368 Assembling Tomorrow: A Guide to Designing a Thriving Future from the Stanford d.school with Carissa Carter and Scott Dorley

In this compelling episode of Partnering Leadership, host Mahan Tavakoli dives into a fascinating conversation with Scott Doorley and Carissa Carter, authors of Assembling Tomorrow: A Guide to Designing a Thriving Future. As leaders at Stanford's d.school, Scott and Carissa bring a wealth of expertise on design thinking, adaptability, and systems thinking that is uniquely relevant for CEOs and senior executives facing today’s complex challenges. Their insights are a timely reminder of the importance of embracing curiosity, imperfection, and collaboration to lead effectively in a fast-changing world.

Throughout the conversation, Scott and Carissa reveal how design principles can transform the way leaders think, act, and guide their teams. They delve into practical strategies for noticing what others might miss, addressing systemic challenges, and preparing for uncertainty. Their unique perspectives on shaping leadership in turbulent times challenge conventional approaches and inspire listeners to adopt new mindsets that drive innovation and adaptability.

As the conversation unfolds, Scott and Carissa explore topics like “shape-shifting” leadership, balancing confidence with curiosity, and harnessing discomfort as a powerful design tool. They share practical advice and real-world examples, making the conversation rich with actionable insights. Whether you’re looking to improve your team’s creativity, foster systems thinking, or simply become a more intentional leader, this episode offers ideas and strategies you can apply immediately.

Actionable Takeaways:

• Hear how curiosity—not certainty—can redefine leadership confidence and lead to more adaptable and innovative decision-making.
• Discover why “noticing the unseen” is a critical skill for leaders, and learn how to develop this often-overlooked ability.
• Find out how to use shape-shifting leadership techniques to adapt your style to different situations and inspire your team in new ways.
• Learn why embracing imperfection is essential in complex systems and how leaders can balance risk with resilience.
• Hear Scott’s take on how lowering cognitive load for your team can unlock creativity and drive better problem-solving.
• Unpack the surprising role of emotions in leadership decision-making and how acknowledging emotional triggers can lead to better choices.
• Explore Carissa’s approach to leveraging discomfort as a design tool to find hidden opportunities and innovate in uncertain environments.
• Find out why focusing on multiple perspectives, or “many Norths,” can help leaders tackle today’s messy, interconnected challenges.
• Discover how to make time for reflection and intentional noticing in an always-on, fast-paced work environment—and why it pays off exponentially.
• Understand how to prepare your organization for the ripple effects of change by designing for healing and adaptability.

Connect with Scott Doorley and Carissa Carter:

Stanford d. School Website 

Scott Doorley LinkedIn 

Carissa Carter LinkedIn 

Connect with Mahan Tavakoli:

Mahan Tavakoli Website

Mahan Tavakoli on LinkedIn

Partnering Leadership Website

Transcript

***DISCLAIMER: Please note that the following AI-generated transcript may not be 100% accurate and could contain misspellings or errors.***

[00:00:00] Mahan Tavakoli: Carissa Carter, Scott Dorley, welcome to Partnering Leadership. I'm thrilled to have you in this conversation with me. 

[00:00:06] Carissa Carter: Excited to be here. 

[00:00:08] Scott Doorley: Thank you, Mahan. 

[00:00:09] Mahan Tavakoli: I can't wait to talk about Assembling Tomorrow, a guide to designing a thriving future from Stanford d.

school. I've had great conversations with Sarah Stein Greenberg and Susie Wise as well. Before we talk about your book, we'd love to know a little bit about your upbringing and how it's impacted who you've become. Carissa, where best did you grow up and how has your upbringing influenced who you've become?

[00:00:36] Carissa Carter: I grew up in the Boston area, Massachusetts, and I had  dentist and a chemist for parents. They both infused in me. This desire to try on many different types of activities skills interests and it didn't matter what I was into. They really supported me doing that. I feel very lucky for it. And I'm thankful to them.

[00:01:03] Mahan Tavakoli: You ended up becoming a geoscientist, how does a geoscientist end up now in design? 

