Systems Thinking Practice: Starting Out
Systems thinking is something we can all learn to do. We discuss the fundamentals for starting your practice as a systems thinker.
toolkit
Using The Concept of Attractors To Facilitate Change
Attractors might be the most useful concept within complexity science for understanding practical change-making. By looking at how an attractor works we can better facilitate action and design more practical strategies in complex situations. We hear much about the concept of complexity when speaking about social systems. Complexity simply refers to a set of multiple, …
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Organizational Healing By Design
Whether it is our organizations, teams or ourselves we need to heal. What’s made this such a complicated challenge is that we must do this as individuals and groups. We also must do this by having shared and unique experiences. This is the design challenge for our age. There’s little need to point out our …
Strategy as Service Design
What if we viewed our strategy as a vehicle for shaping our services rather than the other way around? By looking at a strategy as more than a plan, but as a service design we can better align what we want with what we do. We begin this look by considering what kind of questions …
Frameworks and Their Utility
A good framework can provide enormous guidance when faced with a situation where there is no clear path forward. By allowing you to ‘hang’ and organize ideas a good framework can help you focus your design, too. A good closet not only stores your clothes, it organizes your wardrobe. The same can be said for …
Taking Ideas Into Sustainable Innovation
One bright idea is pretty but a collection of ideas put into practice over time, sustainably, is beautiful (and real innovation). Sustainable innovation — a process, practice, and culture of design-driven creativity — might be the most valuable outcome for any organization. Real, sustained innovation is not about creating a single item — product, service, policy …
Developing Creative Confidence With Practice
The means to developing the ability to create useful, valued products and service comes from learning through doing. What is the best way to learn design? Design something. It’s a bit trite to say this, but it’s true. Someone can be a designer having never taken a design course or completed a degree or they …
Learning for Innovation
Learning is at the heart of innovation and works best when evaluation is part of the process to spot what’s actually learned. Learning is a critical part of innovation and evaluation is about understanding its role. There are many definitions of innovation out there. After years of experience, observation, and study I’ve found them lacking …
Incubation and Echoes
Systems change requires the kind of tools and mindset shifts that can move how and what we see to act better. We profile various strategies to help you do that.
Systems Perceiving
System change requires we understand the perceptions of those in that system. Here’s a way to go about that and make change real, not just an idea #systemchange #systemsthinking #systemicdesign