Making Smarter Moves with Systems Thinking with Derek Cabrera and Laura Cabrera - OrgDev Podcast

Things change when our thinking changes.

So why do so many organisations still rely on outdated mental models to tackle today’s complex challenges?

In this episode, From developing foundational theories like DSRP and VMCL, to shaping national education programmes and training leaders across sectors, we’re joined by two of the most influential figures in the systems thinking world

This conversation explores what it really means to think systemically—and why it matters now more than ever.

Visit the Cabrera Lab website here:
https://www.cabreraresearch.org/

Buy Derek and Laura's books here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Derek...

Subscribe to the Cabrera Lab Podcast here:
   / @cabreralabpodcast  

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About Us

We’re Dani and Garin – Organisation Development (OD) practitioners who help leaders and people professionals tackle the messiness of organisational life. We focus on building leadership capability, strengthening team effectiveness, and designing practical, systemic development programmes that help you deliver on your team and organisational goals. We also offer coaching to support individual growth and change.

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Transcript

(00:00) Hi and welcome to the org dev podcast. So things change when our thinking changes. So why does so many organizations keep applying the same outdated mental models to the complex problems we face? After 30 years of extensive research, doctors Derek and Laura Cabrera have uncovered what it really takes to apply systems thinking for the improvement of our society, organization, our education systems, and much more.
(00:25) Today we're absolutely honored to be joined by two trailblazing and prolific leaders in the systems thinking world. Laura and Derek are on a grand mission to educate, engage, and empower 7 billion systems thinkers to solve the problems we face. Derek is a distinguished systems and cognitive scientist and faculty member at Cornell University and he serves as secretary general at the international academy for systems and cyber sciences.
(00:47) His fascinating career started out as a mountain guide and his career spanned research fellowships and advisory wall with institutions like West Point. Laura is a renowned expert in systems thinking and leadership and she teaches at Cornell University and directs the systems thinking modeling and leadership program with a background in policy analysis and public administration.
(01:07) She spent over 25 years translating complex systems science into practical applications for businesses, schools, and government agencies. and she's led national research initiatives with organizations like the National Academy of Sciences, USDA, and the US Department of Justice.
(01:24) Together, they've co-founded the Cabrera Research Lab, a science to society lab focused on bridging the gap between systems, science, and real world impact. And they're overseeing the world's largest systems thinking conference at Cornell, which is coming up in May. And they've launched training camp, an innovative platform for developing your systems thinking school.
(01:42) They're co-authors of several influential books including systems thinking made simple and the brilliant flock not clock. I can never pronounce that correctly and they also co-host co-host my favorite podcast the cabera lab podcast which ranks in the top 2% of all podcasts worldwide. So welcome to the world of RDS barbell peace circle is is not it will change the way you see the world.
(02:06) So thank you so much Lauren Derek for joining us. [Music] We're very excited to have you with us. So, we normally kick off with a question. Just tell us about the work you do, but you do so much. Um, and we've only got an hour and we've only got an hour with you, so we're going to narrow that down. So, some of our audience might not be overly familiar with systems thinking.
(02:28) So, can you just give us a a definition of what is systems thinking and how might it differ from other ways people think about thinking and and problem solving? systems thinking really there's a lot of confusion out there. If you Google it, you're going to get all kinds of uh confusion about what it is, but it's actually pretty simple.
(02:46) We live in systems are we live in families, we live in organizations, we live on the universe, in ecologies, you know, on Earth, in countries, you name it. These are systems that we live inside of and situations that we live inside of. And systems thinking is about how do we think more in alignment with those systems because the systems we live in are pretty complex. They're multi- aent.
(03:12) There lots of interactions going on. There's lots of change. And how do we get our thinking to be more kind of accustomed to dealing with the systems that we live in every day? So it really applies to everything. you know, how to lead a better family life, how to lead a person better personal life, better professional life. It's very pragmatic.
(03:35) Um, and and it's also based on a lot of um science and and theory as well. Yes. And you've done decades of research on this and you've developed your own model, the DSRP model. So, could you tell us a bit more about that and why that's so fundamental to understanding systems thinking? Yeah.
(03:53) Um yeah, it's interesting that DSRP is really not my model. It's it's nature's model. The uh so it comes out of nature. Um nature makes distinctions. Our brains make distinctions. Um we organize things into groupings. That's the S systems making make groupings out of things. We relate things.
(04:16) Things are related in in the real world systems. And everything kind of happens based on what position or perspective you're coming from. So if you shift your perspective, you might shift the distinctions that you see or the relationships that are relevant or the way you group things. And just those four simple patterns which we call DSR and P are sort of fundamental to the way information is organized both in nature in the universe but also in this little universe of our brain.
(04:50) If I could just add to that also based on what Derrick just said the last part is the way we organize. If you think about anytime you're taking in information from the world through any of your senses, the process by which you make meaning around that information is you're distinguishing it.
