Foresight can be an enormously powerful vehicle for shaping strategy and nurturing innovative thinking if used properly. The problem is that it is rarely ever used. Strategic foresight combines trend research and design together to help envision possible futures and help guide our strategy in the process. It’s an attractive proposition. Here’s what it looks
Putting Foresight in its Place Read More »
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,
Using The Concept of Attractors To Facilitate Change Read More »
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
Organizational Healing By Design Read More »
It’s been said by (maybe) Peter Drucker and (definitely) the Internet that culture eats strategy for breakfast. This quote’s truth is solid even if its pedigree is questionable. Our culture shapes us in ways that are profound and often invisible. When I look at how I talk, what I say, and how I express things
Culture Transitions and Transformations Read More »
Models, frameworks and theories are meant to guide what we do, yet they can also obscure what needs doing. The peddlers of ‘ways to think’ need to start showing evidence that matches their enthusiasm. I once got into a bit of an intellectual spat with an instructor of mine when I was completing my master’s
Models, Frameworks, and Theories (Oh, My!) Read More »
Our designs drive systems change as much as anything and feedback drives good design. Feedback comes from evaluation so it makes sense that the two should work together. This is a version of a post I recently contributed to the American Evaluation Association’s AEA365 blog. Developmental Evaluation is a specific approach to strategic learning suited
Design-Driven Evaluation and System Change Read More »
The proliferation of ‘tips and tricks’ for boosting change-making and innovation efforts obscures the craft and commitment that transformation requires. Visit sites like Medium, search YouTube, or scroll through your Twitter feed and you’ll find endless sources of tips and tricks to innovate, transform, or learn. Tips and tricks work for formatting files with software.
Evaluation is a term that requires some rehabilitation. The term isn’t incorrect or outdated, just poorly understood and not much appreciated. That is unfortunate because it is a field, practice, and habit that every innovator and change-maker could benefit from knowing intimately. In this article, I’m going to outline why and what we might do
What is Evaluation? (And Why You Should Care) Read More »
What we see or choose to see has a profound effect on what we do and achieve. Choose wisely. The role of expectations — what we anticipate happening from our actions — is another critical pillar of behaviour change. In this latest in the foundations of behaviour change series, we look at how what we
Great Expectations and Change-Making Read More »
The personalities and preferences of innovators and change-makers are rarely discussed and when they are it’s not about implementation. So it was with some enthusiasm that we find an attempt to place the roles, preferences, and skills of implementers in a framework and discuss what these might mean. Consultants at NOBL sought to ‘type’ those
Fellow Travellers on the Journey to Change Read More »
