What if instead of racing to solve problems, you paused to map the entire system first? In this episode, Hannah sits down with Sheryl Cababa—author of Closing the Loop: Systems Thinking for Designers and founder of Optimistic Design—to talk about what it really means to design for complexity. From AI adoption to organizational policy changes, Sheryl brings a systems lens to the decisions leaders make (often too hastily) in fast-moving environments.
They explore how design leaders can avoid short-sighted thinking, better understand stakeholder dynamics, and use accessible tools to facilitate organizational change that actually sticks. Whether you're planning your back-to-office strategy or rethinking your product's impact, this conversation will leave you re-evaluating how your decisions ripple through the system.
Resources from this episode:
- Subscribe to The Product Manager newsletter
- Connect with Sheryl on LinkedIn
- Sheryl’s book — Closing the Loop: Systems Thinking for Designers
- Check out Optimistic Design
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Hannah Clark (00:01):
Imagine you're holding a marble and
there's a paper cup aboutthree arms lengths away.
Your task is to toss themarble into the cup, and
if you get it in, you win.
But how likely are you tosink the marble into the
cup every time you toss it?
Even upon first attempt,you'd recognize how many
factors go into a successfulthrow, like how hard you're
throwing and how well you aim.
(00:22):
This is called systems thinking,and it's a thought process
that takes into account thecomplexity surrounding a
specific challenge, as opposedto linear thinking, which is
like saying, "oh, it's easy,just throw the marble and it'll
land in the cup." And while thismetaphor is obviously a huge
oversimplification, the crux ofit is that complex circumstances
call for more holisticapproach to problem solving.
My guest today is SherylCababa, author of Closing
the Loop (00:44):
Systems Thinking for Designers, and the
founder of Optimistic Design.
In this conversation, Sherylapplies the principles
of systems thinking toorganizational change.
In other words, makingleadership decisions based on
the nuances and complexitiesof real people in a time
of dizzying change, and noton reductionistic or overly
optimistic assumptions.
She also shares someuseful tools for leaders
(01:04):
and designers to developbetter, more functional
systems—whether that's aproduct feature, a team, or
even an entire organization.
Let's jump in.
Oh, by the way, wehold conversations
like this every week.
So if this sounds interestingto you, why not subscribe?
Okay, now let's jump in.
Welcome back to TheProduct Manager podcast.
I'm here with Sheryl Cababa.
(01:25):
Sheryl, thank you so muchfor joining us today.
Sheryl Cababa (01:27):
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Hannah Clark (01:29):
So first of all, can you tell us a little
bit about your backgroundand how you developed your
focus on systems thinking?
Sheryl Cababa (01:34):
Yeah, so my background is as a product
designer and design researcherand strategist, and.
I think when I moved fromproduct design into design
strategy, I was findingthat I was doing a lot of
work at the front end of thefunnel for organizations.
And so I've been adesign consultant now
for about 15 years.
So there was this moment intime where I was working a
(01:56):
lot with technology companieson emerging tech like VR
and AR and things like that.
But I was also doing projectsin global development,
so global health that.
You see a lot of likephilanthropies developing
or funding efforts in placesthat are in the global south
to solve problems there.
Things like eradicatingmalaria and things like that.
(02:19):
And I was feeling like inboth spaces in different
ways that the design processfor me was falling short.
I've always described it ashuman-centered design, and so
the idea of, designing firstand foremost for end users
and making sure that you workiteratively to engage them
within the process of designsaves lots of time and money.
(02:41):
Obviously, when you'redeveloping expensive things
and you want to make sure thatyou're designing the thing
right before you build it.
But I was seeing that therewas a lack of thinking around,
for example, if we're thinkingabout technologies that aren't
heavily integrated into, let'ssay like society today, it's
really important to think aboutlike unintended consequences.
(03:04):
It's also really importantto think about with intent
about the kinds of usecases that you're thinking
about those technologiesshould be solving for.
Even if it's still likea wide world and you just
want to figure out what anew technology is good for.
And then on the globaldevelopment side, it sometimes
felt like there was some lackingcultural knowledge or there
(03:24):
were people from Western placeslike coming into places in the
global south and not havinga great handle on how things
work in a place like that.
And so you'd see a lotof interventions failing
because there wasn't agreat understanding of
how communities operated.
Either like culturally oreconomically or what have you.
(03:46):
And so I started doing a lot ofreading around systems thinking
specifically Donella Meadow'sbook, thinking in Systems.
I found really inspiring thisidea that, you expand your lens
towards thinking more broadlywhen you're looking at like the
world as it exists today andthe problems that are inherent.
And how you can analyzethat from a systems
(04:08):
perspective to think abouthow potential solutions
or ways of changing thingsmight affect things broadly.
And that means like a lotbroader notion of who your
stakeholders are, as wellas thinking about different
forces, like what people andgroups are incentivized by.
So that's the long story short.
That's where I started reallythinking about systems thinking.
(04:30):
But as a designer, I waslike, I don't know how to
actually integrate this in mywork in a real practical way.
So I started experimenting withdifferent frameworks and things
like that, and I. The result ofthat is the book that I wrote is
a reflection of my own journeythrough the intersection of
design and systems thinking.
It's the book I wish I hadwhen I was going on this
(04:51):
journey to begin with.
And so hopefully it'suseful for other people too.
Hannah Clark (04:55):
Absolutely.
Yeah, I think there's alot of really interesting
concepts in it.
I think we'll definitely tapinto a few of them as we moving
through and then we'll haveyour book linked towards the
end in the description box.
'cause I think it'sreally worth checking out.
So today we're gonna befocusing on applying systems,
thinking specifically in thecontext of organizational
change, especially sincewe're in this kind of a
shifting tech landscape era.
(05:18):
So to kick us off, what haveyou found to be the biggest
challenges around organizationsthat are trying to implement
systems thinking during atime of organizational change?
Sheryl Cababa (05:26):
Yeah, I think first off, systems thinking
and organizational change andorganizational design go hand
in hand for many decades.
I did my little deep dive intothe origins of systems thinking,
and you have really foundationalbooks like Peter Senge's, the
Fifth Discipline, and reallythe relationship is super
strong because organizationsare a dynamic set of different
(05:50):
stakeholders and forces.
Many of whom have differentincentives and ways of working,
and there's culture involved.
And basically every aspectyou can think of when it
comes to, let's say, steepanalysis, which is social,
technological, economic,environmental, and political.
And I think when, if anorganization is rightfully
(06:12):
thinking about usingsystems, thinking methods
to think about how to createorganizational change.
I think there are, somekey sort of tenets and
frameworks to engage in.
One of the ones that I referto a lot is Peter Senge.
Has this kind of like principlethat, and I always say this
wrong because I think it's, Imight be saying it backwards,
but the idea holds true.
(06:32):
It's like today's solutionsare tomorrow's problems.
So constantly thinking abouthow the dynamic forms of
problem solving means thatyou're, you might have to
anticipate or mitigate forthe kinds of problems that
problem solving might cause.
I think that's areally important thing.
Causality is like a reallyimportant concept for people
(06:53):
and practitioners to think aboutas they're looking to integrate
systems thinking as what are thethings that kind of happen as a
result of either decision makingor problem solving that you
might have to account for later.
So that's one thing.
If folks are thinkingabout systems thinking as
a method to hold that ideabehind how they approach it.
I also think like in termsof the shifting technology
(07:16):
landscape, I think, it'sreally about interrogating
our assumptions about emergingtechnologies and, knowing, like
your audience is oriented aroundlike product design development.
I. I think organizationalleadership tests see either
only the good or harm to new totechnology, just depending on
what kind of organization it is.
If it's a technology thatwe're developing, there
(07:37):
can only be good to it.
There's possible greatthings will come of it.
If it's a kind of technologythat an organization
is thinking about usingor being forced to use.
I think there's a lot ofskepticism and there's
oh my gosh, this is like.
How can this harmour organization?
That happening todaywith AI, right?
It's or not developingAI, they're looking for
opportunities to use it.
(07:58):
Or you have like companiesand organizations being like,
we don't wanna use this.
It feels like there's verylittle control and then the
kind of like companies thatare developing it are like,
oh my God, this is like gamechanging for everybody on earth.
And I think it's really, it'saround thinking about, how
can we with intentionalityconsider the potential outcomes
(08:22):
of using a technology ordeveloping a technology, right?
If you're an organization thatis using new technologies,
AI is a good example.
I do a lot of work in educationand I think it was EdWeek just
a few months ago, released asurvey of K 12 school districts.
Found that the majorityof teachers said they
(08:42):
weren't clear on the AIpolicies of their district.
For example, I'm like, thisis a big deal because a lot
of students are just using AI.
A lot of teachers are using it.
And I think for an issuelike that, AI or systems
thinking is a goodapproach for unpacking with
(09:03):
intentionality, the problemsthat AI is meant to solve.
So you can create atheory of change about.
