The podcast

My Brilliant Burnout

Behind the scenes with Becky and Karen

From the co-founders of FTS. Fix The System. Absurd systems, two brilliant brains and a business run our way.

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Becky Hirst and Karen Cocks recording My Brilliant Burnout in the FTS. studio

Behind the scenes at FTS.

There's nothing brilliant about burnout. But there's everything brilliant about our brains. Becky Hirst and Karen Cocks bring six decades of combined experience fixing systems across government, business and community, plus two big burnouts of their own. Each episode we pick apart the absurd systems that wear people down (schools, health, workplaces, even ordering a coffee) and talk about how to fix them. Honest, funny, a little sweary, and for anyone who's ever been asked "How do you do it all?" We fix the system, not the people.

A behind-the-scenes look at the people building FTS. Fix The System: the voice notes, the big ideas, the burnouts and the ways we're doing business differently.

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.

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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. Karen looks inside out, from the front door of the organisation.
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?

Explore The Perpetual Cycle of Brilliance and Burnout™ and EVA: Engage, Validate, Adapt.

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 on YouTube, like and subscribe, or find us on Instagram, get in touch or email connect@fixthesystem.world.

FTS. We fix the system, not the people.

Who this is for

Dear Amy,

We don't know you. Not your name, not your face, not which system broke your heart most recently. But we know you're out there.

You're the one who gets asked to lead the project because you'll actually finish it, then gets called intense for caring how it turns out. You're the one who's spent more hours than you can count translating your kid's brain into language a school will actually act on. You're the one who knows, somewhere underneath it all, that the thing keeping you up at 2am figuring out a better way isn't a flaw, it's the exact same brain that makes you brilliant at your job.

You're probably close to burnout. Maybe you've already been there, more than once. You might be sober, or sober-curious, or just tired of being told a glass of wine is self care. You might have been diagnosed late, or you're starting to wonder. Either way, you've spent a long time compensating for a system that was never built with your brain in mind, and calling it normal because everyone around you seemed to manage fine.

We're Becky and Karen. We built careers, families and a business around exactly this. And now we've built a podcast, because the thing we needed most in our worst weeks wasn't a therapist or a five-step plan. It was two people who actually got it, telling the truth, laughing at the absurd bits, and reminding us we weren't the problem.

If any of this sounds like you, hi. We've been waiting for you.

Becky and Karen

The question

What's your FTS?

The thing in your life, workplace, system or world that makes you think: why is this even a thing? Tell us. You might have a question for us, something you want us to discuss on a future episode, some feedback on the podcast, or anything else. Write it or leave us a voice note. We read and listen to every single one, and we might unpack yours on the show.

The question

Everyone has an FTS. Here are a few of ours.

Portals
Why are there so many portals?
We discuss the impact that different portals for different things have on people who aren't digitally savvy.
Customs
Why is customs still a scary place?
We discuss why a system built to catch wrongdoing still treats everyone like they might be guilty.
Process
Why can't they see that this process is insane?
We discuss why processes survive long after everyone agrees they don't work.
Schools
Why does it feel like combat when we need adjustment?
We discuss why getting a reasonable adjustment for your kid can feel like a fight instead of a conversation.
Proving
Why do I have to prove to you that I need the thing that you are there to provide?
We discuss why proof of need is treated as more important than the need itself.
AI
What does AI mean for the neurodivergent brain?
We discuss what AI means for the ND brain, and why neurodivergent minds might already be built for what's coming.

No single person caused this, and someone chooses to keep it this way. We aren't here to scream into the void. We're here to call the absurd out by name, work out whether it actually needs to exist, and get it out of the way of people just trying to get on with their lives.

The FTS. ecosystem

Why is this a thing?

The question. Aimed at systems, work, parenting, healthcare, education, bureaucracy and the general admin of existing. It cuts through everything.

Does it need to be this hard?

Almost never. Most absurdity is just accumulated habit. Nobody's malicious. It's just that nobody ever asked. Habits can be unpicked.

Simplifying the absurd.

What FTS. actually does. The podcast finds the absurd; the work inside organisations cuts it out.

Who Becky and Karen are

Two women who've spent their careers living inside the very systems they're now interrogating.

Both in their late 40s. Both diagnosed neurodivergent late, both navigating early menopause, both parenting neurodivergent children, both several years sober after real, genuine relationships with alcohol in their past.

Karen Cocks

The operating model brain

Karen built a customer experience practice over thirty years in senior leadership, teams across four cities plus offshore, national accountability for product portfolios worth hundreds of millions. She knows exactly what a good process looks like, which is why the bad ones make her twitch. Diagnosed late, after health issues that took a fair bit out of her and gave something clearer back.

Why the process is broken, who it's breaking, and the shortest honest path to fixing it.

Becky Hirst

The room reader

Becky built and ran a community engagement practice working the politically sensitive edge of local government decisions, the rooms where everyone has an agenda and nobody says it out loud. Author of For the Love of Community Engagement. Also diagnosed late, after significant health issues of her own.

The one who says the thing everyone's thinking but nobody's brave enough to name, kindly and immediately.

For organisations

The podcast finds the absurd. Our work helps organisations see it.

Keynotes

"What's your FTS?" brought into the room. Funny, provocative and grounded in the very real absurdities people experience when dealing with organisations.

Customer & community insight

Sometimes you can't see the absurdity from inside the organisation. We go to your customers and communities and listen to their experience, then bring those blind spots back to you.

Culture & capability

We work with teams and leaders to build the capability to communicate clearly, listen properly, challenge assumptions and respond to the human in front of them.

Make a corporate enquiry

Goes straight to us, not some generic inbox.

Where to find us

Watch, or just listen

We're YouTube first, because sometimes you need to actually see us losing it. But we know real life doesn't always come with a screen, so we're on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Music too, for the run, the commute, or hiding in the walk-in robe with your noise-cancelling headphones in.

YouTube Spotify Apple Podcasts Amazon Music

FTS. Dictionary

absurd

/əbˈsɜːd/ · adjective

Completely unreasonable, foolish, or ridiculous to the point of being funny or making no sense. It describes ideas, actions, or situations that go against logic, reason or common sense.

Get in touch

Got a system absurdity to talk about?

Tell us what your people are working around. We might make an episode about it, and we'll tell you honestly whether we're the right people to help.

Start a conversation