We don’t have a climate change problem, we have a thinking problem
Lateral thinking is our greatest tool in creating ideas that bring value. These ideas can be generated through thinking frameworks, sometimes called Design Thinking or Design with a capital D. It is the skills of the compassionate leader to create the right environment to nurture valuable ideas into existence, using thinking frameworks and the skills of empathy and communication to align decision making with the economy we want to build post-Covid 19.
As we reflect on 2020 and the events that have preceded the pandemic, it is clear that this ‘unprecedented’ event was very much on the horizon. Poignantly, Bill Gates delivered a talk in March 2015 titled ‘The next outbreak? We’re not ready.’ The World Economic Forum also delivered a similar message in its 2014 guide to possible futures called ‘Seeds of Dystopia.’ This survey predicted, unsurprisingly ‘a killer pandemic’ as well as ‘unmanageable deflation; a geomagnetic storm that wipes out the internet; global food shortages and unprecedented geophysical destruction’. If hindsight is anything to go by, the rest may be yet to come. Unfortunately, it is the result of human behaviour that we are living through a global pandemic and Covid 19 is just a very visible symptom of the planet’s ecosystems in collapse.
Civilisations have known for thousands of years that we must take care of the planet and people before growth and have developed a respectful, long-term approach to leadership. The indigenous people of Canada have a thinking framework based on the philosophy that: ‘In our every deliberation, we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations’. It is this approach from the Iroquois Nation and indigenous communities around the world that had left the planet and its ecosystems in balance, a period of time known as the holocene, one in which the planet has experienced relative stability. We now however are entering the age of the anthropocene; this is history in the making, the era where human activity has now so severely impacted the earth that we face climate change.
It is our generation of leaders who have exploited and over-extracted resources, failing to implement the prudence of indigenous people like the Iroquis nation into their decision making and put the planet and people at the heart of our economy. Ecuador is leading by example by being the first to incorporate ‘Pachamama’ meaning ‘Nature’ into their constitution, stating that ‘it has the right to exist and persist to maintain and regenerate its vital cycles’. In rebuilding post-Covid 19 we need to think about consequences to the planet and people ‘across every deliberation’ and consciously build a restorative economy for the generations to come.
Covid 19 has aggressively uprooted our daily habits, norms, and rituals, from our commute to our social structures. Never has there been a better moment to readdress these patterns. Habits that have become obligations, rituals that are now ineffective. Lateral thinking is a tool to deliberately rethink ‘patterns’ and ‘snap’ them back into place in an optimum formation that adds value. In taking this opportunity now we can redirect decision making for the betterment of the planet and people, a practice known as ‘Redirective Practice.’ Consciously designing the economy of the future to restore ecosystems and better serve the people that our growth economy has left behind.
The economy we want to create
In thinking about the future economy we want to create we first must acknowledge that as we pursue exponential growth we create imbalance. In order to create this growth we must extract more resources to create more energy and in doing so push our planetary boundaries, to the point that we are now seeing ecosystems in collapse. In the global north, people live in abundance, rarely threatened with insecurity, wherein parts of the global south people still do not have the basics of life, often surviving rather than thriving. Kate Raeworth’s ‘Doughnut Economics’ Visualises the dynamic balance that must be restored and maintained ahead of pursuing growth, in the shape of a doughnut, hence the memorable title of her book, ‘Doughnut Economics.’
At the heart of the doughnut are social needs, these are the 12 basics of living that everyone on the planet should have access to. These are: Food, health, education, income and work, housing, peace and justice, energy, social equality, networks, gender equality, political voice and water.
The inner ring represents the planetary boundaries. A regenerative and redistributive economy that is a safe space for humanity.
The outer ring represents the 9 environmental constraints. These make up the interconnected parts of our social and ecological systems. When we live within these boundaries we can maintain this equilibrium. These are Climate change, ocean acidification, chemical pollution, nitrogen & phosphorus loading, freshwater withdrawals, land conversion, biodiversity loss, air pollution, and ozone layer depletion.
If we accept the patterns that have occurred as a result of exponential growth then we accept encroaching into our environmental constraints and depriving humans of the basics of life. We must take this opportunity to shift our mindset to a restorative economy, and repair as much as possible what has been destroyed, understanding that before we design anything it has the potential to improve or destroy people and the planet.
The need for lateral thinking
Often patterns occur passively rather than by intent and could be done better if we could take the time to deliberately consider our actions and use methods to unpick established ways of doing things in order to add more value. If we take the example below taken from Edward De Bono’s Lateral thinking: ‘There are two pieces of plastic given to someone who is then instructed to arrange them together to give a shape that would be easy to describe. The two pieces are usually arranged in a square as shown. Then another piece of plastic is added with the same instructions as before. This is simply added to the square to give a rectangle. Two more pieces are now added together. They are put together to give a slab wish and are added to the rectangle to give a square again. Finally another piece is added. But this new piece will not fit. Although one has been correct at each stage one is unable to process further. The new piece cannot be fitted into the existing pattern.
