 it is Thursday, April 2nd, 2020. We are kind of a month into the great lockdown. Things are weird. Everybody is on Zoom. And so we have yet another Zoom call here. This is a design from Trust call. And our guest is Hildi Gottlieb, who will, I think, help address some of the fear that's been coming up with some really productive suggestions for what we might do. And our introductions are light. The conversation is meant to be casual. There's a chat on the side. Please feel free to post a lot on the chat. Meet yourself if you're using your keyboard a lot, because we can probably hear your keys tapping. And otherwise, I'd just love to turn it over to Hildi to take us in a bit for the start of the conversation. And please take it away. It is just delightful to be here. And I just want to say thank you because many of the people on the screen are here at my invitation. And so Nicole and Troy and Bonnie and I, Trey, I never know because it could be, it could not be. And Jackie and Fred. And so I'm just really glad that you all are here. And I thought if we could start by just going around and if we could let each other know, tell us your name, tell us where you are, and just what's alive and exciting for you today. And I will start. I am Hildi Gottlieb. I am in Tucson, Arizona, where the weather has gotten very warm very quickly. Not as hot as it will be eventually in the desert here, but quite, quite beautiful. And what is alive and exciting for me these days is watching and listening for what is powerful in people and what is good. And because there is so much good among the dross, there is just so much good stuff. So that is, that is what is alive for me today. Whoever wants to go next, just dive on in. Okay. I'm, I'm Troy Alfred. I'm from San Diego, California. And I think what's alive for me today is the unexpected side effect of all of the stay at home worker stuff is that there's various people from around the country and around the world who I haven't been in touch with for a long time. And this is causing us to like reach out on Facebook and have video calls and reconnect and that kind of stuff. So, you know, if you look for the silver lining, I feel like that's, that was a totally unexpected out of the blue silver lining, which, you know, I'm trying to take some real joy in. Thank you, Troy. Who else would like to jump in? I may as well. Sorry. Okay, go ahead. I'm well, as you can see, I'm Roy Roy Brooks. I'm in Norfolk in the UK on the northern edge of the bulgy bit that sticks out into the North Sea. And what's changing around here for me most pleasantly is the diminution of traffic. This is, this is being one of the most wonderful side effects of where we are now. And the other thing is that I see so many of the little plants that have been quietly nurturing away in the background waiting for something like this to happen are possibly going to get a chance to blossom as some of the bigger trees in the forest fall. So it's exciting times. Sounds beautiful and restful. Judy, did you want to jump in? Yeah, I'm Judy Venom. I'm in the Twin Cities in Minnesota. And I think two things struck me. I've had the same experiences, Troy. In fact, a couple of months ago, I had a two hour phone conversation with a college roommate long, long time ago. I see her whenever I get to her area of the West Coast, but it's been four or five years. So that was wonderful. I think what I'm liking the most is the effect that quiet time offers. And I have the luxury of that because I don't have small children at home, but the opportunity for reflection and a bit of ease and then eliminating all the transportation time because all my meetings are occurring virtually. And so I'm able to stay connected to people virtually, but the reflective time in terms of how to take positive action, what to make positive from the situation that we're in and the abundance of kindness of so many people. Thanks, Judy. Anyone else? Bonnie, just muted yourself. You were unmuted. So my name is Bonnie. I am in Brooklyn, New York. I have to say one of the things that's just giving me great joy right now is the spring bulbs that are popping up that are a result of our, my apartment buildings volunteer garden group that we planted all around the building last year. And just the sense of community that it represents. The other thing that I am really loving is just the question that is being posed out there of what will life be like on the other side? Because I like to believe that there is going to be good that comes out of it along with bad, but if we can tilt the CSaw, so more good is left behind. Thank you. I'll jump in because mine is very similar to that. I'm Jerry McCall scam in Portland, Oregon. When I do this, it means I agree. When I do this, it means I disagree. This means not so sure, just in case anybody hadn't run across the signs yet. This actually means applause in American Sign Language, which is kind of the borrow, but it was also the occupy hand signs. And I try to use them all the time in Zoom because if you have gallery view, this is really, really like this works in gallery view phenomenally because you can, it's easier than trying to read if somebody is smiling or frowning or falling asleep at the terminal. What's alive and exciting for me these days is the possibility that the great sort of the machine stopping causes a lot of people to go try new stuff like unschooling, for example. So all the kids might not be back in school through summer, through September in the US, for example. Wow, what are you going to do? And lots of people are trying curriculum, lots of teachers are trying to be on top of this and send lots of homework. And I think a lot of parents and kids are going to be like, hmm, this ain't working so well for us. What else might we do? And that's just educational with kids. And for me, there's like sector after sector after sector after sector that we could begin to experiment in interesting new ways that otherwise we were kind of lulled into complacency about. And nothing was forcing us to reexamine our values or assumptions or like any of that kind of stuff. And suddenly we're like thrust into a world where we better do that. And in the meantime, all sorts of people are doing brilliant things at home like the family that did the Les Mises Robb song, everybody raise your hand if you've seen the Les Mises version. Brilliant, right? Like the lyrics are fantastic. It didn't just kind of hack that one. They really like knocked it out of the park. So we're seeing that people at home left the devices are doing and inventing and creating in some cases, brilliant things. So I'm excited about that. Who else? Can I go next? Yes, please. I'm on the other side of the world. What the rest of the world calls developing country or underdeveloped or developing country, India. So I'm still developing my thoughts on what's going on around here. A few things just in case you didn't know. I think our Prime Minister, I'm not a very politically minded guy, but I think our Prime Minister has shown a lot of courage to have shut down a country of 1.4 billion people, locked it down completely for 21 days. And there are some of us who are educated idiots who will still believe that we are the exception to the rule. So these are the guys that are going to actually help the virus spread. I'm hopeful that the rest of us or the people that have a little bit of sanity left will actually get them a little bit more good sense. So that's what's been happening in India. So we've been locked in. It's not very new because we come from a culture that has so much diversity and so much of cultural noise going around that you are actually welcome quite times like this. It's not that quiet because you've just moved from a physical world to a virtual world. We're all doing this kind of stuff. I love this because it's just part of the course for me and because I work a lot with and speak a lot to people in other parts of the world. This is my second job, day job, right? I mean the day job is four hours during the day in India and the rest of it is all on a phone call or a telephone call. I just have two more things to say. If you can bear with me, can I go ahead? So one of the good, one of the very interesting things is that, you know, apparently it takes 21 days for you to either cultivate a habit or kick a habit. And almost by coincidence, the India lockdown is 21 days, right? And to me, I keep wondering as to why we think about the other side of the crisis. I think we are already into the other side of the crisis, which is the new normal. If we keep thinking of the other side of the crisis, what we are actually telling ourselves is that we will go back to something or we will go out on the other side. But I think the best that we can do is to see that we've already stepped into the new normal. The past is the past, it's gone. And so how do we, you know, how do we move forward with what we have right now? And we have 21 days at least in India to, you know, cultivate the new habits of a new culture. And I really think that Jerry, I think you were way ahead of your time when you talked about designing from trust because you can actually see everything being done with so much of trust today, thanks to COVID. So many of the tweets that I put out these days or the social media stuff that I put out these days, I try to end it with quotes, well, it says COVID and it says you're welcome. You know, COVID is telling everybody that you're welcome, don't thank me. I had to unify humankind because humankind is going everywhere all over the place. So I think that we are already in a space because let me give you one example, a very powerful example. There's this, and Tre, you know this, Jerry, you know this, the OpenEXO community. And Francisco on 17th actually came up with a sprint which I looked at very skeptically and I said, you know what, this guy gives us three days, puts out something on LinkedIn, tells people that he wants to do a one day challenge to find out if we can do collaborative projects for COVID. Basically COVID is the