Systemic Redesign: From Individual to Collective

🧠 From Awareness to Architecture

We cracked the mirror.
We mapped the pattern.
We walked into the room.

And now—
we ask the question that terrifies broken systems:

What happens when we don’t just see the harm—
but start redesigning the conditions that made it inevitable?

Last week, we anchored awareness as more than insight.
We called it rhythm.
We called it muscle.
We tracked it across meetings, moments, and misalignments.
We named that leadership without awareness is protectionism in a prettier outfit.

But awareness alone doesn’t change systems.
Design does.

And systems don’t collapse because you see them.
They collapse when you change their code.

This week, we begin that process.

🔍 Key Insight: Systems Are Imagined—So They Can Be Reimagined

Every collective structure we live within—
governments, school curriculums, coaching protocols, finance portals, DEI initiatives—
was imagined by someone.

Which means:
It can be reimagined by us.

Awareness was never the goal.
It was the blueprint.

🛠️ Tool of the Week: Design Your System Worksheet™

This week’s tool isn’t just a worksheet.
It’s a ritual.

The Design Your System Worksheet™ guides you through a five-phase Spiral of Redesign:

1. System Map Flow™ – Who built the system? Who disappears within it?
   

2. Power Pattern Scan™ – How does power operate inside it?
   

3. Harm Inventory Grid™ – What’s overburdened, erased, or normalised?
   

4. Cultural Rewire Matrix™ – What can be composted and redesigned?
   

5. Spiral Commitment Summary™ – What ritual or rule will you shift now?
   

It is built for:

• Founders
  

• Therapists
  

• Policy designers
  

• Coaches
  

• DEI leads
  

• Activists
  

• Healers
  

Use it for a hiring rubric, a therapy framework, a procurement flow, or a family script.

Your system is not too big.
Your impact is not too small.

🧾 Case Study: When the System Couldn’t See the Healer It Hired

Earlier this year, I was commissioned by a world-renowned institution to lead a transformational public sector programme:

• A 3-day leadership retreat
  

• A multi-week coaching arc
  

• A masterclass for future impact
  

The theme?
Healing, inclusion, and systemic liberation.

The retreat was a success.
Feedback included words like “finally something made for us”, “life-changing,” and “deeply healing.”

But behind the scenes?

I spent 49 days chasing payment.
Not because of dispute.
Because of misalignment.

Forms weren’t accessible.
Finance portals were inaccessible.
Responses were delayed, contradictory, and dismissive.

I had to do more labour chasing the money
than I did delivering the work I was hired for.

🔍 Applying the Worksheet to My Own Ordeal

The experience nearly burnt me out.

But what breaks us
can also brief us.

🔺 Where I Sat Inside the Power Pyramid™

This wasn’t just a payment issue.

It was about proximity to power.

The Power Pyramid™ maps visibility and decision-making into four tiers:

1. Privileged Core (~0.5%) – Design and control
   

2. Institutional Buffer (~9.5%) – Enforce and justify
   

3. Intersectional Majority™ (~87.56%) – Carry the burden
   

4. Dispossessed Edge (~2.44%) – Silenced, surveilled, erased
   

As a Black, queer, neurodivergent therapist, I was hired to deliver care—

—but the system I walked into was not built to offer me the same.

I was located in the Intersectional Majority™,
delivering value to a system controlled by the Institutional Buffer,
whose payment structures answered only to the Privileged Core.

I was asked to model care—
while being contorted by control.

❤️ Honouring the People Inside the System

Let me be clear:

Many of the individuals I worked with were warm, equity-driven, and compassionate.
They validated my frustration.
They tried to fix the system from within.
They, too, were disempowered by the processes they had no control over.

This is not about blame.
It is about design.

Even the most well-meaning people can become vessels of harm
when the structure they work within rehearses dysfunction as default.

That is the paradox of system work:

We are asked to build transformation
inside architectures that punish the very values we embody.

🐸 Metaphor Moment: When the Water Is Boiling Slowly

Working inside that system felt like being the frog in the pot:
the water got hotter, the forms more rigid,
the apologies more abstract,
the harm more “accidental.”

By the time I realised I was burning—
I had already coached nine clients, rewritten four invoices,
navigated ten staff members, and delivered 18 sessions—unpaid.

Systems like this don’t break you in a moment.
They erode you in slow motion.

💡 What Actually Happened?