A different way of arranging the plastic pieces is shown below. With this new way of arranging them one can fit in all the pieces including the final one. Yet this other method is less likely to be tried than the first method since a square is so much more obvious than a parallelogram.’
The lateral thinking attitude challenges the assumption that what is a convenient pattern at the moment is the only possible pattern. By using lateral thinking manoeuvres we can juxtapose unlikely information, break down old patterns, liberating information to stimulate new patterns that add value. All these manoeuvres will only produce a useful effect if the pattern which is disrupted can be quickly snapped back together again to form a new pattern. Without this, lateral thinking would be purely disruptive and useless.
Just like to be a gardener is not to let nature take its course, it is to tend, to prune, to sequence. Gardeners don’t make plants grow but they do create optimum conditions and make judgements of what should and shouldn’t be in the garden. That is why ‘economic gardeners’ must throw themselves into the problems solving needs we face today. Creating the economy of the future with prudence, intention, and compassion.
How to use lateral thinking ‘manoeuvres’ to restructure ‘patterns’
In Edward de Bono’s Lateral thinking, first published in 1970, the ideas also still ring true. Lateral’ itself means moving sideways as opposed to directly to the solution. A way of thinking of the two ways of thinking is if you were digging a hole, vertical thinking would let you dig deeper where lateral thinking would let you dig lots of shallower holes nearby. For a problem or existing pattern to change it requires lateral thinking to look at the situation differently and to generate new ideas. Often when a pattern is first established it may initially be right and we will continue to use it or build on it using vertical thinking. But, if for example, the system in which the pattern sits changes, then there may now be a multitude of better ways of creating that pattern. Two examples from De bono’s ‘Lateral Thinking’ that help with analysing an existing problem:
The generation of alternatives
The basic principle here is that we must look at a ‘pattern’ from one of many possible ways. This approach values quantity and ‘richness’ of thinking over ‘rightness’ and moving straight ahead with what is considered the single correct solution.
How can you divide a square into 4 even pieces?
Challenging assumptions.
Assumptions are patterns which have escaped the restructuring process. In order to live we have to take some things for granted. Any assumption can be challenged to make better use of information and without taking these opportunities, we take for granted that ‘the pattern’ exists in the only form possible.
The ‘Why technique’ in this scenario is a useful game in challenging assumptions. It is similar to the way a child would ask ‘why’ all the time but in this scenario when we ask the question ‘why’ we do already know the answer, it is simply a way to elicit an explanation that is acceptable and in turn will raise more questions and more assumptions.
‘Why are wheels round?’
‘Why do humans have two legs’
‘Why do boys wear trousers and girls wear skirts?’
There are many more deliberate exercises that can be used to restructure patterns, some of these include, ‘Suspending judgement,’ knowing that a right idea or the seemingly ridiculous could create a train of thought that leads to the right idea. Fractionation, further fragmenting established patterns to avoid problems solving with the whole and rather with the granular parts. The reversal method, to understand what you have first and then understand the opposite, e.g water runs up the faucet. Analogies, align a pattern with the context of a story and many more. Ultimately lateral thinking is a mindset:
‘Reassessment as standard, to look back at things that are taken for granted and to deliberately generate new ideas’.
Design for sustainment — redirective practice
In aligning new ideas for people and the planet Tony Fry call’s this redirective practice. It compliments the lateral thinking attitude but before ‘snapping’ patterns back in place, we must make sure to restructure them in alignment with these three areas.
- To counter what is unsustainable,
- to reimagine ‘things,’ designed objects and systems that threaten our own sustainment
- To design prudently for the future that is coming.
Humans have designed the world around them, in doing so, we have designed systems, tools, services, and products that humans depend on and consequentially we have created the need for these ‘things’ be that clothes, homes, or cars. Essentially humans are in control of designing behaviour be that positive or negative, this is known as ontological design. Whilst our ability to shape the world around us has brought great advancement it has undeniably brought great destruction. To every ‘thing’ designed we face this paradox. We must intentionally design our ‘things’ to encourage sustainable behaviour in order to align people with the economy we want to create.
John Thackara wrote ‘Designing Tomorrow’s World Today: How To Thrive in the Next Economy’ in 2015, seven years on, and of course the themes still ring true today. Covering ten themes, changing, feeding, knowing, clothing, grounding, water keeping, commoning, dwelling, moving, and caring, he uses case studies from his travels around the world to show signs of the new economy we want to see, already emerging all over the world. At the heart of this new economy, in parallel with doughnut economics, will be people and a focus on raising everyone’s standard of living globally. It will also have a deep awareness of the earth systems and the interconnectedness of everything. No longer will growth be the entire focus, rather a redistributive, circular economy that leaves the earth in a better condition than we found it.