common enemy for all of us, right? But you'd be amazed, they had 300 people sign up, they had from 25 different countries, people came together, they congregated on teams, worked for three hours on whatever they wanted to, and they came up with stuff that was brilliant. And it's all about designing from trust. It's all about working with trust. People who don't know each other, they don't have this problem about, you know, who are you and where do you come from? They jumped in with both feet and everybody worked, came out with these ideas, not judging, not caring about whether they're doing things right or not. So we are in the new normal, it's the way I would like to put it. And thanks Jerry for this call. Fantastic. Thanks, Sunil. Let's keep the check-in round going and if you can keep it a little bit briefer, but I totally love what you said, Sunil. Trey, please. I'll jump in. So Hildi, I first heard about this call from Jerry's list, then Sen found about it from your list. So I'm Trey Ashley Garan. I'm here in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. I've had the privilege of working side by side and closely with both Jerry and Sunil in the last couple of years and Hildi and Troy over a decade now. I am absolutely excited and alive about the work that's been happening in pockets all over the world for the last 20, 30 years that is actually getting a voice now, beyond those pockets and is getting more mass distribution, so to speak. Getting on Zoom has been my best friend for probably about three years now and I have more friends through Zoom I think now than I have achieved personally. And I am super excited to be on the call and very grateful to be here. Thank you so much. Thanks, Trey. Who's next? Debs. Hey, I'm Debs. I'm in New York. I know about the call from Jerry's list. So I have just, oh, there's so many things I'm grateful for, but I'll fuck it into a couple of things. One is to echo what everyone's been saying. I'm excited to see that people are, that we're swinging the pendulum away from algorithms. Corona has warped our need to change almost back to who we authentically are, our human selves. So I'm grateful that that's happening in lots of places. You're seeing people get, I've been talking for years, technology changes, humans don't is my thing and so seeing Jerry's design from trust and so seeing people actually get that. I'm also grateful, I think this echoes what you were saying, Trey, is that I thought about it last night, I'm like, I was joking with a friend, but like, thank God this is happening now and not 20 years ago. So there's a lot, so it's sort of bringing us back to what we all loved about technology, at least I don't want to speak for everyone, but the connecting part of technology, the doing stuff together part of technology. And then on a very concrete level, I'm grateful for Governor Cuomo, someone who's got leadership, because it's pretty stressful here in New York at the moment. And I'm also grateful for the guy who lives across the street from me in an apartment building across the way, who's our team captain. I posted the video on this bar, 7 p.m. claps, and he's, and watching how I could talk a lot about how I've seen this change over the last week. So what started out as people just sort of clapping ended up, you know, becoming lots of people clapping and this guy has a booming voice. So, you know, I listen and seven o'clock I hear his voice. So I go to the window and now it's morphed to, and this is a building I've lived across from, I mean, I moved back to this apartment. I was in San Francisco the last 14 years and moved back to New York this past year. And so I lived over the past 25 plus years in this space and looked across at this building across the way and all the windows. And now what happens every night at seven o'clock is the same few, you know, the same randomness of windows open and that building and buildings across the way. We all listen for this guy whose name I want to get. You know, it's interesting to see how what started as anonymous people clapping became people who were like waving to each other. And now we end our two to three minutes every night with see you tomorrow. And yesterday he went from his apartment window down onto the street. So it's interesting to see how that's been changing and how this strange community of windows to faces to humans with connection has happened. And I should probably write that up. That's beautiful. Please do. I'd love, yeah, yeah, please. Please do. Other check-ins. Susan, Frederick, April, Jackie. And Judy, you had your hand raised. Did you want to ask? I was just going to add that I meant to say and actually thought but then forgot. I'm also really excited for the visible demonstration of the effect on pollution and climate of the actions in all of the countries where this is occurring because the doubters are going to have trouble disbelieving the change that is possible as a result of human behavior. And Greta just got her wish basically like petroleum consumption just with subsequent effects on the economy, et cetera, et cetera. But super interesting. Thank you, Judy. Other check-ins? I'll just follow up on that. I'm Susan Saki. I'm here in the San Francisco Bay Area in the States. Two things. One is on that whole, I was looking up at the sky yesterday and I was looking into the sky for the first time in years and I realized what it was like when I was a child. And you could stand there and you could tell that there was an atmosphere and then it went on and on and on and on. And it was looking into the sky. It was so special. And I thought, oh, could we just please have more of that? The second thing that I thought was, well, we don't have clapping. I'm near La Honda, which is Ken Keezy's place here on the West Coast. And so instead of clapping, people are having howls. Outside at 8 p.m. and howling. I love that. I'm sorry I had to tell you to just say I love that you guys are taking in your inner coyotes. I love it. Oh, one question to you then. Do you know the book, Coyote America? Well, you might like it. I'll send you notes. I just typed the name in. So if anybody wants to do the Amazon link or whatever else, that'd be great. Susan, thank you. It's great. Who are we missing? Frederick? Yes. Nice to see you. Nice to see you too. I'm speaking to you from Whidbey Island, which is a little bit north of Seattle. And if you've got to be isolated, be isolated there. It's really quiet and everything's closed and everything's far apart and it's quite relaxing. But I'm moving between two bases. So I'm breaking a rule, jumping in the car and coming up here three days a week. And I just want to report one thing I noticed yesterday is that the atmosphere of the universe often expresses people's states of mind, but I'd never seen anything quite like this. Beautiful super blue skies after weeks of gray and rain. And the clouds were lined up in a kind of a long arc which stopped and was completely clear on one side, but it was as if someone had placed the clouds quite coherently. They were all about the same size. They were all square. They were all rather not too tall, but they were like square blocks and they all had equal spacing between them. To the right it was like that through the whole sky and to the left over Seattle it was open blue. So I said, the clouds are representing this social distancing. They're cooperating. And I said, very nice, very nice. And the only other thing I'd like to say at this point is that it seems that the madhouse effect of life on the planet had been sort of accelerating over the last four years where things were going on that you couldn't even believe people believed. And it seems as if the COVID experience has burst a kind of a boil and it's draining rather rapidly. And nobody knows exactly how it's going to turn out, but it can't go back. And I think, well, it's about time. And I'm very medium on it can't go back, but I don't want to hijack the conversation because we need to get to Hilly. Frederick, were you done checking? Yes, thanks. Thank you. We have a few people who still haven't. This is April. I'll keep mine really brief because I want to hear Hilly. Good morning, everyone. I'm April, Rene, and I'm not on video, but apologies for that. I'm actually, and I guess my closest connection to this is I am Jerry's wife, but I've actually been interested in how do we navigate change and uncertainty and unknowns and all of that for quite a while long before COVID and have given some talks around this and so forth. And I think what I'm most interested in is I was working on this concept, which was much more sort of pace of change. Everything's changing so fast. We need to run faster, you know, society tells us that in order to quote, unquote, keep up, we need to run ever faster. And I had this emerging thesis that that is not the way we need to go, that running ever faster, you know, at best leads to burnout and at worst leads to just no one reaching their full potential in society. And so I was sort of tinkering away on this idea. And then COVID happened. And this notion that everything is changing faster than we can possibly imagine, but in a very different way than simply the pace of technological change, that really not only fascinates me, but it's just given this incredible lift and boost to work that I already had underway. So that's the stuff that I'm interested in exploring, riffing on, building, creating, curating, etc. And I'm really happy. I mean, I spend a lot of time around Jerry. He hosts calls all the time. I feel really lucky to have access to such a wonderful community. But unfortunately, I'm not always able to join a lot of this stuff. I travel a lot, I'm overseas a lot, etc. So the Design from Trust Group is one that I've been really keen to get to know better, but haven't had much access to thus far. So thank you for the invitation and I'm really happy to be here. Thank you so much, April. Last few. This is Jackie. Jackie Nunzi from Boston. First of all, I'm really delighted to be here. I've been following Hilda's