How this particular technologywill affect your organization.
You can look at the statusquo of what are the problems
today in your organization,let's say like you are running
a school district, and whereare the sort of points of
(09:24):
intervention that when wethink about AI as a possibility
that it would have an impact.
Then creating sort ofprinciples for use.
In addition to that, you canuse systems thinking methods
I use the Futures wheel a lot,for example, to unpack potential
consequences both intendedand unintended as an approach.
(09:44):
And I think it helps youmake decisions about your
organization with intentionalityin a way that you might not.
Have thought about beforeand that you can do this with
intention instead of just thingsbeing used organically and
like finding out the hard way.
Hannah Clark (09:58):
Yeah.
I have so many reactions tothis right now 'cause I, this
is really consistent withsomething that has really
been on my mind and a lotof conversations that I've
had recently with colleaguesand other folks about how.
We're in this kind of discoveryphase a time of really extreme
excitement over AI, and we'rein this period where there's
shifting sands in which newsolutions, like you said,
create kind of problems intheir wake or problems to
(10:21):
be solved in their wake.
It's not really like a cure-allsolution is just, we're moving
the goalposts around a littlebit for where exactly we need
to be focusing on, correctingdifferent things that have moved
as we make new developments.
This is actually also remindingme a lot of a conversation we
had some time ago with SamanthaGonzalez around I. Ethical
product strategy and having toreally audit your approach when
(10:43):
you're in this space around.
This was recorded before AIwas even popular, by the way.
Like we were talking allabout how it's so important
for product leaders to bereally evaluating the impacts
unintended and intendedof their product strategy.
And that's something atthis point that's you're
relying on product leadersto take that approach.
(11:04):
Of their own volition.
So yeah, it's, it is avery interesting time
to be in this space.
But I wanna diginto this further.
'cause I think that thisis, like you said, this
is so applicable to thespace that we're in,
the time that we're in.
So in closing the loop,you're talking about expanding
stakeholder considerationsbeyond just end users.
So I'd like to elaborateon that a little bit.
How can design leaders identifyand map the broader stakeholder
(11:27):
ecosystem when they'replanning organizational change?
What exactly do you meanoutside of just the end user.
Sheryl Cababa (11:32):
I love that you mentioned like that product
leaders are expected to doall of this kind of work on
their own volition, which isthat's putting a lot on the
shoulders of practitioners whoreally are oriented around just
wanting to make things work.
They're building somethingis fundamentally like a
build type of discipline and.
(11:56):
They just needthe thing to work.
And then all of a suddenwe're just oh yeah, you
gotta be thinking aboutunintended consequences.
You have to be all thesedifferent stakeholders.
You have to be thinking aboutall these different people,
like beyond just end users.
So I, I'm just acknowledgingthat's not super easy, right?
Yeah.
And it's a really bigtask, which is one reason
(12:16):
I try to like, engage inthose kinds of activities.
In that kind of thinking in areally accessible way, which is
like you should be able to dolike a one hour workshop where
you do some of this analysisand then try to figure out like,
are there takeaways from this?
So when I talk about somethinglike stakeholder mapping, it's
basically in many ways, likeawareness is the first step.
(12:39):
You might be thinking,especially if you're in
product organization, thatthe main stakeholder you're
thinking about is an end userand what their experience is.
When they're in themoment of using a product
that you're designing.
And we test productsin that way too.
It's oh yeah, howdo, is this usable?
How can we ensure that it'squality, experience, et cetera.
(13:00):
But there's all these potentialkind of repercussions.
So go back to my work ineducation and with optimistic.
It's we have product teamswho are in ed tech and
they're developing maybesoftware courseware for.
A teacher to use or deployor for students to walk
through, but they're not alwaysexplicitly thinking about all
(13:23):
the different stakeholders inthe system for whom there might
be incentives and they mightnot even be thinking that much
about, to be honest students.
And what students might needfrom these systems because maybe
they're not the primary user,maybe they're secondary users.
So one way that I try to getcertain of product teams to
engage in the syncing is to.
Put your end user in the centerof radiating like ecosystem map.
(13:47):
And you're gonna think aboutprimary sort of relationships,
secondary relationshipsand tertiary relationships.
And think about who are allthe people who have an impact
on that student's experience?
And then you can do this aswell for your organization.
So for your product team,who are all of the primary,
secondary, and tertiarystakeholders that we
(14:07):
should be thinking about?
And you might be thinking about.
It might surface for you thatyour buyers are really different
than your end users, or thatyou have a huge intersection
and are affected by regulationor by policy makers and
like how do you understandwhat their incentives are?
And oftentimes what this meansis bringing them into the mix.
(14:28):
So you might want to bedoing like interviews
with policy makers oreven engaging with them.
In workshops or something likethat, and we do like a lot
of that in our own practice.
And I think that goes a longway in just gaining alignment
for what's the broaderpicture in which we need to
be thinking about our productand kind of the impact it has
(14:50):
on the world and not just theimpact it has on end users.
Hannah Clark (14:53):
Okay.
I wanna dig a little bit deeperinto, 'cause you've mentioned
a little bit about incentives.
When we're talking aboutkind of an ecosystem of
stakeholders, there's powerdynamics at play as well.
How do you see design teams.
Analyzing and navigatingdynamics like this, especially
now that we're talking aboutmore dynamic changes that are
happening rapidly over time.
Sheryl Cababa (15:13):
Yeah, I think it's really about understanding,
if you're designing experiencesfor end users, you have to
think about what are theymotivated by beyond just
their use of your product.
Also, what are they affected byin terms of the incentives of
other people who are involved?
So if you have a student, forexample, using courseware,
(15:36):
it's like they wanna learnthrough the courseware, right?
But at the same time, I. They'renot necessarily the people
who are buying the courseware.
So the people who arebuying the course Rev, like
very different incentives.
They're incentivized by okay,is this system cheap and does
it integrate well with ourexisting digital ecosystem?
And then you have, teachers orinstructors or what have you,
(15:59):
and they are motivated by.
Okay.
Does this make my job easier?
Does this make my life easier?
And when we think about thosekinds of incentives, do they
actually align with the kindsof things that result in good
student outcomes, for example?
And then on top of that,there's organizational
leadership that are completelyincentivized by other things.
(16:22):
And I think it's justmaking sure that.
People let you have a goodunderstanding of where
people want to be and whatthey want to accomplish.
And I think it's, youmight not always get
like a win-win situation.
And I think that's where thingsget complicated, but at least
(16:43):
you can acknowledge that.
And I think, yeah, there's the,these kind of other dynamics
too that come up when wetalk and think about power.
We oftentimes do in someways self-reflection with
product teams that we workwith because we're like,
okay, what are the powerdynamics with you, for example?
And where you sit in thesystem, you're not just like an
(17:05):
outside observer of the system.
You have your own incentivesas well that are driven by
things like quarterly profitor where your funding is
coming from and what arethe kinds of things that.
Your funders are demanding,especially that you might
have friction with, andhow do you resolve that?
We recently did this projectcalled Modernizing Math, and
(17:27):
you can actually look at it.
It's on modernizing math.comand it is really around like
the future of math education.
And one of the most interestingthings that I felt like I
took away from that was, itwas a futures thinking and
systems thinking project where.
We were working basicallywith middle school students
to think about what would youwant out of math education
for 20 years from now?
(17:48):
And we're thinking aboutdifferent technologies and
different scenarios thatwould exist at that time.
And one thing that constantlycame up was they were like, when
it comes to AI, like they don'twanna be just like users of.
AI or any other importanttechnologies, like I wanna be
able to make that technology,like I wanna be in the room and
they will point out like, peoplewho look like me are not in
(18:11):
the room, and you're doing thiswork with mostly black and brown
students and they're like, weknow who's making AI right now.
Not representative of who I am.
How do we change it so thatI can get in that room and
not just be like a userof these things that are
coming and trying to figureout like, how would we use
this in math education?
I want to think about matheducation in terms of like,
(18:35):
how can I be empowered toactually create it or create
things in a way that is not aslike super centralized the way
it is now, where like thesecompanies, where there's very
few people are designing thesetechnologies for everyone else.
I thought that was just likesuch a clever way for the
kids to be thinking aboutthis as well as just it
made you sit up and just goyeah, kids are really smart.
(18:57):
Like they, their systemthinkers inherently, I think,
and bringing it to that,even though that's not how we
necessarily post it to them,was really interesting exercise.
Hannah Clark (19:06):
Yeah.
What I'm taking away from thatis just really challenging
the assumption that theresources that you have.
That you're designingfor are not static.
Like how do you designa system in which you're
facilitating and empoweringstakeholders to move dynamically
throughout your organization?
And so that, yeah I, that's areally interesting takeaway to
(19:28):
think about it, not just, who'sa user now may not only want
to become a user in the future.
I feel like we could reallydig into just anything
here, but we'll keep moving.
Let's say we're talking aboutAI adoption and platform shifts.
