Zaid Hassan has spent 25 years in systems change, and he thinks the field fooled itself. Beautiful diagrams that feel like progress and change nothing. Skills that AI will take first. Joe Iles asks him what actually works, and why he still ends his new book with three words: it's not that hard.
Zaid Hassan has spent 25 years in systems change, and he thinks the field fooled itself. Beautiful diagrams that feel like progress and change nothing. Skills that AI will take first. Joe Iles asks him what actually works, and why he still ends his new book with three words: it's not that hard.
Zaid is a strategist, facilitator and writer. He has advised organisations across the globe including the World Bank, Oxfam, WWF and more. He is the author of the Social Labs Revolution (2014) and more recently How To Evolve And How Not To (2026).
Find out more about his work here:
https://xinx.co/
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[00:00:00.420] - Zaid Hassan
AI does 2-dimensional far, far better than we do. If the core capacities that your organization has are 2-dimensional, you're toast.
[00:00:11.550] - Joe Iles
Hello and welcome to The Circular Economy Show. My name's Joe and I'm your host for this episode. I'll be speaking with Zaid Hassan. Zaid is the CEO of 10 in 10 and a strategist and systems thinking expert. In his new book, 'How to Evolve and How Not To', Zaid highlights that while systems thinking has become a well-known approach for many public and private institutions in the past 20 years or so, it hasn't necessarily made us more effective at tackling grand challenges. Whilst it's crucial to recognize that a system is complex, that isn't alone a substitute for launching projects in the real world and seeing if the system reacts in the way that you hoped. So the conversation's about the reality of systems change, which I know is a subject that will resonate with many of you and the work you do. I'll be back at the end, but for now, enjoy this conversation with Zaid Hassan. Hey, Zaid, thanks for joining us on The Circular Economy Show.
[00:01:11.940] - Zaid Hassan
Thanks, Joe. Good to be here.
[00:01:14.020] - Joe Iles
I'm gonna— I think it's quite uncool to quote people back to themselves. I'm sure I heard from an interviewer once that that is not the done thing. But for this podcast, I'm going to do exactly that. And I'm going to structure our conversation around 3 things that you said. I hope that's okay. I mean, your connection to the Foundation goes back quite a long way. I think we first spoke, I was watching some archive footage, we spoke maybe 10 years ago at one of the Foundation's events.
[00:01:48.950] - Zaid Hassan
Yeah.
[00:01:50.580] - Joe Iles
And the topic was systems change. And I think back then I asked you, is there a secret recipe for systems change? And maybe that's sort of the underlying theme of this conversation as well, because you've spent a lot of your time thinking and writing about that question really, particularly in this recent book, How to Evolve and How Not To, which is out this year. So first up, I'm going to hit you with quote number 1, which is one of my favorites. It's actually the quote that I think we reconnected over this year. Systems thinking provides the appearance of engagement while deferring commitment. The reason that stood out to me is that I think of you as a systems thinking guy, a systems thinking proponent, an advocate. So what do you mean by that?
[00:02:48.850] - Zaid Hassan
Yeah. I think when systems thinking first came about, people were thinking about things quite mechanistically. So quite mechanically, so the world is a clock, not a forest, for example. So I think when systems thinking first kind of emerged, you know, I would say almost 50 years ago, it had an insight, which is the world is not like a clock, the world is, you know, more like a forest or an ecology. So I think that insight is extremely valuable. The challenge, I think, is that if that's all we have, then it's not sufficient. So it's sort of a bit like saying, you know, a farmer realizes that, you know, his field is an ecosystem and not a clock. And that's it. It's a bit like, well, what are you going to do with that insight? Because yes, that's a very valuable insight. And it's quite helpful. But if you stop at the insight, and you start creating more and more metaphors and more and more ideas around that insight, and what you're doing is you're holding that insight as the endpoint of systems thinking, then it's not. It's, it's a bit like, well, it's congratulations on the insight, but it's not sufficient.
[00:03:59.590] - Zaid Hassan
So that's kind of what I mean, which is that yes, systems thinking gives us an insight into the nature of things. But again, you know, if I was to be extreme, it's a bit like saying, you know, that's a plant and that's a rock. And it's a bit like, well, congrats on the distinction, which is absolutely true, but so what?
[00:04:18.280] - Joe Iles
Yeah.
[00:04:18.440] - Zaid Hassan
And if you're not going to do anything with that insight, then you can't. So it's a bit like, you know, I feel like we've rested on our laurels in terms of, um, being able to make these distinctions about the nature of systems, and as if that is sufficient. And all I mean is that is not sufficient.