[00:01:11] Carissa Carter: So my first career was as a geologist and I did graduate school for geology and undergrad degree in geology. And I know it sounds very drastic. To now be a designer, but I do believe that all of us are many things and those things may have to do with careers or life experiences or our identities, but they combine , to make us be able to see problems and see the world in unique ways.

So I'm always combining my skill set that I gained as a scientist. with the way that I approach problems as a designer. To me that ability to notice and combine and make new things is the magic of what makes me unique and what makes all of us as designers and creators be able to do our creation in the world.

[00:01:59] Mahan Tavakoli: And I imagine that's where the value of having Diverse thinking, diverse voices around the table. That's where it comes in. In that those unique experiences influence how we see the world, whether physical or otherwise around us. 

[00:02:15] Carissa Carter: Yeah, like design is about being able to notice, and Scott and I always talk about see the unseen.

That's what design is. That's what our book is really about. How do you do that? How do you kick yourself out of what you assume to be true and the way the world works so that you can take in new information, have new ideas? 

[00:02:36] Mahan Tavakoli: So Scott, whereabouts did you grow up and how did your upbringing impact who you've become?

[00:02:40] Scott Doorley: I also grew up in the Boston area and I ended up at UCLA, which similarly to Carissa was because my parents really encouraged me to get out there. And similarly, they regretted that, I think, because I ended up across the country. But when I got to UCLA, I started getting into movie making and, when you're in Boston or when you're in a place that doesn't really have the idea of making movies, it's hard to even imagine that's something you can do.

But I found myself at UCLA film school and the professors I worked with just took what I made so seriously. They took make believe seriously. And I would come in with a really harebrained idea and they would act as if it was the most important thing in the world and give me critique and feedback. That was, very intentional and they taught me really to be intentional about my imagination.

And that is what led me to Stanford where I work now with Carissa and actually it's something similar that led most of the people who work there to that place. Most , if not all of the people who work at the Stanford D school have some sort of background like ours, where moviemaking led to design or geology led to design, and that's specifically because what you were talking about, where you can solve problems, or you can at least approach problems that exist in the cracks, they're the things that are the more messy problems that don't fit into a discipline perfectly, or the problems that have been solved in one way, but that didn't really quite work and created more problems is really messy problems.

I think it's very useful to work across disciplines. And I think all of us have landed there for that reason. 

[00:04:19] Mahan Tavakoli: In the book, you say, we often assume we see the full picture. And I cracked up about that because that's one of the biggest challenges.

I know a lot of executives and especially CEOs have where we assume we get a full picture of the world around us as is. 

[00:04:39] Carissa Carter: Yeah, we do. , and this is human, right? We think that our way of sensing and our tiny slice of the world is the world. Even in, having a conversation or an argument with somebody else, I believe that I'm right and you believe that you're right.

And clearly something happened. And we each have our own perspective on it. That's just one example for how we all see our own tiny slice of the world. It turns out who you are, your upbringing, your own personal biases, your intuition, all of that plays into how we view the world.

And there's no one way. There are all these different ways of sensing what's going on. And that's fun. Mind bogglingly cool, in my opinion. 

[00:05:26] Scott Doorley: , it's a very strange quirk of people too. Like, why do we expect to know everything?

And we really do you want to be right. You want to be right. You get confident about things, but if you think about it for a second, just the limits of your experience show that you can't know everything, 

[00:05:42] Mahan Tavakoli: for way too long, we have also looked for leaders, whether in organizations or in other arenas who seem like they know everything. We celebrate the know it alls rather than those that admit that they might not have a full understanding or full picture. 

[00:06:00] Scott Doorley: Yeah, I have to say the students here I'm most impressed with are the ones not who know it all but are hyper curious and are very excited about finding ways to figure things out.

It's almost like their course of study is how to figure things out, not specific content that they're becoming expertise at., 

[00:06:20] Carissa Carter: new graduate students are having their. Day one orientation today and later on today, when I do a little workshop with them, one of the things that we're going to focus on is adaptability and how they are going to control and design their learning experience throughout coming to school.