• Invoice submitted: 18 April
  

• PO issued: Late
  

• Admin requested 3 revisions
  

• Payment confirmed: 4 times
  

• Payment delayed: 4 more
  

• Admin labour: 30+ unpaid hours
  

• Emotional toll: incalculable
  

• Work delivered: Flawlessly
  

This is the cost of being culturally competent
in a system that hasn’t designed for cultural dignity.

🧾 Final Action: A Redesign, Not Just a Complaint

I didn’t just send another reminder.
I submitted a 7-page systemic equity feedback report with:

• Trauma-informed procurement flow
  

• Ethical supplier checklist
  

• Recommendations for onboarding redesign
  

• A Spiral Debrief Template™
  

I turned exhaustion into architecture.
Pain into protocol.
Silence into systems change.

Some of the report was implemented.
Some met silence.
But the shift began.

✍🏾 Integration Prompt: Begin Your Spiral Now

Choose one system you’re in.

Ask:

• Who built it?
  

• Who benefits?
  

• Who adapts the most?
  

• Who is invisible inside it?
  

Then redesign one rule, one ritual, or one assumption.

Examples:

• Replace “must have 5 years’ experience” with “demonstrated lived expertise”
  

• Add a “Positional Impact Pause™” to your next hiring round
  

• Remove ableist onboarding forms and offer voice-note alternatives
  

• Change “cultural fit” to “cultural contribution”
  

You don’t need to fix the whole machine.
Just recode one line of inherited logic.

Because systems don’t change through inspiration.
They change through intervention.

🔄 Post-Rupture Rebuilding: From Complaint to Consultation

Something shifted after I submitted the report.

Not overnight.
Not all at once.

But the tone changed—from procedural rigidity to reflective partnership.

On 9 May 2025, senior programme leadership re-engaged.
Not with excuses—but with acknowledgment.

By 10 May, director-level leadership was briefed.

By 13 May, a formal institutional reply arrived—respectful, considered, and without defensiveness.

The final message?

“Your feedback will inform future redesigns.”

No system repair can undo the harm.
But this time, my voice was heard.
Not just tolerated.
Not just documented.
Heard.

And that hearing wasn’t because I made myself palatable.
It was because I showed up with clarity, evidence, and care.
Not just for myself—but for the next practitioner behind me.

📥 What My Report Included

Here’s what I gave them—not in anger, but in integrity:

• A step-by-step timeline of harm
  
  

• A diagnostic breakdown mapped through the worksheet
  

• An Equity-Focused Procurement Redesign Checklist™
  
  

• A Trauma-Informed Supplier Onboarding Flow™
  
  

• A Spiral Debrief Template for future engagements
  

• A goodwill compensation request for time lost
  

None of this was theoretical.

It was born from:

• 30+ hours of unpaid admin
  

• 60+ emails
  

• The emotional weight of systemic neglect
  

• And a leadership curriculum I was hired to teach but denied in practice
  

What almost broke me became part of my blueprint.

♻️ Transmuting Fatigue Into Framework

Let’s demystify what transmutation looks like.

Step 1: I named the pattern.
→ Chased payment for nearly 7 weeks.

Step 2: I documented the pattern.
→ Tracked hours, emails, contradictions, power locations.

Step 3: I mapped it.
→ Applied the Design Your System Worksheet™ to the system.

Step 4: I coded it.
→ Created a supplier checklist, onboarding audit, and trauma-informed redesign.

Step 5: I shared it.
→ Submitted the report with a request for restitution and repair.

Step 6: I composted it.
→ Turned burnout into ritualised structure for other micro-enterprises.

This is the composting of harm into healing infrastructure.
This is cultural design.

💬 In My Own Words

“I was asked to model care. But I had to contort myself just to be compensated with dignity.”

“What almost erased me became my protocol.”

“My fatigue became a curriculum. My silence—now a checklist. My exhaustion—a redesign template.”

🧘🏾 Liberation Reframe: Redesign Is Patterned Resistance

Most systems aren’t broken.
They are rehearsed.

They operate like theatre:

• The script repeats.
  

• The characters rotate.
  

• The values get spoken—but not lived.
  

Redesign doesn’t begin with a revolution.
It begins with a refusal.

A refusal to rehearse erasure.
A refusal to centre comfort over coherence.
A refusal to default to inherited blueprints.

To redesign a system is to interrupt its rhythm—
and repattern it with remembrance.