writing for several years and loved it and have been sharing it widely with the groups I work with and I do a lot of work with movement building and social change. I want to say that what I'm hopeful about is that with all of this disruption as a result of COVID and what we've been talking about, the connection, the sense of community, the awareness of each other, my hope is that we become aware and we remain aware of groups that have been invisible to a lot of us in our society and have been the ones who've been impacted most by the inequalities in our society and in our world. And so if we are designing from a place of trust, my hope is that increasingly we design from a place of trust that values every, includes everybody, values them and that they're part of the community we build to both imagine and create the world we want to live in. Jackie, thank you. That's beautiful. And then I've been seeing multiple posts about the new heroes, basically, you know, during sort of normal ongoing peace time, our heroes are the people who are like the warriors, the way we sort of deify soldiers and police folk. And at this point it's like, the heroes are different. Last couple of people to check in, Matthew? Nicole? Sure. Go ahead, Matthew. What a great connection just between the two of you. I'm Matthew Manard. I'm in Stratford, Ontario, Canada. I'm involved with both First Nations and with healthcare as a patient partner. And as some will call me in the First Nations in the last couple of weeks, oh, you're the needed white guy. And I think that really does speak to equalizing that COVID has brought to us. So we end up with a personal responsibility, but we also end up with a community responsibility. And from that, we end up with a leadership responsibility. And so that's what I found myself doing as in the past. I would have been commenting as a patient partner on whether that policy was appropriate or not. Now it's about how can we make sure that there is inclusion and that as we move forward, that we're moving forward not only in our own best interests, but in the best interest of our communities and with full intention and with trust. That we're going to make mistakes, we've made mistakes, but this is our opportunity globally to move forward in a way that brings equity and brings true recognition of what the individual can provide and working together what community can do for themselves and for those around them. Thank you. Thank you so much. That's lovely. Hi, I'm Nico or Nicole. I'm in Minneapolis, so I'm in Minnesota with Judith. I'm super excited to be here today. I will keep this short, what is really feeling alive in me right now. They just echo what Jackie said. I do a lot of social change work in community organizing as well, in addition to systems change. And at the local level, we have been organizing rent strikes and working to redistribute stimulus checks back into the communities where many folks won't receive them but are still tax paying folks. And so I'm seeing a lot of people who have been very hesitant to participate in mutual aid in non-emergent times, really sort of learning what that interdependence looks like for a lot of the reasons that many of you have said. And so I'm interested in the ways that people talk about designing from trust so that I can continue to bring people into the circle that really does do so. So thank you for having me here. Thank you so much, Nico. Really appreciate it. Hildy, you're over on that side of me on my particular little grid display. So over to you. Wonderful. One quick check in April and Matthew and Jackie, if you could just put in the chat box, we can't see you, and I want to know if you can see us. So when folks are doing twinkle hands, are you actually seeing that or do we need to communicate with you differently? So if you could just put in the chat, if you're not visible on video, just let us know if you can see us. You know, one of the things that has been a drum beat for me for a long time is that what we are seeing in each other is not unusual in a crisis. We see this in an earthquake, we see this in a tsunami, we see this in whatever it is people come together, community comes together, and the question that I am frequently asked in those settings is what can we do to ensure that this becomes our way of being? And because all of this systems that we have created are set up around this not being our way of being, it's very easy to slide back into how we normally do things. And we're being so rabidly encouraged to go back to normal. I loved, Sunil, the fact that a did normal work. Let's start with that, but even if it did, we are where we are right now. And we are really being very, very strongly urged, especially in the US and in many places around the world to just go back to the way it was. And what's been very, very interesting for me is that unlike other crises, the world's never known this. We've never all just stopped. And the world has just stopped. And what that means is that we don't have a frame of reference to say, well, last time this is what we did, we got nothing. And all we have is the future, which is awesome, which is absolutely awesome. And this urge to go back to something that no longer is there, that even if it was going to continue, and even if it was going to thrive, it stopped. It's not there. So without that, what does it take to create the future that we do want? And that is what catalytic thinking is all about. It is why the organization that is built around catalytic thinking is called Creating the Future, because that is really what this is about. I will also let you all know, just as an aside, that for each of you that was celebrating spring and the bulbs and everything popping, I believe that from everywhere you mentioned it, it is all in my nose right now. So we're all feeling spring in the exact same way. And so if I start a massive sneeze attack, that is that. It basically, catalytic thinking is a framework for creating the future that we want. And it is about creating what is possible in any situation via the questions that we ask and what we listen for. And the thing that has been remarkable in practicing catalytic thinking for over a decade now is that the results are almost entirely consistent. Once we create that path to the future and we use these questions, consistently gets good responses and good by means of good for the most people, good for affirming life and humans and our planet. And so what we found about catalytic thinking is that it is a doable, walkable path to hope for the planet and for humanity. And the reason that it is so consistent is because it's rooted in science. It's rooted in the way our brains work. It is rooted in the physics of causality that we are so used to feeling like we are victims of causality. Well, that happened. That's why we're here. And we like to blame stuff that happened in the past and we go digging for root causes and trying to find why are we here instead of realizing or in addition to realizing that we can create the future the exact same way. We can create causality. We can lay those dominoes down to hit that goal that we do want. And so it's just a really important thing to be facing at this point that we can, as you all expressed so beautifully, we can work from a place of mindfulness or we can work from a place of reactivity. We can work from a place of trust or a place from suspecting. We can work from a place of compassion or blame and we get to choose that and we get to choose that on an ongoing basis. Are we going to respond with wisdom or are we going to respond from a place of reactivity? All of this while our brains are in stress mode. And so not only has this planet never been here before, but you've got seven billion of us walking around in stress mode. I'm not recalling that I'm going to make the assumption that at least some people in the room did not get a chance to watch the video about science. And so I'm going to do like three seconds of science. It's it will be more than three seconds. It may be five. The basic thing to remember in brain science when it comes to how we are all being right now. And this is about the most simplistic way of breaking the brain down because we all know this is a very complex machine up here with lots of interconnected circuitry. But we have got a center in our brain that is primarily about reacting, protecting us, surviving. It is almost entirely reflexive and that is what releases adrenaline when we got to get out of some place. It's our heart's race and we all know what adrenaline feels like. That is the part of the brain that releases cortisol. And many of us have heard about cortisol. We know it's sort of the stress hormone. What it really does is it slows down all of the functions that our bodies don't need to be doing that would take up energy and distract us from just getting out of there. Because again, this is about survival. So something bad is coming at us. We don't need to be digesting our lunch. We don't need to be thinking about things. We just need to get out. And so those are those are two of the chemicals that we feel in that survival part of the brain. The adrenaline gets us going and and the cortisol stops us from the stuff that that we don't need to be doing right now. One of the most interesting functions of cortisol is that it doesn't just stop, slow your metabolism or slow your digestion. It also puts a chemical barrier up against the frontal lobe, which is where our reason is, our creativity is. And it is literally this chemical barrier. If you saw the video, we draw a fence across the brain saying you can't get there. And so when we watch people who are acting supposedly, you know, that cognitive dissonance thing, where we're acting against our best interests, where we're feeling one thing, we value something, and yet we're doing this thing over here, it's because we're physically unable to think clearly. So, so first, just, you know, what does it take to design from trust to be in a place of trust when we can acknowledge from each other that none of us