Because. Following that curiosity is something that we want them to pursue. There's no one way to be a designer in the same way. There's no one way to lead an organization, but being able to pay attention to all those signals and sense the environment and sense within themselves. That's not simple.

That is something to practice. 

It is really hard. And you mentioned in the book, the shape shifting, which is key to adaptability. Now there's been a lot of conversation about it. I've interviewed a lot of authors CEOs who talk about it, but it is very hard for people to do. So how can we. Do a better job, whether as individuals or in our teams and organizations in shape shifting in order to become more adaptable.

[00:07:29] Scott Doorley: You mentioned that, , we're at least attracted to confidence, there's something about confidence that makes us feel, Oh, this person's going to get us through it, or , this is gonna work out. it's just a natural human tendency.

 What we're talking about with our students is, really curiosity is the thing. And there's a level of confidence in your ability to figure things out. That is what we're trying to develop. So it's not the confidence that you have the answer. It's the confidence that you can figure it out.

So if you come from the premise that we have limited points of view, then very clearly the job becomes, how do we figure out our limits? How do we see what we're missing? And if you start to tilt in that direction, that becomes a skill in itself. So the idea of being able to uncover what you're missing, the idea of being able to pick something up quickly, you can get good at diagnosing a situation.

Doctors, as an example, they're constantly trained at noticing symptoms, trying to make sense of them, and then trying to see what the course of treatment might be. So a doctor, in a sense, is shape shifting all the time. What comes in the door? You're an ER doctor. What comes in the door? At two o'clock is different than what comes in the two 30 is what comes in a two 45 is what comes in at three o'clock, but you're adept at sussing things out and trying to experiment your way sometimes through trial and error to figure out , what's the best course of action.

So it's really not that it's harder. I think it's harder, to shape shift or change careers because we're not. Teaching people that we're not thinking that way, it's just another skill, but it is a very different way of working. So I think the difficulty is in the difference of how you have to work that way rather than the actual working that way,

[00:09:21] Mahan Tavakoli: so Carissa, the leaders who are listening to this , how can they develop that skill? 

[00:09:26] Carissa Carter: Let me take something super practical, you're leading monthly meeting that you have with managers in your organization.

Okay? It's like a generic setup. This is something that happens once a month. It's a moment to find out what everybody's doing now. If you want to take that principle of shape shifting to a moment like that, you could take inspiration from an entirely different field. You could say , if I was not leading my business, how would Oprah Winfrey lead this meeting?

How would Justin Bieber, , how would a crow lead this meeting? And I know , some of them may sound fantastical and silly and quirky, but the minute that , you actually give us a specific other individual or type of character, you start to think of okay crows actually have names for each other and they greet.

themselves, like name to name, they remember situations from the past and they talk about them. They call their peers together to work on something. And so you could now see like ways you might greet each other differently or work on areas of interest in this corner of the room or that corner of the room.

And while the initial spark may feel more fantastical than you're comfortable with. It's way easier to tone things down than it is to make them more interesting later. Being able to shapeshift is to change how you show up at times. And you can do that and practice that in recurring sessions, like meetings, that happen every day.

And it's quite low risk, it's very low risk in a way to practice on trying on new behaviors. 

[00:11:08] Scott Doorley: , Carissa just did something amazing there that I want to point out, and it has to do with, and I've seen this on leading teams, I think half of leadership is lowering people's cognitive load, they come into a situation, it's Oh my God, there's too many variables, I don't know what to do, and you reduce the number of variables, direct them in a certain direction, then they can now wrap their head around it, the use of metaphors, Which Chris just did beautifully, immediately lowers the cognitive load, it immediately brings everything into focus in different ways, but then you also notice, she didn't mention one, she mentioned three, then demonstrated what one would look like.

So this ability to shapeshift could be as simple as, Not only having one frame of mind, let's have three different frames of mind that we're looking at. Let's see how those three different frames of mind help lower the cognitive load in a way that also accelerates our imagination. And then let's follow the one that feels like it might be the most fruitful way right now.

And then realize that you're missing a bunch of stuff. So do it again. I think it's really just getting comfortable with knowing you're never going to know everything. So there's much lower risk to trying things out. In fact, there's a higher risk. To not trying things out because you're not going to see what you're missing.

