15 Minute Foreplay™ Conversation with Dr Sohail Inayatullah  

In this conversation Bronwyn Williams and Tumelo Mojapelo talk to Dr Sohail Inayatullah about how four different perspectives on reality can help leaders to move from their current reality to a new reality.

Bronwyn Williams: Hi, everyone. I’m Bronwyn Williams. We’re back with the Flux Foreplay™ 15-minute conversations where we chat to people who have prominent ideas in the futures field and demystify them for you into bite-sized chunks. And today, we’re lucky enough to have with us, Sohail Inayatullah (PhD), who’s going to talk to us about his model that really is becoming quite foundational with futures thinking at the moment, that of causal layered analysis. 

So Sohail, can you tell us about the origins and the evolution of this framework with thinking about both the past and the present and the future? 

Dr Sohail Inayatullah: So personally origins, I grew up– my mother is very much a Sufi mystic type. My father was working with the United Nations as a researcher and development expert. And conversations with him were always about here’s a geopolitical tension in the world. It’s the same tension we had now if we had 50 years ago. But if it was always about the tension, the problem, the battle. And it was very much data oriented. My mother was always very much speaking at a different level, I would say metaphorical oriented. So I already grew up with these two approaches. And then as a student, when I would go to meetings or when I started going to conferences in the 1980s, I would see meetings were in discord. One person kept me thinking, well, here’s the data. So another person would say, well, here’s my story. Here we’re speaking, here’s a metaphor. And another person would go into a long-term lecture on philosophy. And we’d have, well, here’s the systemic solutions. And then finally it hit me, aha, these are four ways of knowing the world. And instead of them fighting, there are actually four different levels of reality. If we took this not as a problem, but as a solution to issues, what would it look like? 

So when Johann Galtung at the time, he was saying go from direct violence, which we can see, to structural violence, where systems in themselves create violence. And so then I said, aha, so what’s in our systems? There’s actually a culture of worldviews, ways of thinking. And then of course, I understood underneath that was all the stories, which I got from Lenor and Thompson, Joseph Campbell. So CLA (causal layered analysis) became a way to integrate four different perspectives on reality and use them as a way to transform self, transform organisations. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: I like the fact that you talk about there are different ways to see the world. And if you’re a leader in a world filled with uncertainty, how would you apply the CLA method to your context, or your business’s context, firstly, because I also like the idea of personal transformation as well? So it’s not just seeing the issues in or the uncertainty in an organisation or in the environment around you, but also using the CLA method to unearthing those issues or blind spots or biases, or even questioning and challenging your worldview when you bring it to the table, especially when you face with uncertainty. How would you use the CLA method for that? 

Dr Sohail Inayatullah: OK, so let’s ask you. OK, so what’s the uncertainty you face right now in your work? Let’s just do this. 

Bronwyn Williams: Well, that’s the big one, right? We’ve just done our scenarios. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: I mean, I don’t think… I mean, this is a really great question. I mean, you have a question. I don’t really… I’m not the kind of person who does have an uncertainty as an issue. It’s more like an opportunity to learn. So my framing is… I don’t know if it’s the same as the average individual. I don’t know if I’m making sense. So I’m not sure if my answer will assist you. But I don’t think there’s.. I can’t say… I feel like…

Dr Sohail Inayatullah: The first thing in your work you do, helping organisations move from uncertainty to opportunity. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: Yes. 

Dr Sohail Inayatullah: If I said it as a metaphor, what does that feel like as a metaphor to you? Because you’ve just given me your strategy. At the metaphorical level, what is that? 

Tumelo Mojapelo: It’s freeing the mind. It’s shifting the mind. I don’t know if I’m making sense… 

Dr Sohail Inayatullah: So that’s level three in CLA. Shifting the mind from a fixed mind to a mind is far more flexible. So you want certainty to opportunity, fixed mind to a shifting mind. Level four analysis, what’s the metaphor that in your life– and in either one, so Bronwyn in yours as well, that you can now bring on there? That actually matches fixed to shifting. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: Ooh, this is very deep and challenging. I’m just trying to think of a nice metaphor, um…

Dr Sohail Inayatullah: Let me give you one in HR. So I was working in Dubai with international policing. And the current model is higher key. You spend 30 years in the force. You develop expertise, wisdom. And so then you move up. Now, in a rapidly changing world, what everyone kept on saying are problems are not based on how many years you’ve been on the force or in any organisation. So I said, so what do you need? So HR right now is years on the force or in the business versus, well, let’s find the expertise that’s needed. Cybercrime, for example. So I said, well, that’s great. So why is that difficult? Because right now, HR is like a ladder. What would you like to be? We’d like to be like a lift. So HR understands that you can go up really quickly. It has a 22-year-old who could know much more than anyone else. So they go up quickly, do the job, and then of course they may go sideways, they may leave. So that meme actually took off at the conference. Ladder to lift. How do we redesign organisations so they have a lift mode except always being a ladder? Sometimes we need ladders. But many times we need a lift to get to the solution. 