is thinking clearly, that that we need to be supporting each other. We need to be bringing out the best in each other. When people are saying ridiculous things, making the assumption first that they're not at their best, rather than, you know, she's such a jerk, or he's such a jerk, or they're such a jerk, which is where we go. And so it's really important to understand the brain sciences, to understand that that is where we're at. Anything that's going to bring us forward then, is going to be rooted in keeping that survival brain calm. And when we go to places like let's dig into the problem, and what's wrong, and let's fix this, you can feel, you know, when we start to talk about the problem, when we start to go into, okay, let's talk about root causes of the problem, and then you feel it, you can feel it in the ropes in your neck, you can feel it, you are physically reacting, your brain is physically sending out chemicals saying, this sucks, I don't want to deal with this. And that could be anything, it could be, I'm giving you one more assignment at work, and you've already got 17 assignments on your desk, and ding ding ding ding ding ding, and so you go right into that reactive mode because that's what our brains are programmed for. What it's going to take right now is questions that lead us to quiet that, things that lead us to quiet that, and a big piece of that is really about, and I practice this with the news a lot, you know, I mentioned that catalytic thinking is about the questions that we ask and what we listen for. When we're listening to the news, what are we listening for? Are we listening to those beautiful expressions of folks that are clapping for healthcare workers? Are we listening for what people are valuing or are we listening to the conflict? Because conflicts are almost always about values. So I've never found, I say almost always because I know there's probably one out there that's a conflict that's not about values, but in my mind, I equate conflict is about values. Are we listening for the values? Are we listening to what's important to that person? And saying, wow, okay, here's what my values are. That's what their values are. Are we going, you know, he's an asshole, which is generally where we go. And we name call and we, and so a big piece of what we can be doing right now is what are we listening for? What are we listening for? Are we listening for the problem or are we listening for what we do want? Are we listening to what's wrong? Are we listening to what we, what our aspirations are? Are we listening to what's not working? Are we listening to what is working? Yeah, Jerry. Just a brief introduction, Hilde. Long ago when I learned about appreciative inquiry, one of the things I loved about it was that it started from the premise that trying to solve problems creates negative discourse and negative thinking because you're looking at the problem and like where the head goes, the body follows, you know, all these other sorts of things and you were then focused on a problem. And appreciative inquiry was like, there are problems. Like let's pay attention to what we might do to make things better. Let's look above and away from the problem. And so I think, I'm going to over generalize here, in particular, men are trained to be analytic problem solvers. Right? And it's like that's your great benefit to society is you apply your mind to solve problems. And this is just like everywhere. And so in general, we're turning to look the wrong way at things, rather than, you know, approaching and thinking about community connectedness and mutual benefit, which I will over generalize again, seems to me a feminine trait. We're busy doing the other thing, which in many cases is the wrong thing. Yeah. And I prefer words like ineffective versus wrong. You know, what is it accomplishing? It's counterproductive. We see so many things that are counterproductive, rather than saying it's the wrong thing. But and we all use that language. So much of this is all about language. The thing that has been fascinating, Jerry, about catalytic thinking is that we don't claim to have invented anything. The wisdom of what brings out the best in people and what brings out the best in situations has been around for thousands of years. We've seen it in faith traditions. We've seen it in science traditions. We've seen it just about everywhere. We've seen it throughout the Renaissance. I mean, this is nothing new. What we don't have are repeatable frameworks that we can go to that are, okay, here's the questions I ask. And here's the order in which I ask them. Here's what I listen for and practice that. And it is having a practice that just pulls all of that stuff together. When I speak, when I do public speaking around this, people will come up to me afterwards. And everything from I practice appreciative inquiry, I practice, I'm part of a collective impact initiative. I am a devout Christian. I am a devout Buddhist. It is remarkable to me the ideologies from which people come, and they say, and this sounds, this really resonates with me. And it's because we know what works. We know what works. If we can pull it all together, we get something pretty powerful. Some of the questions that maybe we can play a little bit with, starting from a place of if we are trusting, if we have built trust into society, how many times have we seen initiatives in community where people say, yeah, well, the problem is nobody trusts anybody. And where do you wind up? You wind up right down that spiral of, oh, yeah, that's the problem. Oh, yeah. And then we wind up using words like it's an obstacle. It's a barrier. It's a challenge. Those are the things we bring into the room. The language we use triggers our brains. And so when we call something a challenge, we call something an obstacle, we call something a barrier, we're actually creating that. We're actually creating that. So by asking instead, what is good life like? And what are the conditions under which that will be created? And what we find is when it's a challenge or a barrier, it's actually an unmet condition for success. So if we call it a condition for success, when we say what needs to be in place, you wind up with the exact same answer you'd get if we said nobody trusts each other, just framed in a way that actually gives us something to aspire to. Another brief interjection, and this is a little bit negative, but I think it's sort of the reality of the current political situation, is that a lot of people around the world, I think on the far right, have done deep thinking about how humans respond and what's going on. And they have intentionally undermined trust facts, all these sorts of things, because it leads to winning things like elections. And so part of design from trust, part of catalog thinking, I think, is this assumption that most people have good intent and that we can work together to find a better place. But that the arena within which I think we're doing all of this is just got landmines everywhere. There are people intentionally trying to undermine discourse connection process. And one of my hopes is that this moment, this coronavirus moment, points out like the fruitlessness of trying to undermine society because we actually need each of them to make it through this. One of my favorite quotes is that people will believe anything as long as they either want it to be true or they're afraid that it's true. And the afraid that it's true part is way easier to capitalize on because it doesn't require you, it requires you only to tap into people's primal instincts, the lizard brain, you just get somebody to be afraid and they'll believe whatever you say. But the other way is much more effective if you can get people to share a common hope and want things to be true and follow along with what it takes to make the things that they want to be true. That's how change actually happens, right? And I feel like this is an opportunity where the reset button has been pressed on a huge amount of global fear and a system that's designed to create and foster that fear and to disingenuously divide people and cause us to hate each other, argue with each other, etc. But that's not predetermined, right? That's the thing that we're afraid of the differences and so we believe in them. But this is an opportunity for us to look at massive examples of people acting in unity and common interest and harmony and a future that we all want to live in. No one can avoid looking at the situation and saying, yeah, this sucks. But at the same time, it's also pretty impossible to not see people acting in harmony with each other and wanting to get along with each other and communities reaching out to each other and that sort of thing. If there's a way that we can focus our attentions on that and let that be what we're propagating to each other, it's quite an opportunity for us. Can I ask a quick question here? This is April. It's a great, great point. And I'm just throwing around in my mind and I think for me, it's a matter of not having connected all of these dots yet. But in the context of COVID, I think you're bang on in terms of what you want to be true or afraid is true. And I do think there are a lot of people who are very afraid that some of what we're hearing about COVID is true from a public health perspective, right? So there's, there's a kind of a legitimate fear that is in, you know, stoked by lack of complete information and that sort of thing as well. I'm just wondering, is there a way, so in practice, what would this look like to harness? Is it about harnessing and addressing that very real fear? And this isn't, I don't feel like this, in this case, it's fear instigated by others. It's like we have a pandemic. This is a natural, normal time to feel a lot of fear. Absolutely. What is the process we go through to harness? And I don't want to sound naive in that I don't think we try to harness that fear and well, there's a tension between fear and hope. But like practically speaking, where do we take those questions? Where do we, is there a translation