The Design Thinking Playbook
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Mindful digital transformation of teams, products, services, businesses and ecosystems.
Design Thinking for Humanity › Templates › Futures Thinking
Futures Thinking · book page 90
Causal Layered Analysis (CLA)
A method that looks beneath a problem on four layers: litany, systemic causes, worldview and myth.
When to use it
When surface solutions keep failing and the deeper narrative needs to change.
How to start
- Describe the problem as it is talked about.
- Dig into causes, then worldviews, then the underlying metaphor.
- Reframe the metaphor and work back up to new solutions.
The book explains the tool step by step, with examples from the case study The Living Soil Mandate.
More Futures Thinking templates
Futures Thinking · p. 92Scenario Planning & the 2x2 MatrixFour plausible futures built from the two most critical uncertainties.Futures Thinking · p. 96Pattern RecognitionA tool to find recurring patterns across signals, cases and data.Futures Thinking · p. 98SensemakingA shared process to make meaning out of complex and ambiguous information.
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