Systems thinking means systems acting, with Paulo Savaget

"We shouldn't be paralyzed by analysis, right? That’s the essence of solving systems," says Brazilian entrepreneurship engineer Paulo Savaget on The Web of Us. In conversation with Claire Wathen, Paulo shares why thinking like a computer hacker can be a great approach, how piggybacking on other peoples’ solutions can save you a ton of work, and why friction isn’t necessarily a bad thing. 

Transcript

[00:00:00] Paulo Savaget: This scrappy mindset, I would say focuses more on pragmatism, considering that perfection is an abstraction that will not be reached. 

[00:00:13] Claire Wathen: Welcome to the web of us revealing the visible and invisible connections that shape our world. I'm your host, Claire Wathen. For our first episode, I wanted to start with one of the most foundational concepts in network theory.

[00:00:25] Claire Wathen: Systems thinking. Systems thinking helps you zoom out to see different parts of a [00:00:30] system that are interconnected and how changes in one part can affect the whole. It shows us that a system is made up of more than just the sum of its parts. Through systems thinking we can better understand how relationships shape that system and how changing relationships, what we can call a network, can lead to bigger shifts in the system itself.

[00:00:49] Claire Wathen: This week's guest is an entrepreneurial engineer, author, and Oxford researcher. Who is a pro at using practical strategies to tackle complex problems? Since we're living [00:01:00] in an age where rapid change feels like a daily staple, we're better to start than the good enough approach. In our conversation, we cover why thinking like a computer hacker can be a great approach.

[00:01:11] Claire Wathen: How to apply simple systems frameworks and why friction isn't necessarily a bad thing on why systems thinking means. Systems acting. Here's University of Oxford Associate Professor. Paolo Savaget.

[00:01:26] Claire Wathen: Welcome Paolo. Uh, we've known each other for quite a [00:01:30] while. I was thinking back to where we met and I remember an early conversation when I was beginning my visiting fellowship about all these different ideas and areas that I wanted to explore, and you very kindly and patiently listened and shared a. A research framework that's been really central to the journey for me.

[00:01:50] Claire Wathen: I keep coming back to it, which is thinking about explore and exploit as a spectrum and starting with what you know, starting with your [00:02:00] experiences and grounding there, and then exploring from there and how Oxford is a fascinating place to do just that. So really excited to dig into your expertise in.

[00:02:11] Claire Wathen: Systems, engineering, entrepreneurship, your fantastic book, the Four Workarounds. But first, I'd love to start with you and help folks get to know you as a human first and foremost. Uh, so I'd love to start with where do you call home? 

[00:02:28] Paulo Savaget: That's one of the toughest [00:02:30] questions. 'cause I had, I had a very nomadic life for the past 20 years or so, and so I'm gonna borrow a quote from Gloria Andal who said that she was like a turtle that she carried home her back.

[00:02:44] Paulo Savaget: I think that I, I've carried home on my back for a while, but now Oxford is becoming more home and I still. Feel that Brazil is home for me, that's where I grew up. That's where I spent most of my life. 

[00:02:57] Claire Wathen: And what's something that we [00:03:00] wouldn't see in your bio that speaks to who you are? Maybe a superpower that you have?

[00:03:04] Paulo Savaget: I think I'm a bit goofy, but not in a, I. In a super goofy way, and perhaps when they see my profile, like Oxford Associate Professor at Oxford, they don't imagine that I'm a little goofy. 

[00:03:18] Claire Wathen: Well, one part of Oxford culture that I've experienced, um, over the last few years is how dinners are such a big part of, um, the college experience.

[00:03:26] Claire Wathen: And I'm, um, curious if you find yourself at a dinner [00:03:30] party, how do you, uh, introduce yourself? 

[00:03:32] Paulo Savaget: I don't usually like to introduce myself by describing profession, and I don't usually ask a first question that is profession based. So I usually ask questions related to food or make a comment about the place or, yeah, any, anything that, that is a bit more spontaneous.

[00:03:49] Claire Wathen: I find it to be both. Very normal that people ask that. But also it, it just feels limiting often about, you know, what do you do versus who are you or [00:04:00] what, what's, um, energizing you? How are you finding the day? You know, there's so many things happening in everyone's lives around us that you would never know unless we open a little bit of space for conversation.

[00:04:13] Paulo Savaget: Exactly. Yeah. Completely agree. 