that can happen? I think the thing you just said, the practical part, that's what really jumps out to me because the lizard brain is where the fear comes from, right? There's a reality of what's going on in the world right now. And that reality is not pleasant. It's terrible. There are people suffering, there are people dying. It's just real, you know, the thing that I keep thinking, however, is we can spend our time focused on the terrible part of it. We can spend our time thinking about and feeling horrible about what's going on and, you know, wallow around in the sensation of that. And it's easy to do, but it's not effective. It's not helpful. It doesn't make the virus go away. It doesn't make any of the situation better. You know, there's a, I think there's a way that we can, that we can be and we can practice and we can model to the other people in our lives, which is about saying, yeah, this sucks and we're in it together and we're going to get out of it together in whatever that looks like. So how about if we spend our time instead of focusing on being in pain, let's spend our time focused on what is the future of this look like? How do we come out of it whole, as whole as we can? How do we help as many people come out of it as whole as we can? Because when you spend your mind, when you spend your attention with your mind focused on that, there's no room left in your mind to focus on the fear. The cortisol levels go down, right? You start having that comes out, which actually boosts your immune system. It helps your body to recover because you're not spending your time in fight or flight mode. I mean, all around it's better for us to focus on what's good, which doesn't mean ignore what's bad. It doesn't mean ignore the CDC guidelines or anything like that or take stupid risks or whatever. But I think that there's a healthier way for us to be together than spending our time just being afraid. Deb, then Hilary. Yeah, I just wanted to quickly add in and both of what Troy and April said relate to this is that I always bring it back to the individual. I mean, we're talking very intellectually from a point of individual human who's very can sit back and be intellectual and think. And there's fear that, Jerry, you said that people are intentionally creating fear. But there's also the I always joke that if we were all just hug more as children, the society would be a better place. So Troy, you have this ability to think rationally and whatever. But certain people out of fear go to scarcity mode. And they're not evil people. They just might have had really, you know, their personal experiences are a certain way. And other people, you know, have so I think that's the other thing. It's like, you know, and I'm not saying it very. No, that was really well put very well. And part of what I'm part of what I'm trying to say is that the people who were intentionally triggering this are completely aware that there are a whole bunch of humans out there who have that as a background. And they know exactly what ropes to pull to trigger those responses. Hilly, I think we can't hear you right now. Oh, now we hear you good. I saw your lips moving, but no sound coming from your video. But now you're you're good. Awesome. Awesome. The thing that I'm going to move sort of from catalytic thinking to the work of creating the future, they blend creating the future is all about systems change. And the reason we focus on systems change again is rooted in what we learned about how the brain works, which is why folks are able to manipulate the systems that that they do manipulate us through systems. The reason that we focus on systems is systems are among other things. One of the ways that our brains feel safe. If we can predict if we know what to expect, then we feel okay. We may hate the system we're in. And how many of us experienced this in a workplace where where we complain about the system, we know the system sucks, but we do it anyway, because to buck the system requires that we completely have to get out of that fear brain, because the system feels good. I know what to expect, right? It may not be the best, and so the reason that we focus on systems change at creating the future is because if we can create systems that become just the way we do things, because that's really what systems are. Systems are this is how we do it, whether it's the criminal justice system or the system of how you introduce yourself in meetings. This is how we do it. This is our system. If we can create systems that are embedded and infused and grow from questions that are life-giving, rather than questions of scarcity and questions of suspicion and questions of reactivity, because all of that, think about strategic planning. You've all been in probably seven million strategic planning sessions. Typical strategic planning starts with today, reacts to today, does a situational analysis about today, so that we look at whether you do a SWOT analysis or you do an environmental scan or whatever you're doing, you're going out and you're finding out what the needs are. It is so mired in negativity. Anybody that's done a SWOT analysis with strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats knows that the strengths list is going to be, we've got a great team, and the weakness list is going to be five flip charts long, and that's where our brains go. Again, what if strategic planning asked, what do we want the world to look like? What do we want our community to look like because we're here? What are the conditions that would lead to that? What do people need to know? What do they need to feel? What do they need to be assured of? Those are conditions. Those are the dominoes we lay down, so if good would look like our community is humane and healthy and happy, what do the people in our community need to have in order for that to happen? What do they need to know in order for that to happen? What do they need to be assured of in order for that to happen? We lay down those dominoes. If that was the system we were used to, then nobody would say, wow, that sounds great. They'd say, well, of course, that's how we do it. And so it's the simple systems like that, that if we can institute different systems and change from within, it becomes very clear that we all have the power to ask a different question. And it doesn't matter where we are. You don't need positional authority to ask a different question, to ask, well, okay, I understand how badly that sucks. Can we talk about what good would look like for just a minute? What would it look like if this were good? What would trust look like in our community? And how often do we hear communities talk about people don't trust each other? And do we ask the question, what would trust look like in our community? If people trusted each other, what would we see? What would we feel? What would equity look like in our community? If this was an equitable community, what would we see? Equitable for whom? And just starting to ask those what would good look like questions, you can change any conversation and that can lead, I mean, so it's little things on a daily basis, if you've got somebody in your life that just constantly complains about how bad life sucks. I will almost guarantee if you ask them, okay, so what would good look like? Two things. One, they won't be able to answer because their brain just goes, oh, I don't know. They're stuck like that. And we get, and that's what happens is we get stuck in that loop and we're actually creating a feedback loop for our brains. And so we can interrupt that. We can just interrupt that. But I'm curious if you all, and Jerry, you guide me, have you all had the conversation of what does trust look like? We've dived into trust in 500 different sort of directions and ways, including sort of case studies of what design from trust looks like on the ground today, lots of different communities. And the one I point to all the time is Wikipedia, for example, which is actually a great example. There's a dark side to Wikipedia, but Wikipedia is designed from trust from the get go. And then there's lots of other examples from open source software to traffic calming to animal juggling to unschooling, etc. These are all operating from these same fundamental principles. I just put in the chat a little observation, which is that people of privilege who are benefiting from these inequities, I think a lot of them are really aware of this imbalance. And to them, any change in the current situation looks like loss. They have a hard time imagining that if everybody were in the table and if diversity were included that things would be better for them and their offspring. And I think that's crucial here is that they don't see that the future in a fairer world is better for them. So fight it. Like, block it all. So intercept this conversation at whatever opportunity possible. Does that make sense? And here I'll point to, like, one of Donald Trump's tactics during the 2016 campaign, he knew he could never survive an actual debate with anybody. Never mind Ted Cruz, who is a Yale debate winning champion and Hillary, who's awesome in a debate around the facts. So I can see him sitting in bed every night before the debate going, what am I going to do during this next debate that is so outlandish that everybody will talk about it for three days and nobody will notice there was a debate. And he successfully did that through a whole long series, just picking off enemies. So that's just a really explicit version of the strategy at play in the world today. And I love, I mean, one of the things I would love to arm us with is disarming tactics. And what you said a moment ago about, you don't have to have positional authority to interrupt, intercept, and take the conversation in a more positive way, anybody can do that. Unfortunately, most of us don't have that felt sense of agency, right? Most of us feel like the authority has control and we're not going to interrupt or whatever it might be. I love that. To me, that's a big opening wedge to making this conversation happen