these solution clusters are informed by both the present and the future. We developed a solutions matrix which challenges people to develop diverse solution ecologies. So, the vertical axis corresponds to those societal sectors from the problem map and challenges stakeholders to think specifically about where interventions should be situated. The categories in the horizontal axis correspond to the levels of everyday life that were used in the visioning exercise. This challenges stakeholders to develop holistic visions and think about the level of scale at which a solution would be most appropriate and effective. We developed this teaching example, working with the wicked problem of COVID-19 in the U.S. The solution ecology you see here is comprised of very diverse solution proposals in order to address as many key issues related to COVID-19 as possible.

We began building the cluster with three solution categories. Category one is about solutions that address deforestation and the origin of zoonotic diseases, category two looks at needing to increase self-sufficiency in households and neighbourhoods during a pandemic, and category three looks at solutions that address the economic vulnerability created by the pandemic. All of these issues and many more are part of the larger wicked problem of COVID-19. Now, note that specific solutions have been situated in different sectors at different levels of scale, and that the concepts for these solutions are different yet complementary. Now, this is a skill that needs to be developed when designing systems interventions, this complementarity. Once we developed a foundation cluster that can include both new and existing projects and initiatives, we added others around it to create a solution cluster and we populated all five societal sectors at six different levels of scale. Now, it's important to say that a group like yours might begin the process with a keystone policy concept but then begin to scaffold it with multiple other solutions to form a true ecology. So, notice that in this matrix, the connection between the projects has been explained and it's every bit as important as the solutions themselves, because only a solution cluster like this will have enough traction to destabilize a wicked problem and jumpstart the transition toward its resolution.

Okay, I'm nearly out of time, but I want to leave you with two final thoughts. The first is this: the approach I've outlined here is not a linear one-off process. Addressing a wicked problem is not like running a sprint. It's like running a marathon, or perhaps better put, a relay race. It's an ongoing cycle of problem mapping, future visioning, and system solutioning, and then we're waiting to see how the system has responded to our interventions.

And the last thing I'll say is that we think the accepted way of establishing metrics for success doesn't work very well when it comes to wicked problems. It usually involves small groups of experts defining narrow parameters that are imposed upon a system comprised of diverse stakeholders who will continue to have conflicting agendas, needs, and ideas about what success looks like. So, we're working to add another step to the approach in which each stakeholder group defines what successful resolution of the problem would look like in the near-term for them. Remember, they've already defined long-term success in the future vision.

Okay, that's it. There's a lot more to say about this approach. So, for those of you who are interested, you can find more information about transition design on our seminar website that has readings and downloadable materials, and everything we've written about the approach is also available on my academia.edu website. Thank you.

[00:34:41 Serge Bijimine appears in a separate video chat panel.]

(Applause)

Serge Bijimine: Thank you very much, Terry. That was excellent.

And before I jump to questions in the audience, I do have a question, and I have a little bit of a script here but I'm not going to follow that one. So, what you've described to me is something that is long-term, it's to solve a complicated problem, and we don't operate often in that kind of time, space, in solving public policy problems, at least within government. We're caught with the reality that you have to operate within the government's life cycle. So, how do we choose where we put our effort? Because I mean, I was thinking of housing as one, and just about every department is involved in housing in some way or another if you think of that systems approach. So, it might be too big a problem to start off with because you've got to demonstrate success to get people to buy into the approach. So, do you have a sense of how do we prioritize where we should put our first effort, shall we say?

Terry Irwin: Yeah, well, you are not going to be surprised at my answer, which is we probably shouldn't be determining it. I mean, designers work in a very similar way to policymakers. We are looking at a system, we're trying to decide where to begin, what the solutions ought to be, and I think what transition design is arguing is we need to begin with deep engagement with the stakeholders in the system, and when we map the system, the system is going to tell us where to begin. The system is going to show us where we can begin working right now on solutions that have broad support, but it's also, in mapping the system, going to show us where the biggest barriers to success are?