[00:04:14] Claire Wathen: Speaking of evolving and exploring, I'm curious. You know, we're gonna get into more of your expertise and areas of focus, but as you think about your journey coming from Brazil through different industries and spaces, how would you describe that? Do you see, see [00:04:30] it as linear or sequential?

[00:04:32] Claire Wathen: Is it more organic? How do you think about the journey? 

[00:04:35] Paulo Savaget: No, my journey was most definitely not linear. Um, I, I spent most of my life in Brazil, uh, but I had lived already in a few different places. I worked as an entrepreneur, had a few companies, worked with several, uh, nonprofit organizations or projects in different places ranging from the Amazon to favelas or, [00:05:00] uh, with development organizations.

[00:05:02] Paulo Savaget: Uh. And I think that it was more the. I think I, I've been very curiosity driven and, and one of the reasons why I came for, for the UK was a moment that I became more frustrated with the kind of work I was doing. I, I, I was doing primarily consulting, like sustainability consulting, and I realized that my reports were getting too similar, that I always recommended more collaboration, more coordination, more [00:05:30] alignment, things that were not wrong, but I thought that.

[00:05:32] Paulo Savaget: I lacked not only re but also different ways of looking at systems change, and that was what brought me to the UK for PhD. And then I stayed because of many reasons that I couldn't have foreseen. 

[00:05:48] Claire Wathen: I'd love to hear just a little bit more about. How you describe your work in systems engineering. You know, there's a lot of themes that are quite complex, but [00:06:00] you also are known for bringing simplicity and clarity to those areas, how you find yourself in straddling those spaces, um, and where you focus your work with themes like resilience coming through.

[00:06:14] Claire Wathen: Mm-hmm. 

[00:06:14] Paulo Savaget: Uh, I think one of the. The common assumptions is that complexity means that something's complicated when the reality is that they are not. And, and if you try to make something very complicated, it's usually [00:06:30] a very bad approach towards making changing systems. Uh, simplicity can be. Really, really positive in approaching, um, systems change and, and in systems engineering.

[00:06:44] Paulo Savaget: There are many approaches to. Assessing a system and also intervening in systems. The, one of the important things is that system is not a thing. System is not, it's not a a specific energy system. It's more toolkit. It's to [00:07:00] analyze situations in which, uh, that could be. For example, technological systems, social systems, political systems.

[00:07:06] Paulo Savaget: But they allow us to unpack these complexities, unpack who's involved, how they're connected, and the complexities that arise from these interdependencies. So for example, vicious cycles. I'm working on a project that that is about poverty traps. Once someone is ultra pool. They do not have money to eat now, so they get [00:07:30] a loan from a loan shark who's gonna exploit them and charge an absurd interest rate.

[00:07:36] Paulo Savaget: And then to pay them back, they have to sell the labor very cheaply to whoever pays them to clean their house. And then, like, this is a, a self-reinforcing cycle that traps them into poverty. Right? That's something that we observe in systems. It's one of the complexities, but there are many. Systems usually have some components of self-organization.

[00:07:58] Paulo Savaget: So for example, if you bring [00:08:00] people into a dinner party in a college, as you mentioned earlier, I. You see that there's a bit of self-organization, naturally, organically, people self-organize. There are hierarchies as well, even the, the startups that want to be super flat, uh, that really want no hierarchies.

[00:08:17] Paulo Savaget: You see that there are some hierarchies, even if they're not. Their titles in how they, uh, divide labor. For example, one of the benefits of thinking systemically is because you can assess these [00:08:30] complexities and know how to intervene in systems. And again, not by making things complicated, but quite the opposite.

[00:08:37] Paulo Savaget: It's stripping off this unnecessary complexity, uh, and trying to. Address the, the issues that you care about in a way that is most effective, right? That's the, the, the essence of systems thinking and the many traditions, many ways of assessing systems and intervening systems. But I would say that the main value is that it's the [00:09:00] ability to understand who are the act, how they're connected or not.

[00:09:05] Paulo Savaget: Uh, what are the boundaries of the system and how does that shape. For example, power dynamics, but also the many complexities that arise because as we say, in systems thinking, the whole is more than the sum of the parts. It's not simply thinking of who's in, who's out of that system. It's also because of the many complexities that arise.

[00:09:27] Paulo Savaget: From the, the connections. [00:09:30] I hope I didn't speak too much jargon. 

[00:09:32] Claire Wathen: That's, that's actually, I was curious about that because there is a lot of jargon in this space, both in describing the set of people involved or organizations or actors in a given, you know, system. There's a whole spectrum of words used for.

