What happens when we stop designing services from behind a desk and start listening to the people who actually use them?

In this episode of My Brilliant Burnout, Karen and Becky explore the gap between customer experience and community engagement, and why fixing a system starts with the people it exists to serve.

Karen recalls what first excited her about customer experience 20 years ago: observing real people to design products that make life easier, from a hands-free car boot to OXO Good Grips.

Becky takes us back to Kilburn, North London, where she walked the streets, met a priest and a bingo caller, and helped bring NHS stop-smoking support into spaces the Irish community already trusted.

Then to Adelaide Zoo, where 147 children and young people helped shape a charter by being heard, not handed a list of predetermined answers.

We also explore Becky's Continuum of Customer Engagement, from transact and inform through listen, involve, co-create and belong. (Yes, six gym members really did get logo tattoos.)

And the numbers should make organisations pay attention: 78% of businesses believe they deliver a connected customer experience, while only 25% of customers agree.

IN THIS EPISODE

• Why listening is more than sending a survey.

• Pîtoteyihtam, a Cree word Becky shares as meaning "he/she thinks differently".

• The magic jar, a 16th birthday and an unexpected walnut.

• The Kilburn priest, bingo hall and rugby club.

• What 147 young people at Adelaide Zoo taught Becky about safe participation.

• 20 lessons from Becky's book, For the Love of Community Engagement.

• Why trust and safe spaces matter for customers, communities and staff.

• The 5 Whys, and why Karen turned down work without meaningful engagement.

• Becky's six-stage engagement continuum and the 30/30/30 rule.

• "What We Heard" reports and why listening must lead somewhere.

• Karen's Hotel, the Amys, and what it means to feel seen and heard.

THE BIG IDEA

Remember who you exist to serve. The people navigating your systems know where the friction is. Go where they are, make it safe to speak, and listen before you design.

LINKS & REFERENCES

• The Customer Experience Engagement Gap:
https://fixthesystem.world/blog/customer-experience-engagement-gap

• The Consequence Gap:
https://fixthesystem.world/blog/the-consequence-gap

• OXO Good Grips and User-Inspired Design:
https://www.cooperhewitt.org/2015/12/17/getting-a-grip-on-user-inspired-design/

• Charter for Children and Young People, Synthesis Report:
https://childrensa.sa.gov.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Charter-for-CYP-Synthesis-Report-FINALv2-2021-10-20.pdf

• Becky Hirst, For the Love of Community Engagement

• Charter Summit 2019:
https://youtu.be/L5rXDug7TRU

• Charter Launch 2021:
https://youtu.be/vbJ4BCPYG2g

COMING UP NEXT

The health system.

ABOUT MY BRILLIANT BURNOUT

We're two neurodivergent systems thinkers. Our experiences are our own and don't speak for everyone. This podcast isn't about neurodivergent brains; it's about the systems that shape our lives.

Got a story? Send us a voice note:
https://fixthesystem.world/podcast

Recorded on Kaurna land. We pay our respects to Elders past and present.

There's nothing brilliant about burnout, but there's everything brilliant about our brains.

Parents who care deeply. Teachers who care deeply. A young person both sides are invested in. So why does everyone walk out of the school meeting feeling defeated?

When a young person can’t make it through the school gate, that’s school can’t, not truancy. So why does the system still treat it as defiance?

In this episode, Becky and Karen look at the school system. They start with their own school reports (“Rebecca is lazy”), then move to the parenting moments that still make them flushed. One of Karen’s kids is thriving in a part-time job and finally handling schoolwork, and the school’s reply was a link to the Fair Work Act. Becky asked to formalise a day a week at home and heard the word “truancy” in a meeting that felt more like an interview than a conversation.

Then the twist: the people across the desk are struggling too. Nearly 9 in 10 South Australian teachers have considered leaving the profession. Parents, teachers and young people are all fighting the same system, and the student ends up lost in the middle.

In this episode

• What the guest question reveals: favourite time of day, and why crash mode matters

• School then and now: reports, sick days and being “so much potential”

• When the thing that works doesn’t fit the rules

• Why parents slip into the student role in school meetings

• The teacher side: emotional load, workload and burnout

• The parent–teacher–student triangle and why nobody’s winning

• One Plans: a plan built around the student, and the extra steps that quietly say no

• Start With Yes: “It’s never a shed”

• How EVA applies: engage on the symptom, validate the cause, adapt the system

Key takeaway

Nobody here is the enemy. The system is. We fix the system, not the people.

