Coaching and training that integrates strategic vision, adaptive skills, and a systems and design perspective.
Leading and Innovating: Networks & Complexity
Networked organization and health systems present opportunities for collaboration, co-creation, innovation, and learning that are distinct. We can do better together is what distinguishes networks and member-serving organizations from others.
Yet, many of us are never provided with the resources to fully take advantage of these structures and to learn through systems. Cense can help by offering training and coaching support for health system leaders, their teams, and their members.
Whether it’s 1-1 coaching, a webinar or keynote, a short course, or a custo program of learning, we can help you learn the art and science of innovation, discovery, leadership, and learning through networks. We build a learning plan to suit your needs, based on a body of curriculum resources we’ve built over 25 years teaching behaviour change, evaluation, systems thinking, and strategic design.
“I’ve been teaching and support health leaders for over 25 years as an award-winning educator and trainer.
My coaching work is built around the idea of a critical friend — someone with the expertise to challenge your thinking, the humility to know how to ask the right questions, and the bravery to tell you what you need to hear rather than what’s easy to say.
I work closely with individual leaders and leadership teams, because networked organizations face challenges that reside beyond the individual. Networked leadership designed for systems allows my clients to develop a shared language for complexity and design, which creates a common approach to learning, and conversations that make adaptation and innovation possible.
Approach
We approach all of our work through the lens of strategic design — which means we’re considering goals, systems, behaviour, feedback, and how to design everything we do to keep these ideas working together. This is a systems approach, a design ethos, and done with the aim of improving our impact.
Our aim is to make all of our training activities and coaching engagements exciting, relevant, and practical.
We ground our curriculum in the situations and contexts of our learners. We design everything to suit their needs and situations. Just as we do with our services, Cense creates learning centred on learners in context.
We’re ready to deliver custom or pre-developed training on topics such as:
- Leadership in networks and complexity
- Systems thinking
- Evaluation for Innovation
- Applied Creativity for Health
- Behaviour change and organizations
Examples
Principles Evaluation and Innovation
Cameron Norman served as a coach and trainer for a collaboration between the Waterloo Institute for Social Innovation and Resilience (WISIR) at the University of Waterloo and the Canadian Community Economic Development Network (CCEDNet) to train graduate-level and post-doctoral trainees and staff in principle-focused and developmental evaluation methods. Dr. Norman provided lessons, coaching, and tactical support to the WISIR team as it sought to understand the roles, capacities, and support the innovation potential of a pan-Canadian network on social finance. Cense developed a curriculum, delivered lessons, and provided both one-to-one, and small group coaching on applying the lessons in practice. The lessons learned from the project were presented at a special keynote panel at the Systemic Design Association conference in Toronto, ON (RSD12).
Systems Change and Social Innovation
Cameron, the Cense President, provided training in systems thinking, strategic design, and evaluation to four successive cohorts of Studio Y, a unique program delivered from the MaRS Discovery District from 2014-2017. The curriculum, entitled Understanding Systems Change, trained young professionals in methods and approaches for guiding systems change, design thinking, systems science, and evaluation. Dr. Norman also provided a similar training program to the Catalyst-X CoPilot program between 2016 and 2018. The Co-Pilot program was designed to support emerging social innovation leaders in the methods and tools for systemic change.
Design and Innovation in Evaluation
The American Evaluation Association asked Cameron to develop a unique learning experience on design thinking methods for proessional evaluators for its 2016 national conference in Atlanta, GA. The annual AEA conference was drawing nearly 4000 people, and this event was a unique conference program-within-a-conference that explored design thinking tools, techniques and approaches. The event — entitled The Design Loft — was such a success that it was repeated every year until the 2020 pandemic temporarily shuttered live events. The Design Loft initiative was transformed in 2024 as a Substack/Newsletter-driven resource available for subscription.
Keynotes and Teaching
Dr. Norman continues to be a sought-after keynote speaker and has delivered keynote addresses and training for the Ontario Public Service, MaRS, The US Centers for Disease Control, City of Vancouver, Niagara Public Health, Durham Region Public Health, Government of Canada and others, while continuing his role as an active faculty member teaching systems thinking, research methods, and health design as part of OCAD University’s Strategic Foresight & Innovation and Design for Health graduate programs.
If you’re looking for a thinking partner who understands the complexity of the work you’re leading, let’s talk.