[00:12:23] Mahan Tavakoli: , even the shape shifting that you mentioned Carissa in the team can become a mindset that shifts how people interact, outside of those team meetings as well. You start out your book talking about how everything is interconnected. So this. Impact all aspects of how people interact, not just how they interact in that team meeting.

[00:12:49] Carissa Carter: , it's very related to what you were saying before about how we all have our one lens and way of seeing and experiencing the world, , most people have a section of work that they do within the larger organization, but that interconnection is wild if you start to think about it.

 Your cell phone's a product and that product has a physical thing that was designed and it has digital products on it that enable experiences to happen. That whole thing's embedded in any number of systems in the world that control where you get service or how you get apps and all of that stuff.

was designed and is interconnected. The technology that powers the whole thing was designed. The data sets that power that technology, that power those products, enable those experiences that are embedded within the systems are all designed and all of that has implications. And so while your work may be running a technology company that is really focused on algorithms to, help people communicate.

better. You can't disregard the fact that all of that stuff propagates and has ripple effects that may have near term or longer term consequences, both positive and negative. And so as the leader, you have to constantly be zooming in and zooming out and helping people make those connections across.

And it's not simple to do, but it's necessary. 

[00:14:13] Mahan Tavakoli: We talked previously about how we look for confidence rather than humility and curiosity. The challenge that I see in this regard is that we are looking to one thing that makes the difference rather than looking at the entire system and designing the system.

So everyone's looking for what is the one answer rather than a systemic approach. 

[00:14:40] Scott Doorley: I think this is absolutely right. And I've talked to a lot of people about. This problem. And of course, there's a lot of work going on in systems thinking. And how do you look at the whole system and where do you find leverage and that kind of thing?

 The pattern that I'm seeing overall, you do, it feels to be able to execute, need to be able to focus, there's something about if you can't focus on something, you can't really make a change because you're just in the ether of figuring it out. However, you've always got to have multiple points of focus.

We have section in the book that we talk about reorienting. And Carissa has this idea of exploring many Norths, Western vernacular is like your North star, it's your vision, it's, where the compass is pointing you and what we're saying is you gotta have three or four of those.

To really be able to deal with the problem, because I do think the problems are getting messier. They're changing more quickly and they are getting more intertwined. So these algorithms are intertwining our communication more. They're intertwining our culture more. They're intertwining our politics more.

So just focusing on one thing isn't really going to cut it. So I do think you need to focus, but can you have multiple points of focus at once? 

[00:15:51] Mahan Tavakoli: And one of the points that you also mentioned in the book is about agency. And I want to touch on that from two perspectives in that there are times when I get emails from listeners where they say I'm not the CEO, how can I?

make a difference in this case, how can I have an impact on the design? And then I've been having more interactions with even CEOs and executives who, as a result of better understanding of algorithms, AI, whether it's in social media or other parts of our lives are wondering how much agency. We have in making a difference and influencing our environments.

[00:16:34] Carissa Carter: To anybody that is feeling like I'm nervous because I don't know if I have agency in this moment, pay attention to that feeling, because it is these moments of unease that are. Really important design opportunities and I think that you're absolutely right our algorithms today are at a place where they're starting to do things that we have felt have been traditionally quite human. They are making decisions that have felt like used to be human decisions.

And that's what's creating this unsettling time. And really, that is. The key ethos of the book and Scott and I explore that in multiple different ways. But I think if you are feeling like you are not a part of the decisions that technology is making, we need you to start asking questions of the technologists.

And I think this is on all of us who don't code for a living. Because if you want the tech to represent all of us, we have to find ways that it is built by all of us. Simple questions of talk to me about how that algorithm is working. What does it do? Break things down into plain speak.

If I combine this algorithm that you're using with this data set that we have about people that we know have purchased our product in the last 10 years, let's do some visioning. What might that do or create? What system might that disrupt? There's a lot of in the blank, or if you're familiar with Mad Libs the old thing, stories you'd fill out as a kid, where it says noun, and then it has a little connector sentence, and then, insert verb here, right?