[00:04:33.700] - Joe Iles
Well, you've teed me up nicely for quotes. Number 2, our mental landscapes are cluttered with the conceptual equivalent of sweet pastries, visually appealing, deceptively simple to digest, making us feel good for a moment. And in the book, you actually talk about this in the context of really challenging the practices of some of the well-known institutions in economic and social change. I'm not going to reveal that because people can go and and buy the book to find out who you're talking about. But what do you mean by that then? And more to the point, for the organizations who publish reports, they publish maps, they write words about what should be done or could be done, what are we getting right and what are we getting wrong?
[00:05:29.670] - Zaid Hassan
Yeah. Well, so what do I mean by that? So what I mean by that is that we are Because we're struggling to grasp the complexity, the scale, the, you know, the nature, if you like, of the challenge that we're facing, what I feel is happening is that we are looking for insight, obviously, and we're looking for answers in terms of how do we make decisions, what do we do, what guides our decision-making, and we're falling for what— there's a guy called Edward Tufte. So he's an information designer, I think it was at Yale, and he talks about PowerPoint fluff basically. And he basically says, look, if you look at a typical kind of PowerPoint file or PowerPoint diagram or image, there's actually very little information there. There's very, it doesn't actually communicate a lot of information. It's very shallow. Literally in terms of, you know, in comparison to a well-designed kind of information chart or statistical table or whatever it is. So part of the challenge, is that we, you know, you could explain it through the attention economy or whatever you want, but we seem to gravitate towards simple explanations for very complex phenomena because the cognitive load is low.
[00:06:52.390] - Zaid Hassan
So, you know, we get a diagram and we go, ah, that diagram, you know, explains it basically. And the diagram doesn't explain it. The diagram gives us a shortcut that will, and it creates the feeling. and this is the comparison to kind of sugar and sweets, is it gives us the feeling that we've eaten, that we have, you know, exercised our cognitive, you know, muscles, if you like. And actually what we've done is we've eaten a bit of sugar and actually there are no calories, it's just pure calories, there's no nutrients in it. And so I feel that we've gravitated towards this kind of space, if you like, or this consumption model of consuming very simple models that look good that actually are completely useless.
[00:07:44.340] - Joe Iles
But what about the notion that to change the world, as many organizations hope to do, we need to build a big tent? And to do that and to bring more people on board to build movements, to build momentum, You need stories. You need simple stories that people can get behind. So isn't there an argument for saying, you know, most people couldn't really handle the complexity and nuance of how the world actually works or does not work. So we need those simple models, visuals. We need some of that fluff to bring people with us.
[00:08:34.420] - Zaid Hassan
Well, so I'd kind of contrast what a good story is with what a simple diagram is. So a simple diagram is not a good story. It's a simple story, but it's not a story that is animating. It's not a story that gets you sad, upset, angry, motivated, fired up. So, and if we think about sort of human storytelling traditions, we've been telling stories for a long, long time. And arguably, we are wired to understand stories. So it's not as if the stories that we tell are confusing and we don't know how to tell good stories. We know how to tell good stories, but the good stories that we tell are stories that actually provoke an emotional response. And what we're seeing, or what I'm seeing at least with, you know, the PowerPoint fluff, is that there is no emotional response. It's purely a cognitive response. And it's a, it's a, it's a, it's an illusion of a cognitive response. It's like, it is eating that sugar, right? You get that hit and that rush, but beyond that, you know, it's not very good for you. So what I would say is that it's not about telling simple stories, it's about telling good stories.
[00:09:43.740] - Zaid Hassan
And good stories animate people, you know, they invite people to action, they fire people up. And if you think about sort of, you know, any of the great social movements of the 20th century, they managed to do it without PowerPoint. So in one of Tufti's books, he does a joke of the Gettysburg Address as a PowerPoint. And, you know, at slide 4, it crashes basically, right? So we tell good stories and we animate people and we invite people into action. And it historically, it has not involved very simple, you know, cognitive shortcuts, if you like. So I would make that distinction that actually maybe what we need to do is we need to rediscover what it means to tell good stories and how to tell good stories. stories. And, you know, when I kind of started doing this work, I looked for good stories. And in our space, they were very hard to find. And, you know, one example of one of the best stories that I found was a Google ad. And I would show this when I kind of taught storytelling without telling people it was a Google ad, and everyone would be in tears before I revealed that it was a Google ad, you know.
[00:10:52.800] - Zaid Hassan
So it was 3 minutes, and it was stunning, beautiful storytelling. Everyone got it. Doesn't matter what language you spoke, where you were from. And people were moved and they were in tears in 3 minutes. So I think we need to rediscover that art, if you like, which is that actually if people are motivated because of an emotional reason, which is they are outraged or they're angry or they want justice, then our movements become stronger as opposed to You're motivated because you saw a very simple PowerPoint diagram that makes you think you understand a system.