How would you say that systemthinking can be helpful in
avoiding common pitfalls?
You describe a systemarchetype called success to
(19:49):
the successful in the bookand some other systemic traps.
If you wouldn't mind justsummarizing what success and
successful means and then justhow can we use systems thinking
to mitigate some of these kindof tendencies for organizations
to create we mentioned before,unintended consequences.
Sheryl Cababa (20:05):
Yeah.
I love that she broughtup systems archetype.
Sometimes I myself forgetabout them because like
it's something that DanellaMeadows talks about a lot and
it's actually like a reallygood way to understand like
tangible versions of systems.
So archetypes are a waythat system dynamics happen
(20:28):
and there's a few verynotable archetypes, success
successful is one of them.
And a way that's oftendescribed as the rich get
richer and the poor get poorer.
And you can think aboutthat as we also described
that as vicious cycle.
And I think it's aboutthinking about ab an
abstract concept like that.
Oh, a vicious cycle.
(20:48):
Are there like vicious cyclesin our ways of doing things
where we're maybe incentivizingthe wrong things or it's.
Counterintuitive, whatdo they call those?
Perverse incentives, right?
Or, yeah.
We're rewarding certainthings that are actually
resulting in an outcomethat we don't wanna see.
Hannah Clark (21:08):
Okay.
I have a perfectexample of this.
Sheryl Cab (21:10):
Yeah, let's hear it.
Hannah Clark (21:11):
Overdraft fees, I think is a great example of this
to penalize people who don'thave money by making them pay
more money, which prevents themfrom becoming ultimately better
customers in a banking context.
So something like that in whichyou're I can see the short term
thinking for it, but it's, yeah,it seems like it's one of those
archetypes that's just like aself perpetuating and everybody
(21:32):
loses kind of situation.
Sheryl Cababa (21:34):
That's such a good example.
And so a lot of systemsthinking frameworks, there's
like systems thinking frameworkabout where you create
causal loops for things.
If you created a causalloop for that, you would.
Exactly understand why thisis unsustainable uhhuh.
And at the end of theday, it's about are
these forces sustainable?
And yeah, if you overdraftfees are, just sending people
(21:55):
spiraling and there's basically,it's a race to the bottom
that's a sustainable system andthey're, it's like worthwhile to
think about what are differentpotential solutions for this?
An example I use from like sortof city policy sometimes like
plastic bags, because this,there's no wrong answer here,
but it does help organizationsmaybe think about what if
(22:20):
we're trying to institute apolicy, like what are the actual
long-term outcomes we want?
So some plastic bag policies.
There have been studies thatshow when there's a plastic bag
ban that people buy more plasticbags for just things like lining
their trash cans and things likethat rather than just using the
reusable or the plastic bagsthat come from the supermarket.
(22:42):
And the problem with that isthe sort of garbage bags you're
buying, those use more plastic.
So is the goal toreduce the use of.
Plastic bags that you'regiving away for free, or is
the goal to reduce the use ofoverall plastic entirely in
the long term and it's likeforces organizations to think
about what are the choiceswe're making about that?
Hannah Clark (23:03):
Yeah.
Okay.
I'm so glad you broughtthat up because I have often
thought the same thing.
Where in which.
You're either, because howmany times do people go
to the store, forget theirplastic bag, or forget their
reusable bag and buy anotherreusable bag, which is going
to go into another pile?
Because those bags areone of the least useful.
They have a one purpose.
They can't be reusedwith garbage bags.
They can't be used aslike food containers.
(23:26):
They're really onlyserve the one purpose.
And those I'm sure arejust absolutely the worst
as far as by gradability.
So it's just to me like I'mthinking there's only a few
grocery stores in my area thathave just started using paper
bags in lieu of the reusableones, which to me is kinda
like it's an obvious choice.
That's probably the firstthing that people are
gonna opt for if they.
Sheryl Cababa (23:46):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's really interestingwhen you start like being
intentional about surfacingthose things and yeah, you can
use systems thinking frameworksto kind of surface and think
about what is our theory ofchange when it comes to this?
Is the impact we're seekingto use less plastic overall.
And is this goingto lead to that?
(24:07):
And you can work backwardsfrom that too, or is it,
we just want to reduce thenumber of plastic bags?
Is that the metric?
And it makes you moreintentional too about metrics.
I feel like in my book, I didn'twrite enough about metrics.
I, I, another edition comesup, I'll write more about it.
I do think like sometimeswe measure the wrong things
and a lot of organizationsare guilty of that too.
(24:28):
So I think it's like thinkingabout what are the long-term
outcomes that you want and howconstantly mapped that in a way
that even the small decisionsyou're making, you can keep
that in the back of your mind.
Hannah Clark (24:42):
I, and I think this is really relevant
now, especially with AI.
Obviously in my capacity,I'm pretty heavily in the
content space and we're lookingat this as well, in which
old metrics that have beenlong clung to have suddenly
overnight become obsolete.
Like it used to be a measure ofproductivity and of performance
to just look at content volumeand like volume of production.
(25:04):
And now volume is.
A little saturated, there'sit, there's really more of a
emphasis on quality of outputand how can you measure the
actual impact of what you'reputting out, rather than just
blasting out as many itemsas possible and then just
hoping that they'll perform.
Yeah I think that this is likea, it's a really important
thing, as a main takeawayfor this conversation is to
(25:26):
really be evaluating, it'snot just about what you're
doing, but what's the intent?
What are you trying toachieve with what you're
investing in here?
And being really intentionalwith how you're mapping out
the pathway to get there.
Okay.
So I wanna talk a littlebit about something that you
mentioned in your book againabout designers as facilitators
rather than solution creators.
I wanna talk about that alittle bit and what exactly
(25:46):
you mean by facilitator roleversus solutions creators.
I think that we've long thoughtabout designers as solutions
creators, so how do you kindadescribe that change in mindset
and what are some of theprocesses that you'd suggest
to support that kind of atransition in the organization?
Sheryl Cababa (26:02):
It's interesting because I've, I spent the first
half of my career as a productdesigner, and then I moved into
becoming a design researcherand design strategist, and
I do feel like we're at apoint in time where I feel
like the practice of productdesigner UX design is starting
to become really commoditizedespecially in the, I don't
(26:25):
know, more like productionkind of roles or like junior
design roles or what have you.
This has everything to do withAI as well and as well as things
like design systems, right?
Design systems are meant tomake everybody's jobs easier,
but I do feel like everythingbecomes systematized in a
way that it's oh, what doesthat mean for designers?
(26:49):
As practitioners?
Really, at the end of theday, as I'm thinking about
educating future designers.
I think being able to have astrategic lens on how decisions
are made and how maybe weeducate others or think
strategically about how thingsget made and built is maybe a
(27:10):
better like long-term spot tobe in, which is like the area
in which I work, which is justthinking about, how do we bring
together different stakeholdersfor problem solving purposes.
And basically facilitate andmake explicit the decision
making or the broadening ofthe lens that design can help
(27:33):
facilitate, which is, yeah,things like making explicit,
a theory of change, makingexplicit, like what does a
systems map analyzing today,and where the intervention
points, where can we look topotentially problem solve?
How do we imagine the future?
In a way that, we canarticulate through design.
(27:54):
So I, in my book, I write alot about, I don't write a
lot about it, but at the end Iwrite about speculative design
because I do think there isan intersection with thinking
and systems and being able tocreate provocations around what
the future might look like andwhat the future might hold.
And that's what I think aboutwhen I think about design
as an act of facilitation.
(28:15):
It's like, how can we.
Help people make moreexplicit their ideas, whether
it's organizations we'reworking with or various
stakeholders who are comingtogether to problem solve.
We would do a lot of work inmy studio with philanthropies
and thinking about where todirect their investments.
And design is actually a verygood tool for facilitating those
(28:38):
kinds of conversations becauseone, we can use like our.
Visual communication skills tocreate frameworks, principles,
et cetera, for decision making.
But we can also dodesign concepts, right?
So even if we're not buildinglike a shippable thing, it's
about how can we imagine thefuture through artifacts that
(29:00):
are around what might screenslook like in the future?
Or how might people movethrough a journey of using
different kinds of products?
These are all acts ofdesign that I think get
me really excited becausethey're used for like really
upstream decision making.
And so I encourage anyonewho's designer and if if
(29:21):
you're like a product designer,there are ways of integrating
this into your work as well.
That I think is like maybe doingsome of that facilitation work,
holding workshops with yourteam, et cetera, that might
get them into the space of.
And thinking more broadly aboutwhere work in general sits.
Hannah Clark (29:38):
Okay.
I wanna go back to what wewere talking about before.
It overlap that withwhat we're talking about
right now and think aboutsystems mapping techniques.
As far as anticipatingunintended consequences,
like we said before, thereis some degree of volition
involved in sometimesevaluating some of those.
Less than desirablepossible consequences.
