Designful Innovation

Organizational Energy Priorities (For Humans)

2022-04-05 by cense

Whether it is strategy or wellbeing programming, we all rely on energy to make them work. There is a tendency in organizational behaviour consulting to focus on the cognitive qualities of decisions, change-making, and action. These qualities are things like our thoughts, ideas, and confidence in doing something. Sometimes they are about emotions. What’s often missing is what converts all of this into action: energy.

Yet, it’s our ability to convert our thoughts and manage our emotions that determine our ultimate success with efforts to change. Without energy, we can’t move from intent to action.

Energy Assessment

When we speak of energy we refer to the capacity to convert thoughts, sensations and emotions into intentions, designs, and actions. This is our ability to sense, dream, hope, plan and take action toward a goal.

This is a simple idea. It’s the application that is complicated. The reason for this is that we need to get in touch with what it is that we think, sense, and feel? We encourage people to think of three things in assessing energy:

Thoughts: What are we thinking about? What is holding our attention? Where does our mind, our attention, and focus wander?

Sensations: What are we feeling, hearing, or experiencing in our body? Where are we feeling it? What is capturing our sensations like touch, feel, sound (even taste)? This is as much about our physical energy as it is our body reacting to the world around it.

Emotions: What are our feelings? Where and how do we feel about things?

These questions shape our energy stores – the amount of energy we have available. Thoughts, feelings, and sensations in their quantity and intensity all require energy to attend to. The more we have and the more intense they are, the more we need to manage this in order to convert energy into action.

They are attractors that draw us toward or away from something. These attractors can also help us to clarify our strategic intent and what we’re really interested in. Our efforts at change, wellbeing, and innovation fail when we misalign our intent and desires with our energy. Pay attention to where you pay attention.

Energy matters because it is what converts our interests into actions. A good sense of what gives and draws energy helps us to determine the attractors that pull or push us to and from things.

Energy Stores and Design

Another important concept in energy assessment is recognizing that sometimes we don’t have much energy. It takes time to ‘top-up’ our energy stores after they’ve been depletion. A highly emotionally charged experience can deplete our energy stores. This is even more salient when we have a prolonged intensive experience (e.g., consider the COVID-19 pandemic, a stressful merger etc., a personal injury).

Design is shaping what is to come with intent. When we follow energy our designs are best when they account for what energy we have and what energy we need to make the design a reality. This approach means that we take energy into account as one of the materials of design.

Launching a strategic change initiative requires that we consider building up energy stores as part of our design process. Leading an exhausted, depleted workforce requires specific strategies. It requires flexibility, modelling, work redesign, and compassion (among others). This is before we even create a specific strategy, plan, or prototype.

We argue for doing check-ins on energy stores — looking at people’s thoughts, feelings, and sensations — regularly throughout the process. This can be done in many ways and doesn’t have to be formal or complicated. Simple check-ins will work. Doing this will allow us to determine if we have the energy to fuel the change we want.

Our human energy is a part of our designs and the limiting factor in making our changes real.

We work with organizations to help them change, grow, and heal. If you want help in creating a culture of innovation and wellbeing in your organization, let’s grab a coffee and talk about your needs.

Image Credit: Matthew Henry on Unsplash

Creating Glue: Viewing Change as an Index

2022-04-01 by cense

Change-making is not a singular thing, rather it is viewed more as an index. That means that the more of these different factors that are present, the greater the likelihood of change.

We recently concluded the first season of Censemaking: The Innovation Podcast looking at this idea of the index and introducing the last of the ten factors: glue. Glue brings together our strategies, processes, techniques and tools (one of the other factors).

Ten Factors for Change

The previous factors that have each been profiled in episodes in that first season are:

Knowledge
Skills
Confidence
Outcome Expectations
Conditions
Environment
Social Support
Time and Space
Tools
Glue

This first season has focused on the building blocks of change. These ten factors that if applied in earnest can help us to grow and transform organizations, communities, and ourselves. We can think of these in two groups: individual-focused change and shared-focused areas of change.

A big myth that we’ve covered this season of the podcast is that we are the masters of our own change and destiny. While we do contribute a big deal to our own change efforts, we can’t separate ourselves from the communities, organizations, families, and teams around us who enable, constraint and support change.