(05:07) You're organizing it into part hole systems. You're relating it to other things and you're taking a perspective if not many perspectives on it. So DSRP is to me the the basil process by which we build understanding of anything and it's the awareness of that because that's happening subconsciously unconsciously and what systems thinking and what we're trying to do is bring all of that unconscious stuff to your consciousness so you're aware of how you're building your ideas, how you're thinking things through. And
(05:36) that to me is the greatest tool that you could give a human on the planet is the ability to understand how they're thinking about things. Karen, sorry. This is edited. We're normally like really slick, so like we've got color coded mirror board here. So I guess what you've done because systems thinking has often in the past been critiqued of being a little bit too abstract, but you've really gone out to try and make sure that people can access it and use it quite simply as well. So with DSRP, I
(06:03) think one of the things you sort of say with even within like two weeks, someone can take those principles and start to apply their thinking in their own world and apply it as well. How does that work? You know, what what how what are the ways in which you can apply DSRP to to to normal life? Yeah.
(06:18) In in in fact, in our research, what we found is even um DSRP is very very powerful. It's very sophisticated. It can do a lot of things, but um it's it like you said, it can it can feel a little abstract at first, part whole and identity, other distinctions and point view perspectives. And so what our research actually has discovered in the last decade is that there are these simple moves that you can do and there's five of them that are the mo the most important rules.
(06:49) They call it a paro law which just means that for like 20% of the effort you get 80% of the benefit. And these these very simple moves we call them mental moves are just like uh you know uh physical moves like push-ups or sit-ups or pull-ups. except they're with your brain. And if you practice these five moves, those are the ones you were talking about at the beginning.
(07:12) Perspective circle, is is not list, part, they kind of have fun names, uh, zoom in and zoom out, and RDS barbell. If you practice those moves, then you will get really good at this stuff in, like you said, in two weeks time. We've actually have research that shows 580% increases in cognitive ability immediately just from learning the moves.
(07:42) Um, so it's it it's really profoundly effective in in everyday life. And you can use them on anything. You can use them in cooking dinner, you can use them to organize your organization, whatever it is that you're trying to figure out. And one of the things that I think you sort of said that is that when you kind of sort of during the research phase you actually then started to apply it in kindergarten as a way of so what kind did they find from applying it in that that area.
(08:04) That's a tough audience isn't it as well? No, not really. They're open-minded. They're lovely little humans. They haven't been trained out of systems thinking yet. So they're great. I mean, when we first started, oh my god, I hate saying 30 years ago, 25 years ago, because then I realize how old I am, but um you know, when we first started, we were literally both at Cornell University.
(08:30) We were Derek's theory had um you know, was the the the process of his doctoral research was DSRP and DSRP theory coming into the world. And we were working with what I would call sort of orary academics. And then we wanted to really bring it out from just the walls of academia. And so we decided, let's go into schools.
(08:52) Let's teach it to kindergarteners. And the remarkable thing about it is with great ease and with no resistance, it was right there for them. They were already making distinctions. They just, you know, they're distinguishing between colors, right? They're relating numbers on a number line.
(09:09) They're taking all kinds of perspectives on a pond. you know, they're pretending to be a frog and looking at the pond from that perspective and then the fly and you know, so it was very simple actually for kindergarteners and very pleasant I would say of an experience. And what what that really solidified for us is that these these four things are happening in everybody's brains, you know, as they're trying to think things through and that we can not just that, but that we could teach it, right? that we could help foster those skills and
(09:39) also help hopefully kids not get trained out of them when they start focusing on testing and when content takes over learning, right? Mastering content, remembering content. So to us, and I think that's really important what Laura is talking about is is that we're kind of all born to be systems thinkers.
(09:59) I mean, we're born in systems of systems and it's really a natural way of thinking to be kind of connected to our environment and to nature and these these complex ecologies and things. And in some ways our school system trains us out of it when we we see dramatic shifts around third grade when testing becomes you know important and we start incentivizing students to get the right answer and you know what the answer that the teacher's looking for things like that.
(10:32) We kind of train people out of systems thinking but we're really naturally born into systems thinking it's not it's something that's part of the way our brain is structured. So how do we reinvigorate? So if it we if it's you know the school system and and life trains people out of it how do we get people back into it in the workplace for example if there's a leader listening saying okay this sounds good I want my people doing this what do we do where do we start yeah I think it's it's literally things like zoom in zoom out
(10:57) right so zoom in means what whatever you're looking at zoom into it and look at the parts and also remember to zoom out one of the things for example we I mean you can teach that to little kids one of the Probably the number one thing that executives come to us with or maybe one of three things that they come to us with for organizational uh issues is they're trying to train that middle level to to rise up to the higher level the seauite and they want what's called what they call enterprise thinking. Well, enterprise thinking is
(11:30) just zoom out thinking. It's it's just starting at where you're at, where your task level or department level is, and sort of saying, well, let's look at it from one at least one level up where I start to see how my department connects to other departments or how my task or my project or my initiative connects to other initiatives in the organization.
