Separating out strategy, evaluation and service design in human services comes from old thinking that produces few benefits for the organization and make-work for consultants. There is a better way. We do a lot of silly things out of habit. Somewhere along the route toward the establishment of a professional management culture, we started separating […]
Strategic Design and Consultants Read More »
Caring is essential for effective leadership, enabling connection and engagement within organizations. It involves attentive listening and intentional actions that foster psychological safety and trust. By prioritizing relational leadership and supportive organizational systems, leaders can motivate teams, manage complexity, and drive innovation, making care integral to their strategic vision and organizational success.
This final post on Strategic Design in the series outlines the integration of theory and practice, emphasizing its adaptability to complex environments. It describes critical steps including context setting, engagement, and envisioning futures. Strategic design fosters effective decision-making and learning, positioning organizations to thrive amid uncertainty through collaborative and informed approaches.
Setting the Table: The Making of Strategy Read More »
As human systems grow increasingly complex, the need for learning and adaptation intensifies. Design-driven evaluation (DDE) merges design thinking with evaluation to enhance accountability and impact. By embedding evaluation within programs and prioritizing user feedback, DDE fosters continuous learning, enabling organizations to effectively navigate change and drive sustainable innovation.
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In the previous posts in this summer series, we looked at what it means to understand complexity and how it affects our world. In this post we connect systems thinking, strategic design and transformation together to show how they fit and why its useful to think of them together. Much of our professional world is
Systems Thinking, Strategic Design and Transformation Read More »
In this latest in our series on strategic design in complex times, we look at the ways in which design methods, tools, and thinking can shape systems and channel our intentions. This is strategic design. For more information, check out the earlier posts on complexity, strategy and introductions to strategic design. The aim is to
Strategic Design: Bridging Complexity, Planning, & Evaluation for Impact Read More »
Among the great challenges of compexity and disruption is knowing what to look at and how to make sense of what you see. Without training your senses, you may be going in blind. The idea of seeing things might be natural, but it still requires work. Many natural things require our effort, which is why
The Strategy Blindness Problem: Training Your Senses for What Counts Read More »
In the previous post, we looked at what complexity is and left with a metaphor of sailing to describe the ways in which we can understand complexity. In this post, we look at how to navigate complexity and ask: what does that mean for what we do and how we do it? Complexity is a
Navigating Complexity: Using Strategic Design Read More »
Complexity is a word we hear more and more. Understanding what it means in practice can help us navigate it with greater confidence. What do we mean we talk about complexity? It’s everywhere living systems reside, yet it’s also a deeply misunderstood or even mysterious subject. There is an entire field of study that looks
What We Talk About When We Talk About Complexity Read More »
Space shapes systems, so systems change requires we understand space. In this post, I’m going to use two contexts to illustrate why and how settings affect so much of our lives and why any systems change must account for them if we are to be successful. Take two examples: education, and healthcare. In an educational
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