Dr Anna Birney (LinkedIn, Medium, Twitter) is Director of School of System Change and Global Director of Systems Change Learning at Forum for the Future.
Our conversation was at the start of February 2022, and the connection wasn’t great, so the sound is a little muddy. Apologies.
Key quote: “If we teach system practices, we create the conditions for which society can continually address the challenges that it faces, then we can actually work with the world as it is at the moment.”
Listen
Links
The conversation uses the word ‘systems’ a lot. Here is a Medium post from Anna on systems practices which includes:
“A system might be defined as a collection of interacting parts organised as a whole to do something.”
Timings
1:00 – Q1 What are you doing now? And how did you get there?
5:05 – Q2. What is the future you are trying to create, and why?
8:28 – Q3. What are your priorities for the next few years, and why?
11:47 – Q4. If someone was inspired to follow those priorities, what should they do next?
13:37 – BONUS QUESTION: What is it that people can be doing that can help them to find work that gives then a sense of aliveness?
16:08 – Q5. If your younger self was starting their career now, what advice would you give them?
17:26 – Q6. Who would you nominate to answer these questions, because you admire their approach?
19:00 – Q7. Is there anything else important you feel you have to say?
Themes
-What makes systems approach special is asking: why, why are we in this mess?
-We need to take a systemic approach to align ourselves more with the way the world actually works.
-The future trying to create: the ability to continually cultivate and work with changing times.
-The systemic approach and working in this way, can help us continually navigate changes as they emerge.
-If we teach system practices, we create the conditions for which society can continually address the challenges that it faces, then we can actually work with the world as it is at the moment.
-How do we build the capacity to build the capacity?
-The secret is that you can’t change the system, by yourself or heroically. But you can contribute.
-You take on a continual learning approach and an adaptation approach yourself. It can feel really passionate, it can make you feel alive, alive to the world.
-Finding out kind of what really made you feel alive when you were a child is often when you were unhindered by other conformities of education or expectation. Inquiring into how those gave you aliveness then, and what they say about what can look now.
-Your own inner work is critical, and then asking people about when they see you come alive, what they appreciate about you.
-Would I have taken away the bumps in the road? Possibly not actually.
-Trust the process of being active, and getting the flow and balance right of action and stillness. Recognising that it takes time to learn.
-A useful thing to say to your younger self to trust the process (of actively inquiring and adapting), because maybe they didn’t back in the day.
David Bent 