So what might be a metaphor for you from this fixed mindset to shifting mindset? 

Tumelo Mojapelo: It’s more… how do I say it? So from a grip to a network kind of thinking. I don’t know if I’m making sense. So … 

Dr Sohail Inayatullah: That’s a systemic you. You want to move towards this flexible network. You’ve got it. So as a metaphor, what would a network be? I mean, for me, when I hear you talking, I see frozen like an iceberg. And then the new metaphor is this riverine, this delta, all going multiple sources of knowledge, multiple forms of the culture of gender. So frozen to a riverine delta, it seems like what you’re doing. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: Yeah, so like… I think you’re getting me. So like moving from looking at an organization as a thing, but to more an organic body that moves and evolves and changes and shifts and responds to the environment, not only external but internal. Because I think that’s what’s missing in an organisational setting, personally, where you have to be responsive to the environment. And environments don’t stay the same. They have seasons. They change. New organisms or people are introduced in new ways of thinking… 

Dr Sohail Inayatullah: So the fixed, industrial, structural, to ecological, organic. So within that, say, it is a delta riverine system, right? You would smile when I said that. So who are you in that? That’s the next question we ask constantly. 

Bronwyn Williams: The full ecology. 

Dr Sohail Inayatullah: We move from industrial to the full ecology. So each one of you, who are you in that story in your business? What’s your role? Are you the gardener? Are you the navigator on the ship? You moved to a delta system. So this is a figure of what’s your story within this new environment. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: Ooh, I’m more like a connector. I don’t know if I’m making sense. So like I’m a neural link. I’m not necessarily…

Dr Sohail Inayatullah: So we changed the metaphor. We’re throwing out the riverine. We’re going from a body to the brain, and you’re the neural link that puts together… 

Tumelo Mojapelo: Yeah. 

Bronwyn Williams: The spark! 

Dr Sohail Inayatullah: We’re talking about you. Who are you in this? We shift another conversation to you in terms of what you folks do in Flux?

See, I asked this one example I use, and it’s probably somewhere on YouTube, it’s 20 years ago I was working with an organisation, and they were looking to future financing, how to find new funding for your organisation. So we did all the normal stuff: scenarios, analysis, data, you name it. But the metaphor was, to me, the most interesting part. They said, we’re like Cinderella. And I said, so who is the Prince Charming? They said, well, it’s government funding. Everywhere we apply for a block grant. And if we get it, then we get the kiss, and we’re married forever, actually, just for a year. They’re not really Prince… Cinderella gets only the one year marriage. If we don’t get it, then we’re in trouble. So this is all going well, but the one that is vice president doesn’t like the day. Doesn’t like me, doesn’t like my colleague. And she’s very aggravated, aggressive. 

And finally at three thirty, I ask her, who are you? She goes, can’t you see? I’m the wicked step sister. And it was fascinating. She was angry at the other vice president. She was worried this four-side process would lead to reconfiguration of power, value, budgets. Now in my inability to be present to her situation, I just froze. I couldn’t breathe and work through it. What I should have said… what should I have said to her? What’s a better story for her within the Cinderella archetype? 

Tumelo Mojapelo: She could be a very good mother. She literally could transition. She doesn’t have to be the wicked evil step sister. She could literally see this as also an opportunity for her to do something great. So it’d be like not a stepping stone, but like back to your analogy about an elevator, instead of it being a static layer. I mean, the person pushes out this process or this person. And that might open up another opportunity, because she might, firstly, or he, they might learn something about themselves, which might create an opportunity within this new vision of this organization where they can thrive. And they would have never had that opportunity to tap into that. They didn’t shift that. 

Dr Sohail Inayatullah: A very Godmother-like story. Then you know in your work, you come over the new vision, but there’s the present. How do we bridge that? That’s an investment bridge, a funding bridge, where you said you’re the neural link bridge. So she could have funded the new transition instead of fighting it because she felt she would lose her power. So in the CLA process, there’s the current world. There’s the new world. And who are each one of us in this transition? If we’re going from ladder to lift, then the people in the room are working in a lift HR system, flexible, fluid movement, young people are allowed to move up to the top of the organisation. Who are each one of you? Are you the lift designer? Are you the engineer? Are you the bellman? Sometimes in some elevators, they have someone there saying, welcome, which floor would you like to go to? That’s kind of a really important job, because you’re there. 