There's an example of this in the book. for people that are working with what Scott and I call mischievous materials, like algorithms, to try on other ones, try on algorithms and data sets in, in their own environments, in ways that feel really accessible to us, even if we're not technologists.. 

[00:18:30] Scott Doorley: And I think too, we live in an era where, Carissa has a great diagram that we use at the d. school that shows all these layers of where things come from, from data to a product, to the system, to the experience of using it. That really just illuminates that every single thing we use is designed and that's obvious, right?

Anything that's not, organic nature made is made by humans. And then if it's made by humans, decisions have been made. If decisions have been made, it has been designed. It's obvious, but you don't think about it. And you don't think about Oh, somebody made that thing. I could make that thing.

And then we live in a world where actually small changes perpetuate very quickly. So if you think of the hashtag. On Twitter, that came from a person who is a product designer, a guy named Chris Messina, and he was just like, Hey, I think we need some way to find things better. Why don't we use the pound sign like we used in this other chat room we were in, then that thing perpetuates.

Then, if you're around in the 2010s, it's hashtag. Everything hashtag black hashtag, Jimmy Fallon has a hashtag segment on the tonight show. And that's just somebody making a suggestion. Things can spread. And as soon as you solve something, we live in a world where now that can be solved by everybody.

You're basically unlocking these little solutions and those little solutions can make a big difference. Here's another like trite one, but do you know what Dalgona coffee is? It's this way to take instant coffee and you whip it with milk and it creates this basically like almost hard foam like a meringue, almost coffee drink.

And it's amazing. And during the pandemic, like that just spread on Tik TOK. I have no idea where it came from, but you can really see these if you saw something, it's now available to everybody. So you can actually make a pretty huge change by a very small solve. And the thing to think about is I do think these technologies we're creating with are inevitable.

Like they do force themselves upon us, but how we use them. And the, what we decide is important about them and the ways that we hack them will fundamentally change our society. And everyone can, if you can take the time to notice that everyone can participate that if you make a solution, it can spread.

We do have more agency than we think. And it is very important. Not what these technologies can do, but how we put them to use. And and not only do you have agency, but we need it, we need your agency, like we're doomed if we don't all really interact with this stuff and play with it and try to make it useful to us or for us, 

[00:21:17] Mahan Tavakoli: we have that agency.

And I love the point you made, Scott and Carissa as well, in that. It requires us taking the time to notice it and in order to be able to design in order to be able to influence, we need to notice before then that agency can kick in. 

[00:21:39] Scott Doorley: Yeah, that's exactly it. 

[00:21:41] Carissa Carter: We're in shared spirit there.

And that noticing is something That also sometimes flies in the face of our human intuition, because noticing takes time. There's a woman at Harvard, Jennifer Roberts, and she has this amazing activity that she gives to her students, where essentially they stare at a single painting for three hours.

And they make notes along the way. And what she describes is that the things that you notice in minute one are very different than what you notice in minute 10 or minute 210, right? It, you, when you take the time and you put yourself in these off kilter disorienting, we call it deliberate disorientation type moments, things differently.

So you can stare, you can notice awkwardness, and when you feel out of sync or somebody else feels out of sync, you can watch people's behavior. And of these things are ways to pay attention and see differently. 

[00:22:48] Mahan Tavakoli: I couldn't agree with you more.

But the challenge that I hear from a lot of CEOs and executives is that they are more overwhelmed than ever. They have less time for anything. Let alone stand back and notice, let alone go to what you mentioned in the book as well, which is disorient yourself, let go of control. So how can they do that?

[00:23:15] Carissa Carter: I'll just call attention to the fact that we're obsessed with speed equals efficiency equals productivity. , in the United States, and if you look at the data from the U. S. Department of Labor since 2008, American productivity has essentially stayed flat. Okay we are not exponentially increasing our productivity, but what we are increasing exponentially is our microprocessor speed.

So yeah, things are flying and dinging and telling us we're not keeping up pace, right? But that's not, that has yet to make us be better. In many ways are more productive. So step one, take that realistic view. Like how does that, how is that actually playing out in your organization? Which tools are we using just because they exist versus what do we really want to be doing and build to that?

