social systems Category
Time. Care. Attention.
Posted on May 17, 2017 3 Comments
A read through a typical management or personal improvement feed will reveal near infinite recommendations for steps you can take to improve your organization or self. Three words tend to be absent from this content stream and they are what take seemingly simple recommendations and navigate them through complexity: time, care, and attention. Embedded within the torrent […]
Healing, by design
Posted on April 25, 2017
The concept of healing plays an integral part of healthy human development in many cultures, yet is largely unknown or misunderstood in its practice. If we seek to develop, evolve, innovate and grown as individuals, organizations and societies wisely we would do well to better grasp what healing is and how its done, by design. To develop, […]
What’s in your baggage?
Posted on April 19, 2017 4 Comments
Social and emotional baggage is what we bring with us and, like the real thing, it’s all in what we pack, how we pack it and how aware we are of what we’re packing it for. And like the real thing, individuals and organizations can’t go on much of a journey without carrying some of […]
A Beautiful Idea
Posted on April 10, 2017 1 Comment
Is what you do, where you work, or how you organize, beautiful? Among the many words used to describe our work lives the most neglected and maybe necessary might be described that one word: it’s time to take it seriously. For those working in design one of the biggest challenges is getting people to understand that […]
International Women’s Day, Every Day
Posted on March 8, 2017
Today is International Women’s Day when the attention of one half of the world’s population is brought to the entire world, suggesting that maybe this day is best honoured the other 364 days as well. Time to consider how this might look. People worldwide will be celebrating and honouring women as part of International Women’s […]
You Want It Darker?
Posted on November 11, 2016 1 Comment
It is poetic irony on many levels that weeks after Leonard Cohen releases his album about the threat of death that he passes on, mere days after we saw the least poetic, most crass election campaign end in the United States with an equally dramatic outcome. This points to art, but also to the science of […]
The Design Paradox of Democracy
Posted on October 9, 2016 1 Comment
The series on paradox continues as the matter of politics, democracy and the power of the people get puts under the spotlight as we consider what it means to empower, express power and re-claim power in this post-liberal, globalized, information age and how we can do better, by design. It has been said that democracy […]
Fail Fast, Succeed Sooner(?)
Posted on October 4, 2016
Our series on paradox continues today by taking a look at the curious case of failure and how it’s popularity as a means to success represents more than just a paradox, but a series of contradictions that might just thwart the very innovation it seeks to support by embracing it. Failure is everywhere. Today […]
The Disconnected Human
Posted on September 27, 2016 2 Comments
In this mini-series we look at the phenomenon of paradox and some of the prominent ones in our social world. Today we look at human disconnection in the face of mass-urbanization, globalization, social media and information technology and why so many feel so isolated in a world pushing ever-more interconnection. It is possible to have […]
When More is Less: The Information Paradox
Posted on September 22, 2016 2 Comments
There is a point at which information ceases to increase knowledge and understand and begins to undermine it, creating a paradox. When information on nearly anything is more abundant than ever the choices we make about how to engage it become more important than ever. The Information Age has been described as the period where […]
