Timestamps

00:00:00: Introduction

00:01:39: Living generatively
00:03:09: Unravel and redesign
00:05:01: Agency
00:06:27: Leyla's examples
00:08:10: That is just the way it is

00:10:30: Role models
00:13:52: Layla's career advice
00:16:24: Change from within
00:18:38: Final thoughts

Interview Transcription

Sarah Ellis: Hi, I'm Sarah Ellis and this is the Squiggly Careers podcast.  This episode is one of our special series of short conversations that we've had with this year's LinkedIn Changemakers, that we're also really proud to be part of.

Each of the people that we speak to is pioneering such important change in the world of work, making a difference in areas like equality, mental health and sustainability.  We're really looking forward to learning more about how they've made change happen, their hopes for the future and how we can all get involved.

Today you'll be hearing my conversation with Leyla Acaroglu.  Leyla is championing change in sustainability and that is an area that we know our community are really interested to learn more about.  Leyla is so passionate about the topic, absolutely lives and breathes this day in day out herself, as well as teaching other people including myself later this year, how we can all think a bit more about sustainability in terms of the practices that we have in our businesses, and in our personal lives.  She's also got so many helpful resources that are mainly free that you can access, and we have included links to all of those in our show notes.

I hope you enjoy listening to this conversation today and I will be back at the end to let you know how you can learn more and who else you can hear from as part of this special series.

I'd love it if we could start our conversation today with you just summarising for our listeners the change that you are really passionate about and pioneering, and then we will dive in to all the details, because I know this is a conversation our listeners are going to be really fascinated about.

Leyla Acaroglu: Sure, well the high-level change that I want to see is that we figure out how to live sustainably on the planet so that we can get to a point where we'll be generative as a species, meaning we give back more than we take.  Because we all know for a long time we've just been take, take, take, make, make, make, waste, waste, waste and that's caused a lot of problems for us.

Also, it kind of strikes me as the next big challenge that we have as a species.  It's figuring out how to not only do the right thing and make sure that our actions are not having unintended negative consequences on all the systems around us that sustain life on earth, but also that we use our smarts to do something good, right, to give back more than we take.

That is the end goal and the pathway to that is obviously techniques such as the circular economy and how we can get our businesses and individuals basically not necessarily caring about the planet, but just essentially motivated to see this change that's already underway.  I think that there are so many opportunities for us as individuals and as professionals to essentially help design a future that works better than today and that's my big goal, is to give people the tools, resources and motivation to help be a part of that, rather than perhaps in the past when we thought, "We'll leave it to somebody else to do that dirty work".

Really, instead of seeing it like that, we can see it as an amazing opportunity for innovation and creativity and that we can use these parameters that we're seeing in front of us to actually drive amazing changes for the way we work, the way we live, and ultimately the way we value this beautiful planet we all share.

Sarah Ellis: When you are looking at these systems, which is never what you would design now if you were starting from scratch, but is what we are all used to living with, how do you even begin to approach unravelling these systems?  How do you take your expertise as a designer and a scientist and the work that you do, because I think it gets overwhelming really quickly, right?

Leyla Acaroglu: It gets overwhelming and also, it's just a big, exciting challenge to unravel.  I mean to be honest, I always see that anything worth doing requires work, because otherwise it would have already been done before.  So, when it comes to these challenges and redesigning all the systems around us, be it products or businesses or energy systems, yes of course it requires work and innovation and scientific discovery and international negotiations; it requires a changing of the guard, a paradigm shift, all of these things.

Of course, you could choose to see them as overwhelming, scary and all of the negative frames, but ultimately humans are in control of the way they perceive the world.  That's the one thing we have agency over, is how we choose to perceive the challenges that are put in front of us, and for sure when five countries at the same time are burning, literally, when we are losing tens of thousands of hectares of natural environment every single day because of wildfires, exacerbated by changing climate and terrible land management policies. we are in the eye of the storm.

Yes, I understand that perhaps a glass of whiskey and a good bawl your eyes out and feel overwhelmed might be in order, but once you have gotten over that, you have to take action.  You have to see that we have agencies, individuals, no matter who we are or where we live on the planet, to take some sort of responsibility for not only our own choices but the role that we play in the societies that we live in.

If you go to work every day and are frustrated by the lack of action, that is partly your responsibility.  If you are buying some products that you know are damaging, you are essentially fuelling that system.  We are all part of that and so we have some sort of immediate agency that we can take.  What I mean by that is agency is the ability to see that you have power to exert some sort of influence on the world around you.  Trust me, no matter how poor or young or old or shy you are, you have agency.  For me the power of that is perception, so seeing that we all contribute to the future through the actions we take today.

For sure, if we end up with two degrees or five degrees of warming or we end up with another seven trillion pieces of plastic in the ocean, ultimately that does come down to macro decisions from government and industry, but partly that's a reflection of our micro-actions as participants in the economy.  That is the thing that I really love to try and remind people of is, you have the choice about your own agency.  Yes, you as one individual probably cannot change the entire world, let's be honest; we can't change the entire system, but we are part of that system that we have the ability to influence and affect and make change and try different tactics and do different things that help create a different outcome.