[00:24:08] Scott Doorley: Yeah, I can relate to that problem completely. I'm working all day long. I've got, 20 threads going. I barely have time to think about anything, so I get it. And I do think Carissa's point about microprocessors there is a lot of it is our communication has sped up so much that we can't handle it anymore.

I think everybody can relate to the inbox that's just too much or the, I love, and nothing against slack or anything, but like the solution to email apparently is more communication faster all the time now, I don't know if that's like the upgrade I'm looking for, right?

So I think the way to think about it is it's a brave thing to do. And honestly, like I'm having trouble doing it myself, but I do think it pays off because I think meaning taking that time to be able to reflect and taking that time to be able to notice does pay off. You have to do those, let go of the sort of the idea of a one to one transactional relationship between your action and the payoff.

So when I returned an email, very clear, got an email, returned him an email. I see what happened there. There's another thing that comes back. It's like very rewarding. If I spend a day trying to think about where I'm going and I don't get there the next day, I'm like, that didn't pay off at all.

I just wasted an entire day. I still have all those emails, from experience, when you do that, it does pay off. It pays off and it pays off in a more exponential way. Pays off over time. You start to be able to click and see things. Part of these writing these books that we've been putting out from the d.

school was to give us time to synthesize all this stuff that's been coming at us for the last two decades. So I'm a champion for it and I struggle with it. But I do think you just have to let go of that one to one transaction and know that it's going to be a long term payoff. 

[00:26:00] Mahan Tavakoli: Good for you for struggling with it, Scott, as do I, and I'm sure Carissa would relate as 

[00:26:06] Carissa Carter: well.

I have no problems with it. 

[00:26:08] Scott Doorley: I know Carissa well, and that's totally true. That's so true. Yeah. Never a problem.

[00:26:15] Mahan Tavakoli: It requires discipline and it is very hard to separate ourselves from that treadmill you In order to reflect, in order to notice, and in order to be able to design, in order to assemble tomorrow, we need to be able to design, not just respond 

[00:26:33] Carissa Carter: yeah. And if you're a leader of an organization, you can set the conditions to make space for that to happen.

[00:26:41] Scott Doorley: You pointed out a very important loop right there, which is if something comes in and we immediately react to it, we might as well not even be there, but if we can take a moment to open up that loop and even just a minute to reflect a minute to notice.

A minute to add in some intention, then I think we can change things. And part of the bombardment of social media and, political polarization and mental health issues that's led to is we're not noticing what it's doing to us. But actually when you do notice, it's not that hard to see that, Oh my gosh, I'm getting feed.

That's, really working me up and that doesn't feel good. So I'm going to stop doing that. It's actually not that hard, but we're not giving ourselves the time to allow that little gap to be able to respond rather than just completely react. 

[00:27:29] Mahan Tavakoli: Now, when we give ourselves that time, you emphasize that emotions, although they are invisible, shape our decisions and actions, I think most people would not, and they agree with that.

How can leaders recognize and therefore. Lead and manage accordingly 

[00:27:51] Scott Doorley: I think this gets into the cognitive load stuff we were talking about a little bit ago. There's a great study by one of our colleagues over in the business school named Baba Shiv and a partner of his Alexander Federican.

And they have a bunch of. People come in to a psychological study, they know it's a psychological study, and they get a card with a number on it. Some people have seven digit numbers, some people have two digit numbers. Then they think their job is to memorize that number that can take as long as they want, walk down the hallway, and restate the number from memory.

But actually what the study is on their way down the hallway, they get interrupted by someone. And in one hand, they have a chocolate cake and the other hand, they have fruit. And the people with the seven digit number are way more likely to just go with the like less good for you, more emotionally satisfying cake.

And the ones with the two digit number are much more likely to pick the healthy choice fruit, right? So seven digits, this is not a huge cognitive load, But when we have that big cognitive load our emotions really just automatically leak out and make the decisions. So from a leadership position, I think it's like acknowledging that everybody on the table is having that reaction, right?