(11:52) That's what enterprise thinking is. And really all it is is zooming out. It's seeing the the whole as a part. So it it see it sounds very simple like you have a hole which is the thing that you're in charge of but if you just shift that to see that hole as a part that means that there's a larger hole above it and zoom in is just seeing that you're a part and you turn it into a hole and you zoom into the part.
(12:22) So, those are just two of the moves that I talked about, but but I'm I'm sort of trying to get across that it's actually very simple if we practice it. It it's not um it's no more difficult than zoom in, zoom out or P circle, perspective circle. Take more than your own perspective. Take multiple perspectives on an issue.
(12:44) Da Vinci used to say, you know, he did a lot of dissection in order to draw his remarkable drawings of the human body. And he used to say you had you had to cut any organ in at least three bisections in order to truly understand the organ. Well, that's taking multiple perspectives. In the mountains, we triangulate to find our position.
(13:04) That's taking multiple perspectives on the map. So, taking multiple perspectives is is something that you can easily train your brain and train your habit to do. You just have to do it enough for a few weeks to kind of it becomes a habit. Yeah. And I think that's one of the things that's really accessible about it is the elegance of of the proposal because one of the things that was heard that you did a study or you did some kind of work with kindergarten and it's getting kids to look at a fire engine and uh they kind of zoomed you they
(13:35) would just normally take a drawing and not notice the detail but in just a few moments it quickly sort of changed the way they perceive things as well. What what was that the findings of that work? Well, I mean we went into I mean I loved our time in kindergartens, but they were teaching a um a state standard which is around teaching uh these were kindergarteners on all of the people in their community that help them and fire obviously firefighters and all of that are part of that.
(14:01) So they actually would bring the fire truck to the school every year. firemen would call come and speak to the kids and part of their project was always to come out and see the actual fire truck and then they would draw the fire truck and they would also build a fire truck with cardboard and milk jugs and egg cartons and all kinds of stuff that people had donated.
(14:20) So this particular year, this one classroom that we were working with, they had actually created a song on part hole and it was something like every part's a hole, every hole is a part blah blah blah and it was a cute little I can't sing but anyway it was a cute song when they sung it.
(14:35) So they learned part hole just through this song and the teacher introduced the idea that you know parts have parts and those parts have parts and then they're part of a bigger thing. So the kids go out and they look at the fire truck and they examine it and they and they do their normal lesson and they come in to build their firetruck and what the teachers noticed is instead of just a cardboard box and a steering wheel, it became a cardboard box with a steering steering wheel with, you know, pipe cleaners making the spokes of the
(15:02) wheel and then it had a ladder and the ladder had rungs. And the kids had the words for all of those things because they were looking for more parts. And they were looking for more parts because they had been taught that there are parts of parts of parts of parts. And these are, you know, kindergarteners, tiny little kids.
(15:21) And the remarkable thing is at the end of that year, all of those kindergarteners had met all the kindergarten benchmarks and some of the first grade benchmarks. So they had to actually uptrain the first grade teacher to keep teaching using DSRP so that these students would not be bored or disengaged not using those systems they yeah in one year they kind of outpaced their teachers training so that we had to uh uptrain the teachers to to get them for the kids because they were so advanced.
(15:52) But the wider point of that Garren is if you take the example of the kindergarteners just learning one of those patterns the I the idea is they go out in the world and they actually look for more and they see more. They see more detail to the world. They look for more parts. Well, that's true across all four of the patterns and that's true across all levels of human beings, right? So, we did, you know, I don't know if you remember the fish tank study where we actually showed people an image of a fish tank. Then we taught them one
(16:19) of the patterns and then we asked them to describe the fish tank and we did statistical analysis on it and across the board for all four patterns people saw more inside of that fish tank as a result of learning just one pattern. So it's about what I was saying bringing the unconscious into the conscious and then you're engaging with as Dererick said the real world systems as they are which is DSR and P structures which is and it's really fascinating isn't it because one of the things you sort of
(16:46) say is the the importance of loving reality. Yeah. Yeah, sometimes the more you see the more painful it could become because you start think well hang on I'm starting to see things I I was maybe sort of through my own lens trying to block out almost there's a double-edged side to this people need to be aware of isn't it that they do see more and therefore becomes more responsibility on their part yes that's true that you know the love reality is the loop that we get in where we're building a mental model and
(17:13) we want to I I call it love reality meaning you don't want to change reality to your mental model. That's called confirmation bias. You want to change your mental model to fit reality. So when we change reality to fit our mental model, that's confirmation bias. When we change our mental model to fit reality, that's us getting it right.
(17:38) Um, and so loving reality allows us to get it right more often. And and you're right. I mean, loving reality also causes us to have to face hard truths. But, um, in mountaineering, we have a saying, mountaineers have a saying that, um, the the truth will set you free, but first it'll piss you off.
