Evaluating Health Promotion Social Media Strategies for Public Health Impact
Posted: April 11, 2013 Filed under: eHealth, evaluation, social media, systems thinking | Tags: developmental evaluation, evaluation, health promotion, public health, social media, strategy Leave a comment »
How is social media stacking up?
I recently spoke at an interactive workshop presentation at the 2013 Ontario Public Health Convention (TOPHC) looking at social media use in public health and the strategies available for evaluating those strategies in practice. The talk was focused on the tools, methods and approaches and the inherent challenges in dealing with a dynamic social communication environment.
Here are the slides from that presentation.
Evaluating Health Promotion Social Media Strategies for Public Health Impact
Image: Shutterstock (used under licence)
The Wicked Problem of Wicked Problems
Posted: February 13, 2012 Filed under: behaviour change, complexity, design thinking, innovation, systems science, systems thinking | Tags: AC4D, complexity, design, Jon Kolko, planning, strategy, systems thinking, wicked problems 7 Comments »
All Knotted Up...Like a Wicked Problem
Wicked problems are receiving a lot of attention these days giving much excitement to systems thinkers and designers alike. Yet what these problems mean for planning and understanding social programs and policies is not clear and may be even more wicked that it first appears.
I was excited to learn that Jon Kolko and his creative band of learners at the Austin Center for Design (AC4D) are coming out with a book on wicked problems. As one who studies and helps others to intervene in addressing such problems, this was like being a Star Trek fan learning that Leonard Nimoy was coming to speak at the Trekkie convention in my hometown. It is refreshing to see that the concept of the wicked problem is gaining traction beyond the small band of scholars and practitioners working at the intersection of complexity, systems and design thinking (which, admittedly is where many AC4D folk inhabit, but hopefully their audience will not).
But it’s not just one book. We are seeing transformations in education and science — with calls for a ‘new breed of scientist’ being created at places like Massey University in New Zealand — or spread through the news or business stories in various forms.
The concept of the wicked problem was originally posed by management science scholar and systems thinker C. West Churchman with planners Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber. The Wikipedia entry on wicked problems provides some examples of what these things are:
Classic examples of wicked problems include economic, environmental, and political issues. A problem whose solution requires a great number of people to change their mindsets and behavior is likely to be a wicked problem. Therefore, many standard examples of wicked problems come from the areas of public planning and policy. These include global climate change[4], natural hazards, healthcare, the AIDS epidemic, pandemic influenza, international drug trafficking, homeland security, nuclear weapons, and nuclear energy and waste.
In recent years, problems in many areas have been identified as exhibiting elements of wickedness – examples range from aspects of design decision making and knowledge management[5] to business strategy.[6]
As our social lives become more interconnected through the Internet, globalization, and mass migration, the complexity of the situations we find ourselves in grows. More of anything in diverse forms interacting together is likely to create complexity as new properties emerge and those properties change the trajectory of actions and reactions of the parts dynamically.
As one who is interested in wicked problems and works with people to address them, I should be thrilled to see the term used so widely. I am, but cautiously so. There is a risk that in the enthusiasm to embrace the lexicon of complexity that the meaning gets lost, which is what one gets from the hype cycle (See below).
The Hype Cycle: Coming to a Wicked Problem Near You?
The hype cycle is described as phenomonena initiated by a technology (or idea) and, once caught on, spikes the expectations beyond reason leading to discouragement, mass abandonment of the idea, and then — hopefully — a return to a level of reasonable return.
While the “cycle” (it is not a cycle) has limitations, the analogy here is well suited to fads of various types and the rapid ascension of the concept “wicked problem” in past years is indicative of a trend. Below are two representations of the amount of citations of the work “wicked problem” and “wicked problems” from Google’s Ngram service:
Wicked Problem Citations: 1950-2008
Wicked Problem(s) Citations: 1973-2008
It appears that wicked problems (plural) are increasing and reference to a single problem is staying the same.
Regardless, an upward trend is evident. What it means is another matter…
If wicked problems are becoming talked about more often and by more people, it is appropriate to ask what kind of impact that this new thinking will have on not only the way the problems are posed, but how people seek to address them.
To that end, it is worth envisioning the future with caution. One of the reasons for this is that wicked problems are often not wholly wicked in their composition or the strategy required to address the problem — which ironically makes these types of problems even more wicked.
This has to do with the interconnected, multidimensional, and embedded nature of the problems themselves which contain within them many interconnected non-wicked problems. I’ve started to see difficulties with organizations developing strategy that fails to consider this. It is, as I’ve discussed before, an artefact of either-or thinking. Tackling the kind of wicked problems like poverty, chronic disease, and global finance require a meta-level strategy that recognizes, shapes and adapts to complexity, while accounting for micro-level issues that are indeed, very linear and simple.