(29:59):
I think there's often,especially when there's a lot
of excitement and investmentriding on an outcome, there
can be a tendency to ignore or,optimism away your potential
negative consequences.
And if you have an anecdote, Ithink that'd be really helpful.
But how would you advise?
Design teams to try to startmapping out some of those
(30:20):
unintended consequences beforeimplementing new technologies or
even organizational structures.
Sheryl Cababa (30:25):
It's funny because I think that in order
to talk about unintendedconsequences, especially
with folks who are in kind oftechnology organizations, you
have to Trojan horse it in away to make it a fun activity.
'cause I rememberseveral years ago when.
I don't know.
I was doing some exercise aroundlike harms or something and
(30:47):
literally one of the clientsthat we were working with
just were like, God, you guysreally are buzz kills, like.
Why are we doing this workshop?
Like it's not fun.
I know we have to think aboutit, but it's not fun to think
about and it actually putspeople in a very defensive
spot too, because they'relike, oh, you're, what you're
accusing us of is that we don'tthink about harm or we don't
(31:11):
care about it or something.
So several years ago Iworked on this thing called
the Tarot Cards of Tech.
It was with my previous firm,and the goal was to get people
to have these conversations,but it's like these fun
little characters that are alittle bit like tarot cards.
And they had like differentpersonalities, like one was
called Mother Nature and therewere prompts on the back of
(31:33):
it that were like, what ifMother Nature were your client?
There was like one that wascalled like the forgotten.
Who's being left out ofyour thinking when it comes
to the product or featuresthat you're designing?
Yeah.
People are using those cardsto this day, which is really
interesting because it's verysimple and, I found that people
are using it for strategy, foreducation also, for basically
(31:55):
product feature design.
And it's, I think becauseit takes the blame away
from you as a technologist.
And puts the onus onlike this toolkit that
is like prompting you.
It helps people have those likereally tough conversations about
what unintended consequences arewithout it feeling accusatory.
(32:16):
The other tool I really likeusing is doing a futures wheel.
A futures wheel is here's thething we're gonna do, and then
you think about the primary,secondary, tertiary, et cetera,
effects of those decisions.
And like good things cancome out of it and bad
things can come out of it.
When I've worked withorganizations for example,
that are think, I was workingwith one organization that
was considering their work athome versus comeback to the
(32:40):
office policy and we did anexercise around a features
wheel around the comeback to theoffice policy and then did it
as well for continuing to leteverybody just work remotely.
And it was really interestingbecause in those scenarios,
like really, I. Liketeams tend to, especially
technology teams, they'relike very optimistic people.
(33:02):
I, this is why I call, we calledmy studio Optimistic Design,
but they start with the reallypositive potential effects.
And then it just likeorganically goes into spaces
where you're like, oh, thatwouldn't work out that well.
Or people are gonna startfeeling really isolated if.
We just let everybody kind ofwork from home in perpetuity,
(33:25):
or if we force everybodyto come back to the office,
there's going to be some lossof autonomy that is going to
be something really hard todeal with as an organization.
And so they're able tohave conversations around
decision making thatgo beyond how they were
initially thinking about this.
Because oftentimes a teammaking decisions, they'll be
like, okay, we have to create.
(33:47):
Are back to the office strategyand it ends up being like a
bunch of like rules and likewhat are like the rules around
this and how do we need toexecute on this rather than
what's like the philosophybehind this and how do we need
to approach it in order to thinkabout those potential effects
that we might wanna mitigate.
(34:08):
And then you go intothe tangible creating
of the rules after that.
I think that analysis justhelps broaden your thinking
about, what are the potentialthings that can happen.
And yeah, I think a lot oforganizations are dealing with
AI right now and aren't doingthat sort of intentional, like
what's our philosophy aroundthis perspective before doing
(34:31):
the policy work of it and therules and regulation work of it.
I really like the Officeof Educational Technology.
I refer to this a lot,where they're like, we
recommend a philosophythat's around treating AI
like an electric bike andnot a robot vacuum cleaner.
You want it to be an assistthat strengthens people's
abilities versus somethingthat just does a thing instead
(34:56):
of the person doing it.
And I was like, eventhat, which is like.
Very high level and maybe alittle abstract gives you a
little bit of guidance whenyou are thinking about that and
creating your policies or yourperspective as an organization
with intentionality.
So I think that's a bigpart of using these things
(35:16):
that help you think aboutunintended consequences will
get you to that principleor policy plays better.
Hannah Clark (35:21):
Yeah, I wanna end on this, although I
feel like we could continuefor a long time 'cause
there's so many interestingthings to dig into here.
But I did want to just put a bowon things by talking a little
bit about some of the processesaround developing, to the point
of the future's wheel and theexample that you gave about
designing back to work policies.
That is a really good example, Ithink, of a situation in which.
(35:43):
Conducting stakeholderinterviews and conducting
workshops to make sure thatyou're not operating just on
the assumptions of people whoare making those decisions
and really getting like avery holistic picture of
the people who are beingimpacted by those decisions.
And when we think about,normally in product, we
usually think about stakeholderinterviews and workshops as
a user researcher productdevelopment methodology.
So how do we have to adjustour thinking and what's the
(36:06):
difference in procedure asfar as using those techniques?
With the purpose oforganizational change
and facilitating betterorganization design?
Sheryl Cababa (36:14):
Yeah, I treat it.
I've done a few of these typesof projects with various kinds
of organizations, whereastechnology organization or
philanthropic organizations, andyou basically treat interviewing
their internal stakeholders.
As a design researchproject, right?
So it's like interviewingthem, running workshops and
(36:37):
doing some co-design with themor doing some like futures
imagining or what have you.
And I think what's interestingis that, and this is maybe
the difference between doinglike more traditional kind of
design research is it's reallygreat to do co-design with
those kinds of stakeholdersbecause the decisions
(36:58):
that are going to be made.
Are going to have a directimpact on them in a way
that they could be involvedin designing the solution.
Creating these workshopswhere they feel part of it.
One, it starts gaining alignmentfor the eventual decisions
that you're going to makebecause people haven't been
kept in the dark and you'reno longer just like throwing
something over the fence.
People are aware that thisis happening and then.
(37:20):
Thinking about how to empowerthose who normally aren't
empowered in these processesbecause organizations are made
up of people from all differentlevels of power, right?
Some who don't feel like they'reever consulted on anything,
and so even if they're justbeing interviewed, it is a
way of consulting with them,and it does feel like they're
(37:41):
being pulled into the process,even if at the end of the day.
Maybe you're not entirely doingwhat they think should be done.
There is some value in engagingwith folks like throughout
the organization in order tocreate policy that is intended
to have an impact on them ortheir own ways of working.
(38:01):
So all of these systemsmapping exercise is
really good for that.
So I've done like icebergmapping, which is like thinking
about what are the visibleproblems and then how do you
look at the patterns belowthat, the sort of systemic
kind of infrastructure andthen the mental models.
And I always find that membersof an organization have.
(38:23):
Just really meaningfulreflection on things that
go below the surface.
So if you're like, oh, we'rehaving a lot of attrition in
this organization, it's okay,you have to think about like,
why is that happening allthe way down to the mental
model, and are we doinganything as like a sort of
system infrastructure thatis actually contributing to
(38:44):
that, that we didn't intend to?
So it forces you to lookat your existing policies
and things like that.
All that to say.
I do feel like putting thesesort of visual frameworks in
front of people, help themhave the conversations that
maybe they wouldn't haveif it were just like them
sitting in a conference roomjust talking to each other.
Things come out because you'remaking it explicit through the
(39:05):
act of filling out a framework.
It's it seems really simple,but I noticed like people
have a lot of valuableconversations they might not
otherwise feel like they couldhave without those tools.
Hannah Clark (39:14):
Yeah, and I can only imagine just the stark
contrast in buy-in from folkswho are part of the process,
even in some small way versusjust being delegated their
change in their role andjust hearing about it as
this is the marching orders.
And I think that can be ahuge, especially for scaling
organizations, such a hugechallenge to mitigate, like
(39:34):
trying to make sure that you're.
Managing the organization inwhich everybody feels like
they understand the reasonsfor shifting priorities.
Anyway, I really dig this, likethe systems thinking approach
is, I think so applicable toso many different disciplines
and in the organizationaldesign I can really see the
connection is very clear betweenthe work and the outcome.
(39:56):
So I really appreciateyour time talking about
this today, Sheryl.
For those who are like meand are keen to continue this
conversation, where can peopleof all your work online?
Sheryl Cababa (40:05):
You can see the work of my studio
at optimistic.design.
You can find, a bunch of ourclient work and case studies
and things like that up there,as well as our approach.
You can find my book, whichis called Closing the Loop:
Systems Thinking for Designersat my publisher site,
which is Rosenfeld Media.
And so yeah, hopefullythis has been an
(40:25):
interesting conversation.
Every now and then I talkabout systems thinking.
I feel like I'm just statingthe obvious, but I think
it's like just connectingthe dots on these things
I think is meaningful.