(17:58) So, you know, there's some truth to that. Uh, that sometimes reality can be hard to swallow, but in the in the long run, it kind of liberates you and it sets you free to to have the decisions you make turn out the way you think they're going to. and to have your life turn out the way you you hope it's going to and all that kind of stuff.
(18:17) So, there is some real value to loving reality. Well, and just take it the opposite. How many times have the problems you have experienced been because you didn't understand or didn't see the full picture of the situation at that moment, right? So, it's not going to work out for you on that end if you're not really seeing things as they are.
(18:34) And that's, you know, that's one of the things we talk about a lot with organizational leaders, which is you have to understand first where you're at the reality of your situation if you want to have different outcomes down. The great thing about reality is it will it's very patient.
(18:52) So, it will always give you feedback and if you ignore the feedback, it will give it to you again and it'll keep giving it to you until you hear it. And um and the beautiful thing is reality is always giving you feedback. And a lot of times people say, well, you know, I was thinking it was going to work out this way and then it didn't work out.
(19:12) Our project failed or our software failed or our, you know, product failed or whatever it is that failed. And what I try to do is reframe that for folks and say when something doesn't work out the way you think it's going to or the way you plan it to, that's reality giving you feedback that your mental model was wrong.
(19:30) So, we should really take that feedback. That's loving reality. Take that feedback and say, "Okay, well, how do I shift my mental model so that I'm in alignment with reality so that the way that I do things works out in reality?" Because, you know, we don't want it to just work out in here.
(19:47) We want it to work out in reality. And is there an element of leaders and and people in organizations needing to slow down a little bit to be able to do this thinking? Because you know the leaders we meet are so they're working at such a pace. It's just they keep going and going and going and they don't take that time to pause and step back and look at what's going on. Yeah.
(20:05) They spend all of their time putting out fires and not thinking about why the fires have started in the first place. That's exactly correct. I was just going to say when you asked your earlier question about leaders, I think part of it is understanding that that to get everyone on the same page means to understand that everyone is building a mental model about whatever it is you're thinking about.
(20:27) And you need to understand with clarity where the differences are between and among parts of your team, between what you're thinking is, you know, the way things should be and what they're thinking. And that means taking the time to slow down just a little bit and think about what is the mental model everyone is building.
(20:46) What is the mental model we need to share before we execute, right? Before we spend time and money and resources on this, let's make sure we're really at the same starting point. I would just put out there because this is a big issue that people have, especially people that think they're busy. Um, so I know that probably doesn't sound great, but we we work with a lot of sea suite and and um they do kind of come with this bias where they're like, you know, I'm going hard charging.
(21:16) I can't slow down. And there's a couple things I say about that. One is you can't afford not to think and get your mental models more accurate. You you can't afford to do that. It's costing you a lot. And number two is it's not really about slowing down. But it's actually about speeding up your ability to think so that you don't have to slow down.
(21:35) If you practice these things, you can be very very fast in your thinking and you can see the systems very quickly, but you have to practice. In the same way that Navy Seal teams and and special forces teams, they always understand what we're talking about because they know that to go fast and get it right, the only way to do that successfully is to practice.
(21:57) And that's why they spend so much time practicing. And so, yeah, you have to go fast and yeah, you have to get it right. But in order to do that, you've got to practice. And what are you practicing? You're practicing having mental models be more in alignment with reality. And it and not seeing those costs.
(22:15) I mean, I can't tell you the number of times that teams get together, decide on something, and then leave. They spend six months, six months of costs based on a mental model that they don't share. They actually are all thinking different things and then six months later they go, "Oh, we weren't even we weren't even on the same page on this product.
(22:35) We were all building different products." Think of the cost of that mistake, right? And if you had just quote unquote slowed down or sped up your thinking at that moment 6 months earlier, you would have saved all that cost, which is interesting. It's obviously the same issue in the US as as it is in Europe with that one as well.
(22:56) Yeah. And I guess one of the things you've developed to help people understand it because it will come naturally for some more than others, won't it? So some will be able to sort of take the perspective of others, but you've developed a TQ like an assessment tool to to help people.
(23:10) Can you tell us a little bit about that because that just tries to identify how people perceive things and their natural aptitude for it? uh the the TQ you know the thinking quotient is the longer version of the name is um an edgometric test which means it le it measures your skill level at a certain point of time and you can take it again you know to see if your skill level has increased and what it does is it tells you on a continuum where your strengths and weaknesses are in distinction making organizing systems and depart hole uh
(23:40) seeing relationships articulating relationships and the ability to take many perspectives and What's nice is when you take the TQ, you get an instantaneous report that says, you know, here's your pros and like here's where you, you know, you might want to focus a little bit more on this skill. And then it gives you a very specific set of things that you can do to practice and develop that skill itself.
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(24:42) live live to get the latest from pod to practice in your inbox and let us know what you think. We'd love to get your feedback. But I guess one of the things we always like to ask is what was your journeys into systems thinking? I'm assuming like at age 16 you didn't decide, right, I'm going to specialize in systems thinking forever.
