Learning takes our exposure to new things and transforms our thoughts and actions. How we do this is – and whether its done well — is where design comes in. Our learning is framed by where we are and where we want to go. The volume of content available to people puts attention at a …
Persistent, dramatic changes are taking place that influence our work, communities, and personal lives and understanding what it means to learn, respond, and succeed will take changes in how we evaluate it all. A key feature of change in a complex system is that once its shifted, it never goes back; there’s no ‘undoing’ what’s …
There is no shortage of advice on how to lead. Most leadership lessons are designed for 2-D times when we are living in more than three dimensions. I used to love reading about leadership. I thought leadership was the key to successful organizations during my studies, and I was partly right. What I got wrong …
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 …
At a time when change seems pervasive leading teams through transitions has never been more important Developmental psychology has many uses beyond understanding how individuals grow and mature — it can be a useful tool for helping frame how organizations do much the same. The parallels between human and organizational growth, evolution, maturity and death …
Design Thinking is not only a means to innovate, but as a means to heal and grow. After a year that by most people’s standards was ugly beyond any others in recent memory, our need for beauty, sustainable and responsible businesses, supportive communities, and viable, service-forward industries needs this.
Inspiration is a primary outcome for design thinking and leadership is the vehicle to deliver it. In a previous post I mentioned an assertion by Bruce Mau that the principal outcome of design is inspiration: without it nothing goes forward. Second to this is leadership. Leadership is the means of converting inspiration into action. While …
Design thinking is best approached as a habit, not as an exercise. Just as ‘critical thinking’ isn’t meant to be applied sporadically to one’s life, neither is design thinking.
When we confuse expertise in one thing with another we risk distrusting experts altogether and losing what they bring. An expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less until finally he knows everything about nothing. This tongue-in-cheek quote from Henry Mintzberg has much truth to it. As I’ve developed as a …
What if the best way to accomplish a goal was to not have one or to keep it changing? That’s innovation. If you tightly define what you want, and succeed, all you get is exactly what you expected. You are limited by your own goal. – Robert Poynton I was recently speaking with one of my …
