An Organizing Framework for Innovation
Innovation requires the right organizing, not just skill and vision. This article explores what that means in practice.
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strategic foresight
Riding the waves of resilience
Big shakeups happen in work, life, and the economy regularly. Navigating these waves of change well requires forethought and foresight. How do we prepare ourselves to meet the future in a way that accounts for all the changes that are underway without us giving up our agency and purpose? Strategic foresight is an approach that
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Getting Out of Our Heads
Too much change psychology focuses on the way we think. Sometimes creating change requires we get out of our heads. Norman Vincent Peale is believed to have once stated: “Change your thoughts and you change your world.” Norman Vincent Peale It’s hard to deny that a change of mind can quite literally change the way you perceive the
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Foreseeing the Unpossible
Change may be the only constant and, beyond wet babies, few of us welcome it. Foresight is about looking ahead to what change(s) might be coming to help us prepare, but that doesn’t help much if we don’t know where we are right now. Last night I had a wonderful conversation with some foresighting peers,
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Ethics and Systemic Change
Systems change is a goal for many social advocates — whether aimed at politics, climate change, social norms or beyond — because often it’s only through changes to the interrelationships and boundaries that contain a system can lasting shifts be noticed. With great potential and power comes a responsibility to ensure that change yields more
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Innovation Framing
Innovation is easier to say than to do. One of the reasons is that a new idea needs to fit within a mindset or frame that is accustomed to seeing the way things are, not what they could be, and its in changing this frame that innovators might find their greatest obstacles and opportunities. Innovation, its
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Systems thinking and the simple plan
Planning is something that is done all the time, but the shape in which these plans unfold is often complex in hidden ways. Without the same resources to evaluate those plans (and make different ones should they change) many organizations are left with great expectations that don’t match the reality of what they do (and can
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Developmental Evaluation and Sensemaking
Developmental evaluation is only as good as the sense that can be made from the data that is received. To assume that program staff and evaluators know how to do this might be one of the reasons developmental evaluations end up as something less than they promise. Developmental Evaluation (DE) is becoming a popular subject
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The Organizational Zombie Resistance Kit
Zombies — unaware, semi-conscious, distracted individuals — are all around us and running many of the organizations we work in or with. And just like combatting real zombies there is a need to target the head. There is much musing about what a zombie apocalypse might look like, but anyone paying attention to what is
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The Developmental Evaluation and Design Imperative
Developmental evaluation is an approach to evaluating programs that takes account of complexity and changing conditions, supports innovation, and serves as a vehicle for adaptation for leaders seeking feedback on how to adapt to these evolving forces. It is not simply about improving programs, but developing them. From a technical point of view, this means
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