(24:58) What was your pathway into it? Yeah, that's a good question. That's like a um that's a long story, but uh I mean probably the best way I can describe it is it was very if you've seen the more movie Forest Gump, it was sort of very Forest Gumpy and it didn't take a straight path. Um, I was a I was a high school dropout.
(25:19) Uh, and the only skill that I had was really climbing and and going in the mountains. And um, so I used that skill for many years. And being in the mountains, being with groups, watching the social dynamics and all the dynamics of of being in complex systems all around us, um, really fascinated me. And I was trying to figure out how do I how do I understand the the micronamics of snow and avalanches and the macro dynamics of you know climate and weather and the social dynamics of 10 people get not either getting along or not getting along and
(25:55) what are the patterns that underly all these dynamics and all these these systems essentially that that you have to take into account. And so I started working on um a theory essentially a mathematical construct for those patterns. My my dad was a mathematician and my mother was a quilter. So I grew up with patterns because quilting and mathematics are just really patterns.
(26:20) And so I looked at patterns across uh knowledge and across the you know systems. It took a long time but um that really was how I came to it. And and then like Laura said, I I I ended up doing my uh doctoral dissertation at Cornell and the National Science Foundation asked uh for us to to get the theory out in the world more to to tell more people.
(26:47) At the time, I was just training, you know, scientists and doctoral students and things like that. And that's where I met Laura. And I, you know, Laura doesn't take credit for this, but it was kind of a big moment when on the grant we were actually flying, we were on a a plane in the airport and and I said, she said, "Well, you're going to have to tell me this theory because we have to like get it out in the world.
(27:12) " And um so I I scribbled it on the back of the airplane ticket for about five, six minutes. And she said, "Oh, okay. Now I understand." And she said, "I know exactly what we need to do." And I said, "Well, really?" because I have no idea what we need to do for this grant.
(27:26) He said, uh, we need to go teach kindergarteners. And so we spent 10 years teaching kindergarteners and first graders and third graders and eighth graders. And it really forces you to speak it in a in a more applicable way, a more tangible way. And um, and today we teach executives at the highest level. We teach special forces operators. We teach Olympic athletes.
(27:54) We teach professional athletes. We teach high-end people. And we teach them the exact same things that we teach kindergarteners and first graders and third graders. There's no difference. The only difference is the the information or the content or the systems that they apply it to. But the actual what we teach them is the same.
(28:15) And it does work because I I've been practicing making distinctions and it is once you start doing it it's like oh my god like you start to really break things down in this you see the world in a different way don't you? Yeah. And Laur how was your journey for you? Oh I took a very different path.
(28:32) I mean I I not to brag I was a star student. I was not a dropout which I'm not sure is a good thing now that I understand I was indoctrinated by the school system. Um but then I ended up at Cornell and I was really interested in how we take the knowledge we have in academia, how we can take, you know, how to really understand how government programs helped vulnerable families.
(28:56) I can't, you know, I grew up in a single parent household. I experienced economic hardship after divorce and all of that. So I was really interested in you how do we take what we know and what we're learning in places like universities to really help human lives improve the condition of humans. So that led me into policy analysis which then eventually segued into translational research which is how do we take these theories and all of this great richness that we have universities and translated into tools that really better communities and help
(29:24) people in the community you know specifically around those universities. And that's when I crossed paths with this one. And I had not even ever heard of systems thinking. I had no idea what it was. But then he explained it to me and it it made great sense. And the rest is history. Right, Derek? From there.
(29:42) Yeah. But it's such an important role, isn't it? Because there's so much quality academic research that never makes the transition over to something that's usable or in society or or business as well. I guess that's that is that one of the sort of the main drivers of your work is to try and help people to understand all the good thinking and the and the empirical research that goes behind it. It really is.
(30:02) We call ourselves a science to society lab for that reason because I I both Laura and I, you know, feel very strongly that we as scientists, we have an ethical obligation to the people who pay for the science to get value out of the science. And citizens pay for the science and so they should get the value out of the science.
(30:25) and and all too often the science is kind of hidden in you know difficult translation or you know journals that nobody has access to and things like that. So I think we we have a dual lab role where we do the science but we also spend almost as much time translating the science and I think that's where Laura and I kind of when we met that was the that was kind of the the the connection that that really spawned the lab Mary and all that kind of stuff too.
(30:56) Oh yeah that's secondary. That's that's another podcast we like. No, the only other thing I was going to say is um you know a lot of it is about if you think about the kinds of struggles that people have and the problems that people face, all of those things originate in their mental models. And so to me helping people understand first and foremost that they are building mental models, how they're building mental models, and then how they can change their mental models to be better aligned with reality and have
(31:27) better outcomes. To me that is the greatest gift you can give to people. It liberates people from all kinds of difficulty and suffering and it really creates a lot of agency and empowerment you know from within. And I to me I mean you know it's no secret or maybe it is a secret.