Sarah Ellis: I was looking at all the work that you have done in so many different areas.  I just wondered if all the different areas that you have worked in and spent time on, is there one or two things that you feel particularly proud of in terms of the change that you've been able to make?  I just thought people might be really interested in a few examples of the sorts of work that you've done over the past ten years in particular.

Leyla Acaroglu: I mean, I would definitely say I'm very proud of the UnSchool, which is my experimental knowledge lab for adults, The UnSchool of Disruptive Design.  Before COVID, we ran experiential programmes all over the world, a lot in emerging economies that combined different skills and ideas and people to create this really hyper interactive seven-day brain exploding, learning experiences.

Just one other thing I'm proud of I think is -- I know that your listeners are really interested in career and perhaps also disrupting their own career paths, and I love this context of the Squiggly Career.  I would say that I've had the erratic multidimensional career where even when someone says to me today, "What do you do?"  I'm always, "Which thing do I say?"

I most recently learned how to be a farmer.  We generated a farm in rural Portugal, learning how natural systems worked and created an organic farm.  For me that was a great learning experience, I wanted to know how nature solved problems.  I wanted to understand regeneration in a hands-on way, and I made so many mistakes in that process, just as I have been in any of my entrepreneurial activities.  Every time I made a big F up, it was in those moments right after where I had the most profound learning, like "Oh, right".

That is why experience, and why I try to make experiential products, the idea is that they give people the agency to have experiences like, this is another product I made a long time ago.  It is a little card game to be used in education that basically presents a bunch of design problems, such as electronic waste being a major contributor to toxins in the environment, and then some of the tools that you could apply and then the challenge of doing it.  Kids love solving this.  I am always surprised at the solutions kids come up with compared to the adults who are all rigid and their minds are all a bit like, "Oh, that's just the way it is".

If I hear one other person say, "That's the just the way it is", in my life, I swear to God I'm going to have an absolute tantrum right in front of them, because it's not the way it is.  It is only the way it is because we replicate it.  That product's led to this ideation toolkit, called Designercise, which I created because I was like, "All these people keep saying they're not creative, but that's not true".  If you cook dinner or if you dress yourself or if you go on a holiday, that's all creative.  That's all using your desires and your knowledge to create something that's unique.  We are all designers, whether we design our lives, we design our experience, so again trying to unlock that. 

I think back to the point that I made earlier, it's like all perception.  If we see these challenges as being overwhelming or unsolvable, then that is the status quo we will replicate.  If we see them as being, yes, challenging and perhaps maybe not figured out yet, which is definitely the case, then I think if you change the perception and see that all problems hold their own solutions in some way, our job is then to be the discoverer in whatever way we can of what those solutions are.  I feel really passionate about helping people unlock that.

So I guess to answer your question, I would say that I am most proud of being able to share knowledge with people in ways that gives them the agency to see the world differently.  I have seen that happen and been privileged enough to hear from people one month, ten years after we've done a workshop, how my enthusiastic contribution in that moment changed their perceptions and helped people see the world differently and be excited about living in it and contributing to it being better for all of us.

Sarah Ellis: I'm interested to know, you must have tough days and tough moments, in the world that you work in, where you are trying to make really significant changes and there is still a long way to go.  You talk very optimistically and positively, that clearly is the lens that you look through the world, which must help you to do your work.  But I just wondered whether there are any particular role models that you have that just have really inspired you through your career?  Also, what do you do on those days where you're feeling a bit down and that it is feeling hard; what helps you to keep going?

Leyla Acaroglu: First off, one person I have always been phenomenally inspired by is Buckminster Fuller, who is a polymer designer, a designer, and he was basically one of the first designers to be "FYI everybody, design rules the world and we can use it to create a better world".  He had incredibly forward-thinking kind of wacky designs and solutions and ideas and he ended up becoming quite famous in the 1970s.  He made statements like, "There's nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it will be a butterfly", which to me is so profound, because it's like everything has the possibility to be something else.

I feel like when I'm having a crappy the world is doomed day, which of course like everybody I do, I usually let myself feel all of the range of emotions that that brings on and I try to find the things that in those moments give me hope.  I can think of a number of things, such as the magic and wonderment of nature, and the fact that being alive for whatever crap we have to deal with is still absolutely infinitely impossible to imagine how it happened anyway.

It's got all of the makings of possibility and that nothing is defined.  Of course, yes, I feel crappy about the fact that half of the world is literally burning, and that politicians are very narrow minded when it comes to the urgency and action that needs to happen because they have vested interests, etc, but I also think, "You know what?  None of it's written yet".  We're all part of the journey and we're all writing it together.