more often and more places in more ways. So Jerry, you're starting to say something that's related to what I wanted to say. And I want to direct my comments to Hildi. Hildi, the thing that came up for me listening to you is what I would like to see happen in this moment is that we create a huge practice field in which people get a chance to see, model, watch other people actually having the kind of conversation, leading with the kinds of questions you're talking about, having the kinds of questions, conversations around them, because right now, you know, what you have been doing for years, incredible work. It seems to me that the audience for it has been limited. And I'm wondering if we couldn't create some collaborative partnerships with a capacity, with a very large platform and therefore a large reach of audience to begin to experiment. You've always talked of your work as an experiment. An experiment to see what would it look like if we could get most of the country both experiencing the kind of questions you're talking about, but then out of that modeling, beginning to ask those questions themselves, so that we're beginning to shift their behavior into your point that language triggers our brain and our brain creates reality, that we use language that literally is designed to move people into a way of thinking that's not only about the future, but the future we want to create. It's aspirational and it's deeply connected in these values we're talking about of empathy, connection, community, solidarity. I would love to see us do that like as a big project that we do that because I think that will change the conversation in the country. You know it's one of the interesting things about catalytic thinking is that and I'll address this in about a million ways because Jack my head exploded when you were talking and I had like about a million different things that I would add. One is that our strategy at creating the future is simultaneously top down and bottom up and that for this conversation I'm choosing to focus more on the bottom up because it's what can each of us individually do, but the top down conversations look very similar to the things that you're suggesting so I want to share that. The interesting thing about hitting a tipping point is and especially when we think about the bottom up stuff because that's stuff each of us has control over. We may also have control over some top down stuff which is awesome, but each of us has control over the conversations we have in our lives, the conversations we have with our spouses, the conversations we have with our kids. I remember a talk I did several years ago and it was about boards and governance so it was just a very very non-profit audience, a very narrow audience. They were all board members, they were all focused on boards and governance. A woman walked up to me at the end crying and I held her and I said, what? She said, what you're talking about isn't just about boards. I was like I know, I pepper it with a lot of other personal stuff as well. She said it's about being a parent and without missing a beat she said, and I've been a horrible mom and I looked at her and she said, I'm always telling my kids you're going to lose your cell phone, you're going to lose your backpack, you're going to forget this, you're going to forget and it's those moments. It's those moments where we can change a little thing we do and what that does and Jerry, you talked about the fact that sometimes it takes a little bit of to ask a question in a different setting. We can practice. The more we get practice of asking those questions, the more they feel natural when you're in a staff meeting. A staff meeting may not be a threatening environment but I don't want to say anything. But if that's a question I'm constantly asking at home, I can preface it with, I'm always asking my kid this, what if we asked this? We can ease into something in whatever way it feels comfortable to us. But watching staff meetings that go down a rabbit hole of we don't have the money, we don't have the money, we don't have the money, we don't have the money, we don't have the money and you wind up only talking about money. To have somebody be able to say, you know, our vision that we've talked about for months is a community that's healthy. How is this conversation linking to that? I need to see that in my own mind. Make it personal. You know, for me, I'm frequently saying I need to see context. My brain doesn't work if I can't see context. Help me understand that. And suddenly you've got a conversation that just shifted from, well, we can get it here. No, nobody's got money and they're going to hate us and we got to compete with them and all of that scarcity talk. We can move that to, oh, yeah, how does this fit with our vision? Well, maybe we could partner with some other, okay, and you just watch the shoulders relax. But again, we can do that in our everyday meetings. And the more we practice in our everyday conversations, the more comfortable that feels. Some of the easiest questions are around, what would that take? And so it might not even be making people imagine what good would look like. Sometimes that might be a stretch, even now that might be a stretch in this current circumstance. I don't know, I can't think past getting to Costco and getting what I need and getting out. You know, we're all sort of in that mode. But asking the question, okay, we've seen people come together in community in beautiful ways. What would people need to have in order for that to be the way they be with each other? What would people need to know? What would people need to experience? Those are the kinds of questions we can be asking. What would it take questions? What would people need to, and what it would take is always about people. It may be about stuff people need, but it's not about the stuff, it's about the people needing it. The more we can focus on conditions being about people and not about things. And we tend to go to things. But what do people need to know? What do people need to understand? What do people need to have? What do people need to be assured of? What do they need to feel confident about? Because those are the dominoes that will lead us to where we want to get to. The more we can start asking those questions. There's also a couple, maybe a couple layers under this. Like, you know, what do they need? I need to know that my paycheck's not going to go away. Well, actually, I need to know that I'll be able to eat and have shelter. Like a paycheck may check, I might be able to do it through mutual aid. I might be able to consolidate living situations and do co-housing. I might be able to do lots of different interesting things. And co-housing may be better for me in the long run than having a little cabin in the woods or something like that because I'm suddenly among people. I mean, there's getting to what the closer to the root of the need may be. And I don't know how much this is a part of your process. But sometimes when you peel back the need, you get to much more interesting things. I'm always reminded of the only part I remember of my Management 101 class, which was the Ugly Oranges case, 30 second version. You divide the class in two, you give everybody a case. The case is that there's a shipment of Ugly Oranges coming into port. This is the last of the Ugly Oranges on earth. You have a budget of a million dollars and you need to buy that shipment because you're going to solve cancer with this. The trick is that half the room needs to peel and half the room needs the juice. And they don't know it. And if they actually talk about it, they can give the ship captain a buck and spend their million dollars on research. But if they don't enter that conversation and figure out what they actually need, they'll never get there. Yeah. The way catalytic thinking handles it, and I would urge everybody, if you would like, we've got plenty of information that talk about the order of these questions that are at our site. Every time we're faced with a situation. So let me go back to catalytic thinking 101. And I'm going to start with why we call it catalytic thinking. The important thing for us all to remember, and you've all talked about it in different ways, is that we focus so much on the actions that we'll create results. We come up with a million different ideas. You know what we could do. You know what we could do. We could have a party. We could have a podcast. We could have a, we come up with a million different doing ideas. But the thing that affects what we do is our thinking. The assumptions and beliefs and thoughts that we all have create our actions. If we change our actions without changing our our assumptions, we're going to get the same results. And that's so much of what we have faced over the past 20, 30 years in the world of social innovation is we're looking for the next new thing to do, but we're not changing the questions and assumptions that go into the doing. And so we continue to be, thank you, Ted. So the thinking, where does our thinking start? And the question is when something arises, whatever the situation, it could be our kids just came home from school. I mean, everything we're doing, are we reacting to that situation or are we creating what's possible? That's the moment. Right there is the moment we have the opportunity to pivot. We can react to what's wrong or create what's possible. And looking at that same scenario, Jerry, of peeling back the need, instead of focusing on the need, asking the question and what we talk about frequently in catalytic thinking is raise it up. And what I mean by that is if this need were no longer a problem, if this were no longer a problem, what would that make possible? Because that's really what you want. So what you want isn't the peel or the juice or the oranges, you want to cure cancer. So okay, we want to cure cancer. And if we cure cancer, what would that make possible? Well, people would be healthy and they'd live longer and they wouldn't have to suffer. And we go through and we just keep raising