The more of these things, we do the better, the quality of our performance, the amount of persistence and endurance of our efforts. The more likely we are to change specifically glue are the techniques, the methods and the strategies for change. They are something that connects all of these other factors together in the implementation of some type of plan to make changes.

Lessons from Season One

The first is that change Isn’t a single thing. It’s more of a combination of things that we think of less than the list and much more as an index. Second, tools, techniques, strategies, and practice are the glue that ties all of these individual factors. Third, we can design change if we know what to do, and we can draw these 10 factors together to help us innovate and create a difference in the world we’re looking to make.

This is a design challenge. Glue is the systemic design of our organizations or our own personal practices that build up strategies to leverage all ten of these. We’re rarely successful with all of these, but by viewing them as an index it gives us something to focus on for improvement. We also can optimize those things working well to compensate for those areas that are not. Success comes because we have many avenues to change, not just one or two.

This is a different way to view change, but one that we’ve seen show the truth in our many years of working as change-makers and strategic designers.

If you want to learn more about this, please contact us and we can help. Censemaking: The Innovation Podcast is available wherever you get your podcasts.

Photo by olia danilevich

Organizational Trust and Wellbeing

2022-03-25 by cense

If you’re looking to enhance the wellbeing of your organization you first need to have trust.

Trust is the anchor of any healthy relationship and wellbeing is all about creating connections to people and self. How do we create wellbeing in our organizations? How do we create trust if we don’t have it?

Trust Creation

Trust doesn’t come through grand gestures, but small acts that are done regularly, consistently, and persistently. We build trust through creating a trusting culture. Trusting cultures are those that foster a culture of wellbeing. They are all connected.

Trust is developed through four actions:

Frequency of contact (familiarity). We trust others more when we understand and can relate to others.
Quality of contact. When we develop the familiarity with others that allow us to be intimate, trust grows.
Shared activities. Building things together brings people together through engendering a shared sense of accomplishment.
Shared vision. When we can share our values, aspirations, and our perspectives it’s easier to come together and trust each other.

Most discussions of trust focus on the fourth part: values and beliefs. However, spend time on social media and you’ll see that sharing our beliefs and values can easily have the opposite effect. This is important, just not as the first step.

Our values come into play when we have the chance to work together, share space, and spend time together. Trust comes from time spent together and we can design for it.

Time matters, but so does the quality of that time. This means taking time to ask questions and to listen to others fully.

Once we do that, we can start designing and building things together because shared making is shared learning. Learning means that I am growing and when I learn with people I grow with them. This might sound simplistic, but it’s a powerful lesson we all can apply to our organizations.

Trust Building

Some simple means to build trust include:

Create space at your regular meetings for personal sharing of stories.
Support the direct one-to-one and small-group meetings that allow people to share their experience. When we do this we also enhance the ability to use After Action Reviews and learn through complexity.
Set up physical spaces that support face-to-face interactions (or regularly use your Zoom or distance tools to create regular chat spaces) .
Support asynchronous chat and responsible use of technology to scale conversations. This means using the right tools for the right task. We recommend you read Keith Ferrazzi’s take on becoming crisis agile in our organizing.

Resilient, compassionate teams come together by design. When we create a collective space to engage collectively to build trust we do better and our wellbeing increases.

These simple steps can yield enormous benefits. We’ve used these approaches with our clients and they continue to reap dividends. This is something that we do by design and with intention because doing so creates a leadership opportunity along the way. Trust by design gives us the chance to co-create a space together and share our experiences while building a better, healthier organization.

If you’re looking to create a culture of trust and wellbeing and want help in taking this forward, contact us and let’s grab a coffee.

Data Collection and Participation For Busy People

2022-03-16 by cense

Among the greatest challenges of doing research and evaluation is ensuring you get participation from enough (and the right) people. Surveys are everywhere. It feels like everyone wants our feedback on just about everything. Yet, the more surveys out there the more we should be concerned about data quality, too.

On top of that, we are surrounded by media messages, distractions, and ‘noise’ that can make attention a very precious (and rare) commodity.

It can be daunting.

