We are trained to use our powers of evidence and research to make our point. What if we used much less research to make much more of a point? When I get into a debate or look to persuade something, my natural tendency is to gather and align as much evidence as I can to …
Nicholas Thompson’s regular posts on The Most Interesting Thing in Tech are informative, timely and enjoyable. However, sometimes the most interesting thing isn’t the tech, but the humans around it. Generative AI is everywhere and has an enormous impact on the arts. Recently, Canadian electronic superstar artist Grimes announced that she is willing to work …
We can think of organizations as part of systems or ecologies, but what does it mean to make them fit for humans? Today, we look at the psychology and design of organizations for humans. An organization is much more than a group of people working together; it’s a system. The whole — the organization — …
Humans and their Organizations: A Psychological Design Perspective Read More »
Psychological momentum leverages performance, motivation, attention, and confidence for sustained change. Harnessing it and leveraging it effectively is a way to improve outcomes. and impact. If you’ve ever seen a team on a hot streak, you know about the power of momentum. Psychological momentum takes the idea first formed in physics and applies it to …
Psychological Momentum and Sustained Performance Read More »
Ecology is a term that refers to an interconnected environment but is also challenging to conceptualize in practice. Let’s start by exploring a way to view individuals and systems together. Ecology is one of those ‘million-dollar words’. It’s a sophisticated term and can be used in myriad ways, and few people challenge you when you …
Psychology, Ecology, and Organizations: Understanding Systems Read More »
Futures work is a branch of design that seeks to translate trends, ideas, and imagination based on data into visions of where we might go. What happens when we bring psychologists along? The popular deployment of generative AI tools has put ‘futures thinking’ into our collective imagination front and centre. We humans love futures thinking …
Saying something is complex was once an admission we didn’t have expertise, now it’s a cover for not committing to something. What does it mean when we undermine the meaningfulness of the term complexity? If you were involved in business operations or social innovation 15 years ago, you might remember when people rarely used “complex” …
The coming years will test our ability to design for the unseen, familiar, and pervasive issues tied to mental health and well-being. Are we up to the challenge? I recently attended my first public event where I felt I had been transported to 2019 – the year before the pandemic (“Beforetimes”). It was a small …
Censemaking helps you to learn how to change and innovate by design.
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 …
