Relational Futures Learning Systems Lab

Peter Scupelli, Saurin Nanavati, Mike McCormick, and Ken Jennings

Leading to desired futures through shared vision creation and acting with purpose.

 

Look Up: Discovering shared PURPOSE

Look In: Discovering shared VALUES

Look Out: Discovering shared OUTCOMES

Look in time: Aligning the past and present realities to discover trajectories for “shaping” shared DESIRED FUTURES

 

Background

Change is challenging, especially due to internal struggles, evolving organizational contexts, and external pressures. Whether it’s personal transformation, team dynamics, family adaptations, organizational shifts, community changes, or sector-wide transitions to foster long-term resilience and adaptation.

 

Change can be tough, and here’s why:

  • When our core values, purpose, and alignments are murky, it’s hard to move forward;
  • If the end goals are unclear, both individuals and groups struggle to make progress;
  • Leadership gaps—whether at the individual, group, organizational, community, or sector level—can stall momentum;
  • Our brains are wired to discount the future, making it hard to seriously consider alternative futures; Futures Studies can help to navigate rapid change;
  • The modern western worldview focused on dualities, often misses the bigger picture of ecosystems, diverse cultures, and life experiences.

Life is much more complex than binaries allow like objective vs. subjective, humanity vs. nature, scarcity vs. abundance, established powers vs. emergent systems, science vs. traditional knowledge, expert vs. novice, in-group vs. out-group, and extractive vs. regenerative. People can be both experts in some things and novices in other things at the same time. For example:

  • older people can be wise experts in some things and novices in others;
  • Younger people can teach elders some things and learn from the elders as well.
  • Scientists aim for objectivity and are shaped by their positionality including: life experiences, background, cultures, and values.
  • Engineers seek technical solutions and must also find culturally appropriate implementations.
  • Workers may seek excellence at work and meaningful, rich, lives as well.
  • Organizational leaders know some things; front line workers know other stuff.

Our research is about helping people to navigate challenges towards inclusive paths forward for personal lives, work lives, family lives, and community lives. Three threads combined assist in accomplishing these goals: serving leadership, personal and collective futures, and systems/sector discovery with the goal of transformation towards desirable futures.

Description

This research project dives into relationality as a worldview, assisting learners of all ages to explore, identify, and chart inclusive pathways forward. By embracing diverse perspectives and finding common values, purpose, and collective action , we can transform the future of our personal lives as well as the groups, organizations, communities, systems, and sectors where we serve. Viewing the world through the lens of relationality opens up a broader range of possibilities and desirable outcomes for individuals, groups, organizations, communities, systems, and sectors.

Distinctives

Our research is guided by three key threads:

  • Serving leadership and values alignment among individuals, teams, organizations, and communities;
  • designing for personal and collective futures; and
  • systems and sector self-discovery, perception, identifying roles within larger systems, developing systems leadership, and enacting strategies and tactics for systems change.

Objectives

Together we focus on three learning research goals:

  • developing meaningful learning experiences through courses, individual learning, and group workshops at multiple levels (e.g., personal, group, organizational, community);
  • testing the effectiveness and efficiency of learning;
  • developing new technologies to support learning experiences for known bottlenecks such as limited individual feedback to deepen understanding through one-on-one mentoring and coaching. We are prototyping and testing AI driven coaching dialogue interfaces and experiences prompting learners to self-reflect in more depth through scaffolded dialogues with an AI driven coach.

Research Team:

Prof. Dr. Peter Scupelli, Dr. Ken Jennings, Dr. Mike McCormick, and Saurin Nanavati.

  • Peter Scupelli is an expert in Interaction Design, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Zero-Carbon Lifestyle Transitions, and Design Futures. Dr. Scupelli has published over 50 peer-reviewed academic papers and journal articles. He is a sought-after keynote speaker and has conducted design futures workshops on three continents at some of the world’s most prestigious design schools. Dr. Scupelli is the founding director of the Learning Environments Lab at Carnegie Mellon University and co-founder of the Global Design Futures Network. He leads research endeavors focused on learning outcomes from courses taught at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Scupelli teaches undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral students, as well as leaders from public, private, and government sectors through executive education workshops. Course sponsors include: Microsoft, Motorola, Bosch, The INDEX Project, Collective Invention, Prospect Studios, and ohers. His interactive art exhibit collaborations with Gruppo A12 have been showcased at the Architecture Biennale di Venezia, São Paulo Art Biennial, PS1 MOMA in New York, and other prestigious venues.
  • Ken Jennings is a Visiting Scholar at the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University, and is a bestselling author, consultant, and speaker in healthcare strategy, leadership development, goal achievement, and strategy execution. A former global managing partner at Accenture, and he is currently a senior adviser, focusing on population health strategies and change leadership. Previously, Ken has been a co-director of the Global Leadership in Healthcare Program at the University of Michigan Business School. He holds a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Purdue University; an M.S. in Management from the Air Force Institute of Technology, and a B.S. from the United States Air Force Academy. As a recognized expert and trusted adviser, Ken draws on depth of experiences across multiple industries including hospital and healthcare delivery, manufacturing, information technology, and life sciences. Ken is committed to bringing world-class services to those who seek to create a world that works for all.
  • Mike McCormick is the President and CEO of Third River Partners, a strategy and leadership consulting firm specializing in Serving Leadership a shared approach to individual, teaming, and organizational leadership. Under Mike’s leadership in 2024, Third River Partners trained over 2,500 leaders in 49 states in the U.S. as well as Mexico, Brazil, Poland, and Philippines. Mike’s personal passion is to equip leaders for transformational service. He is an innovative leader and team builder whose specialty is blending Shared Goal Achievement and Serving Leadership helping high-purpose organizations create the strategic alignment and leadership engagement essential to achieving their greater goals. Mike has trained leaders at Johns Hopkins Medicine, West Virginia University Medicine, Refuge for Women, St. Jude Children’s Hospital, Alignment Healthcare, Stellar Health, Outokumpo manufacturing, Gray Architecture and Design, and American Red Cross. In addition to his work with Third River, Mike has over 25 years of experience in pastoral leadership, where he has brought Serving Leadership to life in a variety of communities including underserved areas of Appalachia, Kentucky. Mike has a doctoral degree in leadership development and is a frequent speaker on Serving Leadership. He has taught communication and leadership internationally in Sri Lanka, Guatemala, and Panama. He is a co-author with Ken Jennings of the award-winning book House on Fire! A Story of Loss, Love and Servant Leadership.
  • Saurin Nanavati is Founder of Ethos Agriculture and has managed sustainable coffee, cocoa and cotton programs across 20 countries. His work promotes integrated approaches from agricultural research, rural development, sustainable trade and data science. Saurin is a PhD candidate in transition design to shift the sector of coffee towards long term sustainability through systems change. Saurin is conducting research on learning outcomes linked to coffee systems analysis, perception, leadership, and systems change both in the classroom and in the field.

Development

The personal futures course developed by this team was taught at:

  • Carnegie Mellon University-Pittsburgh to undergraduate, masters, and doctoral students. There are plans to offer and executive education workshop course in May 2025 in Pittsburgh.
  • Carnegie Mellon University-Qatar to undergraduate students and to executive education workshop participants.
  • the first personal futures course executive education workshop was taught at CMU-Qatar in fall 2023.

Interested in learning more about learning opportunities contact Prof. Peter Scupelli.