🔍 Spiral Commitment Summary™

Let’s ground this in your body, your role, your sphere of influence.

If you’re a leader:

→ Schedule one Positional Impact Pause™ in your next team review.
→ Ask: “Who has absorbed the most silent labour—and how can we shift that?”

If you’re a therapist or coach:

→ Swap your intake form’s “Preferred Name” with “Naming Ritual”
→ Add an ICC-AI™ Cultural Profile scan to every first session.

If you’re a consultant or educator:

→ Refuse unpaid “exploratory calls” without reciprocal design time.
→ Use a Cultural Fluency Commitment Clause in your contracts.

If you’re a marginalised creator navigating systems:

→ Choose one ritual that protects your energy.
→ Practice saying: “I’ll revisit this once the system honours my rhythm.”

You don’t need to wait for permission.
You need a protocol.

Redesign one rule.
Redesign one ritual.
Redesign one assumption.

That’s how systems spiral open.

📚 Glossary Recap (Tap from Part 1)

🔁 Resistance Kit: For When You Face Systemic Friction

Here’s what to do when the system pushes back:

1. Name the Pattern
   → “I notice the delay started when I raised a boundary.”
   

2. Document the Gap
   → Keep emails. Journal impacts. Note silences.
   

3. Design the Disruption
   → Offer one small redesign rooted in care and clarity.
   

4. Ask for Allyship
   → “Who inside the system can echo this pattern?”
   

5. Walk Away With Your Power Intact
   → Remember: non-engagement is also a systemic act.
   

🌀 Week 6 Preview: Systemic Continuity—From Change to Culture

We’ve cracked the mirror.
We’ve mapped the fracture.
We’ve built the redesign.

Now—
we ask what it means to stay with the change.

Because even the best redesigns will decay
without ritualised commitment.

Next week’s focus:

• Theme: Sustaining Systemic Change Through Spiral Integration
  
  

• Tool: Continuity Culture Planner™
  
  

• Poll: What does consistency look like in a world designed to distract?
  
  

We’re no longer reacting.
We’re rebuilding.

And every redesign you make—
ripples outward as proof of what becomes possible.

Download the Tool of the Week:
📥 Design Your System Worksheet™
→ Spiral-based redesign flow
→ Cultural prompts
→ Redesign rituals for solo, team, and organisational practice

About the Author

I’m Jarell Bempong—psychotherapist, cultural strategist, and founder of Bempong Talking Therapy™.

I don’t just help people process harm.
I help them redesign the systems that caused it.

🏆 Named SME London Businessperson of the Year (2024) and winner of Most Transformative Mental Health Services (2025), my work challenges institutions to move beyond inclusion as performance—and into liberation as protocol.

As a Black, queer, neurodivergent founder, I’ve lived the contradictions my frameworks decode.
I’ve been invited into systems for my insight—then forced to contort for my pay.
I’ve been celebrated on stage—then silenced in policy portals.

And still, I transmuted that fatigue into frameworks now used across Europe and the UK.

Through Bempong Talking Therapy™ and ICC-AI™, I now support:

• 🧭 Institutions redesigning equity at scale

• 🧠 Therapists & DEI leads seeking system-safe methods

• 🔧 Founders committed to building from coherence, not compliance

My frameworks include:

• 🔺 The Power Pyramid™ – a four-tiered model of systemic visibility and control

• 🌀 Intersectional Cultural Consciousness™ (ICC™) – a diagnostic map of identity, power, and cultural patterning

• ⚙️ ICC-AI™ – my AI-augmented system that audits equity architecture and generates redesigns

• ♻️ The Spiral Loop of Liberation™ – the bridge between internal healing and external systemic change

When a global institution hired me to deliver trauma-informed leadership, I gave them transformation.

When they delayed payment for 49 days?

I gave them a supplier equity protocol now used by 12+ micro-enterprises.

Because what almost erased me—became my redesign template.

If you’re a practitioner, leader, facilitator, or institution ready to stop rehearsing harm and start building systems that hold what they claim to value…

Then you’re exactly where you’re meant to be.

🧠 I Offer:

✅ ICC-AI™ Equity Audits
✅ Systemic Redesign Intensives
✅ Cultural Strategy Consultations
✅ Spiral-Based Coaching for Leaders
✅ Trauma-Informed Curriculum Design

📩 Let’s talk: [email protected]
🌍 Explore the work: www.bempongtalkingtherapy.com