Welcome to Censemaking
Censemaking helps you to learn how to change and innovate by design.
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When Complexity Exceeds Wisdom
In a recent podcast, historian Margaret McMillan discusses the complexities of today’s world, observing that historical patterns do not neatly apply to current events. Despite her extensive knowledge, she finds it challenging to provide clear insights. This underscores the overwhelming nature of contemporary issues, further complicated by misinformation and faux wisdom, highlighting the need for wayfinding rather than certainty.
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Algorithmic Anti-Design
What happens when we no longer see what’s out there, but what some algorithm feeds us, and what are the alternatives to learning new things from the internet? The answer: email. In the mid-2010’s, I undertook a research project for Heritage Canada (now Canadian Heritage), the federal agency responsible for copyright regulations, looking at the
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Pathways Through Yuletide
It is the time of year in the Northern Hemisphere when we are in our most darkest days and, appropriately, often surrounded with lights. It’s a time of food, reflection, and rest among the bustle of more modern trappings of the holidays and year-end commitments. We are part of the seasons, whether we’ve designed our
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Remembrance and Care
December 6th is a day of remembrance for the women who lost their lives and the gender based violence that caused it. It’s a call to recharge, renew, and redouble our efforts to end the causes of it, and the damage it causes everyone.
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Fumbling and Stumbling Forward: Strategy and Complexity
The Fall Into Strategy series is both a play on the season and a metaphor for how we convert intention into action with a plan, by design. Today, we look at the bigger picture of complexity and its role in strategic design. More specifically, we’re going to look at three words: fumbling, stumbling, and forward.
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The Practice of Strategy
This content discusses the importance of strategic design in connecting aspirations with actions and outcomes. It emphasizes that strategy isn’t confined to boardrooms but occurs in everyday decisions. Key components include inquiry, visioning, planning, implementation, and evaluation, all of which work together to create an impactful, adaptive strategy.
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Fall Into Strategy: The Practice of Making Strategy Real
Strategy is the means of connecting our aspirations and resources to our actions and outcomes. Strategy is something we design with our organization’s goals, values, assets, people, and customers/clients/patients/partners in mind. Strategic design is the means and positive impact is the end. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be walking through the art and science of
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Strategic Design and Consultants
Separating out strategy, evaluation and service design in human services comes from old thinking that produces few benefits for the organization and make-work for consultants. There is a better way. We do a lot of silly things out of habit. Somewhere along the route toward the establishment of a professional management culture, we started separating
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Caring By Design
Caring is essential for effective leadership, enabling connection and engagement within organizations. It involves attentive listening and intentional actions that foster psychological safety and trust. By prioritizing relational leadership and supportive organizational systems, leaders can motivate teams, manage complexity, and drive innovation, making care integral to their strategic vision and organizational success.
Setting the Table: The Making of Strategy
This final post on Strategic Design in the series outlines the integration of theory and practice, emphasizing its adaptability to complex environments. It describes critical steps including context setting, engagement, and envisioning futures. Strategic design fosters effective decision-making and learning, positioning organizations to thrive amid uncertainty through collaborative and informed approaches.
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