How do we get people to participate and get good quality data from that participation amongst the noise? We’re going to outline an approach to data collection that goes from methods to conversations.

From Methods to Conversations

There is a lot of research on improving existing methods like surveys or asking better questions. Tips like these can be useful, but they may also distract us from addressing other issues. For starters, consider the user case for doing research and evaluation.

Who benefits from the research? Is it those who are participating? If not, why would someone want to take time and spend energy answering your questions? We can no longer assume people will participate out of a sense of wanting to help. The deluge of research requests has made data gathering an imposition more than an opportunity for most people.

One of the ways that we deal with this is to shift the focus to creating conversations and learning opportunities. By thinking of data collection as part of a conversation we can change the way we gather data. This works for evaluation, design research, or any applied research context.

A great conversation is about creating exchange. That means some back and forth between the parties. What if you could do this with your data?

Data-Based Conversations

The concept of data-based conversations is all about using what you gather as the foundation for the exchange between people. This means gathering relevant information from people and then sharing what it is that you find. Individuals provide their thoughts, opinions, attitudes, and reflections and as researchers we provide the synthesis and opportunity to share what we’ve learned from others. It works because it creates exchange and value.

People choose to participate because they can both contribute and receive insights about their peers. Please keep in mind that this approach only works when people are interested in your topic.

We recommend that you design multiple, short engagements so you reduce response burden. Rather than use a single, large survey we suggest you break it into smaller batches of questions. In between each survey we provide rapid synthesis learning reports to share what we’ve learned from others.

Our rapid learning reports might be short summaries, infographics, or distilled tips gleaned from the data. Using visual media is particularly helpful because it’s simple and accessible. It says to our participants: “we heard you and here’s what others have said.”

Data collection can also include short interviews, social media exchanges, or panel feedback. The methods matter less than the way that we structure the engagement. This approach builds trust, familiarity and increases data quality.

Time to Talk?

People are busy and less invested in your product or service than you think. This approach to creating a conversation than just asking (and taking) from people changes the relationship. By enlisting people as partners and focusing on sharing what you learn in ways they can benefit, you serve others not use others.

As always, this must be done with transparency, ethics, respect, and commitment to delivering on your promises. We’ve found this approach works and it adds value to participants. People like to learn and know what’s going on with their peers. Gathering data this way is less intrusive, more natural, and less burdensome.

If you’ve got a big research question to ask, consider ways you can transform your data collection into a conversation. You might find that you get more participation, greater engagement, and better quality data.

Want to build this approach into your evaluations or research? We can help and share our experience using this approach to reach busy people. Contact us and let’s grab a coffee.

Image credits: Karen Lau on Unsplash, Jon Tyson on Unsplash, and Firmbee.com on Unsplash

Future Regrets

2022-03-02 by cense

Have you ever thought: I wished I’d done [something] different?

We all have. Regrets are part of what defines us as humans.

Looking back over mistakes or missed opportunities can lead us forward into making better decisions about the future if we let it.

In our work, we’ve used the idea of Future Regrets as a strategy tool to help organizations envision possible future outcomes.

Here is how it works:

Take an action that you’re currently seeking clarity on or debating as an organization (or individual). This can be an issue that you’re uncertain about and want to pursue.
Pick a time point in the future when the results of your action (or inaction) will be likely known. To make things simple, we often use 6-months, 1 year, or 5 years as examples. The specific date isn’t that important – just enough to gain a frame on your activity.
Inquire about those outcomes and whether you would have regretted not taking that initial action.

This approach allows us to see beyond short-term pain, struggle, and awkwardness to see long-term success (or possible failures). Rather than wait for regret to set in on a missed opportunity or failed venture we can learn about tomorrow, today. Try it with a variety of scenarios and give yourself time to consider different paths.

Power of Thought Experiments and Regret

Author Dan Pink has written about the role of regrets in shaping our lives and how we can benefit from them in dictating what we do. While this specific approach isn’t mentioned in his book, there are many others that are including the failure resume.

By bringing our future into our present we can regret less and succeed more.

If you’d like some help in using this approach in your work please contact us and let’s grab a coffee.

Photo by charlesdeluvio on Unsplash