Cense Ltd.

Inspiration, Innovation and Impact

The Innovation Walkabout

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Did you ever notice how much you take in visiting a new city or town for the first time?

Maybe it’s time to get out more.

The Innovation Walkabout is a simple technique that adopts what we do naturally when encountering something new. The method is as simple as it sounds.

The first step is to pick an issue you’re looking to develop. This might be expanding a market, serving a client better, or changing your focus.

Our second step is to find a physical space where you can learn about this issue. This would be where your customers are, your competition might be, or something else.

The third step is to go for a walk to this place with the mindset of being a newcomer. What do you notice?

What are people doing? Pay attention to the kind of relationships that you see. Are there structures — physical or otherwise — that inhibit or facilitate what happens in that space?

What Do You Notice?

When you notice something, ask yourself: what else? We suggest adopting a coaching stance by asking these questions:

  1. What is going on and what captures your attention?
  2. What else do you notice? Keep asking: what else and you’ll be amazed at what you come up with.
  3. Can you imagine what your collaborators would notice?
  4. How about what your competitors might notice?
  5. What would someone who sees this scene every day notice?

When we ask these questions, we start taking the stance of different audiences — this helps us to learn. Take notes on what you see, sense, think, and hear. By taking better notes you can increase your learning, too.

So What?

This seems almost absurdly simple, but that is where its power lies. We can do this almost anytime. The metrics for success in this exercise are:

  1. New insights.
  2. New ideas.
  3. Number of ideas.
  4. Quality — detail — within those ideas.

If you are looking to innovate and need some new intelligence, try walking outside your door. Be intentional and purposive in your walking. Practice what Rob Walker calls “The Art of Noticing” and you will find you notice a lot more.

You might be surprised at what you see and find to help you out.

We design systems to help integrate simple and complex strategies for learning and innovating. If you want help to grow, learn and innovate, reach out and lets go for a walk. Who knows what we’ll notice together?

Image Credit: yns plt on Unsplash

Note-Taking for Learning and Innovation

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Do your notes bore you? They shouldn’t if you’re serious about learning.

Note-taking is among the most powerful, accessible, and portable means to support innovation and learning. Yet, most of us do it poorly. Do you review your notes after you take them? Do you know why you are taking notes in the first place?

There is an art to good note-taking and to using notes effectively. Notes capture what happens, what is discussed or observed, and record insights and commentary — but only if we use them.

Let’s look at ways to improve this.

Tools of the Trade

Fast Company has a remarkably detailed and useful guide to selecting a notebook. The New York Times annually reviews the best pens. Your choice of both can make a big difference to your willingness to use them. That is the key. The best tools are the ones you use.

If pen-and-paper isn’t your thing, consider using one of many apps. In his new book, Building Your Second Brain, Tiago Forte explores how apps and systems can help us better record and retain information. The secret is that the best app is the one that matches the way that you learn and use notes in your practice.

Forte has conducted research into the use of note-taking apps by canvassing the thousands of people who attend his workshops and he’s found that the top tools are:

  1. Evernote
  2. Obsidian
  3. Notion

These aren’t the only ones out there, but they are the most used. Each of these map on to three different note-taking styles such as those suggested by Anne-Laure Le Cunff, which we’ll explore below.

Note-taking Styles

Anne-Laure Le Cunff from Ness Labs has written extensively on note-taking — read her detailed explanation here. She reviews the literature and suggests a variety of strategies that work depending on your goals and preferences. She also provides recommendations on which app to use based on the kind of note-taker you are.

Le Cunff proposes three main note-taking styles:

  • The architect. They enjoy planning, designing processes and frameworks, and need a note-taking tool that allows them to easily structure their ideas.
  • The gardener. They enjoy exploring, connecting various thoughts together, and need a note-taking tool that allows them to easily grow their ideas.
  • The librarian. They enjoy collecting, building a catalogue of resources, and need a note-taking tool that allows them to easily retrieve their ideas.

The best way to learn is to design your systems to match your needs, preferences, and style of note-taking.

Systems of Use

Once you’ve got tools and matched them to your preferences, the next is building an actual use system. This means getting serious about learning. Learning will fail in bad systems as illustrated in a post over on Censemaking.