And the other thing I often say that makes people groan is that all of our societal organizations and structures work the same way. We're solving problems as quickly as we possibly can, and we're thinking in very short horizons of time. The system compels us to work and think that way even though we resist. But here's the irony, I think we don't do that in our individual lives. Anyone that has raised a child is thinking along multiple horizons, right? In this day and age or in this country, you're thinking about how to save for that college education so they can go to a place like where I am right now, and that means forgoing only making short-term decisions. We are juggling multiple timelines or we're thinking about our careers. And so, we do it individually, but collectively, we do not.

So, two more things I would say about that. We strongly believe that this issue of transition is so important that the continuity for that transition must reside in the system. So, perhaps, part of the work of solutioning is to bring resources and approaches to the community so that that continuity is held from within. We experts will still be offering solution ideas, policy ideas, but hopefully those policy ideas will be informed by having the deep engagement with the stakeholders and being able to map and see where the greatest leverage points for change are. But if we go back to the metaphor of a relay race, that baton needs to be held within the community so that outside experts like us can come or go. I've been a designer for 50 years, and for probably 30 of those years, I was one of the experts that would study a system for a minute, we'd go back to the office, we'd cook up a solution, and we'd hand it back. And almost immediately, it would begin to unravel, and I'm convinced it's because we didn't have a way for deeply understanding the system and we couldn't become experts in a minute of visitation, metaphorically a minute.

So, I think part of our work has to be in how we build the continuity within the system that will enable us to dip in and out, that if you map the system, you're going to see so many different kinds of solutions that are needed. Every time a regime changes or every time a funding organization changes their flavour of the month, there will be a way to fund that particular solution because you have the system map in front of you. So, multiple solutions from multiple different fronts can always be in there, but they're all working toward that long-term vision. I don't know if I explained that very well. Did it make sense?

Serge Bijimine: Yeah, it sounded like a wicked problem (laughs).

So, I guess this is one of the problems that we have within public service. I'm going to turn to one of the questions in the audience, which is it takes a long-term thinking approach to solve wicked problem but we're always changing our actors, and you kind of addressed that a little bit in your answer. What are the, in your experience, in looking at organizations where the actors change... so, a lot of times, I would say that, this is me ad-libbing at this point, NGOs, people tend to stay a lot longer, and so the actors don't change, but in large corporations, in government, you have a lot of churn in this system, or that system, in the organization.

Terry Irwin: Yeah.

Serge Bijmine: So, how do you try and manage that churn so that you can keep moving forward with this kind of design thinking, in your history that you've observed, anyway?

Terry Irwin: Well, I think that is the million-dollar question. And again, I'm going to offer up a not very satisfactory answer. So, systems theorist Donella Meadows, and if you're not familiar with her work, I highly recommend checking her out. She wrote a famous paper called 12 Leverage Points for Change, and what she looked at was the most powerful ways to intervene in a system to make sweeping change and she mapped them from least effective to the most effective, and you won't be surprised to hear that the least effective ways are to tinker with numbers or make little tiny changes. Once you start moving up to more effective levels, it's not about making material changes, it's about changing things that are invisible. It's about changing our behaviours, and the most powerful leverage point for change is changing mindsets, right? So, one of the most wicked problems, I think, today, is our propensity to think in very short horizons of time and want quick results. So, we've all experienced having new leaders come in to an organization and they want to make their mark, and so let's wipe the slate clean and start over. That is a mindset that really needs to change.

Now, we think many things need to be done to encourage that mindset change, to encourage the behaviour change, but I do think having a map of this system that preserves stakeholder voices is one approach. We worked very closely on the Nasdaq project with Penn State's Center for Policy Change, and one of the things they said to us, they do deep qualitative and quantitative research, ours obviously is qualitative, they took our enormous systems map, some of which are 12 feet by five feet high, and they put them up on the board and they said, what this does is it keeps the voices alive so we can keep coming back to these over the course of a year to zero in on different sections. Now, if mapping the system became an ongoing exercise, then I think it's one way to keep it ever present within that churn. It becomes, maybe, a centre of gravity, but it has to be incorporated like our exercise. But I think too, leadership needs to change. We need to change our models of leadership so that when you come into a system, it's not about sweeping the slate clean. It's about observing the system long enough so that you do no harm. I mean, that's kind of like the doctor's oath, isn't it? First, do no harm.