[00:09:50] Claire Wathen: Small groups, large groups, long-term groups, short-term groups, whether the groups are self-organized, whether they're led by a specific person or set of people, how [00:10:00] much governance is in place, you know, all these different factors. And I'm curious, given your, your role, both in doing research, but also being very in the space of practicality and practice, how do you wade through all the language?

[00:10:14] Claire Wathen: Is the language helpful? I'm curious if language is often a barrier. 

[00:10:18] Paulo Savaget: Uh, I would say that language, and I mean more specifically concepts and toolkits in, in systems, I treat them as. Tools, right? Like it's, uh, if you want to hang [00:10:30] a painting on the wall, you're not gonna use a chainsaw, you're gonna use a hammer.

[00:10:35] Paulo Savaget: Uh, and, and, uh, the, this many concepts, languages, toolkits, however you want to call them. They serve different purposes, and ultimately you gotta make them useful, right? Or you gotta think of what can be most useful to you. So for example, if you're looking at how actors come together around a shared value proposition, that could be, for example, [00:11:00] promoting access to, uh.

[00:11:03] Paulo Savaget: Malaria diagnostic tasks in Ghana, uh, and how they, they share value, how they exchange value, how this system can be made resilient. I would probably use an ecosystem lens for that. If you're thinking more, for example, how an energy system in Bangladesh can transition from coal to solar. I would probably approach from a [00:11:30] social technical systems perspective, right?

[00:11:32] Paulo Savaget: Because they all give you different ways of looking at something, which I, I say that it's almost as if you had a, a lens or a a few different lenses. You can look at the same. Uh, uh, landscape With one lens, you're gonna notice more The beauty of the peto of a flower. You're not gonna see everything with each of these lenses.

[00:11:55] Paulo Savaget: You're gonna see different things, even for the same landscape and [00:12:00] this many, and, and that's why it's so important to have. A toolkit, right? And you have different tools. You combine them, you use them differently, but also you develop your analytical skill to make this assessment of what is most useful to that situation.

[00:12:16] Claire Wathen: It's refreshing to hear that framing. I, there are so many different tools to work from and I think it's, you know, it's human nature to. Gravitate towards your tool or your set of tools. 

[00:12:29] Paulo Savaget: Yeah. And we shouldn't be [00:12:30] paralyzed by analysis. Right. I think that that's the, the essence as foreign systems, sometimes people try to see too much and it can be overwhelming because these systems are changing and as you try to map them, they are changing and there's just so much in it that you cannot really make, uh, any useful assessment if you try to map that much.

[00:12:50] Paulo Savaget: Uh, it's much better to try to approach that. With simplicity and try to find ways to intervene and address the problems that you, [00:13:00] uh, that you actually care about or that you, that you're trying to, to solve. I. Um, I, I'm not a fan of these systems maps that provide so much information that you can't really see anything in them, right?

[00:13:15] Paulo Savaget: I, I think that it's much more useful to have PARiM money and focus on what actually matters the most and straight off the unnecessary complexity out of your [00:13:30] system so that you can find better ways to intervene. 

[00:13:33] Claire Wathen: That has been a challenge for this field of systems thinking, systems change, um, whether from an entrepreneurial lens or otherwise, that there are these different tools and approaches that have been developed and they may have worked 10 years ago or in a particular context, but we're in a very different context now.

[00:13:52] Claire Wathen: All of the different tags and segments and elements and models and frameworks, um, it doesn't enable the [00:14:00] conversation and the alignment of the stakeholders to take action. 

[00:14:03] Paulo Savaget: Yeah. One a, a good way of understanding a system is to try to intervene in it and see what happens as well. What is disturbed in a system?

[00:14:12] Paulo Savaget: What changes once you, you act, it's one of the reasons, it, it's, it's like we're doing science, for example. You try to control an environment and then you make a change. You see what happens, and then you keep seeing, uh, what else, and, and try to expand out of that. Pilot, right. Or expand the study. [00:14:30] Um, that's a very good way of making systems change approach and systems change.

[00:14:35] Paulo Savaget: And sometimes much more useful than trying to, uh, assess everything. And sometimes the best way to make systems change is actually, I. Addressing a symptom instead of the root cause of a problem, uh, because the solution also evolves, right? It's not only the problem that is evolving and the solution evolves, that might be an entry point after that entry point that you make a small change, others can join.

[00:14:58] Paulo Savaget: But I think that if [00:15:00] we think that it's. Starting with the white canvas, understanding a system, identify the root cause of the problem and trying to tackle that. It becomes a very linear approach to systems change and it's not the reality of change makers around the world. 