I also want to say I'm a big fan of Donella Meadows, who is a woman who was in involved in the 1970s in a lot of the environmental awareness raising that happened then, but specifically she was one of the leading systems thinkers and she wrote books and really phenomenally helped to contribute to this field that I think is one of the most fundamentally important areas of knowledge and education, which is to be able to think in systems, which is seeing the whole before the parts, and knowing that whatever part or individual isolated component, it is part of that bigger system; but that an electricity system versus a cultural system or even a natural system can be understood for its dynamics and its delays and its feedbacks.  Then we can work within those systems.

Her work has fundamentally influenced everything that I've done, and I find that had I not discovered systems thinking, I probably wouldn't be able to flip the script on my own negative thoughts and be able to see that other side of the system and be able to navigate my way through that complex maze of feeling overwhelmed and finding the hope and possibility in every situation.

Sarah Ellis: We always ask all of our guests this, but I think particularly pertinent actually following today's conversation, we're always really interested to know, is there any career advice that you would give to people, I think probably today particularly based on people who are thinking, "I want to do more purposeful work", whether it's work particularly in an area of sustainability or just feel like they are having a more positive impact through the work that they're doing?

Leyla Acaroglu: The first thing I would say is don't quit your job.

Sarah Ellis: Fair enough.

Leyla Acaroglu: I always make a joke that the UnSchool is the school for quitters because most people who come to the UnSchool are in a career transition or a career pivoting moment and they're looking for additional information to help them navigate that, and I am making this with a tongue-in-cheek joke right.  I say that because a lot of the time, I have had conversations with people after they have done a workshop or listened to one of my keynotes or read one of my handbooks, and they are like, "Oh my God, I quit my job and I want to work in sustainability".  I'm like, "No, no, sustainability needs to happen everywhere, everywhere".

Before you quit, which is fine if you choose to do that, go ahead, but just before, see if you can ruffle some feathers and disrupt the system that you're within, because if all the good people who care about things quit their jobs and the cultural change doesn't happen within that organisation, then those organisations don't change.  Organisations are a product of the individuals within them, and they replicate behaviours, so you can disrupt that by choosing to have some sort of either overt or covert influence on the way your organisation is working.

On the free resources, I did just develop this three-dimensional sustainability in business framework, which is about operational product and experiential decisions that companies make.  There is a free toolkit, which is quite extensive, that includes an assessment of where your organisation is at, and then a pathway to help you direct that, and it's designed for individuals within any organisation to help figure out how to reflect and benchmark on your industry, what's going on, where you sit, so that you can get a snapshot perspective and then create a change pathway. 

That actually is part of a bigger body of online -- we have springs you can do in four weeks as teams, we have really in-depth masterclasses.  I have created a lot of content to try and help individuals, especially within the industries that are not trying to figure out how to create the right positive agitation and knowledge, because for me the benchmarking is critical.

The amount of times an organisation -- all I have to do is show three other agents in their industry, "Here are the three best performers in sustainability", and they're like, "Oh, I want to be like them".  It's not about is it the right thing to do or how much does it cost, it's competitive.  So, they're suddenly like, "Oh those guys did that, okay we're going to do that".  So, those types of tools are really helpful and of course, as an individual, you can change your immediate actions, but really the biggest influence you can have in your workplace is helping to create cultural change, towards understanding sustainability is not an add on, it's not some fluffy feel-good, tick-the-box marketing ploy to get people to buy more of your stuff, it is literally the future of how we operate and how we deliver goods and services into the economy and that is not just because I am passionate about it, it is because we have limitations in resources and how much waste we can produce, and climate change for example will affect how we produce natural materials or how effective we are at dealing with waste streams.

So there is a lot of change underway and so if you can find the motivation to spend a bit of time each day of your workday or maybe just half a day a week, figuring out how to connect with colleagues who are also interested in the same alliances, very useful, or as I said benchmarking within your industry or within your sector, I guarantee that other people within your organisation will care, or if not within your organisation within your industry.  Nearly every industry has industry associations and other governing bodies that help to direct the future of that industry. 

I know for example, the design industry, especially here in the UK, the industry bodies are like, "Okay, guys it's really important now that we really change the value position of the design industry.  We need to basically design for systemic change, be it products or services, etc".  That's been a slow process to see that happen, but it's happening.  I think we are seeing that happen in the finance sector with ESG, that's Environmental Social Governance reporting.

Find what we call in change theory the bright spots, and figure out what they've been doing and use the light that sheds on that to help illuminate what the pathway has for yourself.  Then if that doesn't work, quit your job.

Sarah Ellis: Thank you for listening to today's special episode of the Squiggly Careers Changemakers podcast.  If you'd like to learn more about the work that Leyla is doing, as a reminder you can find all of the links in today's show notes, and don't forget you can listen to our other short conversations with LinkedIn changemakers including people like Martyn Sibley, who discusses disability equality with Helen, and you'll find those wherever you found this podcast.

Thanks again for listening, we'll be back with you again, soon.  Bye for now.