Finding, training and retaining the right talent to work with diverse communities on problems that are poorly supported or funded from many sources is wicked. The human resource needs for payroll, supply management, and field support might be much less so. Yet, both are joined-up and require strategies that can extend beyond traditional management and strategy, but also embrace some of the very ‘best practices’ that seem at the outset to be antithetical to complexity.
Just as I shake my head in frustration at seeing complexity dealt with using amplified linear strategies that ‘do the wrong things righter‘, I have surprised myself by how much I’ve been twitching at hearing recent converts to systems thinking rail against the traditional ways of planning as if anything other than seeing problems as complex would be wrong.
At issue is that wicked problems are made more so by having both complex and non-complex elements working together, requiring a level of strategy development that is far more sophisticated than many first thought. Even a review of the better management texts using complexity give short shrift to the relationship between the complex, the simple and the complicated working simultaneously in environments and how we plan for that. The Cynefin Framework provides a start, but just a start.
Until we recognize this complexity — no pun intended — in the way we plan, there is great risk of replicating the hype cycle when our sole use complexity-based models yield poor results of a different nature than the poor results we are seeing from traditional linear, reductionist thinking models applied to many of the problems we deem as wicked today.
Picture credits: A Close Up on Knotted Rope by Sundariel used under Creative Commons License from DeviantArt
Graph: Gartner Hype Cycle by Jeremy Kemp used under licence from Wikipedia.
Common Sense, Complexity and Leadership
Posted: January 23, 2012 Filed under: complexity, social systems | Tags: common sense, complexity, decision making, developmental design, Duncan Watts, evaluation, leadership, social networks, strategy, systems thinking Comments Off
Bye, Bye Common Sense
Great leaders are often ascribed traits that include ample common sense. But what passes for common sense is often a grab bag of miscellaneous, inconsistent ideas that are context dependent and less useful in the complex environments where leadership is called for most.
common sense |ˌkɑmən ˈsɛns|
noun
good sense and sound judgment in practical matters: use your common sense | [ as modifier ] : a common-sense approach.
Today Research in Motion announced that its founder Mike Lazaridis and his co-CEO Jim Balsillie would be relinquishing their roles with the company. In their place, a ‘pragmatic, operational-type guy ‘was installed. Presumably, Thorsten Heins has the common sense to lead RIM after the founders lost theirs. Yet, the pragmatic, common sense that RIM is looking for might not be what they need given the complexity of the environment they are leading in.
Common sense is a false lure in complex systems. In his recent book, Everything is Obvious *Once You Know the Answer, social network researcher and Yahoo! Research scientist Duncan Watts eloquently critiques the concept of common sense, illustrating dozens of times over how “common sense” doesn’t fare so well in decisions that go beyond the routine and into the complex. Indeed. the very definition of the term implies that the problems that common sense works towards addressing are relatively simple and pragmatic.
Certainly, navigating daily social conventions might lend itself well to what we might call common sense. Watts refers to sociologist Harry Collins’ term ‘collective tacit knowledge‘ that is encoded in social norms, customs and practices of a particular world to describe common sense. However, what becomes common is a byproduct of many small decisions, dynamic and flexible changes to perspective, an accumulation of knowledge gained from small experiments over time, and the application of all of this knowledge to particular, context-dependent, situations. This constellation of factors and its interdependent, contextual overlap is why artificial intelligence systems have such a difficult time mimicking human thought and action. It is this attention to context that is most worth noting for it is this context that keeps common sense from being anything but common:
Common sense…is not so much a worldview as a grab bag of logically inconsistent, often contradictory beliefs, each of which seems right at the time but carries no guarantee of being right any other time.
Watts goes on to argue:
Commonsense reasoning, therefore, does not suffer from a single overriding limitation but rather from a combination of limitations, all of which reinforce and even disguise one another. The net result is that common sense is wonderful at making sense of the world, but not necessarily at understanding it.
Thus, we often concoct a narrative about the way something happens that sounds plausible, rational and be completely wrong. Throughout the book, Watts shows how often mistakes are made based on this common sense approach to solving problems.
When it comes to RIM, some have pointed to the late Steve Jobs’ assertion that they would have difficulty catching up to firms like Apple given that the consumer market is not their strength, the enterprise market is. Yet, Steve Jobs didn’t let the fact that Apple was a computer company stop him from making music players (the iPod), mobile phones (the iPhone) or becoming book, music and movie vendors (iTunes). A read of Steve Jobs’ biography by Walter Isaacson reveals a man who was able to lead and be successful through what appeared to be common sense, yet was decidedly uncommon among media and technology leaders. That is why Apple is where it is and why so many other technology companies lag behind them or simply disappeared.