But I, and I hope that peoplekind of experiment with these
methods in the organization.
Hannah Clark (40:41):
I hope so too.
Thank you so muchfor joining me.
Sheryl Cababa (40:43):
Yeah, absolutely.
Thanks for having me.
Hannah Clark (40:47):
Thanks for listening in.
For more great insights,how-to guides and tool reviews,
subscribe to our newsletter attheproductmanager.com/subscribe.
You can hear more conversationslike this by subscribing to
The Product Manager whereveryou get your podcasts.
Imagine you're holding a marble and
there's a paper cup aboutthree arms lengths away.
Your task is to toss themarble into the cup, and
if you get it in, you win.
But how likely are you tosink the marble into the
cup every time you toss it?
Even upon first attempt,you'd recognize how many
factors go into a successfulthrow, like how hard you're
throwing and how well you aim.
(00:22):
This is called systems thinking,and it's a thought process
that takes into account thecomplexity surrounding a
specific challenge, as opposedto linear thinking, which is
like saying, "oh, it's easy,just throw the marble and it'll
land in the cup." And while thismetaphor is obviously a huge
oversimplification, the crux ofit is that complex circumstances
call for more holisticapproach to problem solving.
My guest today is SherylCababa, author of Closing
the Loop (00:44):
Systems Thinking for Designers, and the
founder of Optimistic Design.
In this conversation, Sherylapplies the principles
of systems thinking toorganizational change.
In other words, makingleadership decisions based on
the nuances and complexitiesof real people in a time
of dizzying change, and noton reductionistic or overly
optimistic assumptions.
She also shares someuseful tools for leaders
(01:04):
and designers to developbetter, more functional
systems—whether that's aproduct feature, a team, or
even an entire organization.
Let's jump in.
Oh, by the way, wehold conversations
like this every week.
So if this sounds interestingto you, why not subscribe?
Okay, now let's jump in.
Welcome back to TheProduct Manager podcast.
I'm here with Sheryl Cababa.
(01:25):
Sheryl, thank you so muchfor joining us today.
Sheryl Cababa (01:27):
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Hannah Clark (01:29):
So first of all, can you tell us a little
bit about your backgroundand how you developed your
focus on systems thinking?
Sheryl Cababa (01:34):
Yeah, so my background is as a product
designer and design researcherand strategist, and.
I think when I moved fromproduct design into design
strategy, I was findingthat I was doing a lot of
work at the front end of thefunnel for organizations.
And so I've been adesign consultant now
for about 15 years.
So there was this moment intime where I was working a
(01:56):
lot with technology companieson emerging tech like VR
and AR and things like that.
But I was also doing projectsin global development,
so global health that.
You see a lot of likephilanthropies developing
or funding efforts in placesthat are in the global south
to solve problems there.
Things like eradicatingmalaria and things like that.
(02:19):
And I was feeling like inboth spaces in different
ways that the design processfor me was falling short.
I've always described it ashuman-centered design, and so
the idea of, designing firstand foremost for end users
and making sure that you workiteratively to engage them
within the process of designsaves lots of time and money.
(02:41):
Obviously, when you'redeveloping expensive things
and you want to make sure thatyou're designing the thing
right before you build it.
But I was seeing that therewas a lack of thinking around,
for example, if we're thinkingabout technologies that aren't
heavily integrated into, let'ssay like society today, it's
really important to think aboutlike unintended consequences.
(03:04):
It's also really importantto think about with intent
about the kinds of usecases that you're thinking
about those technologiesshould be solving for.
Even if it's still likea wide world and you just
want to figure out what anew technology is good for.
And then on the globaldevelopment side, it sometimes
felt like there was some lackingcultural knowledge or there
(03:24):
were people from Western placeslike coming into places in the
global south and not havinga great handle on how things
work in a place like that.
And so you'd see a lotof interventions failing
because there wasn't agreat understanding of
how communities operated.
Either like culturally oreconomically or what have you.
(03:46):
And so I started doing a lot ofreading around systems thinking
specifically Donella Meadow'sbook, thinking in Systems.
I found really inspiring thisidea that, you expand your lens
towards thinking more broadlywhen you're looking at like the
world as it exists today andthe problems that are inherent.
And how you can analyzethat from a systems
(04:08):
perspective to think abouthow potential solutions
or ways of changing thingsmight affect things broadly.
And that means like a lotbroader notion of who your
stakeholders are, as wellas thinking about different
forces, like what people andgroups are incentivized by.
So that's the long story short.
That's where I started reallythinking about systems thinking.
(04:30):
But as a designer, I waslike, I don't know how to
actually integrate this in mywork in a real practical way.
So I started experimenting withdifferent frameworks and things
like that, and I. The result ofthat is the book that I wrote is
a reflection of my own journeythrough the intersection of
design and systems thinking.
It's the book I wish I hadwhen I was going on this
(04:51):
journey to begin with.
And so hopefully it'suseful for other people too.
Hannah Clark (04:55):
Absolutely.
Yeah, I think there's alot of really interesting
concepts in it.
I think we'll definitely tapinto a few of them as we moving
through and then we'll haveyour book linked towards the
end in the description box.
'cause I think it'sreally worth checking out.
So today we're gonna befocusing on applying systems,
thinking specifically in thecontext of organizational
change, especially sincewe're in this kind of a
shifting tech landscape era.
(05:18):
So to kick us off, what haveyou found to be the biggest
challenges around organizationsthat are trying to implement
systems thinking during atime of organizational change?
Sheryl Cababa (05:26):
Yeah, I think first off, systems thinking
and organizational change andorganizational design go hand
in hand for many decades.
I did my little deep dive intothe origins of systems thinking,
and you have really foundationalbooks like Peter Senge's, the
Fifth Discipline, and reallythe relationship is super
strong because organizationsare a dynamic set of different
(05:50):
stakeholders and forces.
Many of whom have differentincentives and ways of working,
and there's culture involved.
And basically every aspectyou can think of when it
comes to, let's say, steepanalysis, which is social,
technological, economic,environmental, and political.
And I think when, if anorganization is rightfully
(06:12):
thinking about usingsystems, thinking methods
to think about how to createorganizational change.
I think there are, somekey sort of tenets and
frameworks to engage in.
One of the ones that I referto a lot is Peter Senge.
Has this kind of like principlethat, and I always say this
wrong because I think it's, Imight be saying it backwards,
but the idea holds true.
(06:32):
It's like today's solutionsare tomorrow's problems.
So constantly thinking abouthow the dynamic forms of
problem solving means thatyou're, you might have to
anticipate or mitigate forthe kinds of problems that
problem solving might cause.
I think that's areally important thing.
Causality is like a reallyimportant concept for people
(06:53):
and practitioners to think aboutas they're looking to integrate
systems thinking as what are thethings that kind of happen as a
result of either decision makingor problem solving that you
might have to account for later.
So that's one thing.
If folks are thinkingabout systems thinking as
a method to hold that ideabehind how they approach it.
I also think like in termsof the shifting technology
(07:16):
landscape, I think, it'sreally about interrogating
our assumptions about emergingtechnologies and, knowing, like
your audience is oriented aroundlike product design development.
I. I think organizationalleadership tests see either
only the good or harm to new totechnology, just depending on
what kind of organization it is.
If it's a technology thatwe're developing, there
(07:37):
can only be good to it.
There's possible greatthings will come of it.
If it's a kind of technologythat an organization
is thinking about usingor being forced to use.
I think there's a lot ofskepticism and there's
oh my gosh, this is like.
How can this harmour organization?
That happening todaywith AI, right?
It's or not developingAI, they're looking for
opportunities to use it.
(07:58):
Or you have like companiesand organizations being like,
we don't wanna use this.
It feels like there's verylittle control and then the
kind of like companies thatare developing it are like,
oh my God, this is like gamechanging for everybody on earth.
And I think it's really, it'saround thinking about, how
can we with intentionalityconsider the potential outcomes
(08:22):
of using a technology ordeveloping a technology, right?
If you're an organization thatis using new technologies,
AI is a good example.
I do a lot of work in educationand I think it was EdWeek just
a few months ago, released asurvey of K 12 school districts.
Found that the majorityof teachers said they
(08:42):
weren't clear on the AIpolicies of their district.
For example, I'm like, thisis a big deal because a lot
of students are just using AI.
A lot of teachers are using it.
And I think for an issuelike that, AI or systems
thinking is a goodapproach for unpacking with
(09:03):
intentionality, the problemsthat AI is meant to solve.
So you can create atheory of change about.
How this particular technologywill affect your organization.
You can look at the statusquo of what are the problems
today in your organization,let's say like you are running
a school district, and whereare the sort of points of
(09:24):
intervention that when wethink about AI as a possibility
that it would have an impact.
Then creating sort ofprinciples for use.
In addition to that, you canuse systems thinking methods
I use the Futures wheel a lot,for example, to unpack potential
consequences both intendedand unintended as an approach.
