What happens when the global pandemic gets forgotten, and our organizations, communities and bodies still remember? How might we design institutions that help us recover from what’s happened and thrive in what’s to come? The World Health Organization is meeting this week to discuss whether the emergency phase of the global COVID-19 pandemic response is …
There are reasons people read or scroll through content on beautiful places and spaces; it inspires us to create. Our environments play a big role in shaping ideas and creating innovations. This post was inspired from the recent episode of Censemaking: The Innovation Podcast. When I was five years old, I had a terrible accident …
Aesthetics and beauty are often dismissed, but they can be enormous catalysts and supports for innovation.
Events like the COVID-19 pandemic provide us with examples of how to think about systems and why, when, and how to prepare, panic, do neither or both. A Thursday evening trip to the neighbourhood supermarket was anything but ordinary. The first sign was the lack of parking spots and no shopping carts outside. Inside it …
Systems Thinking About Preparedness and Scaredness Read More »
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
Just like with drugs, dosage and interactions matter with learning and innovation; it’s about amount, mix, and more. If you know someone over the age of 80 (including you) there is a good chance they (or you) are taking drugs — lots of them. Medical science has done a remarkable job with finding pharmaceutical therapies …
Innovation definitions can sometimes create more confusion than clarity. Looking at what it is and does can change that. Innovation might be one of the most confusing, mis-characterized words in business, government, and social enterprises. It doesn’t have to be. If we leave aside all the buzzwords, models, and hype, innovation can be described in …
Actions speak the language of change by making it visible. Talking about change shapes our actions, so let’s talk carefully. Change, real change of substance, is considerably difficult to orchestrate. Even in the presence of threats, opportunities, internal drive, and lack of alternate options, change is difficult to encourage, stimulate, motivate, and sustain in individuals, …
A recent article titled ‘The Right Way to Lead Design Thinking’ gets a lot of things wrong not because of what it says, but because of the way it says it. If we are to see better outcomes from what we create we need to begin with talking about design and design thinking differently. I …
Leadership & Design Thinking: Missed Opportunities Read More »
Enormous energy is spent on developing strategies to accomplish things with comparatively little paid to the systems that they are being deployed in. A good strategy works by design, and that means designing systems that improve the likelihood of their success rather than fight against them and this is no truer than in the effort …