[00:15:14] Claire Wathen: I'm also hearing a real centering in humility and agency and how you're thinking about this and it's, um, something that also comes through in the book that you published in 2023.

[00:15:26] Claire Wathen: These themes also come through in the book that you just published, the four [00:15:30] workarounds strategies. From the world's scrappiest organizations for tackling complex problems. And you've already teased out a few of these themes, but I would be really curious to hear what is a workaround? How did this concept come up for you, and what's the story of the cover image on the book?

[00:15:49] Paulo Savaget: Uh, well, you, you may have noticed from, uh, our conversation so far that I. Like good enough approaches to systems change. [00:16:00] And that actually started from my frustration. I mentioned earlier that I, I was frustrated with my recommendations being always very focused on coordination, alignment, collaboration, things that were not necessarily wrong, but I, I thought that there were different ways of approaching systems change that were very different from that.

[00:16:19] Paulo Savaget: That was the beginning of my research journey that I. Again, not linear at all, but I, uh, I started thinking who makes systems [00:16:30] change in very immediate ways and in very resourceful ways, but still very impactful. And I thought of computer hackers because computer hackers can break into a computer system and make change.

[00:16:42] Paulo Savaget: So resourcefully very quickly as well. Then I started studying computer hackers to see how they hack. A computer system. And then, uh, I identified the essence of a hack is that they work around complex obstacles. [00:17:00] So one of the most notorious computer hacks is called Trojan Horse, and the metaphor here I think is beautiful.

[00:17:07] Paulo Savaget: It. Uh, uh, it's the Greek myth that you don't have to break the walls or the gates of a city to find a way in, right? They work around that obstacle instead of trying to confront them, and that's what computer hackers do constantly. Uh, they don't try to know everything that is in the system from the beginning.

[00:17:27] Paulo Savaget: They don't try to assess everything [00:17:30] that is, they start. Approaching the system and when once they find these obstacles that they cannot remove the, they cannot confront, they work around them and by doing so, they can have outsized impacts. So I started studying this many cases of individuals, organizations, or what I call the very scrappy organizations worldwide, uh, addressing complex problems through this [00:18:00] hacks or workarounds.

[00:18:01] Paulo Savaget: And I identified four approaches for doing so, and the cover. Is connotes the idea of the first walk around in the book. That is the piggyback. The visual metaphor of the covid is that if you are slow, you can take a, a ride with someone who's fast, right? And, and, and that applies to many systems context.

[00:18:25] Paulo Savaget: To give an example, a real world example, the organization that I worked with in [00:18:30] Zambia called Kohl Life. They realized that you cannot find life-saving medicines such as for diarrhea treatment in remote regions. At the time, less than 1% of people in remote regions had access to this medicine and diarrhea was the second biggest killer of, of children under the age of five.

[00:18:49] Paulo Savaget: So very important, medicine could not be found, and the medicine is over the counter. It's so cheap that people living in extreme poverty could afford. So what did this [00:19:00] organization do? They realized that you cannot find this medicine, but you find Coca-Cola everywhere. So in the beginning, they literally started fitting medicines between the bottles in a Coca-Cola crate to take a free ride.

[00:19:13] Paulo Savaget: With these bottles that were already reaching remote regions and provide access to that medicine, then they understood that it wasn't simply the space between the bottles that mattered, it was the fact that there's an entire system for fast moving consumer [00:19:30] goods like Coca-Cola, sugar cooking oil. That was extremely effective and resilient.

[00:19:37] Paulo Savaget: So why can't they use. Literally piggyback on this existing system of fast moving consumer goods to provide access to medicine, and that's what they have done within a few years and a very small budget. This organization of two people started this intervention that. Led to the rise of, [00:20:00] uh, the uptake of the medicine from less than 1% to about 50% in many regions in Zambia.

[00:20:05] Paulo Savaget: A workaround that can have outsized impact by, in that case, piggybacking on a different system. 

[00:20:13] Claire Wathen: I love how you said earlier that complex does not need to mean complicated and, and the role of collaboration, leveraging collective action and thinking together, and I'd love to unpack that. Component a bit more, especially as we're thinking about the role of [00:20:30] networks and interconnectivity between different disciplines and industries and what often blocks that flow.

[00:20:37] Claire Wathen: Curious how, how you place collaboration. Because it's often complicated to get people to work together in new ways, to challenge kind of the status quo and, you know, things that have been done before and the dynamics that you enter a conversation with. So, curious if you could share a bit more about collaboration.