And how do you help them step out of that, acknowledge their feelings, lower the cognitive load. And then you can start making decisions that might be more useful. Now, are you going to make perfect decisions just because you're in a calm state? Probably not. I like chocolate cake, even when I'm, feeling great.

But at the same time, like if we just acknowledge it and they estimate like Baba Shiva estimates, 90 percent of decisions is on the emotional basis. And usually the intellectual side or the reasoning side is of post facto, like I've already made the decision. Now I'm justifying it. And there are a lot of studies that point to that.

So just really acknowledging it and then leaving room for it to come out and just lowering the load so it doesn't just become this automatic reaction. . 

[00:29:51] Carissa Carter: Another thing that Scott talks about a lot is this circumstances, feelings, ideas loop. So you're in a situation. That situation evokes some sort of reaction in you that you might be frustrated or you might be like overjoyed.

And then that leads you to a new idea, which then builds a new circumstance. And, that's a very simplified way of thinking of how things come to exist in the world. But those feelings are really, are oftentimes the triggers for what comes next. Are you going to react really quickly, or are you going to give them space?

It's how you process both positive and negative feelings it can get quite sophisticated and it's important to pay attention to, and it's a lever, again, that you can pull as a leader. 

[00:30:39] Mahan Tavakoli: So as you pull that lever, you also mentioned, disorient yourself, letting go of that control for new ideas to surface.

So on one level, we are trying to stand back and orient ourselves properly. On the other side, disorient ourselves. How does that work?

[00:30:58] Scott Doorley: I think one way to look at it we have a metaphor in there about pilots who fly in turbulence, so you can imagine you're a pilot going into turbulence and you need to figure out how to fly differently because you're in a situation that's different than like just normal flight. One, you do want to. Have your wits about you. So yes, go into that calm and two, you have to use different strategies.

So like they look at their instruments more because they can't trust how the planes acting on their body. They take what they call free air, where if you get an updraft, you stay up rather than leveling back down because you're going to get pushed back down. Again, they veer off course because the wind is eventually going to push them back toward the target.

So it's yes, get in a calm state, but also do things differently because, our feeling is, I think everybody can agree that we're living in a unique time. I think when we initially wrote the book, we felt like it was up to us to convince people of that. Since we wrote it and it came out, a bunch has happened and it's less.

Less needed to convince people, but what is actually the nature of that, of this moment is really a little bit hard to figure out. And we think it is this situation where these relationships between, humans and computers are really changing and the algorithms are having more influence on us.

And that's creating ripples that we're actually not recognizing. There's all kinds of stuff with climate change that relates to that and genetic engineering, which we call artificial evolution, that's relating to that, and everything's just getting mixed up, turbulent and twitchy to borrow a term from Francis Haugen, who is the Facebook whistleblower.

And so when you're in that situation, I think you have to work, you have to do things differently because the old ways of doing things that aren't really working anymore, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't. Try to stay calm. 

[00:32:45] Mahan Tavakoli: In order to do that, you mentioned aim for imperfection, which makes a lot of sense as I read it, but it's another one of those things that I typically get a lot of pushback on whether it's CEOs. , while they want to embrace that kind of mindset, that's not what is expected of them, whether it's their board of directors or the teams that they're leading or their key stakeholders, same thing with other executives. So how can you encourage people to actually aim for that imperfection without.

Whether compromising quality or by still being able to meet the needs and demands of the stakeholders. 

[00:33:33] Carissa Carter: , the subtitle of our Aim for Imperfection chapter is Don't Fix Everything Because Everything Breaks. And that's what's really important to remember. Is that even with the absolute best of intentions, what we put into the world, it may function properly.

according to our specifications, but it's going to alter something else. It may break a system or it may displace people in their occupation. It may affect our natural resources in some way. Everything affects everything else. This is back to the interconnection that we were talking about earlier. So being aware that, your product, your service, Is aiming to do its best, but will affect other things.

That's what we mean by aiming for imperfection, because then you can start to prototype and envision a range of future scenarios so that you're ready to react and adapt into what we call in the book designed for healing, because we know that we're not going to always get it right.

