Learning catalytic thinking for change

In most job descriptions you’ll see problem solving listed as a core skill. It makes sense, understanding problems and effectively navigating out of them is an asset. However, our tendency to start with a focus on finding solutions to specific problems can prematurely narrow the scope of the answers we believe to be available. Catalytic thinking is a practice that uses different questions to change the scope of the possible answers by starting from a place of imagining the future you want. 

I learnt from my early activism and work with leaders across the world through Oxfam’s international youth network and program that it was crucial to be genuinely focused on the future you could imagine, and that planning was best done backwards from that. Being involved in movements around refugee rights, self determination and LGBTQIA rights showed me that it was bold visions of the future that enabled clear thinking about more immediate or incremental efforts. 

So I was primed for meeting Hildy Gottlieb and being introduced to her simple, beautiful and powerful practices of catalytic listening and catalytic thinking. Hildy developed these practices through her long commitment and contributions to social change and from deep research around neuroscience. 

The power of a catalytic thinking comes from tapping into our creative power, as Hildy puts it: 

“The opposite of “reactive” is not proactive. Proactive is simply attempting to stave off current problems, preventing today’s problems from continuing into tomorrow. 

The opposite of reactive is instead creative (note that those 2 words are anagrams!). Rather than reacting to what is wrong, creative approaches create what is possible.

…Our power to create powerful results lies in our power to create favorable conditions towards our dreams”

I’ve seen this approach embodied by Yuwaya Ngarra-li partnership between the Dharriwaa Elders Group and UNSW, where work to reduce the overpolicing and incarceration of Aboriginal children and young people first imagined the conditions that would need to be in place if this wasn’t an issue at all. As a result, alongside efforts to create more diversion pathways and prevent over policing, they focus on experiences of love, community care, connection to culture and country for young people in their community. 

May imagining new futures

Working with global business leaders at The B Team, a catalytic thinking approach helped broaden thinking about transparency, from an issue of diligence and process to having business leaders deploy their power to increase structural protections for civic space. This work now even more relevant and necessary as authoritarianism rises. 

Catalytic thinking helps groups break out of fear and a sometimes myopic focus on “problems” to imagine the future they want and think systemically with others about what it would take to create. 

The process starts with catalytic listening and asks us to listen for existing strengths, values and hoped for outcomes. At the heart of the method is the people or groups that will be affected by the decisions. Catalytic thinking is grounded in radical inclusion, it asks how could those who would be affected by any decisions we may make be involved in or able to make those decisions?

As you move through the process, you explore the conditions that would need to be in place or which people would need to understand, believe or be assured of, in order to bring about those best possible outcomes. Finally you can consider the actions the group can take and what you’d need to believe or be assured of to take those actions (your own internal conditions). 

Once trained and practised, this way of thinking becomes a tool you can reach for and apply to many situations, both professional and personal. I reach for it again and again, in work and in life. I’ve used it with many groups to think about their roles in contributing to change, and also with my family as we considered moving countries.

We are thrilled to be hosting the creator of this technique, Hildy Gottlieb, this coming November, in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Pōneke, Wellington, and in Whakatū Nelson. She will be running three workshops to support you build a catalytic thinking toolkit. This is a unique opportunity to be taught by Hildy in this corner of the world, and connect with others across Aotearoa (and those travelling in from Australia). Find out about the workshops here.