[00:11:29.200] - Joe Iles
So a lot of that was what some of the shortcomings of change organizations, let's say. When you look out across the landscape, what are the positives? What broadly, you know, does give you hope or you feel is progress or progressive organizations are using particular tactics or tools effectively?
[00:11:50.360] - Zaid Hassan
Yeah, so I think the paradox is that our insights, you know, the hard work that all of us have been doing, and, you know, many, many people have been doing to understand systems, is kind of paying off in a sense. So if you think about what you guys do, the idea of circularity is a very good idea. And, you know, it is scientifically grounded, it's grounded in physics, in biology, and so many different things. And being able to communicate that simply and say, well, this is actually a goal that we need to meet, and these systems need to be redesigned to be circular, is a great idea. And it's like, amazing, we should, that's what we should be doing. So I feel there are examples of organizations and people that have arrived at that level of insight. And those insights make sense, basically. They're not, they're not, you know, they're not cheap tricks, basically, that, you know, there's a very deep science behind circularity. We all know that. So in that sense, what I think is that we have developed better understandings of systems and how they work and what they need to look like to function.
[00:12:55.440] - Zaid Hassan
But I think that our ability to make that happen is limited, basically. And so it's not that we don't— and it's not that we don't know what to do. We don't know how to do it, I would say.
[00:13:09.560] - Joe Iles
I'm really curious about one line I was reading of yours, where you said that part of the motivation with writing How to Evolve was that from 25 years in the field, you had seen no strategic practice to speak of. And when you and I have spoken before and I've said, and I've asked you who's doing this really well, you've basically said no one. And—
[00:13:31.960] - Zaid Hassan
Yeah.
[00:13:32.760] - Joe Iles
But then, you know, putting aside the sort of Elon Musk dimension, what about a company like Tesla who have clearly changed the market around electric vehicles. Surely they are demonstrating some degree of strategic practice.
[00:13:52.390] - Zaid Hassan
So I think commercial success is an interesting one. So, you know, let's take McDonald's, for example, right? So McDonald's is a very successful corporation. By any kind of commercial account, it's successful. It's good at what it does. It's been— and, you know, I was in Milan giving a keynote. And I said, you know, I remember growing up in in South London and the street that I grew up on, the high street, basically, the only shop that is still there over 50 years is McDonald's. And it's in the same location, in the same place that it's been for 50 years, right? And everything else is gone. Everything else around it is gone. So what I would say is that commercial success is not an indicator of systemic impact, if you like. So that's one thing. The thing about Tesla, which is kind of interesting, is that they did something that broke the mold. So they essentially made electric cars acceptable when they were not acceptable. So prior to Tesla, electric cars were a joke. Post-Tesla, electric cars are serious. Great. You know, that is undoubtedly kind of an accomplishment. The story of Tesla is much more complex than it looks.
[00:15:04.600] - Zaid Hassan
So You know, if you look at Tesla's revenues, for example, over the years, a large part of their revenues come from government subsidies, from essentially carbon credits. So Tesla is a company that has dependent— been dependent on financing from the public sector. And without that public sector funding, it would not have succeeded. It would not have gotten to where it is. So I think the story is much more complex. I think if we go back to the circularity piece around Tesla, for example, again, I think it raises lots of questions that are very difficult to answer, which is that, Where do the rare earths come from, rare metals come from that Tesla needs to produce its cars? Oh, well, they come from the Congo, they come from here, they come from there. So it's a much more complex story than we let on. What I would say is that it is not strategic in the sense that it is not a social goal, it is not an environmental goal that's been met, which arguably has been abandoned anyway, right, by Musk? So the thing I would just say is that when I mean there's an absence of strategic practice, what I mean is that— what I don't mean is that people don't know how to commercialize a product or people don't know how to get a product on the market and sell that product.
[00:16:18.510] - Zaid Hassan
Of course they do. They've been doing it. We've been doing it for a long time. But that is not, again, sufficient. What we need is we need to be able to meet goals and targets that are difficult to meet. So unemployment or inequality is a good one, right? So we want to tackle inequality. Well, it's getting worse. That is not a simple challenge to tackle. A simple commercial strategy is not going to work, otherwise we would've done it. So the point I'm just trying to make is that our challenges are getting kind of bigger and bigger and bigger and nastier, and our capacity to tackle those challenges has not particularly shifted, in my opinion, in the last kind of, you know, 25 years. We are still doing kind of our 5-year plans. We are still doing what we did. So What I saw when I first started my career was we tried to do things and we got financing and support to do things and we largely failed, but our practice didn't change. As long as somebody came along and wrote the next check, we didn't change. It was only when someone said, no more checks if you keep doing this, that we were forced to reassess our practice.