Sources mentioned in this episode

Small print: Karen was quoting from memory with her systems-thinking brain going at full speed, so a few on-air numbers wobble. The reports above have the accurate figures. The point stands.

• Teachers at Breaking Point (University of South Australia for the AEU SA Branch, 2022). A survey of nearly 1,600 SA public school teachers and principals found 87.4% had considered leaving the profession, and only 19% found their workload manageable.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/60d14074f91b5b0fddfa9652/t/6373090a1245a471f16da3a0/1668483351046/Teachers+at+Breaking+Point+CRESI+2022+Report.pdf

• Australian Teacher Workforce Data (AITSL, 2023). A national survey of more than 50,000 teachers; 39% intend to leave before retirement.

https://www.aitsl.edu.au/research/australian-teacher-workforce-data/atwd-reports/national-trends-teacher-workforce-jun2025

Also mentioned

• One Plan: the personalised learning plan used in South Australian schools

• The Perpetual Cycle of brilliance and burnout

• Start With Yes by Karen Cocks (coming soon)

We record on Kaurna land and pay our respects to Elders past and present.

If this episode felt familiar, subscribe, share it with someone who needs to hear it, and visit https://fixthesystem.world/podcast

My Brilliant Burnout: there’s nothing brilliant about burnout, but there’s everything brilliant about our brains.

Welcome to the very first episode. One of us was hanging pictures five minutes before we hit record, and one of us was still working out where the “go” button on the camera was. So it’s very us. Becky Hirst and Karen Cocks are two women with nearly 30 years’ experience each, two big burnouts behind them and two brilliant brains. In this episode they explain how they met, why they started FTS. and what this podcast is for.

In this episode:

• Where we’re each at on the Perpetual Cycle. We check in on our cycle of brilliance and burnout: reset, ideas, create, impact, push and crash.

• Acknowledgement of Country. We’re recording on Kaurna land, and we talk about why connection to land kept us grounded through our burnouts.
• The lucky-dip question: “What would this look like if you couldn’t fail?” Becky dreams big: running in New York and FTS. as a global consultancy. Karen just wants to soften. Then, of course, the conversation turns to the patriarchy.
• How we met. It starts nearly 10 years ago with a community hospital board in McLaren Vale and Becky’s pre-influencer winey-mum Facebook fame. Later we worked together from opposite sides of local government.
• Our big burnouts. Karen cared for a critically ill child. Becky faced breast cancer and the “postnatal depression” diagnoses she now sees differently. Two things can be true.
• From polite voice notes to a company. Short, polite voice notes became 20 and a half hours of them in one week, 1,443 swear words and a 70,000-word book recorded by voice note.
• What FTS. stands for. Officially it’s Fix The System. Unofficially, you can probably guess. We explain why we’re bringing solutions and not pitchforks.

• A letter to the UK Prime Minister. Becky wrote to him this week, with a gold paperclip.

• Two lenses. Becky looks outside in, across governments, communities and the bigger picture.

• The coffee-shop test. We tried to order a coffee at a café and got an iPad, a sticky note, the wrong counter, then table service that wasn’t table service. Absurd systems are everywhere. Schools, health, homelessness and apprenticeships are full of them too.

• EVA, our framework. Engage, Validate, Adapt. Karen also explains how aphantasia (not being able to picture things in your head) makes her a framework thinker.

• Meet Amy. She’s busy, high-achieving, juggling everything, possibly wondering about her own neurodivergence, and always being asked “how do you do it all?” Are you an Amy?

What you’ll get out of it:

• Proof that you’re not the problem. The system is. We fix the system, not the people.

• A new way to think about burnout: as a cycle you can learn to read, not a personal failure.
• A behind-the-scenes look at running a business your way: voice notes instead of Monday 9am meetings, and no reports.
• Permission to drop the mask, and the reassurance that you’re not the only one exhausted by systems that make no sense.

A note from us: We’re both neurodivergent and we’re both systems thinkers. You’ll hear neurodivergence come through in our conversations, but this isn’t a neurodivergence podcast, and our experience isn’t everyone’s. Next episode: The school system. It’s a big one. Get in touch: We want to hear from the Amys (and anyone else up against a system that makes no sense). Comment below, like and subscribe, or find us at: Web: https://www.fixthesystem.worldInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/fixthesystem.world Email: connect@fixthesystem.world FTS. We fix the system, not the people.