Redirective patient centred care
In demonstrating how we can take his example of redesigning health care for the planet and people. Here he champions a shift from energy-intensive approaches to low tech, community-based approaches that involve spreading medical care to a broader network of trained professionals as opposed to relying on doctors alone and facilities such as hospitals. At the heart of the need for change is our reliance on oil, it is deeply connected to the medical industry, often so woven into everyday practice it goes unnoticed. From the energy to run hospitals, through to consumables within a hospital such as analgesics, antihistamines, heart valves, implants and prosthetics even ambulances and helicopters. A recent study found that 5% of road trips were for medical purposes. It is this blind spot to a looming energy transition that will render the medical industry unsustainable. By avoiding consideration of this issue they face risk of ‘catabolic collapse’. Broadly speaking this means that by the time a system realises their energy usage is not sustainable, the money, energy and resources are no longer available to do anything about it. We are essentially taking energy for granted.
Across the global south solutions exist to deliver health care to patients without the need for intense use of resources. Take for example Cuba, because they have faced scarcity of things like food and petrol for the past 60 years they now use 5% of resource cost per person (average American) to achieve the same levels of medical care we have today. As well as reduced energy consumption, large numbers of community health workers display the same depth of knowledge as clinic-based experts — so-called nurses and physicians can perform 85% of the work of a family doctor. In Mexico, community health care workers are paid $10 per hour to deal with common illnesses such as hepatitis, asthma and substance misuse. And in some state prisons, inmates after a 10-week training course are proving effective health educators to their peers and they are paid nothing. Often our assumption is that we must rely on doctors or innovation in treatment and whilst these remain very important it is clear there are measures we can take before someone needs to visit a hospital or take medication, reducing our reliance on energy and giving everyone accessible support.
Solving these problems through different approaches also requires us to look beyond treatment and to recognise the systems perpetuating the health problems in the first place. Take for example the diabetes pandemic, by 2030 it is predicted that 438 million people will have diabetes worldwide, that’s a 54% increase on today’s total and that is rising, despite innovation in treatment. There is an undeniable interconnection between fast food and the health of people today and it has now been termed an ‘obesogenic environment,’ one that is designed to make us fat and choose foods that will make us more likely to develop a disease like diabetes. We must look at these problems from all angles and choose to reimagine the ‘health space’ within a social and ecological context, which like a garden needs to be cared for collaboratively.
The skills of the designer
The field of design is the perfect place to practice lateral thinking and take on these important challenges. We cannot do it alone though and we need to develop the skills of compassionate leadership to create safe environments to design, fail, and explore. It is the metaphor of the ‘Leader As Gardener’ that guides this role, knowing that it is not about ‘making’ the plants grow but instead, creating the right conditions. The compassionate leader focuses their energy on clearing the path, tilling the soil, observing the system, and gently tweaking when necessary.
The economy of the future will require collaboration with different types of people all with deep knowledge of their field of study. Recently at Imperial College, scientists have been encouraged to do stand up comedy as a way of re-learning how to communicate ideas so embedded in academia that they struggle to communicate and implement their findings. ‘People with the deepest knowledge do not necessarily make the best innovators.’ Therefore designers must practice the skills of facilitation and synthesis, drawing out those insights from for example, scientists or stakeholders whose deep knowledge is invaluable in the generative process of ideation and problem-solving.
The combination of compassion, social skills, and systems thinking is demonstrated in a movement in India called ‘The Ugly Indian.’ Started by design students In Bangalore, it is about cleaning up the informal latrines, trash-covered sidewalks, and illegal rubbish dumps. Small groups talk to everyone in the street from rubbish collectors, shop owners, to office workers who dump rubbish in the street. They use the visibly clean streets to start a conversation ‘look how clean our streets could be!’ and invite people who are part of the problem to imagine themselves as co-owners of a clean street. They don’t blame their fellow citizens, politicians or ‘the system,’ they act first and then they talk, they make it ‘our problem’ not ‘your problem’. It is the ‘Citizen Designer’ who has the humility to know she does not have all the answers and must bring people together as part of the design process.
When the optimum conditions are in place alchemy occurs, real problem solving, flow, sharing ideas, challenging assumptions, breaking down patterns and liberating information. It is only in these safe spaces where people are free to challenge that we will create new and innovative approaches and with the redirective practice we can design ‘things’ products, services, behaviours to align to our planetary boundaries in mind.
In the pursuit of change and after the devastation of Covid 19, let’s take the opportunity to think. To consciously design what comes next and embody the prudence to consider our next generation ‘in our every decision and deliberation’.