(09:44):
And I think it helps youmake decisions about your
organization with intentionalityin a way that you might not.
Have thought about beforeand that you can do this with
intention instead of just thingsbeing used organically and
like finding out the hard way.
Hannah Clark (09:58):
Yeah.
I have so many reactions tothis right now 'cause I, this
is really consistent withsomething that has really
been on my mind and a lotof conversations that I've
had recently with colleaguesand other folks about how.
We're in this kind of discoveryphase a time of really extreme
excitement over AI, and we'rein this period where there's
shifting sands in which newsolutions, like you said,
create kind of problems intheir wake or problems to
(10:21):
be solved in their wake.
It's not really like a cure-allsolution is just, we're moving
the goalposts around a littlebit for where exactly we need
to be focusing on, correctingdifferent things that have moved
as we make new developments.
This is actually also remindingme a lot of a conversation we
had some time ago with SamanthaGonzalez around I. Ethical
product strategy and having toreally audit your approach when
(10:43):
you're in this space around.
This was recorded before AIwas even popular, by the way.
Like we were talking allabout how it's so important
for product leaders to bereally evaluating the impacts
unintended and intendedof their product strategy.
And that's something atthis point that's you're
relying on product leadersto take that approach.
(11:04):
Of their own volition.
So yeah, it's, it is avery interesting time
to be in this space.
But I wanna diginto this further.
'cause I think that thisis, like you said, this
is so applicable to thespace that we're in,
the time that we're in.
So in closing the loop,you're talking about expanding
stakeholder considerationsbeyond just end users.
So I'd like to elaborateon that a little bit.
How can design leaders identifyand map the broader stakeholder
(11:27):
ecosystem when they'replanning organizational change?
What exactly do you meanoutside of just the end user.
Sheryl Cababa (11:32):
I love that you mentioned like that product
leaders are expected to doall of this kind of work on
their own volition, which isthat's putting a lot on the
shoulders of practitioners whoreally are oriented around just
wanting to make things work.
They're building somethingis fundamentally like a
build type of discipline and.
(11:56):
They just needthe thing to work.
And then all of a suddenwe're just oh yeah, you
gotta be thinking aboutunintended consequences.
You have to be all thesedifferent stakeholders.
You have to be thinking aboutall these different people,
like beyond just end users.
So I, I'm just acknowledgingthat's not super easy, right?
Yeah.
And it's a really bigtask, which is one reason
(12:16):
I try to like, engage inthose kinds of activities.
In that kind of thinking in areally accessible way, which is
like you should be able to dolike a one hour workshop where
you do some of this analysisand then try to figure out like,
are there takeaways from this?
So when I talk about somethinglike stakeholder mapping, it's
basically in many ways, likeawareness is the first step.
(12:39):
You might be thinking,especially if you're in
product organization, thatthe main stakeholder you're
thinking about is an end userand what their experience is.
When they're in themoment of using a product
that you're designing.
And we test productsin that way too.
It's oh yeah, howdo, is this usable?
How can we ensure that it'squality, experience, et cetera.
(13:00):
But there's all these potentialkind of repercussions.
So go back to my work ineducation and with optimistic.
It's we have product teamswho are in ed tech and
they're developing maybesoftware courseware for.
A teacher to use or deployor for students to walk
through, but they're not alwaysexplicitly thinking about all
(13:23):
the different stakeholders inthe system for whom there might
be incentives and they mightnot even be thinking that much
about, to be honest students.
And what students might needfrom these systems because maybe
they're not the primary user,maybe they're secondary users.
So one way that I try to getcertain of product teams to
engage in the syncing is to.
Put your end user in the centerof radiating like ecosystem map.
(13:47):
And you're gonna think aboutprimary sort of relationships,
secondary relationshipsand tertiary relationships.
And think about who are allthe people who have an impact
on that student's experience?
And then you can do this aswell for your organization.
So for your product team,who are all of the primary,
secondary, and tertiarystakeholders that we
(14:07):
should be thinking about?
And you might be thinking about.
It might surface for you thatyour buyers are really different
than your end users, or thatyou have a huge intersection
and are affected by regulationor by policy makers and
like how do you understandwhat their incentives are?
And oftentimes what this meansis bringing them into the mix.
(14:28):
So you might want to bedoing like interviews
with policy makers oreven engaging with them.
In workshops or something likethat, and we do like a lot
of that in our own practice.
And I think that goes a longway in just gaining alignment
for what's the broaderpicture in which we need to
be thinking about our productand kind of the impact it has
(14:50):
on the world and not just theimpact it has on end users.
Hannah Clark (14:53):
Okay.
I wanna dig a little bit deeperinto, 'cause you've mentioned
a little bit about incentives.
When we're talking aboutkind of an ecosystem of
stakeholders, there's powerdynamics at play as well.
How do you see design teams.
Analyzing and navigatingdynamics like this, especially
now that we're talking aboutmore dynamic changes that are
happening rapidly over time.
Sheryl Cababa (15:13):
Yeah, I think it's really about understanding,
if you're designing experiencesfor end users, you have to
think about what are theymotivated by beyond just
their use of your product.
Also, what are they affected byin terms of the incentives of
other people who are involved?
So if you have a student, forexample, using courseware,
(15:36):
it's like they wanna learnthrough the courseware, right?
But at the same time, I. They'renot necessarily the people
who are buying the courseware.
So the people who arebuying the course Rev, like
very different incentives.
They're incentivized by okay,is this system cheap and does
it integrate well with ourexisting digital ecosystem?
And then you have, teachers orinstructors or what have you,
(15:59):
and they are motivated by.
Okay.
Does this make my job easier?
Does this make my life easier?
And when we think about thosekinds of incentives, do they
actually align with the kindsof things that result in good
student outcomes, for example?
And then on top of that,there's organizational
leadership that are completelyincentivized by other things.
(16:22):
And I think it's justmaking sure that.
People let you have a goodunderstanding of where
people want to be and whatthey want to accomplish.
And I think it's, youmight not always get
like a win-win situation.
And I think that's where thingsget complicated, but at least
(16:43):
you can acknowledge that.
And I think, yeah, there's the,these kind of other dynamics
too that come up when wetalk and think about power.
We oftentimes do in someways self-reflection with
product teams that we workwith because we're like,
okay, what are the powerdynamics with you, for example?
And where you sit in thesystem, you're not just like an
(17:05):
outside observer of the system.
You have your own incentivesas well that are driven by
things like quarterly profitor where your funding is
coming from and what arethe kinds of things that.
Your funders are demanding,especially that you might
have friction with, andhow do you resolve that?
We recently did this projectcalled Modernizing Math, and
(17:27):
you can actually look at it.
It's on modernizing math.comand it is really around like
the future of math education.
And one of the most interestingthings that I felt like I
took away from that was, itwas a futures thinking and
systems thinking project where.
We were working basicallywith middle school students
to think about what would youwant out of math education
for 20 years from now?
(17:48):
And we're thinking aboutdifferent technologies and
different scenarios thatwould exist at that time.
And one thing that constantlycame up was they were like, when
it comes to AI, like they don'twanna be just like users of.
AI or any other importanttechnologies, like I wanna be
able to make that technology,like I wanna be in the room and
they will point out like, peoplewho look like me are not in
(18:11):
the room, and you're doing thiswork with mostly black and brown
students and they're like, weknow who's making AI right now.
Not representative of who I am.
How do we change it so thatI can get in that room and
not just be like a userof these things that are
coming and trying to figureout like, how would we use
this in math education?
I want to think about matheducation in terms of like,
(18:35):
how can I be empowered toactually create it or create
things in a way that is not aslike super centralized the way
it is now, where like thesecompanies, where there's very
few people are designing thesetechnologies for everyone else.
I thought that was just likesuch a clever way for the
kids to be thinking aboutthis as well as just it
made you sit up and just goyeah, kids are really smart.
(18:57):
Like they, their systemthinkers inherently, I think,
and bringing it to that,even though that's not how we
necessarily post it to them,was really interesting exercise.
Hannah Clark (19:06):
Yeah.
What I'm taking away from thatis just really challenging
the assumption that theresources that you have.
That you're designingfor are not static.
Like how do you designa system in which you're
facilitating and empoweringstakeholders to move dynamically
throughout your organization?
And so that, yeah I, that's areally interesting takeaway to
(19:28):
think about it, not just, who'sa user now may not only want
to become a user in the future.
I feel like we could reallydig into just anything
here, but we'll keep moving.
Let's say we're talking aboutAI adoption and platform shifts.
How would you say that systemthinking can be helpful in
avoiding common pitfalls?
You describe a systemarchetype called success to
(19:49):
the successful in the bookand some other systemic traps.
If you wouldn't mind justsummarizing what success and
successful means and then justhow can we use systems thinking
to mitigate some of these kindof tendencies for organizations
to create we mentioned before,unintended consequences.