it up. Frequently at creating the future, you'll hear conversations, usually internal conversations among us where we're just starting grappling with stuff. And somebody will say, you know what, I think we need to pull it up. So we get into this weed's place of needs and unraveling. And yeah, if we lift it up and say, okay, so what would those oranges make possible? Oh, we cure cancer. Okay, that's where we aim. Okay, so what would it take to cure cancer? What would people need to know? What would be, that's what we reverse engineer, not the need. And it's that difference between creating versus reacting. What in your experience allows people to go into that mode of thinking and a short story. In grad school, I studied under a guy named Russell Akoff who helped develop systems thinking and he had a process called idealized redesign where he helped people reinvent their companies. He spent two days telling stories to these people about clever solutions. He helped people sort of break the boundaries of limited thinking. It took sort of like artillery barrage of clever ideas and good stories from him to loosen people up. This is like his own design of this thing, but it took a while to get people to the point where they're like, oh, hell, yes, we could fix anything. We could do anything. And then they were kind of ready for it. And I witnessed this personally in one workshop, and there's lots of other ways of doing this. And sometimes I think the change can be almost instantaneous. But what's happened for you in getting people into that mode of thinking? The classic answer, it depends. And it depends because we're not widgets, we're humans. And so one group may be totally ready and one group may be totally stuck. And it's understanding, again, when I started, I said this is around the questions we ask and what we listen for. It is listening for the cues in people and responding. So I've got a group that is stuck in the, we've got to increase profits by 5% and that's the only thing we live for. Not what would that make possible. It's going into that group. And first of all, knowing that while yes, there is such a thing as the critter that evolves to be a group. A group is a conglomeration of individuals. Am I having one-on-one conversations with those individuals? Am I talking to them as humans? Am I practicing what I preach? Am I walking to talk of my values? Am I going in telling them that they should act like humans and treat people like individuals, but I'm doing it to a group of 20 people and I don't know them. So there's just some basic human pieces to have conversations, to listen. And again, if we're listening through the lens of not what is this person complaining about, but they're also giving me cues of what good would look like on the other side, I'm just not trained to hear it. We're so trained to go down that rabbit hole. They're telling me about the conflicts that they're experiencing. I'm not trained to listen for their values. Oh, so it sounds like what's important to you is that people respect you and go, yeah, do you want to talk about what it would take for people to respect you? So what I'm doing is I'm responding, but not to the thing that's bad, to the aspirational thing that I'm also hearing, that people don't even realize that people are telling us. And so there's a big piece in there of what are we listening for? Are we listening to go down the rabbit hole with people about their needs or are we listening to elevate that conversation, linked directly to what that person just said? Short version. Anybody else? Questions, thoughts? And our calls usually go 90 minutes, so we have another 10 minutes left together. Deb. Yeah, I had a question and maybe you've sort of answered it in what you just said, Hildy, but when you raise it up and raise it up and keep raising it up, at what point do you, I've been in many of these sort of business-y contexts, do you need to start bringing it back to the challenge at hand? In other words, because I've been in places where it gets so high up there that it's like, okay, now we need to cure cancer, but that feels too big. So how do you go from that up here to the downhill? Looking at it as dominoes, I find very, very helpful. At some point, as you look at those dominoes, and frequently I'll say, play along with me for a little bit. This'll take it, do you have an hour out of the two days we're going to be together? Do you have 15 minutes out of the day we're going to be together? Play with me for a minute here. I'll create those dominoes to cure cancer. So let's go quickly. And quite honestly, it can go quickly. You know, in order to cure cancer, what would people need to know? Okay, they'd need to know. What would they need to, okay, then from that, what would people need to know to accomplish that? And it's the reverse engineering, the walking back, the back casting. You can look at those dominoes and say, okay, where's the stake we want to plant? Okay, we want to be about creating this condition right here. If everybody in on the planet would stop smoking, we might eliminate a big piece of heart disease and lung disease. Okay, am I ready to, no, I'm not ready to think about that. But what would it take? Well, it would take examples. Okay, am I ready to look at everybody in my community stuff? So finding where you're, which condition you want to put in place. But what we have a tendency to do in these kinds of plans that you're talking about is we have a tendency to say, you know, visioning is not an unusual, we've all done visioning, right? Okay, we have this, what does good look like? We look at this, and we look at this pie in the sky. And then the next question we ask is, okay, what do you want to do in the next two years? Right, exactly. That's my point. Right. It's like you're on the ground floor of a building and you're looking up at the 30th floor and you go, well, I'd like to get up there, but I don't have a ladder, so I'll jump and see how high I go. We just come up with ideas out of nowhere. And if we can create that path of causality, and we can see that path, we know where we are along there. Years ago, I was doing this wonderful work with this wonderful group that Trey and Troy had pulled together. And we had a map all over this huge whiteboard of all the what it's possible and all the conditions and what the preconditions were. And I'll never forget this, Troy, and I share this so often, but Troy jumped up at one point and he pointed and he went, oh my gosh, no matter which of these levers we push, they'll all lead to creating that future because we created that path. Nice. And so we get to choose where do we want to play in there, but if we don't have the whole map of the whole thing, you know, I used to talk a lot about the fact that I would like to take a trip to Paris. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to spend two years studying my driveway, because if I don't get out of my driveway, I'll never get to the airport. And that's what we do, right? I want a humane, healthy world, but I'm going to spend three years doing a needs assessment in my community. I'm looking at right here at my feet. And so let's see that whole picture. Nice. Thank you. Absolutely. Can I add something to that, Hilde? I think it's a talking about you. Using what Hilde is talking about with these various questions over the years, what I've found in my business life is that oftentimes an individual team at my companies will be given a task to solve, right? And they're a working group and they're the doers. And so what their job is is to take the task that's been given to them and go solve the thing. But often what winds up happening is that's come from some executive who's got a goal in mind that's organizational goal and it's filtered through five layers of managers and it winds up on the team. And there's no question that comes back to, well, what's the overall goal? And so with all the best intentions, the people that are doing the work in the day to day that are tactical as opposed to strategic, have no idea what the strategy is. And so they make decisions to implement that don't ladder up to the strategy. And they, in fact, can be counterproductive. But if you take the time with those people, fast is slow with people and slow is fast. You take the time with them to say, well, what we're trying to accomplish is cure cancer. And in fact, what we're trying to accomplish is a healthy world, right? Yes, what you're doing right now is you're building a widget. But here's how that ladders up. The context is so valuable because you won't build a widget that's facing south when you need to go north, right? You understand the direction overall that you're trying to go in. And without that, I think people agree you do. You stare at your feet and you don't, you do that with the best of intentions. But it's important to first point your eyes at the top of the mountain you're trying to climb or point your eyes at Paris and figure out, hey, there's a whole map here, not just my driveway. So are you just reminding me, I just have to add one point in here that early in my career, probably about 20 years ago now, I helped merge two companies that I'm not going to go into the details, but they were completely polar opposite cultures and et cetera, et cetera. And I don't remember how it happened, but we were trying to put together this, like, now that we're all one company week-long training, even though training is not my thing. But, and I made this, I guess it's sort of, sometimes it's in your gut, I made people, and the left side didn't understand why the right side did things this way and we've all been there, right? And I made them switch, in this week-long training, everyone had to switch roles. So like the left-brain people had to be right-brain people, you know, in that context. And, you know, I stumbled upon it and it was like super helpful. Oh, you know, it's helped me in my career later, like, oh, empathy, being in the other person's seat, understanding why they're asking for a widget. Maybe they shouldn't be asking