[00:17:19.380] - Zaid Hassan
And so what I would say is that the incentives for shifting our practice are not really there. And as a result, we're not shifting our practice, in my opinion.
[00:17:28.980] - Joe Iles
Well, a shift that is happening, you know, I think across the— that needs to happen in the circular economy is this shift from momentum building, getting the circular economy on the agenda, which is, I would argue, has been quite successful in the past 10 or so years, 10, 15 years.
[00:17:48.370] - Zaid Hassan
Absolutely.
[00:17:48.820] - Joe Iles
Moving to implementation. And that's the journey that the Ellen MacArthur Foundation is on now, to take this idea that is, as you said, a good idea that works in reports, thoughts and, and in theory and to, to put it into practice. Um, so final quote: for imagination to have an impact, it has to manifest in the world. How can institutions navigate that though? Because there's a very different type of, um, of practice, of behavior that is needed to run or, or to initiate a, a reusable packaging model in Indonesia compared with trying to, um, create awareness among 500 CEOs of the circular economy as a concept. So how can organizations navigate that?
[00:18:45.600] - Zaid Hassan
Yeah, and, and you know what, what's kind of ironic is that, um, when I, when I, I gave a keynote at, um, at one of your conferences, which is, I don't know, 10 years ago, I kind of said, I kind the same thing, that, you know, we need to make a distinction between what I would call 2-dimensional skills and 3-dimensional skills, which is that, you know, we are very good at writing reports and analyzing systems and putting that analysis out in the world. But in a sense, that work of analyzing, which is necessary, has become a form of what this guy Ronald Heifetz, who's a professor at Harvard, calls work avoidance. So, you know, I like writing reports. I like writing. I'm a writer. I like doing the analysis. It's easy in comparison to the work of actually working with, you know, 1,000 stakeholders in Indonesia and trying to get, you know, redesign a packaging plant. So what I would say is that there's this distinction between kind of 2-dimensional skills and 3-dimensional skills, and they are very, very different skill sets. So 3-dimensional skills are, you know, are the skills of actually sitting with a group of people and getting to a decision or resolving a disagreement or a conflict.
[00:19:52.160] - Zaid Hassan
And what I would say is that Where we are at the moment is that AI does 2-dimensional far, far better than we do. And if the core capacities that your organization has are 2-dimensional, you're toast. I mean, fundamentally, you're toast because it can be done cheaper, quicker, faster, more accurately by AI. AI cannot do 3-dimensional. AI cannot sit down with a group of, you know, worker unions, workers, corporations, and get them to negotiate an agreement on how to handle plastics, for example. It just cannot do that. It can support that negotiation, but literally you need a bunch of people in a room, eyeball to eyeball, having a negotiation. So what are the skills required to succeed in that negotiation versus what are the skills required to produce an analysis that helps in the negotiation. So what I would say is that, um, you know, there's a— there's an entirely different set of skills and muscles and practices required to act in the world, and we are not trained in those practices. We're trained in rationality and analysis, in, in paperwork basically, which again is necessary, but it's a bit like, you know, if, if your working week is kind of 5 days, that paperwork should be half a day.
[00:21:13.500] - Zaid Hassan
At most. And it's like, what are you doing with the rest of your time? You know, what are you doing with your 4 and a half days? Well, your 4 and a half days should be spent on, you know, the 3-dimensional, the stuff that, you know, machines cannot do, basically. So I think that that is the reality of kind of our capabilities, which is they're weighted towards this kind of 2-dimensional space, which AI is essentially, you know, taking.
[00:21:36.830] - Joe Iles
Yeah.
[00:21:38.370] - Zaid Hassan
And that's, that's, That's how it is.
[00:21:40.290] - Joe Iles
I guess the allure of the 2D approach and that way of working, that mode, was that you could, from sort of one place, or sort of virtually, I guess, develop a model that would be replicated not just in Indonesia, but in in India, in Belgium, in the US, in Chile. And it would— that would be a sort of a route to having a huge impact because you had the maps, you'd done the systems thinking, you had the charts, and you could just sort of, in a sort of top-down way, sort of roll it out.
[00:22:27.040] - Zaid Hassan
Yeah.
[00:22:27.860] - Joe Iles
But if that 3D, 3-dimensional work is, is, is, you know, of a time and a place, then how does that travel? Because if you, let's say you solve some recycling or linear economy challenges in a particular place, what do you do then? Do you just go to the next place and do it there and repeat? Because that does sound quite hard. I'm not saying it shouldn't be done, but it sounds really hard, harder than the 2D version.