(31:47) I mean to Derek and I we would love for this to be free for the whole world all the time every day all day. And that's what we're working towards right. Our goal is to have a foundation and just bring it out into the world and and just really actually change things for everyone at the individual level and then you know that's going to work its way up to the societal level and then the global level.
(32:06) So we really want when we say world domination we don't mean it in a bad way. We mean world liberation for good liberation. We want world liberation. Right. Fabulous. It's so yeah it's such an important goal. So one of the questions we like to ask you do so much what what brings you real joy? Which bits of your work really kind of spark joy for you? I'll tell you, you know, one one day Laura and I were we had a talk and we had to get a cab like a one of these little like um uh livery caps, like long distance cab. And we I
(32:38) literally hadn't slept in days and I'm in the back of the cab and we have to drive like two hours to get to this other talk that I have to give. And um I'm driving the guy's driving and I'm It's like I don't even know what time it is. It's like really late and I got to be at another place and I'm just completely out of it, right? And I'm like kind of dozing off in the back seat and and I open my eyes and the guy's like staring at me in the mirror and I go, "How you doing?" He says, he goes,
(33:09) "You're you're Derek Cabrera." And I go, "Yeah." And I thought, you know, oh, he had my name, you know, because he picked me up. And he goes, I'm reading your book right now. And he pulls it out of the driver's seat, out of the passenger seat.
(33:27) And I go, why don't what? Why? You know, why? What makes you what got you to read this book? You know, really strange. And he goes, "My daughter." And he goes on and on and on about his daughter. And he's so proud of her. She made it to Colombia Education School. And, you know, he's doing all this work. She's reading it there.
(33:43) and she loved it. So, she sent it to my wife and I and blah blah blah. And we started reading it. We got so much. And to be honest, when when the work hit, you know, when when just regular everyday life kind of applications happen of of the work, that's honestly the best feeling in the world when a guy that's driving a cab finds value. That's meaningful.
(34:07) Well, I I think you know it is that it those moments where you see that it's actually touching and helping somebody think something through. So, many many years ago when we were working in a Pennsylvania school district, we were lucky enough to become um involved with their uh residential center for students who had gotten into disciplinary problems, pretty serious disciplinary problems.
(34:33) So, they were actually in a like a it's like pins person in need of supervision. And there's this lovely young man who had been in had been put in this situation for something he did that was fairly fairly damaging to another person. And we were using systems thinking DSRP to work in his biology class around some concepts of biology.
(34:52) We we spent some time there and then I guess about a week or two later we got home and we got a letter from this young man and he said, "I just want to let you know the next day that I was in my counseling session, my therapy session, which is to deal with his victimization and He said, 'I actually used what you taught me in biology to understand the things that trigger me to harm people to to do things that I know are bad.
(35:15) And he said, ' And now I understand and now I know I won't do it again and I'm going to be, you know, a productive member of society. I'm going to finish this program. And to me, you know, and that was a young man and you think about the trajectory of his life, not just his life, but his sense of himself is completely different.
(35:33) And that to me is I mean that I mean it's you know we got all kinds of stories but that one really stuck for us because this this kid really needed help. One of the most remarkable things about sort of producing so much content putting it out there you never quite know how the world's going to consume it and the way in which they'll apply it and I guess you must hear lots of really interesting stories about how people are picking your work up and and and the difference it's making. Absolutely. And it and it
(35:57) and you're absolutely right like you you never know how it's going to get applied or what thing is going to hit somebody the right way. And um but it it does it it it does make a huge difference to it when we hear those stories that that really motivates us massively to to continue and and do the hard work of of getting it out there and doing the science and all that kind of stuff.
(36:22) Well, I also think that was a lot of the impetus for the podcast. Let's just talk about this in front of as many people as we can because maybe it'll help more people. Yeah. Our students at Cornell told us you have to do a podcast for like 10 years. And we always said, I don't really know what a podcast is.
(36:39) Like I I honestly had I had no idea what a podcast was. I didn't even understand why anybody would listen to a podcast. And then I started like I'm like, "Okay, I got to figure out what a podcast is." And so I would during my workouts I would like put on a podcast and I was like oh okay like I kind of get the I kind of get it.
(36:58) I'm starting to get it, you know. And uh and then we said okay let's let's do a podcast. They keep telling us we need to do a podcast and it's been great. I mean it's been wild a wild journey but um I just think it when you have like what DSRP does is it gives you a almost like a having a user manual for your brain and your brain's doing everything.