We suggest asking yourself the following questions ahead of any learning-based activity like a course or webinar:

  • Will I create the time to review, integrate or reflect on what I am exposed to?
  • Is the delivery of this course suited to the ways in which I make sense of the world and develop new skills?
  • Am I invested in the product — a certificate, degree, or outcome — or the process?
  • Am I engaged with this program (course, webinar, tutorial) to escape from asking myself difficult questions about my work?
  • Do I have a system in place to revisit, re-work, and apply what I’ve learned in place before I start?

A good learning system involves the following:

A good learning system is something that:

  1. Reduces distraction (preserves and hones attention to find, gather, synthesize and sense-make the most useful information)
  2. Protects/creates/utilizes time (is fit-for-purpose in connecting our knowledge to our purpose and our strategy)
  3. Articulates care (creates principles for practice)
  4. Fits the culture of your organization (creates space for integration)

Learn By Design

As you can see, any good learning experience involves good design. Our choice of tools, motivation, and systems all shape what we learn, what we retain, and whether it’s of practical value.

Learning is easy to say, more complicated to do. But it is something we can design into our organization.

You can learn to learn better by design. Remember: the best system is the one that you use.

If you want help creating a learning system for your organization to help get the most out of what you do every day, reach out and let’s grab a coffee and learn from one another.

Photo by Jan Kahánek on Unsplash

Practical Systems Thinking: The Cynefin Framework

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The Cynefin Framework is among the most widely used frameworks for understanding how systems are organized. It might be the most practical means of bringing systems thinking to life. A system, after all, is simply an organization of things within some constraint or boundary.

We rely on The Cynefin Framework (pronounced /kəˈnɛvɪn/ kuh-NEV-in) as a central platform in our training and consulting work for strategy, evaluation, and design. The reasons are many, but its utility is the most important of them.

What makes the Framework so useful is that people can relate to the stories we tell about systems using it. Perhaps the best story comes from the Framework’s founder and chief advocate, Dave Snowden in describing how to organize a children’s party using systems thinking*.

This video has been our most widely-referred source for teaching the fundamentals of systems thinking since it was first made.

The Framework has also been an inspiration informing the development of a centre for studying and intervening in complex systems based in Wales. It’s also developed into a burgeoning practice and learning community centred around the model.

The video below adds detail to help explain how the Cynefin Framework functions and where it came from.

We recommend reading Chris Corrigan’s excellent update on the Cynefin Framework. Chris has been one of the leading practitioners contributing to the thinking on the Framework’s use and development.

Using the Framework

Unlike many other Frameworks, Cynefin is useful throughout a project life cycle, not just at a particular stage.

In the beginning, we recommend using it to orient yourself to the situation you’re facing. What kind of problem situation do you find yourself in? What elements of the situation are complicated, complex, or simple? These questions aided by the Framework can help you identify key aspects of the system and complement systems mapping work.

As you move through the project, the Framework can help serve as a wayfinding tool. When you know where you are, it is easier to see where you are going. Social systems are dynamic, so while we may find ourselves in a quadrant at one stage, this can shift during the project or at particular moments.

The Framework can also be used as an evaluation tool by helping frame the questions you ask and the strategies that link your actions to your outcomes. By inquiring about the way your work and activities are organized within systems, we can ask better questions and assess real influence and possible impact.

We recommend starting any evaluation with the Cynefin Framework.

We also recommend using the framework as part of a strategic assessment approach to planning and sensemaking. The framework can help you to determine the role of evidence and practice — when to look for ‘best evidence‘, practice-based evidence, and innovative problem-solving options.

Moving Forward with Cynefin

We recommend using Cynefin Framework to anyone working in applied systems thinking, check it out. There is a global community of scholars, practitioners, and policy-makers who are working on advancing, testing, and documenting the use of it in practice. A recent book has been published that provides further examples and can be of use to anyone looking to get into Cynefin.

It’s worth the effort to explore – and we think you’ll agree.

* It is worth noting that our use of the term systems thinking is just that: thinking about systems and how they are organized and function. We recognize there are many different definitions and models of systems thinking including those used by Dave Snowden that may not fully subscribe to ours.

If you want help in applying lessons from the Cynefin Framework or building up your systems thinking capacity for action and strategy, reach out and let’s have a coffee meeting. We can help.

Image credit: Mitchell Luo on Unsplash; Snowded, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Using Decision Canvases

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You might have noticed that the world seems to be awash in canvases these days. The canvas model owes much of its popularity to the work of Alex Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur and their Business Model Canvas.