Sheryl Cababa (20:05):
Yeah.
I love that she broughtup systems archetype.
Sometimes I myself forgetabout them because like
it's something that DanellaMeadows talks about a lot and
it's actually like a reallygood way to understand like
tangible versions of systems.
So archetypes are a waythat system dynamics happen
(20:28):
and there's a few verynotable archetypes, success
successful is one of them.
And a way that's oftendescribed as the rich get
richer and the poor get poorer.
And you can think aboutthat as we also described
that as vicious cycle.
And I think it's aboutthinking about ab an
abstract concept like that.
Oh, a vicious cycle.
(20:48):
Are there like vicious cyclesin our ways of doing things
where we're maybe incentivizingthe wrong things or it's.
Counterintuitive, whatdo they call those?
Perverse incentives, right?
Or, yeah.
We're rewarding certainthings that are actually
resulting in an outcomethat we don't wanna see.
Hannah Clark (21:08):
Okay.
I have a perfectexample of this.
Sheryl Cab (21:10):
Yeah, let's hear it.
Hannah Clark (21:11):
Overdraft fees, I think is a great example of this
to penalize people who don'thave money by making them pay
more money, which prevents themfrom becoming ultimately better
customers in a banking context.
So something like that in whichyou're I can see the short term
thinking for it, but it's, yeah,it seems like it's one of those
archetypes that's just like aself perpetuating and everybody
(21:32):
loses kind of situation.
Sheryl Cababa (21:34):
That's such a good example.
And so a lot of systemsthinking frameworks, there's
like systems thinking frameworkabout where you create
causal loops for things.
If you created a causalloop for that, you would.
Exactly understand why thisis unsustainable uhhuh.
And at the end of theday, it's about are
these forces sustainable?
And yeah, if you overdraftfees are, just sending people
(21:55):
spiraling and there's basically,it's a race to the bottom
that's a sustainable system andthey're, it's like worthwhile to
think about what are differentpotential solutions for this?
An example I use from like sortof city policy sometimes like
plastic bags, because this,there's no wrong answer here,
but it does help organizationsmaybe think about what if
(22:20):
we're trying to institute apolicy, like what are the actual
long-term outcomes we want?
So some plastic bag policies.
There have been studies thatshow when there's a plastic bag
ban that people buy more plasticbags for just things like lining
their trash cans and things likethat rather than just using the
reusable or the plastic bagsthat come from the supermarket.
(22:42):
And the problem with that isthe sort of garbage bags you're
buying, those use more plastic.
So is the goal toreduce the use of.
Plastic bags that you'regiving away for free, or is
the goal to reduce the use ofoverall plastic entirely in
the long term and it's likeforces organizations to think
about what are the choiceswe're making about that?
Hannah Clark (23:03):
Yeah.
Okay.
I'm so glad you broughtthat up because I have often
thought the same thing.
Where in which.
You're either, because howmany times do people go
to the store, forget theirplastic bag, or forget their
reusable bag and buy anotherreusable bag, which is going
to go into another pile?
Because those bags areone of the least useful.
They have a one purpose.
They can't be reusedwith garbage bags.
They can't be used aslike food containers.
(23:26):
They're really onlyserve the one purpose.
And those I'm sure arejust absolutely the worst
as far as by gradability.
So it's just to me like I'mthinking there's only a few
grocery stores in my area thathave just started using paper
bags in lieu of the reusableones, which to me is kinda
like it's an obvious choice.
That's probably the firstthing that people are
gonna opt for if they.
Sheryl Cababa (23:46):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's really interestingwhen you start like being
intentional about surfacingthose things and yeah, you can
use systems thinking frameworksto kind of surface and think
about what is our theory ofchange when it comes to this?
Is the impact we're seekingto use less plastic overall.
And is this goingto lead to that?
(24:07):
And you can work backwardsfrom that too, or is it,
we just want to reduce thenumber of plastic bags?
Is that the metric?
And it makes you moreintentional too about metrics.
I feel like in my book, I didn'twrite enough about metrics.
I, I, another edition comesup, I'll write more about it.
I do think like sometimeswe measure the wrong things
and a lot of organizationsare guilty of that too.
(24:28):
So I think it's like thinkingabout what are the long-term
outcomes that you want and howconstantly mapped that in a way
that even the small decisionsyou're making, you can keep
that in the back of your mind.
Hannah Clark (24:42):
I, and I think this is really relevant
now, especially with AI.
Obviously in my capacity,I'm pretty heavily in the
content space and we're lookingat this as well, in which
old metrics that have beenlong clung to have suddenly
overnight become obsolete.
Like it used to be a measure ofproductivity and of performance
to just look at content volumeand like volume of production.
(25:04):
And now volume is.
A little saturated, there'sit, there's really more of a
emphasis on quality of outputand how can you measure the
actual impact of what you'reputting out, rather than just
blasting out as many itemsas possible and then just
hoping that they'll perform.
Yeah I think that this is likea, it's a really important
thing, as a main takeawayfor this conversation is to
(25:26):
really be evaluating, it'snot just about what you're
doing, but what's the intent?
What are you trying toachieve with what you're
investing in here?
And being really intentionalwith how you're mapping out
the pathway to get there.
Okay.
So I wanna talk a littlebit about something that you
mentioned in your book againabout designers as facilitators
rather than solution creators.
I wanna talk about that alittle bit and what exactly
(25:46):
you mean by facilitator roleversus solutions creators.
I think that we've long thoughtabout designers as solutions
creators, so how do you kindadescribe that change in mindset
and what are some of theprocesses that you'd suggest
to support that kind of atransition in the organization?
Sheryl Cababa (26:02):
It's interesting because I've, I spent the first
half of my career as a productdesigner, and then I moved into
becoming a design researcherand design strategist, and
I do feel like we're at apoint in time where I feel
like the practice of productdesigner UX design is starting
to become really commoditizedespecially in the, I don't
(26:25):
know, more like productionkind of roles or like junior
design roles or what have you.
This has everything to do withAI as well and as well as things
like design systems, right?
Design systems are meant tomake everybody's jobs easier,
but I do feel like everythingbecomes systematized in a
way that it's oh, what doesthat mean for designers?
(26:49):
As practitioners?
Really, at the end of theday, as I'm thinking about
educating future designers.
I think being able to have astrategic lens on how decisions
are made and how maybe weeducate others or think
strategically about how thingsget made and built is maybe a
(27:10):
better like long-term spot tobe in, which is like the area
in which I work, which is justthinking about, how do we bring
together different stakeholdersfor problem solving purposes.
And basically facilitate andmake explicit the decision
making or the broadening ofthe lens that design can help
(27:33):
facilitate, which is, yeah,things like making explicit,
a theory of change, makingexplicit, like what does a
systems map analyzing today,and where the intervention
points, where can we look topotentially problem solve?
How do we imagine the future?
In a way that, we canarticulate through design.
(27:54):
So I, in my book, I write alot about, I don't write a
lot about it, but at the end Iwrite about speculative design
because I do think there isan intersection with thinking
and systems and being able tocreate provocations around what
the future might look like andwhat the future might hold.
And that's what I think aboutwhen I think about design
as an act of facilitation.
(28:15):
It's like, how can we.
Help people make moreexplicit their ideas, whether
it's organizations we'reworking with or various
stakeholders who are comingtogether to problem solve.
We would do a lot of work inmy studio with philanthropies
and thinking about where todirect their investments.
And design is actually a verygood tool for facilitating those
(28:38):
kinds of conversations becauseone, we can use like our.
Visual communication skills tocreate frameworks, principles,
et cetera, for decision making.
But we can also dodesign concepts, right?
So even if we're not buildinglike a shippable thing, it's
about how can we imagine thefuture through artifacts that
(29:00):
are around what might screenslook like in the future?
Or how might people movethrough a journey of using
different kinds of products?
These are all acts ofdesign that I think get
me really excited becausethey're used for like really
upstream decision making.
And so I encourage anyonewho's designer and if if
(29:21):
you're like a product designer,there are ways of integrating
this into your work as well.
That I think is like maybe doingsome of that facilitation work,
holding workshops with yourteam, et cetera, that might
get them into the space of.
And thinking more broadly aboutwhere work in general sits.
Hannah Clark (29:38):
Okay.
I wanna go back to what wewere talking about before.
It overlap that withwhat we're talking about
right now and think aboutsystems mapping techniques.
As far as anticipatingunintended consequences,
like we said before, thereis some degree of volition
involved in sometimesevaluating some of those.
Less than desirablepossible consequences.
(29:59):
I think there's often,especially when there's a lot
of excitement and investmentriding on an outcome, there
can be a tendency to ignore or,optimism away your potential
negative consequences.
And if you have an anecdote, Ithink that'd be really helpful.
But how would you advise?
Design teams to try to startmapping out some of those
(30:20):
unintended consequences beforeimplementing new technologies or
even organizational structures.
