Ep 101 Change the Questions, Change the World: Catalytic Thinking with Hildy Gottlieb

EPISODE OVERVIEW What if the biggest obstacle to creating change in your organisation isn't a lack of resources, effort, or intention — but the questions you're asking? That's the central challenge Hildy Gottlieb has spent 30 years answering, and it cuts right to the heart of what purpose-driven leadership actually requires. Hildy Gottlieb is a futurist, social scientist, and the developer of Catalytic Thinking — a question-based framework for systems change published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review and used by nonprofit leaders, social entrepreneurs, and purpose-driven businesses around the world. Over three decades working with community organisations, Hildy and her partner Dimitri Petropolis made a confronting discovery: the tools most organisations rely on to pursue change — strategic planning, resource development, board governance — were never designed to create the world we want. They were designed to maintain the world we have. In this conversation, Hildy unpacks the deceptively simple maths behind why most change efforts stall, walks us through the seven questions of Catalytic Thinking, and makes a compelling case for why the most important thing a purpose-driven leader can do right now — in business, nonprofit, or social enterprise — is dream bigger, not smaller. Listeners can expect actionable ideas for leaders in nonprofit, social enterprise and business who want to move from reactive fixes to ambitious, inclusive change — starting with one simple shift: change the questions, change the world. WHO THIS EPISODE IS FOR This episode is for you if you're a CEO, nonprofit leader, social entrepreneur, sustainability or ESG leader, or anyone responsible for organisational strategy and culture who: • Wants to move beyond incremental, reactive change toward genuine systems change • Is grappling with how to embed purpose more deeply into how your organisation plans and operates • Leads teams and wants to unlock more creativity, inclusion, and collective ownership • Is navigating a difficult external environment and looking for a framework that builds resilience and hope alongside action • Is curious about what inclusive leadership and stakeholder-centred strategy actually looks like in practice ABOUT HILDY GOTTLIEB Hildy Gottlieb is the co-founder of Creating the Future and the developer of Catalytic Thinking — a framework for social change rooted in neuroscience, mathematics, and economics. Her work has been published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review, and her SSIR article on Movements vs. Organizations was selected to open their ebook Essentials of Social Innovation: Transforming Leadership — and directly inspired the design of the Community Centric Fundraising movement. Hildy is a TEDx speaker and the author of multiple books used as texts in undergraduate and graduate programs around the world. With her partner Dimitri Petropolis, she co-founded the world's first Diaper Bank, sparking a movement across North America and earning a Points of Light Citation from President Bill Clinton. She helped develop the Masters degree program in Community Leadership at Duquesne University (pron. Dew-cáyne), where she and Dimitri taught as professors, and has lectured at institutions including UC Berkeley and the University of Waikato in New Zealand. Her forthcoming book, How to Create the Future, distils 30 years of research and demonstration projects on what actually creates lasting change. WHAT WE COVER IN THIS EPISODE • Why love isn't just welcome in business — it's essential to good decision-making, and why its absence leads to what Hildy calls 'really dumb decisions' • How Hildy and Dimitri moved from commercial real estate to founding a social change movement — and what values drove that journey • The five-year wake-up call: why doing nonprofit strategic planning 'the right way' produced good reputations but no community change • The maths that changes everything: why less bad does not equal good, and what the number line from minus one to plus one reveals about how organisations set their ambitions • Why most organisations are aiming at zero — and how Catalytic Thinking reorients purpose-driven leaders toward the positive future they actually want to create • The seven questions of Catalytic Thinking, grouped into Radical Inclusion, Radical Possibility, and Radical Strength • Why the first question — who will be affected, and what will it take to include them — changes everything downstream in organisational planning • Radical Inclusion vs. target marketing: why centering your community (not your organisation) produces fundamentally different strategy • Why strategic planning inherited from the military and church charity was never designed to create...