(37:24) So when you understand it it just like Laura was saying it completely liberates you. It completely gives you agency over your life over your emotions over your thoughts over your actions over your problems. It just gives you personal agency so much that I think it has a huge impact on people no matter what you know wherever they are in life whatever age whatever they're doing it just kind of gives it it has a liberating power to it like you did an episode which is or it was a vignette which is like nothing happens suddenly and it's kind of sort of making the
(37:55) relationship between cause and effect and you know again these are sort of like really essential tools or ways of thinking for modern living aren't they like just getting people to slow down and and you know with the person you talked about there understanding how what your actions do and the effect that they have and it doesn't happen instantaneously it happens later on I think you sort of said is it cause and effect and not neighbors on a timeline was a was a great saying as well what what's particularly interesting you in
(38:22) the in the field of systems thinking at the moment well right now we're working a lot on what's called DSRP therapy we're working with u counselors and therapists uh and we're working on things like trauma and PTSD and and really looking at um studying how does this work as a as a therapy as a you know in particular on on very difficult problems right um and to me that's I like working on problems that are like the hardest the hardest problems you know and and um so some of these are problems that we're not able to solve as
(38:58) a society and and yet we're seeing really remarkable effects on them. So that's really exciting to me right now. We work with organizations and leaders all the time and a lot of our audience will be doing that as well. What can we do to really help organizations and leaders really understand the value of systems thinking and and become better commissioners of kind of bringing that into their organizations? Is there have you got any ideas or or tips for people listening thinking this is just what the people
(39:25) I'm working with need? I mean, I think for us when we work with organizations in particular, a lot of the conversation stems around the connection between how they're thinking about things and the outcomes that they're getting, right? And getting people to understand that the crux of it all is their mental models and the degree to which they are understanding how they're building their own and how other people are building their mental models, how they can work together to build a shared mental model.
(39:54) Because in organizations that's what really is the crux of it. Are we all on the same page before we start investing time and effort? And then also being open to the concept of because of love reality being a loop that as you're getting feedback from the external environment or your customers or your clients, you might need to actually modify and evolve your mental model and keep going around that loop.
(40:16) I mean that's really what businesses need to do to survive, right? Is constantly adapt to those kinds of things. Well, and the the other thing I I guess I would mention, you mentioned Flock, not Clock. That's our other book. And what we we teach kind of two big tracks at Cornell. One is the individual level systems thinking, and one is the organizational level systems thinking.
(40:39) And so, flock.clock is about more the organizational level, but the two are obviously uh related, right? Because individuals work in organizations. And so if the individuals aren't systems thinking then the organization's not going to but I you know at the organizational level it's it's about another theory called VMCL which is vision mission capacity and learning and um and so really getting an understanding of the how to design better visions better missions how mission affects vision how capacity drives mission and how organizational
(41:16) learning and culture drives capacity and then obviously systems thinking drives that organizational learning. So a lot of what we work with in organizations is yes training the individuals as systems thinkers but also training the organizational leaders how to design better organizations. You you've actually helped me fall back in love with mission and vision.
(41:43) It's done so badly in organizations. It's so bad. But the way you described it just is so it just really makes sense. It's like the vision mission moments making is it capacity sexy? Is that what that was? Was a slogan, wasn't it? I thought it was sexy, but it's amazing. Who knew? But it is.
(42:03) If you do get a chance to watch those podcast episodes, they're really worth watching. And in the book Flock Not Clock, you really lay out it really, really well. One of the things you talked about which was just such a brilliant way of seeing organizations was is it puade the point puade the point of the system is what it does or something like that.
(42:21) Yeahant the acronym for the purpose of a system is what it does and so a lot of times we'll we'll have these aspirational visions but really what we want to look at is what's the organization doing. the organization has a vision whether or not it matches your aspirational vision is up for question.
(42:40) And so what we ideally want to do is have our aspirational vision and our actual vision that the organization is behaving as to be the same thing, but they're often not. What VMCL does is fundamentally get us to look at our organization more like an organism, a living, breathing organism, which it is made up of people, sociotechnical systems, you know, all kinds of things going on.
(43:08) But rather than looking at it like a machine or a clock, we look at it more like an organism or like a flock of birds, a bunch of birds together that are that are working together to evade prey or attack something or whatever. So our organizations are much more like living organisms than they are like machines.
(43:29) And that is the fundamental metaphor that we've used for the last hundred years is that that of the clock. And we treat our organizations like clocks and they're really not. They're more like they're more like living organisms. Well, and the thing about that is like you were saying Derek that you know treat them more like an organism is what a lot of people don't realize is all systems and human organizations.
(43:53) They have a goal state or a vision. They have something that they're doing on the ground to accomplish that goal state which is the mission. They have the capacity to do that or not. and they have the ability to learn from the environment or not. So what what want leaders to do is see that these are four natural sort of inherent functions to their organization and if they understand them and they understand the difference between them and the relationship among them then they can leverage that knowledge to actually the better outcomes that they're seeking.
(44:22) Right? I mean one of the things people don't seem to realize is that there's a culture to your organization. Right? And a leader has the ability to either shape that culture or not. But there's going to be a culture either way. So what a lot of leaders that we work with don't realize is there are things you can do to really inculturate the mental models of the vision and the mission.
(44:44) You really build that culture around those two things rather than have sort of that subversive or counterculture that will emerge if you're not purposeful in your leadership around that. So I think that's the thing about flock not clock is it gets you to see that very differently the the sort of metaphor of a biological organism rather than a mechanical thing. Yeah.