Sheryl Cababa (30:25):
It's funny because I think that in order
to talk about unintendedconsequences, especially
with folks who are in kind oftechnology organizations, you
have to Trojan horse it in away to make it a fun activity.
'cause I rememberseveral years ago when.
I don't know.
I was doing some exercise aroundlike harms or something and
(30:47):
literally one of the clientsthat we were working with
just were like, God, you guysreally are buzz kills, like.
Why are we doing this workshop?
Like it's not fun.
I know we have to think aboutit, but it's not fun to think
about and it actually putspeople in a very defensive
spot too, because they'relike, oh, you're, what you're
accusing us of is that we don'tthink about harm or we don't
(31:11):
care about it or something.
So several years ago Iworked on this thing called
the Tarot Cards of Tech.
It was with my previous firm,and the goal was to get people
to have these conversations,but it's like these fun
little characters that are alittle bit like tarot cards.
And they had like differentpersonalities, like one was
called Mother Nature and therewere prompts on the back of
(31:33):
it that were like, what ifMother Nature were your client?
There was like one that wascalled like the forgotten.
Who's being left out ofyour thinking when it comes
to the product or featuresthat you're designing?
Yeah.
People are using those cardsto this day, which is really
interesting because it's verysimple and, I found that people
are using it for strategy, foreducation also, for basically
(31:55):
product feature design.
And it's, I think becauseit takes the blame away
from you as a technologist.
And puts the onus onlike this toolkit that
is like prompting you.
It helps people have those likereally tough conversations about
what unintended consequences arewithout it feeling accusatory.
(32:16):
The other tool I really likeusing is doing a futures wheel.
A futures wheel is here's thething we're gonna do, and then
you think about the primary,secondary, tertiary, et cetera,
effects of those decisions.
And like good things cancome out of it and bad
things can come out of it.
When I've worked withorganizations for example,
that are think, I was workingwith one organization that
was considering their work athome versus comeback to the
(32:40):
office policy and we did anexercise around a features
wheel around the comeback to theoffice policy and then did it
as well for continuing to leteverybody just work remotely.
And it was really interestingbecause in those scenarios,
like really, I. Liketeams tend to, especially
technology teams, they'relike very optimistic people.
(33:02):
I, this is why I call, we calledmy studio Optimistic Design,
but they start with the reallypositive potential effects.
And then it just likeorganically goes into spaces
where you're like, oh, thatwouldn't work out that well.
Or people are gonna startfeeling really isolated if.
We just let everybody kind ofwork from home in perpetuity,
(33:25):
or if we force everybodyto come back to the office,
there's going to be some lossof autonomy that is going to
be something really hard todeal with as an organization.
And so they're able tohave conversations around
decision making thatgo beyond how they were
initially thinking about this.
Because oftentimes a teammaking decisions, they'll be
like, okay, we have to create.
(33:47):
Are back to the office strategyand it ends up being like a
bunch of like rules and likewhat are like the rules around
this and how do we need toexecute on this rather than
what's like the philosophybehind this and how do we need
to approach it in order to thinkabout those potential effects
that we might wanna mitigate.
(34:08):
And then you go intothe tangible creating
of the rules after that.
I think that analysis justhelps broaden your thinking
about, what are the potentialthings that can happen.
And yeah, I think a lot oforganizations are dealing with
AI right now and aren't doingthat sort of intentional, like
what's our philosophy aroundthis perspective before doing
(34:31):
the policy work of it and therules and regulation work of it.
I really like the Officeof Educational Technology.
I refer to this a lot,where they're like, we
recommend a philosophythat's around treating AI
like an electric bike andnot a robot vacuum cleaner.
You want it to be an assistthat strengthens people's
abilities versus somethingthat just does a thing instead
(34:56):
of the person doing it.
And I was like, eventhat, which is like.
Very high level and maybe alittle abstract gives you a
little bit of guidance whenyou are thinking about that and
creating your policies or yourperspective as an organization
with intentionality.
So I think that's a bigpart of using these things
(35:16):
that help you think aboutunintended consequences will
get you to that principleor policy plays better.
Hannah Clark (35:21):
Yeah, I wanna end on this, although I
feel like we could continuefor a long time 'cause
there's so many interestingthings to dig into here.
But I did want to just put a bowon things by talking a little
bit about some of the processesaround developing, to the point
of the future's wheel and theexample that you gave about
designing back to work policies.
That is a really good example, Ithink, of a situation in which.
(35:43):
Conducting stakeholderinterviews and conducting
workshops to make sure thatyou're not operating just on
the assumptions of people whoare making those decisions
and really getting like avery holistic picture of
the people who are beingimpacted by those decisions.
And when we think about,normally in product, we
usually think about stakeholderinterviews and workshops as
a user researcher productdevelopment methodology.
So how do we have to adjustour thinking and what's the
(36:06):
difference in procedure asfar as using those techniques?
With the purpose oforganizational change
and facilitating betterorganization design?
Sheryl Cababa (36:14):
Yeah, I treat it.
I've done a few of these typesof projects with various kinds
of organizations, whereastechnology organization or
philanthropic organizations, andyou basically treat interviewing
their internal stakeholders.
As a design researchproject, right?
So it's like interviewingthem, running workshops and
(36:37):
doing some co-design with themor doing some like futures
imagining or what have you.
And I think what's interestingis that, and this is maybe
the difference between doinglike more traditional kind of
design research is it's reallygreat to do co-design with
those kinds of stakeholdersbecause the decisions
(36:58):
that are going to be made.
Are going to have a directimpact on them in a way
that they could be involvedin designing the solution.
Creating these workshopswhere they feel part of it.
One, it starts gaining alignmentfor the eventual decisions
that you're going to makebecause people haven't been
kept in the dark and you'reno longer just like throwing
something over the fence.
People are aware that thisis happening and then.
(37:20):
Thinking about how to empowerthose who normally aren't
empowered in these processesbecause organizations are made
up of people from all differentlevels of power, right?
Some who don't feel like they'reever consulted on anything,
and so even if they're justbeing interviewed, it is a
way of consulting with them,and it does feel like they're
(37:41):
being pulled into the process,even if at the end of the day.
Maybe you're not entirely doingwhat they think should be done.
There is some value in engagingwith folks like throughout
the organization in order tocreate policy that is intended
to have an impact on them ortheir own ways of working.
(38:01):
So all of these systemsmapping exercise is
really good for that.
So I've done like icebergmapping, which is like thinking
about what are the visibleproblems and then how do you
look at the patterns belowthat, the sort of systemic
kind of infrastructure andthen the mental models.
And I always find that membersof an organization have.
(38:23):
Just really meaningfulreflection on things that
go below the surface.
So if you're like, oh, we'rehaving a lot of attrition in
this organization, it's okay,you have to think about like,
why is that happening allthe way down to the mental
model, and are we doinganything as like a sort of
system infrastructure thatis actually contributing to
(38:44):
that, that we didn't intend to?
So it forces you to lookat your existing policies
and things like that.
All that to say.
I do feel like putting thesesort of visual frameworks in
front of people, help themhave the conversations that
maybe they wouldn't haveif it were just like them
sitting in a conference roomjust talking to each other.
Things come out because you'remaking it explicit through the
(39:05):
act of filling out a framework.
It's it seems really simple,but I noticed like people
have a lot of valuableconversations they might not
otherwise feel like they couldhave without those tools.
Hannah Clark (39:14):
Yeah, and I can only imagine just the stark
contrast in buy-in from folkswho are part of the process,
even in some small way versusjust being delegated their
change in their role andjust hearing about it as
this is the marching orders.
And I think that can be ahuge, especially for scaling
organizations, such a hugechallenge to mitigate, like
(39:34):
trying to make sure that you're.
Managing the organization inwhich everybody feels like
they understand the reasonsfor shifting priorities.
Anyway, I really dig this, likethe systems thinking approach
is, I think so applicable toso many different disciplines
and in the organizationaldesign I can really see the
connection is very clear betweenthe work and the outcome.
(39:56):
So I really appreciateyour time talking about
this today, Sheryl.
For those who are like meand are keen to continue this
conversation, where can peopleof all your work online?
Sheryl Cababa (40:05):
You can see the work of my studio
at optimistic.design.
You can find, a bunch of ourclient work and case studies
and things like that up there,as well as our approach.
You can find my book, whichis called Closing the Loop:
Systems Thinking for Designersat my publisher site,
which is Rosenfeld Media.
And so yeah, hopefullythis has been an
(40:25):
interesting conversation.
Every now and then I talkabout systems thinking.
I feel like I'm just statingthe obvious, but I think
it's like just connectingthe dots on these things
I think is meaningful.
But I, and I hope that peoplekind of experiment with these
methods in the organization.
Hannah Clark (40:41):
I hope so too.
Thank you so muchfor joining me.
Sheryl Cababa (40:43):
Yeah, absolutely.
Thanks for having me.
Hannah Clark (40:47):
Thanks for listening in.
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