[00:23:00.830] - Zaid Hassan
Well, so let's be clear, the 2D version doesn't work. Nobody reads a report that was written in London and then goes, well, I'm sitting here in Jakarta, I'm just going to copy what these guys did because it was in a report. It just does not happen, right? It's a complete delusion. So that's one thing. What does get copied is the question. So what does travel from London to Indonesia or from Indonesia to Brazil, right, is services and products that actually reward people for the work they do. So if you figure something out, if you design a pen that works, right, it will get replicated. You don't have to tell people to do it. They'll kind of go, oh, well, there seems to be a market for this pen. We're going to copy it and we're going to produce it. And we're going to— you don't have to tell anyone to do that. So what I would say is that, you know, if we move into that action phase and we manage to prototype or come up with services, solutions, products, whatever you want to call it, and they work, they will get copied. You don't have to tell anyone, and they will get copied precisely because they work.
[00:24:01.310] - Zaid Hassan
If they don't work, you know, you can push and shove and all you want, they're not going to land, basically. So the top-down thing does not work if things don't work. If they work, you don't need to convince anyone to do anything. They will take it and run with it. You know, if you invent something, you know, in India that actually suddenly has a market of 200 million Indians buying it, you can be guaranteed that it will get copied everywhere without, without any top-down instruction, without— it will get replicated and copied.
[00:24:36.760] - Joe Iles
I'm going to fire one last quote at you. It's a short one.
[00:24:39.870] - Zaid Hassan
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:24:41.140] - Joe Iles
You sort of conclude your book by saying, it's not that hard, which, that sets off some alarm bells because You know, countless organizations have been busting their ass to try and change the world, and it has felt really hard. So that sounds like BS. It does sound— it is hard. Tell me more.
[00:25:03.890] - Zaid Hassan
No, it's not hard. So it's a little bit like, look, obviously people are working extremely hard, right? People are being heroic in terms of, you know, the amount of time, energy, effort, you know, that they're putting into the fight. It is not necessary. Okay, so it's, it's a bit like kind of saying, look, I'm putting in a huge amount of effort to move the dial an inch, and it's not moving an inch. The fact that you're putting in the effort does not mean— it might mean you're actually putting pressure the wrong way, or, you know, you're, you're pushing the door that should be pulled. So that would be, that would be the analogy that I use. It's a bit like, you know, I don't know if you ever saw this kind of Far Side cartoon, and it was something like, you know, something school for geniuses, and there's a kid pushing the door and it says pull, right?
[00:25:50.870] - Joe Iles
Yeah.
[00:25:51.190] - Zaid Hassan
And this kid's like straining away at the door. But it's a bit like that. It's like where these geniuses who put in heroic effort, but essentially we're putting it into the wrong place. And we're kind of going, but I've put a heroic amount of effort pushing this door, why isn't it opening? And it's like, well, it says pull. So that's the analogy I would use. But what I would actually say is that What is hard, which is extremely hard, is doing it for the first time, right? So figuring out how to crack a problem for the first time is extremely hard. But once you've done it, everyone will copy it. And that's the easy part, right? So the easy part is once you figured out that actually we've figured out a way of providing nutrition to kids that is cheap, easy to do, right? And we figured out what that looks like. That figuring out part is extremely hard. The copying part is extremely easy. And so what I mean by that is that we are, you know, we're assuming that it's permanently hard. It's always going to be hard and it's not. It's like if you crack it, it's not hard, then everyone will copy it, as I kind of said earlier, but cracking it is the hard part.
[00:26:55.600] - Zaid Hassan
And I think that work of cracking it is far harder than anyone likes to admit. But it's a specific kind of skillset. And if you don't have that skillset, it's this push-pull thing. It's like, well, you've got to learn how to read in order to do that. And So there's a set of skills I think that you need. And I think that leadership work of actually cracking these problems for the first time is extremely difficult to do. But once it's done, it becomes easy.
[00:27:20.630] - Joe Iles
Zaid, thanks so much for joining us on The Circular Economy Show, sharing much of the wisdom you've accrued in over the past nearly 3 decades, I think. And loads more of that in the book, How to Evolve and How Not to. But Thanks for joining us on The Circular Economy Show. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Zaid Hassan. The piece that stuck with me was how we should be thinking about scale when the impact that we're trying to see is not about awareness, but it's about implementation and delivery, which is exactly what the circular economy transition demands now. Thanks for joining us on this episode of The Circular Economy Show. Don't forget to subscribe and we'll see you on the next one.