The reason is that common sense in leadership looks as simple in hindsight only, not in foresight or even in the present moment. This is one of the big points that Watts makes. He uses the example of Sony’s MiniDisc system that, when introduced, had all of the hallmark features of the innovations that Apple introduced (novel, high quality, portable, smaller, visible advantages over the alternatives), yet it was a spectacular failure. Canadian management consultant Michael Raynor has called this the strategy paradox. When qualities such as vision, bold leadership, and focused execution — all the commonsensical aspects of great leaders — are applied to organizations it can lead to great success (Steve Jobs and Apple) or resounding failures (RIM?).
Strategic flexibility, making small adjustments consistently, and imaging scenarios for the future in an ongoing manner are some of the potential ways to limit the damage from common sense (or use its advantages more fully). This requires feedback mechanisms and close monitoring of program activities, developmental evaluation, and a willingness to tweak programs and design on the go (what I call: developmental design) . It’s not a surprise that this incremental approach to development is consistent with the way change is best produced in a complex adaptive system.
By recognizing that common sense is less than common and is certainly not consistent, program designers, developers, evaluators and other professionals will be better positioned to provide true leadership that addresses challenges and complexity rather than adds to the complexity and creates more problems.
Photo: Goodbye to Common Sense Space by Amulet Dream from Deviant Art
43 Steps to a Well-Prepared Design Strategist (via the design strategist)
Posted: June 1, 2011 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: business, creativity, design, design thinking, design-driven-strategy, design-process, design-strategist, design-strategy, frog-design, IDEO, innovation, lists, making-meaning, nathan-shedroff, strategy, Tim Brown Comments OffI stumbled upon this list of “to-dos” and related resources aimed at preparing someone to serve as a design strategist. What I like about the post is the list of resources linked and embedded within. It’s not designed (no pun intended) to be prescriptive, but as a series of things to ponder as one moves into the field. Having engaged in this before, I wished I’d considered a few of these before starting out.
I came across this post thanks to the Design Thinkers group on LinkedIn, which has shown itself to be quite active and engaged.
Complexity, Interaction Design and Social Media
Posted: February 26, 2011 Filed under: complexity, design thinking, eHealth, health promotion, public health, social media | Tags: Brian Solis, complexity, design, health, health communication, health promotion, interaction design, marketing, public health, social media, strategy 1 Comment »
Social Media Targeting for Head & Heart
Social media, like all human activities, involves designed interactions in a complex environment. How we design for this space is as much about the social — and the complexity that results from it — as it is the media.
Yesterday I participated in a webinar on social media strategy hosted by the Program Training and Consultation Centre’s Media Network. The focus was on how public health professionals can use social media to engage their populations of interest to advance health promotion. Examples of how social media is being used were presented from ParticipACTION, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and my own research group’s Youth4Health initiative to show how these tools could enhance health communications.
What might have caught some of attendees by surprise was the introduction of complexity science concepts and design thinking into the discussion. These terms are not often used in public health, but as I’ve argued many times in this space, they ought to play a much larger role.
The other potential surprise for some might have been the emphasis on relationships, connection and the kind of things that Brian Solis showcases (see infographic above). Solis describes social media as:
Social media is a deeply personal ecosystem that I lovingly refer to as the EGOsystem. As such, there is a “me” in social media for a reason. It is quite literally a world in which we are at the center of our online experiences, a place where everything and everyone revolves around us. – Brian Solis
When a person is at the centre of an experience that is human formed and technology mediated, design is very important. How one engages with others and the opportunities afforded within that environment or EGOsystem is largely a product of design. For example, Facebook provides a great deal of opportunity to bring in your close “friends” into a conversation, but is relatively poor at bringing in strangers. In contrast, Twitter is about bringing anyone into the conversation, particularly strangers. As I like to put it:
Twitter enables you to learn answers to questions you never thought to ask, have conversations you could have never planned, and meet people you never knew existed
In both of these contexts, the manner in which one designs for interactions has a profound influence on what kind of conversations take place. To use Solis’ model above, attention to interaction design qualities of the technological and social space helps amplify the white arrows, dampen the effect of the blue arrows, with an aim of enhancing the power of the red arrow (belevolence).
This attention to these kind of patterns is at the heart (no pun intended) of complexity oriented planning and why social media, design and complexity require mutual consideration in developing strategy. When in complex spaces, the tempo, rhythm, and pattern of information exchange shifts constantly, just like in a regular conversation. So approaching the program from the perspective of a traditional, more linear-focused mindset will inevitably lead to a misalignment between program activities and the outcomes produced.
If you’re expecting to get a firm outcome from a social media strategy, you might be disappointed. If you are looking for surprises, consider more flexible outcomes, then social media may deliver the goods — but only if you design your strategy to suit the complexity of the context. A complex setting is one where there are multiple agents interacting and producing emergent new properties through such interaction. It it therefore fitting that the concept of interaction design be considered in examining how we engage in these environments.
Much of the discourse on social media from marketing and communication leaders hints at these concepts, but doesn’t name them. By explicitly making complexity, design and the social part of social media a focus we can more intentionally create better experiences that will engage our audiences, and in the case of public health, promote health.