[00:20:59] Paulo Savaget: Sure. And I, [00:21:00] I think it's, I, I would say that I would start with the, the assumption that collaboration is not always positive. Collaboration can be negative as well. Right. And then it's who you collaborate with and who you deliberately avoid because sometimes collaboration can lead to very bad outcomes.

[00:21:19] Paulo Savaget: Right. And we have many history that have proven that. Let me share an example of a workaround that I think is quite powerful in showing how they [00:21:30] collaborated. It's a nonprofit from the Netherlands called Women on Waves, that later they created a, a trained organization called. Women on web, they realize that what prevents people from having access to a safe and legal abortion service is where they are based.

[00:21:50] Paulo Savaget: So if they're based in Poland, they can't, if they are in the uk, they can. Right. It's the jurisdiction where they reside. So the [00:22:00] workaround that they use that is one that I call the loophole, is that they use the law from the Netherlands to provide abortion services that are legal and safe to people who live elsewhere.

[00:22:12] Paulo Savaget: So for example, they would take a boat from the Netherlands and sail to places where abortion is illegal, and then people who want an abortion service go on board. They sail to international orders. Where the legislation that applies is the one of the flag of the boat, which is Dutch, and then they can [00:22:30] provide abortion services for them legally and safely.

[00:22:32] Paulo Savaget: That sounds very small niche, right? It sounds very small niche. It's uh, it's controversial. They. They picked fights with many organizations worldwide, and because they collaborated with some while also having animosity with some orders, they created some big change. So, for example, when they went to Portugal, I.

[00:22:55] Paulo Savaget: To provide the Washington services. Long story short, they teamed up with some [00:23:00] grassroots organizations that were pro-choice. There was this massive tension with the conservative government in Portugal that sent a warship to prevent the little boat from the Netherlands to go to national orders. And from that nation, it triggered a change in the legislation, and Portugal became pro-choice.

[00:23:21] Paulo Savaget: So I would say. There's a lot of value in collaborating, but there's also a lot of value in thinking about how frictions can [00:23:30] be generative as well. I usually say that like frictions can deteriorate materials, but it, but it also creates light, right? It's uh, and I think frictions are important as well.

[00:23:40] Paulo Savaget: It's collaborating with some, but also frictions with orders that may generate very interesting systems change as well. Very promising, 

[00:23:50] Claire Wathen: and that. Again, different solutions are helpful in different cases. Um, I think there's a lot of almost romanticism about collaborating and partnering and [00:24:00] coming together and that it's actually quite challenging and not always the best.

[00:24:04] Claire Wathen: You know, less can be more. There's sort of the minimal yeast theory of, you know, just a small group of willing and well aligned people can enact the core of what becomes a widespread movement or a broader network that's activated. There's also a theme. In your work around constraints and how constraints can be both helpful and beautiful, and that not necessarily a negative, that actually by embracing the [00:24:30] constraints, all kinds of innovation can happen.

[00:24:33] Paulo Savaget: Exactly. Yeah. Constraints can be very liberating. I know it doesn't sound very obvious, but once you face many constraints, and if you are keen on challenging them, for example, working around them, you can find so many solutions that you wouldn't have found otherwise. It's because you were constrained and trying to find a way out of that constraint [00:25:00] that you came up with.

[00:25:01] Paulo Savaget: Many innovative approaches to addressing some of the, these challenges. And we have constraints everywhere, right? We have constraints in our daily lives. You have constraints in your work or when? When you talk about. Problems that you care about, you can identify many constraints. I would encourage everyone to not think of them simply as something that prevents you from doing stuff, but also as something that can [00:25:30] stimulate you to think differently and approach your problems differently.

[00:25:33] Paulo Savaget: I. 

[00:25:34] Claire Wathen: Yeah. There's a, a fantastic book called A Beautiful Constraint, um, by Adam Morgan and, and Mark Barden that essentially teases out eight different types of constraints. 

[00:25:44] Paulo Savaget: Exactly, yeah. A constraint can easily become an enabler if you change how you are looking at it. Mm-hmm. 

[00:25:50] Claire Wathen: I'm curious, how, how do we bring more of this practical, scrappy thinking into the mainstream?

[00:25:56] Claire Wathen: Are there ways that you, um, think about [00:26:00] introducing more people to this kind of way of thinking or being, especially in a time of rapid change and increased ambiguity? What do you see as possible? 