And that is definitely a shift in mindset. And it's really hard to do. We live in a culture where the hubris of what we're building and the excitement over what we're building often trumps the responsibility to take care of places that it may cause harm along the way. 

[00:34:59] Scott Doorley: And I will say too, it's not like failure goes away.

I think actually when people talk about having an issue around failure, it's not around the fact that failure happens, products get launched, they don't work, put something out into the marketplace that doesn't sell. These things happen constantly in every corporation, anywhere. It's the acknowledgement dealing with and responding to the failure.

That's the scary part. So failure happens. Then what people want to do is dress it up as not a failure, or they want to ignore it so that it doesn't become something they're totally associated with. So if you think about the scary part of the difficult part being the acknowledgement of the failure, then I think all you have to do is figure out where's a safe place to acknowledge that failure.

Is that with certain people in the organization is about a certain process, in design, we use prototyping as a way to bail before you put it out into the world. At least that's the idea. That's the hope, is that you're actually failing before the repercussions are bad because you're assuming failure is going to happen.

So actually a lot of prototyping as an example is about pushing something to see it fail. You're trying for failure so that you can understand how to make it not do that when in a more consequential. So the real question is where do you deal with the failure and where is it safe to do that? 

[00:36:24] Mahan Tavakoli: You mentioned in the book about the unpredictability of systems that aiming for imperfection in my view goes to that unpredictability, which is gaining speed. 

How do you foresee technological systems will enable or get in the way of us being able to do that. 

[00:36:49] Carissa Carter: I think that's the money question of this moment in time, isn't it? One thing I'd love to bring back up is these systems are here to stay and they're going to both enable and get in the way.

Scott mentioned in the beginning his shock and awe when he went to UCLA to film school and how seriously the people there took make believe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And really treated that as something to bring to light in a very serious way and yeah, we can all envision that for movies, but that's also a tool that we use in this book, and that we think helps us try on those multiple futures with these technologies in them.

There's 20 fiction stories. Across our, two big nonfiction parts here, and we do that, these are speculative stories that take place about, five to 20 years in the future, and they all pull a thread of something that's happening now with where we think that might, manifest as a moment in the future, and it is make believe we are making these stories up, but it's a way of seeing like, okay if that technology embedded in our brains actually comes to pass, here's the types of conversations we might be having.

Here's an argument you might be in. Here's the anxiety that you may have. And that's a way of seeing the full gamut of positive and negative ways that technology comes to life in a flexes that make believe. 

[00:38:16] Scott Doorley: And I will say in the deliberate disorientation chapter, we 

we also talk about how you can tilt into the problem. So one other question is like, how can these technologies be used to stave off the problems that they create? Can you use AI to model the catastrophes that AI could produce? Can you use artificial evolution or synthetic biology to, in a safe place, hyper speed up an evolutionary process to see what all the ripples might be?

And I hope that, people start to use that as much as possible. Possible and use the make believe to run these things to the ground that Chris was talking about. And just is this the world that we want? Cause I think the big issue is that technologists are just excited about getting this stuff out into the world.

It's all about the potential. It's all about what it can do. And we really need to be working on what it should do.

[00:39:11] Mahan Tavakoli: We have some of the most powerful tools. Ever that humanity has had access to and requires some of the thinking. So we assemble the kind of tomorrow we want for ourselves, our teams, organizations , Scott and Carissa.

For the audience to connect with you, find out more about your book, where would you send them to? 

[00:39:34] Scott Doorley: You can go to the d. school website. We have a books page and our book is on that page. It's d. school. stanford. edu slash books. 

[00:39:45] Mahan Tavakoli: I appreciate, first of all, the book, it's great insights, beautifully done, and would love to close.

With a quote from the book that I absolutely love to be human. Today is to collaborate with the world. It is to create and be created to work and be worked on to make and be made. Thank you so much Carissa and Scott for helping us design a better future, assemble a better tomorrow.

Thank you for joining me in this conversation. 

[00:40:21] Carissa Carter: Thanks so much for having us, Mahan. 

[00:40:23] Scott Doorley: It was great chatting with you. Really appreciate it.