Nicholas Thompson’s regular posts on The Most Interesting Thing in Tech are informative, timely and enjoyable. However, sometimes the most interesting thing isn’t the tech, but the humans around it. Generative AI is everywhere and has an enormous impact on the arts. Recently, Canadian electronic superstar artist Grimes announced that she is willing to work …
We can think of organizations as part of systems or ecologies, but what does it mean to make them fit for humans? Today, we look at the psychology and design of organizations for humans. An organization is much more than a group of people working together; it’s a system. The whole — the organization — …
Humans and their Organizations: A Psychological Design Perspective Read More »
Psychological momentum leverages performance, motivation, attention, and confidence for sustained change. Harnessing it and leveraging it effectively is a way to improve outcomes. and impact. If you’ve ever seen a team on a hot streak, you know about the power of momentum. Psychological momentum takes the idea first formed in physics and applies it to …
Psychological Momentum and Sustained Performance Read More »
Ecology is a term that refers to an interconnected environment but is also challenging to conceptualize in practice. Let’s start by exploring a way to view individuals and systems together. Ecology is one of those ‘million-dollar words’. It’s a sophisticated term and can be used in myriad ways, and few people challenge you when you …
Psychology, Ecology, and Organizations: Understanding Systems Read More »
Climate change will continue to pose ever-greater challenges to how we live, work, and organize ourselves. A recent conference has helped inspire some ways to think about how we might do this better. Natural systems are all around us, even if they are hidden. In urban centres, much of what we call ‘nature’ is reduced …
A new term has been circulating in policy circles that reflects a changing way of viewing conflict, crisis, and complexity: polycrisis. Let’s look at what it might mean for people looking to plan, evaluate, and act in a world filled with turmoil. Polycrisis is not a term that inspires much hope. I’m not one for …
In my previous post, I wrote about using metrics that are as much about reflecting width (joy, quality) as length (longevity, quantitative performance). In this post, I look at how that applies to organizations. I’ve encountered relatively few organizations that are driven — if they are being honest — by quality, depth, and richness as …
There’s something that happens when you spend enough time working in a field that fosters true wisdom. When you’ve had the chance to see the fruits of your labour and the cycles and patterns of your domain of practice, the best metrics emerge. I didn’t appreciate the wisdom of experience enough when I was younger. …
Futures work is a branch of design that seeks to translate trends, ideas, and imagination based on data into visions of where we might go. What happens when we bring psychologists along? The popular deployment of generative AI tools has put ‘futures thinking’ into our collective imagination front and centre. We humans love futures thinking …
Far from being messy, the meta middle is the space we are in where we can see the disruption coming and aren’t sure where we need to steer things so we navigate through it. The Messy Middle is a phrase used to describe the part of a project where we’re prone to get lost, mess …