A canvas is a form of system mapping that visualizes critical aspects of a system and organizes them. A canvas uses visual conventions like boxes and arrows to lay out key assumptions, resources, actors, and value claims.

Three examples of popular canvases include:

  1. Business Model Canvas
  2. Value Proposition Canvas
  3. Social Lean Canvas

Andi Roberts has pulled together a massive list of fifty different types of canvases that cover issues ranging from value chain analysis, ethics, and strategy, to project management and more.

Some popular canvases like the Business Model Canvas are even pre-loaded as templates in visual thinking tools like Miro and Mural.

There is even a tool called Canvasizer that can help you create your own personalized canvas.

But how do we use these in practice?

Canvas Application

Most of these canvases rely on a similar structure. The simple form of using 8-12 boxes organized in an essentially linear format. This is a strength and weakness of the approach. The reason? It reduces complexity and interdependence, favouring a simplified organizational approach.

The simplification makes it attractive to people and relatively easy to use. The difficulty is the risk of oversimplifying the situation and confusing the model with reality.

It is for both of these reasons that we use canvases with caution. Canvases can be helpful in the following circumstances:

  1. When a project team is unsure where to start. A canvas reduces complexity and can help people start getting things on the page. Just getting started can be an enormously powerful reason to use canvases. Too often, organizations pause because they do not know where to begin. This can nudge that process forward.
  2. When the research hasn’t been entirely done or organized while the need to move forward is high in its absence. Sometimes, there are holes in the research (what we know about a situation) and plotting key themes or issues on a canvas can help us to hypothesize more clearly what else we need, know, or ought to consider.
  3. In times when there isn’t a budget to support in-depth research and sense-making. Canvases can help us to anticipate what a situation has present and available. In the absence of data, we can imagine what might be needed. This isn’t faking data and should be used when research is used to guide, not to prove or validate.
  4. When the number of anticipated themes and key variables for consideration is relatively tiny. Massive systems with many variables don’t fit well, but in many situations, we are not dealing with large, massive, complicated systems — they are small and complex. There are a few key categories and for these, canvases can work well.
  5. When there’s coaching time available. Canvases shouldn’t be used for client work without sense-making and coaching. We see many people confuse the map and model with the landscape and reality.. Plotting out data on a canvas is relatively simple and can be done with little time. What takes time is making sense of what it means and how it can inform strategy. Designing a strategy from a canvas takes time, care, and attention. Doing this is where the value of a canvas comes in.

Canvases are useful. Find or create one, and you can focus your team on what’s most important, organize it, and help foster the kind of conversations needed to assess what to do and how we might do it in the future. Canvases are design tools, and if you consider their advantages and limitations, you can become a great organizational designer.

We use canvases and many other tools. If you want some help setting this up, applying it, or learning other tools and methods, let’s have a coffee and talk about your needs and how we can help.

Falling In Love With Your Challenge

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Humans are strongly motivated by two forces: love and money*.

When pursuing change and seeking to better things we often look at ways to gain more money as the solution, but what about love? What if we fell in love with our challenge?

(*Money can be a proxy for security, safety, and opportunity.)

Love as a Change Strategy

Author, broadcaster, finance and plant-medicine coach Geoff Wilson encourages people to try love as a means to growth and change. He recently spoke to this on Earth Day and encouraged his listeners and followers on social media to try falling in love with the earth. Instead of arguing about the reasons why we should care for the earth, falling in love is something that transcends reason. It breaks us out of the usual patterns of motivation and persuasion.

What if we took the same approach to falling in love with the earth that we do with humans?

Practically, this might mean buying and caring for a plant or more fully using our bodies and senses to embrace our connection to the earth. You might try walking barefoot on the grass to feel the earth, not just see it.

Increasing the sensory and emotional aspects of change reframes things for us. What if we fell in love with our organization or business? What if we cared for our neighbourhood or customers the same way?

If I want to change something why don’t I fall in love or why don’t I leverage love and power together?

This simple strategy has enormous power attached to it. This approach is much like Adam Kahane’s work on connecting Power and Love for social change. Geoff’s approach is also similar to Arthur Zajonc’s work on mindfulness as contemplative inquiry.

Be more mindful and open your heart, eyes, and senses and you might find change looks and feels differently.

Photo by Leon Wu on Unsplash