So that each person who figures that we are in a transition… a transition can be uncomfortable. Here’s our vision. CLA helps us figure out what we’re going to measure in the future. Because right now, in this case, they were measuring crimes committed. As we work through this all, we don’t want to be the people who are measuring crimes committed. We want to use these young cyber experts’ crimes prevented. That’s a different measurement. So the cost, the age, and the lift has to play a different game. So CLA works by structuring the present, deconstructing it, creating the new future, and then figuring out the personal level. What are some stories each one of us can enact to play a more powerful role? So we’re living, working at the mythic level. And of course, we work in organisations for saying, what are you measuring? What’s your KPI? So we’re doing both. And most people really find energy coming to them. Because now they are operating in all of being, body, mind, and spirit, and ancestors, as well as future ancestors. So if you’re on a spiritual journey, if you’re quiet and you’re part of that worldview, the ancestors can speak to you. If that way of knowing makes sense to you, but you have to be in that quietness, you have to have a connected story where the ancestors can speak to you. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: I like…

Bronwyn Williams: Oh, you’re playing it, right? Like, what is that story? Because those are the stories that humans connect with. The stories that go right down to those myths, to those core ideas that frame so much of our society and why we do things, right? And when you shine a light on that, it does force people to reflect on their own role in that story. 

And I suppose what’s interesting is how few people actually will frame themselves as being a hero in that story, which brings us up to date with our modern myths that we’re telling. And now, of course, our myths are framed not with fairies and fairy godmothers. They’re framed with AI gods and singularities and non-playable characters and hero characters, right? And skins and avatars. And again, what are those roles and how do you see yourself in that? And I think that a lot of my work is around helping people find agency, right? That’s so much about not just leadership, but around everyone in a team, right? And helping people to find a playable role and character in the story is critical to get people to buy into your story and your vision, whether it’s for a society or for a company, right? 

Dr Sohail Inayatullah: No, I love that. I mean, it is the playable role. It’s finding agency. So we play in the tech role, but I think as futurist, I ran a workshop in Bangkok last year. And there were policy makers, but many were senior doctors who had a spiritual view of life. And so they started to imagine what would like a real-time Buddha as hologram look like. So in Thailand, you’re facing an emotional issue, some existential crisis, and you can go and meditate. Might be difficult to know. You call the Buddha hologram and say, what should I do now? And the hologram connects with you at their neurologic level or just visual level and says, aha, you seem to be feeling anxiety. You need to do more meditation, or really, you will not doing right livelihood. You’re not following your dream work. You need to do this. So they talked about using AI to create Buddha holograms to help each person in their individual professional career and personal career. So this guy was like I enjoyed that workshop because it was localised in the current culture. It had some innovative ideas, and they were helpful. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: I, like, the one thing I like about the CLA method is that it approaches the… not the problem, but rather the situation in a holistic manner. And it takes in the element that we normally like to overlook. And I think that’s something you mentioned in the beginning, especially in your story, is the spiritual element. Because everyone has a belief, even if they don’t call it anything, they believe in something. They have a set of values that dictate how they see the world and how they construct their identity within that world. Now, with that said, how do we simplify this for anyone who wants to apply the CLA method? Like, what is the five-step plan? Someone doesn’t have to read into it, like read lots of articles about, like, how do I say, I want to have this application to my life, or to any problem, or to any situation. How do I approach the world in these four different ways? What is the simplest way of distilling what we’ve discussed here so that in every day, people can actually just harness this method and leverage it in every step that they take, or decisions that they make? 

Dr Sohail Inayatullah: So there has to be an issue, right? So we start with the problem. Everyone who worked with WHO in one of the projects, the issue was alcoholism. So that’s level one analysis. Rates of alcoholism are increasing. That’s linked to a whole range of diseases. Level two, why? Easy to get, cheap. Level three, while we’re in the transition from a socialist culture economy to a market economy, and that shift is difficult. And level four– and in the market economy, it’s the individual responsibility. The metaphor was, it’s your problem. It’s your drink. We know… we live to drink. And the new shift was something that grandparents used to do. We drink to die. Then the world’s new shift was personal responsibility. No, it’s a social responsibility. We’re all involved in this together in Mongolia. And then the better system was, well, then how do we tax? How do we de-incentivise? How do we have dry areas? How do we slowly make the transition? And the new litany was number of people drunk at night, et cetera, et cetera. 

Tumelo Mojapelo: Thank you so much for explaining that. I think that is the best way. So you start with the problem. You work your way down. And then you start looking. And then I think basically you say, you land at the systemic. And what changes need to happen at a systemic level to be able to help the individual to move towards this new vision, or this new goal, or this new idea. 

Dr Sohail Inayatullah: And every group is different, right? Some people would not be alert to myths. They would be alert to systemic financial issues they’re facing. So I try to find in the room what’s needed. If they’re all storytellers, the last thing I want to do is live in story, because they actually need to understand the link between story and strategy and structure. If they’re all MBAs and that group, then I really want to get them to narrative, because they’ve pushed that out. 

That wonderful movie, Inside Out 2, that’s quite good at that. The worldview is inside of us, and how do we make transitions? 

Tumelo Mojapelo: Thank you so much. I love that. Thank you so much for sharing your insights and for your time. For our viewers, please continue to watch our 15-minute conversation, subscribe, share. We have so many other insights and other methods and models that you can use to have some agency and determine your future and the direction you’re going in. Thank you so much, Sohail. 

Dr Sohail Inayatullah: My pleasure.

By Flux Trends 

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