I know when I was hired 15 years ago to lead the School of Design, the first thing I did was try to get more money and space for people because I figured that would do no harm, and I didn't understand the system well enough yet to even begin to intervene, but that takes patience. You have to be willing to step aside from traditional roles and pictures of leadership so that you're dancing in a system, and when you come into a system, you're trying to learn how it works before you're making that change. So, it's both changing mindsets and, we think, developing tools and approaches that will help change behaviours and mindsets. So, you're working bottom-up and top-down, and we just keep coming back to, the first thing you need to do is understand the system better and you need to map it and you need to talk to the people in the system. Not a very satisfactory answer, I know.

Serge Bijimine: Great, actually good answer, I thought.

I would say that the... so, the next question up here, again, and I'll ad-lib a bit, so here in Canada, we operate our system, it's called the Westminster model, and so ministerial accountability, departments operate under them. And so, that just naturally leads to silos. And so, how do we incorporate that kind of process in that kind of culture of silo policymaking? And how do you structure to get around that? And I can tell you that this policy community that's listening to you today struggles with this every day.

Terry Irwin: Well, the good news and the bad news is we all struggle with that. I mean, silos are the way our infrastructure works. I'm embedded in one of the biggest silos that exists, disciplinary silos in a university, and I can tell you that until we start changing the rules of the system, which is another leverage point on Donella Meadow's list of leverage points, to incentivize breaking out of the silos, nobody will break out of the silos. Now, each industry has its own set of incentives. At the university, we are governed by tenure and promotion, and you have to publish or perish, right? But if you're doing transdisciplinary research, you can't find a place to publish it. So, right there, that de-incentivizes going across silos. And if you don't publish, then your career is affected. So, one of the first things to do is try to tinker with the rules that will enable people to work across silos. I don't know if it involves the creation of new roles like silo ambassadors. You know how I was talking about we need ambassadors who, within a community, can broker connections between existing and new projects? We need people that rove throughout the system and that can begin to make these connections.

And I would be doubtful if everyone in the room there today hadn't had a good experience, at some point in their career, collaborating with somebody from a completely different discipline, but it's usually time and money that keep us from collaborating, because I think people are natural born collaborators. Smart people who want to make positive change know, in their bones, that they have to play with people with other perspectives in order to make that happen. But when you're under intense deadlines and limited budgets, you just keep your head down, your butt up, and you keep doing what you're doing. We've all been there. So, again, it takes a few brave people that can begin to swim upstream, but it also takes leaders who understand the problem and can begin to work from the top-down, creating new rules and new ways for people to traverse across those silos, and funding organizations too, I think, have to be on board with this.

Now, if we go back to that matrix, that solutions matrix that I showed on COVID-19 there at the end, one thing we've talked to some funders about is if you've got an ecology of very diverse solutions that are complementary and connected, you can get a whole ecology of funders to fund them. So, you have a lot more diversity, a lot more potential, and you could say to each of them, well, all you have to do is fund this little piece here, but in doing that, you're actually funding systems-level change. So, that's not a direct example but we have to start coming up with innovative solutions like that, because it's not just policymakers, it's everyone. We're all stuck in our discipline. We're all stuck in our silos, and unless we figure out ways to break out of those really soon, we can't address any of the wicked problems confronting us, and I think one of the biggest wicked problems of all right now is social and political polarization. We can't solve any problem because we can't talk to each other. So, there isn't anything more urgent, I think, than talking to other, whether it's another department, another organization, another discipline. That is the work of the 21st century, in a way.

Serge Bijimine: Again, good answer, showing the complexity of the issue.

I've got a question from the screen but I have another question for you first, which had to do with stakeholders. How do you find the stakeholders? So, obviously, there are interest groups and there are representatives of stakeholders, lobbying organizations, those kinds of things, but how do you actually get to the stakeholders? I'm thinking now, homelessness. So, those that do not have an address, how do you get them into the room?