[00:26:09] Paulo Savaget: Well, that's a, a very tough question. I'm a fan of scrappy thinking and scrappy approaches because I think that they.

[00:26:17] Paulo Savaget: Uh, very adaptive, very flexible, and we find ourselves in situations that might be so. Turbulent that these approaches are very beneficial, right? And, and, uh, [00:26:30] and the focus on good enough instead of focus on perfection can work really well in this context, this crappy mindset, I would say focuses more on pragmatism, focuses more on good enough, considering that perfection is, uh.

[00:26:48] Paulo Savaget: It's an abstraction that will not be reached. One of the, the things that came out of this research that was published in, in the, the book was the, [00:27:00] the look at abundance instead of scarcity. I think that also impacts a lot the scrappy mindset, right? Like we. Many organizations and especially large, more bureaucratic organizations, they start having procedures, which are very important of course, but once you have so many procedures, it sometimes prevents them.

[00:27:23] Paulo Savaget: I. From innovating, from approaching problems differently and especially, and, and [00:27:30] more talking now about social innovators and, and the space that we usually, that we are very interested in. Claire, very often they, they become not only more I. Uh, more rigid, but they always start from what is lacking in a context, right?

[00:27:45] Paulo Savaget: They, they, they look at a context and they see like, what is lacking? What is the problem? What do they, what do we have to provide? And then you end up missing so much, you miss the potentialities that exist in those [00:28:00] places. The case I mentioned earlier, the, the one piggyback on Coca-Cola's distribution chain, if you think of a healthcare problem simply through the lens of scarcity.

[00:28:10] Paulo Savaget: You're gonna see the obstacles and everything that prevents you from delivering medicine, but you don't see everything else that reaches these regions and everything else that you could leverage to also reach these regions without necessarily tackling the obstacles that are there for a reason.

[00:28:26] Paulo Savaget: They're tough, they're big, they're dur. So the [00:28:30] changing that approach and looking at potentialities, I think can be very transformative as well. 

[00:28:35] Claire Wathen: And it's something that is not limited to any one discipline or language. You know, the idea of connections being abundant, possibilities, ways to approach things, the possibilities of coming together in a collective manner.

[00:28:50] Claire Wathen: I. That's all very much abundant and I think is one of the reasons I've been drawn in, you know, knowingly and unknowingly towards networks across my own [00:29:00] career as thinking about, you know, what becomes possible if you just kind of embrace the flow and the ambiguity of how different groups move together and apart how people move in and out of a particular lane, how a path.

[00:29:13] Claire Wathen: Develops whether we're talking about our own personal professional journey or the role of an organization or the role of a system. There's, um, constant flow. And that by embracing that and approaching it, as you said earlier, from a, a place of curiosity, that [00:29:30] there's yeah, no shortage of directions that we could go in.

[00:29:33] Paulo Savaget: Exactly. Yeah. The, uh, I think the, the, the word you used, ambiguity is key because there's so much that we know that we don't know, and that can propel us to explore, right. And, and, and find, uh, new possibilities. And also expose ourselves to the unknown unknowns, the things that we don't even know, that we don't know.

[00:29:54] Paulo Savaget: Right. Then you only bump into them. If you allow yourself to be exposed to [00:30:00] them. Uh, and I think it's a bit getting out of your comfort zone and going to, you mentioned different disciplines. Go talk to people from different disciplines, different organizational environments, try to explore things that.

[00:30:15] Paulo Savaget: Are completely outside your, your comfort zone. And of course, most times this will not be extremely fruitful or will not directly fit into your knowledge base. Or, or, or experiences. Or, or practices. [00:30:30] But sometimes they 

[00:30:31] Claire Wathen: might. And it's beautiful to see how that's played out both in your own journey and the work that you're doing.

[00:30:35] Claire Wathen: And, well, Paolo, thank you so much for joining. 

[00:30:38] Paulo Savaget: Thank you very much for inviting. 

[00:30:39] Claire Wathen: Thanks so much, Paula. We'll talk soon. 

[00:30:41] Paulo Savaget: Thank you. Bye. Thanks soon. Bye-bye. 

[00:30:44] Claire Wathen: Thanks for listening to the Web of Us. I hope you enjoyed our first episode. The Web of Us is produced by Josie Colter and Ben Beheshty with Design and scripting by Goldstar Studio.

[00:30:54] Claire Wathen: Join us next week for a conversation with Paula Moreno, where she shares how her experience [00:31:00] in the Columbian government, global philanthropy and activism. Has shaped her views on leadership, power, and collaboration. Welcome to the web