(45:06) And you talked about because it's that that real in leaders being intentional about what they're doing and how they're building it as well because often things are just thrown together, aren't they? The mission is kind of like just regurgitated kind of words, isn't it? Yeah.
(45:20) What Laura just said is is that that ties the two conversations that we've just had together is that a vision really isn't a statement that you put on the wall. A vision isn't a sentence. A vision is a mental model that everyone in your organization either has and shares or doesn't. And if they don't have and share that mental model, then you don't have that vision.
(45:43) What makes a vision happen is that all the individuals in the organization have a shared mental model of where they're going. And what makes a mission exists is that all the individuals in the organization have a shared mental model of how to get there. And so it really kind of ties back to well where it it it's driven by mental models and that's the leader job is to make sure that everybody understands and and shares the same mental model.
(46:11) not the same sentence, not not a a you know something in a in a frame on a wall or on a website, but in hearts and minds of people. It's a quite a big question, but when you look back at your over your careers, what's the biggest lesson that you've learned that you you'd share with others? I think you know the biggest lesson there um there's a very great scientist that I respect greatly uh named Richard Fineman.
(46:37) He was a quantum physicist and I believe his it was his wife who said why do you care what other people think and and she constantly was kind of and he actually wrote a book with with this title or a chapter if I'm remembering incorrectly but um I I think a lot of it is is like in your younger years you worry about what other people think and what they're going to think and I think as you get a little bit older and long in the tooth you you kind of you realize like there's a lot of people in the world. Some of them are
(47:07) going to not like you and some of them are going to like you and some of them are going to disagree with you and some of them aren't. And you just got to like follow what drives you and and be okay with where you end up, you know, and and and follow your passion and follow what's good for, you know, do something good in the world.
(47:25) Don't focus on yourself, focus on others. You'll always be happy if you're focused on others. And um it it's this weird like paradox which is the best way to take care of yourself is to take care of others. And um so you don't have to worry about it. And yeah, I think probably those two, you know, don't worry too much about what other people think about whatever it is you're doing and and do good.
(47:48) Just keep doing good. Even if it's a pain in the ass, if you're tired in a cab, even if they're tired, just keep doing it. a lot of people that you're trying to do good for, they don't, you know, they don't want the help, but you know, try try do it anyway kind of thing. Yeah, you're hard to follow, Derek Cabera.
(48:05) Um, well, you know, I would say for me at the time that I learned about these ideas and learned about the theory, I was actually struggling on many fronts, professionally and personally. And so, I actually witnessed my own transformation. And I think the biggest thing I've learned is it is possible to get out of your own way.
(48:25) And that the key to that liberation from your own self is really understanding your mental models, how you're building them, why you're building them, and how to get them better aligned with sort of the reality of situation. And once you get there, you can actually sort of unlock your own jail cell and thrive.
(48:43) Just do whatever you want, adapt, embrace the crazy, and have fun. You know, totally different. It's totally different. I wish you knew me 35 years ago and you knew me now, you'd be like, "Wow, like how possible." Brilliant. We want to say a huge thank you. We've really really enjoyed this. It's been um so insightful.
(49:05) You've really brought the book, the podcast, and everything to life. If people want to follow your work, what is the best way for them to do it? You're you're doing things like the the huge the world's biggest systems thinking conference that's coming up live. You've got training camp.
(49:18) What's the best way for me to start following your work and engaging with the things that you're doing? I'd probably go to cababrial.org and and everything is there. Um or go on YouTube for Cabrera Lab podcast and you know that type of thing. If you just search Google if you can't remember those, you'll probably find us somewhere. Uh findable.
(49:39) We're find. Well, thank you so much. Um just I want to just say firstly a huge thank you. Um, you're probably one of the biggest inspirations I've had professionally in the 20 years that I've been doing it. It's, you know, we we are doing a lot of complex work out in the field and the way in which you've put together this, the way in which you've sort of also not just put the work out there but supported it with things like the podcast has been a big inspiration.
(50:00) So, we really want as many people as possible to watch the podcast, to engage in training camp, to go to the systems thinking conference as well. So, so thank you Danny. What are you taking away from today's conversation? Lots of things. I think the few things that stuck with me were talking about reality being patient and it will give you the feedback and we'll keep giving you the feedback until you listen to it.
(50:21) So that stuck with me and I think the importance of understanding on mental models that you know really taking that time to explore the mental models we're holding and then work with others that we're working with to get that shared those shared mental model between us and keep that up to date and keep evolving that.
(50:34) Well, thank you. Thank you so much Derek and Laura. If you are watching this podcast and you think you someone you know would find it really useful in being introduced to the world of systems thinking and and Derek and Laura's work, please do share it. We have a huge number of shares every single week from people just wanting for others in in different organizations to get into it as well. So, so thank you so much.
(50:52) But most of all, thank you so much Dererick and Laura. It's been brilliant. We've loved it. Um and good luck with everything as well. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. It was a lot of fun. A lot of fun. Heat. Heat. [Music]