for a widget. So I always joke, it's, you know, every company needs a topsy-turvy day to create some cultural empathy when you're trying to get something done. No, we all have topsy-turvy. We've just been handed topsy-turvy. A little bit back to what Ter was saying, and I have mentioned this idealized redesign process before, one of the magical things about idealized redesign is that he broke the company up into groups of 7 plus or minus 2, so you knew what everybody was saying, multi-department, so mixing everybody, and multi-layer. So the janitor might be next to the VP of marketing. And then he let the strategy emerge from these groups. And so by the time they were having a conversation down the road, they were all part of developing the strategy, so they had a really pretty good idea of where they were aiming. And we've entered this sort of very top-down command and control era where some, like CEO and C-suite, develop strategy and then gets by in a phrase I hate, or engagement strategies, another phrase I hate, sort of from the rest of staff in order to go in some direction. And that's part of the problem. I mean, there's like 12 layers of dysfunction impeding the work you're recommending we all do, Hildy, which is, if you just reflect on it, how natural humans ought to be working. So that's what I find remarkable about this is that you're not describing anything that would come as a surprise to an aboriginal Australian. And yet it is so foreign and so unexpected in many ways. Because we've created the systems that make it foreign. Bingo. Exactly. Exactly. And in Design from Trust, I did a couple of posts. And the second one of these essays is called The Two O' Shits. And I was just thinking about systems that are designed for trust like Wikipedia. And people go through two predictable reactions. The first one is, oh shit, this is impossible. Who had this stupid idea? This will never work. And then they try it. And then sometimes they get to the second response, predictable response, which is, oh shit, this seems to work. How does it work? How do I get more? And that how do I get more reaction is the one I love because my own amateur theory is that people who've had this taste and who have that realization, oh, this is different. I like it. How do I get more? We'll start looking around for what else works this way, except nobody's pointed that road. Partly my problem for not having written a book and done other kinds of things, because I'm seeing this. But partly what you've done with catalytic thinking is give people a taste of personal agency, of a sense of aiming together for a higher purpose, of a whole series of things that are absolutely necessary for that path. Which is why there's so much resonance, I think, between your work and mine. The final thought that I would leave folks with, first of all, this is way too fun. I could do another hour and a half. This is just way, way too fun. Is that because we are such doing creatures and we keep going to that doing place, well, what could we do? Well, that didn't work. What could we do? That didn't end hunger. What could we do? We look at replicating the doing. And we all know that doesn't work. Because what worked over here is not going to work over here. Different people, different culture, different geography, different everything. But we can replicate the thinking. And we can replicate the questions. And the questions can be the exact same questions we ask everywhere. And the answer over here will be different than the answer over there. And that thinking will lead them to what makes. So when you hear about and people are talking about, is that replicable? The questions we ask are always replicable. The thinking can be replicated. We want to design from trust and empathy and love. That can be replicated. What that looks like in a million different places is a million different things. But it's not about replicating the doing. It's about replicating the thinking. It's fractal and adaptive and local very much. And I think one of the things that makes it work is storytelling. Like just hearing stories of examples of what worked. But then reflecting on it to understand the underlying principles. Because if you hear a bunch of stories and you don't really know why they're catching your brain or what might work, you're not going to get to the point where you can implement or adapt. So I think we need some waking up to the underlying principles. Which is what this conversation is partly about. Any last words or thoughts for Hildi as we wrap the call? Any reflections? Any ah-has? Anything that's standing out to y'all? I had a bunch of ah-has along the way. I try to type a lot of them into the chat. Anybody else? You know, I guess one of my thoughts that I've been having. So I lived in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina hit. And you know, I saw how quickly we all acted. And people made, we made great decisions and we made terrible decisions. And you know, I think the great decisions were probably a bit of luck and experience. I think the bad decisions were, you know, really a result from speed and lack of connection with other people. And what concerns me with the whole coronavirus, and as we talk about this, like people have made decisions very quickly. I mean, we've had to, I mean, people have had to isolate themselves, move to different places, shut down businesses, close universities. So many decisions have been made so quickly. And really time will only tell if they were, you know, good or bad. I mean, hopefully they'll be short, hopefully shorter ones that will show that, you know, sheltering in, you know, a place is good. How do we, you know, how do we get people to kind of move from that very fast action because we had to act to, now we have to change the way we, we do move forward. So, you know, I do believe like we are in the, we are in our future, but at the same time, there are many things are going to have to kind of unravel themselves before we can really see where we are. You know, how do we work with the people in our communities and our immediate circles to say, now we have to move from action to really kind of, you know, catalytic thinking to trusting to, you know, whatever, you know, whatever people, whatever language resonates with them. That is a, that's kind of, that is a bit of like a conundrum or concern that I have. You know, we started with the, you know, what excites us. What concerns me is, you know, how do we change that, that thought process? I think we need new systems of learning built on the connections that we build through this. We need to stay connected. It's not only just about learning, catalytic thinking. It's about practicing it, sharing what we're learning. And for the things we have to do, as you pointed out, beyond our control, Bonnie, because it was quick, we need to then reflect on, like, what difference did that make? Like, we're now hearing about a lot of things that we've gone through in the past, even right now contemporaneously that other countries have gone through, and we have, as a country, not been willing to learn from them. So I just feel like everything we're talking about is calling not only for new principles, new practices, new thinking, new questions, as Hilda is saying, but we need to put the systems in place that support us to practice that, get better at it, and continue to learn from it what difference it's making. Agreed. Thank you. Thanks, Jackie. And just can I say one other thing? Why that's so important? It's not only important for the people who are willing to practice it. It's for all the people outside of that who are not willing to practice it, to Jerry's point, be intentionally trying to manipulate and amplify fear so that they can manipulate the country and serve their own interests. The reason we need to put these systems of practice and learning in place is so that we can take more control over our country and the culture we live in, and the kind of country and future we live in, and not just have it imposed on us, and people have used the words top down, by these other forces. Thank you. Hilda, you have a lost word. I think if I were to add anything, it is just that we are the ones we've been waiting for. Batman's not common. We are the ones we've been waiting for. Sorry. He's in the Batcave with a flat. Yeah, he's, no, he's sheltering. He's sheltering in place. Where are you thinking, Jerry? See sequestering at home. All the superheroes are sheltered in place. It sucks. But we are the ones we've been waiting for, and we can start by changing a simple question right now and with the people that we love that we're sheltered in with. Awesome. The videos I sent him the invite are really good videos to learn about catalytic thinking. Hilda, thank you so, so much. This has been wonderful. Can I? Want to do more? I'm wondering about the videos. Is that? There were two links at the bottom of the invite. If you want to learn more about catalytic thinking, there's a text one that's on the catalytic thinking website, which I put on here as well. And then there was a video that is a really nice explanation of the process. Okay. And we can resend them. I will, I will send this. Bonnie, I don't have your email jacket. Yeah, I was like, I don't think I see that. Okay, yeah. So my email is in the chat. If you guys will write me, I'll make sure to add you. And then I'll send, I'm going to post the video on YouTube openly and then send an email with the chat and these extra links to everybody who's been on the call. Jerry, if you'll include in the links that you send, it may be helpful for folks to have the piece that I wrote on how our brains are working right now in fear, the one that's at LinkedIn. And I can send you that right. Perfect. So good. Just send me that again. I'll make sure that I post it again. I'm pretty sure I have it, but I want to make sure I get the right one. Absolutely. Thank you, everybody. Hilary, thank you. Lovely to see you. Roy. Thank you, everybody. Good to see you. Thank you. Thank you. Cheers, guys. Bye-bye.