Strategic Design For Health: Systems to Service to Impact
Cense empowers leaders to innovate and create impact by design.
You’re leading through unprecedented disruption, transformation, and complexity. You need pathways forward and to make sense of what’s happening, to learn, adapt and build evidence to guide your actions.
We are here to help.
At Cense, we use strategic design to help you thrive in complexity. We are both a consultancy and a studio: we advise, co-create, educate, and evaluate with and for our clients, partners, and collaborators. Cense supports leaders in navigating complexity through strategic design, evaluation, and systems thinking.
Our specialization lies in creating and supporting strategic plans and planning, including evaluating the outcomes and impact of your work, as well as improving your programming through service design.
Leadership in Complex Times
We bring over 25 years experience as consultants, designers, academics, and leaders in the health and social innovation sector. At Cense, under the leadership of Dr. Cameron Norman, we offer:
Strategy and Planning Support
Our participatory, engaged approach to systems issues seeks to build robust, complexity-informed strategies, resilience and:
- Decision and sensemaking tools that recognize stakeholder and system complexity
- Actionable strategic plans built for uncertainty and resource constraints
- Innovation frameworks that direct resources where they matter most
Systems Change That Sticks
We help you create services, systems, and practices that create sustainable impact through:
- Interventions grounded in behavioural psychology and systems thinking
- Organizational learning systems that adapt and evolve
- Culture building strategies that improve how your teams serve patients, clients and support each other
Evidence You Can Act On
Our design-driven developmental evaluation approach generates real-time insights that help you course-correct quickly and demonstrate impact using:
- Real-time insights gained through developmental and complexity-oriented evaluation methods
- Learning systems that help you course-correct quickly and spot opportunities early
- Impact-oriented evaluation findings that are designed for use.
Leadership Guidance For Navigating Complexity
- Advising and coaching on strategies for engaging staff, stakeholders and clients
- Team resilience building and vision maintenance to bring strategic plans to life
- Systems that keep you focused and well amid daily “firefighting”
How We Help Our Clients
Strategic Planning & Foresight
Develop robust strategic plans that guide your organization into the future while respecting complexity, not denying it. We create impact by design—marrying ambition with pragmatism and creativity to help you achieve your goals in uncertain environments. We bring foresight into the process to help you lead into the future, not the past. Whether it’s developing new plans or bringing fresh thinking and insight to your existing strategy, we help you to adapt and lead, regardless of the context.
Evaluation & Learning Systems
Generate real-time evidence and actionable insights through our Credentialed Evaluation services. Our design-driven developmental evaluation approach creates learning systems that help you course-correct quickly and demonstrate impact to stakeholders.
Service Design & Innovation
Transform how your organization learns, adapts, and delivers care using behavioural psychology and systems thinking. We design sustainable interventions and service models that are fit-for-purpose and built for lasting impact.
Leadership Development & Coaching
Build adaptive leadership capabilities through practical training, coaching, and facilitation support. We help you navigate delivery tensions, strengthen team resilience, and maintain strategic vision while managing daily operational demands.
Implementation Support
Bridge the gap between strategy and action with hands-on implementation guidance. We provide the tools, training, and ongoing support needed to ensure your transformation initiatives succeed and create measurable change.
The Complete Cycle of Organizational Excellence
We can help you with any and all aspects of the journey from strategy clarifying through to impact assessment by designing a system that supports you at every step.
Strategy Clarification → Actionable Planning → Service Design → Implementation Support → Learning & Adaptation → Measurable Impact
Our work connects service design, organizational psychology, and complexity science, ensuring sustainable change that serves both your people and your systems—organizational, network, client, and partner.
Explore Our Services
We bring over 25 years of experience in healthcare, public health, health services, social innovation and professional evaluation.
Whether you’re building strategy, leading transformation, or cultivating innovation, we offer practical tools, training, and insights that come through strategic design. Our Credentialed Evaluation services support the evidence you need to demonstrate impact and learn.
We bring it all together for you.
Want to learn more? Click the button below to book your free, no-obligation consultation to discuss your challenges and needs.
Learn and Listen
Explore our services to learn how we can support your work, and subscribe to our learning resources to stay inspired. Visit our blog and Censemaking for insights on strategic design for innovation and impact. Learn even more by listening to Cense’s profile on the Deep Dive interview.
We acknowledge that our office is located on the ancestral and traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Wendat, and the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation. We pay our respects to the Elders, past and present, and to future generations who continue to care for this land. We commit to supporting Truth and Reconciliation through ongoing action, advocacy and education.