Terry Irwin: Well, yeah, every single question is a good one. I would say the harder work that precedes that hard work is first making a list of who the stakeholders are, because remember that power continuum slide. So, you not only want to get at the people who are being hugely affected by the problem, and you can usually get to them, we think, via the community organizations or the activists who are working in those communities already, but you also have to find the long list of stakeholder groups that are somehow connected to the problem but they're not interested in solving it or they're benefiting from it, and that would probably include landlords. It would include people in different departments of the city. We have our... the students in our transition design seminar pick a hypothetical wicked problem every semester in Pittsburgh to work on, and one of the things they have to do is list every stakeholder group they could possibly imagine that might be connected to that problem. So, first you have to look at the list, and then you have to ask, who's benefiting from this problem? Who's got the potential to maybe solve it but they just don't care, for one reason or another? Who are the groups that care about it and are working to try and solve it right now but they probably don't have enough resources or power to do it? And then, who are the groups, you can always... the most visible are always the groups that are adversely affected by the problem.

But unless we understand the motivation of the other powerful groups that don't care or don't want to see it solved, nothing's going to change. So, once you kind of get the list and you start looking at the power dynamics, then it's a networking exercise. I would say in a scenario like homelessness, getting to the homeless is going to be one of the easiest things to do. Getting to the landlords who are... we got buildings going up all over Pittsburgh that are not necessarily mixed use. They just knocked down an entire city block of subsidized housing about three years ago, blocks from our house. They knocked it down, these people were shipped out to the outskirts, and the lot sat vacant for three years until they got the highest bidder, and then Whole Foods came in and put a huge complex there. So, getting to the people that are actually exacerbating the problem is the harder part, but, I'll use Nasdaq as an example. If you think about a lack of funding for minority entrepreneurs, of course, venture capitalists are the people kind of creating that problem, but we had groups of them who are willing to show up. And that's the thing about humans, they surprise you, don't they? We act one way collectively, but within any group, you will find people on the fringe who say, yeah, this is a problem, I'm involved in this problem. And if you can get them to show up in a workshop, you're going to get incredibly valuable perspectives from those folks.

So, you're trying to... it's a networking phase. It's a long phase, but you have to first get the list, then you have to figure out who to network with to begin to bring them in. Now, we recognize that the other thing that's really necessary, and I'm hoping we can find a PhD student soon to work on this, we have a PhD in transition design, we need to find field techniques so we can get stakeholder feedback outside of the workshop format. But here's the thing about a workshop format, when you get these groups, each stakeholder group works on their own and they're brainstorming issues. You get twice the data when people are working in a group because one person's answer spurs thinking, and everybody's synapses are just firing like crazy. So, you get mountains of data. So, we have to figure out a better way than interviews and surveys to get the information from the system, all things we're working on right now.

Serge Bijimine: Okay, great. Thank you.

I have one last question which is, are there some policy areas that you've observed that have had some success in tackling issues with this methodology? So, do you have a couple of examples of... obviously climate change hasn't been solved, but are there areas that you've seen some success with this approach?

Terry Irwin: This approach is new. So, I'm going to sit here and say no, we haven't. It's a long process. We'd love to work with policy folks. We haven't yet. But I will say, apropos of climate change, I'll probably get a lot of pushback from this, but the SDGs are a perfect example of siloization. They're silos. That's a fragmented approach. So, no I haven't, but we're a research organization and we are happy to work with folks.

Serge Bijimine: Okay, excellent. Well, thanks. Well, with those words, thank you very much, Terry. Thanks for joining us from Pittsburgh.

Terry Irwin: Thank you.

Serge Bijimine: For me, myself, this is kind of a very insightful approach. It just demonstrates the complexity of finding a solution to a complex problem. So, it is, I would say, refreshing to hear that there's that thinking going on. So, how we apply it, that's the... well, that's the job of everybody who's listening to you. So, that's great.

Terry Irwin: Absolutely.

Serge Bijimine: Thank you so much.

Terry Irwin: Yeah, thank you for having me. Bye.

Serge Bijimine: Bye bye.

(Applause)

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