Thinking Frameworks

2022-05-19 by cense

You might have heard or read about concepts like Systems Thinking and Design Thinking (both with and without capital letters) and asked yourself: what do they mean?

We see both of these are frameworks for thinking about problems. It’s somewhat confusing, but both systems thinking and design thinking are more than just ways of thinking, they often refer to a constellation of methods, tools, and approaches to problems.

For that reason, we tend to prefer using the terms systems practice and design instead. However, as frameworks for understanding problems, situations, and issues we see much benefit in using the term thinking.

Just like the image above: our thinking frameworks can help us determine whether we’re looking at the land, the sea, or both, together.

Why Thinking Frameworks?

Our mindset — the mental models, habits of mind, or ways of thinking about something — is the primary factor influencing what we do (or do not do). It shapes how we see the world around us, what we attend to, and determines what has value. When we become aware of how we think we reveal the biases (everyone has them) that direct our attention so we’re better able to direct them to where we want intentionally.

We use thinking frameworks in our work by starting out with identifying what kind of ones our clients are using. Ask yourself: what central ideas are useful to us in doing our best work?

This might include concepts such as: evidence-based practice, learning organizations, ethics stances (e.g., ‘green’), values-based frameworks, use-centred (e.g., words like ‘practical’ and ‘user-centred’). Any of these provide guides to what is valued in an organization. There are many more of these.

Exploring Thinking Frameworks

Once we’ve done that, we start to interrogate it (see what we mean by that narrative here). This process involves asking questions that connect what someone says, what they do, and what they accomplish. This helps to see where there might be alignment or misalignment.

In dynamic markets or communities it’s easy to see how an organization can be misaligned. Policies, strategies, and organizational practices are designed for a certain time and place using a certain kind of thinking framework and as things change so does the potential utility of what we’ve created.

By identifying how we think, we are better able to determine the benefits of it and make modifications.

A great tool is using visual thinking and simple sketch notes to illustrate our thinking. By visualizing what we think about we can better tell how we think.

Tools like the Cynefin Framework can also focus our thinking (in this case about systems) to help refine our mental models.

Don’t make this complicated. There’s no need to worry about coming up with the correct terms, language or model for how or what you think about. The key is to simply identify and become more acquainted with how you think, see the benefits that confers, and understand its limitations. By seeing the blind spots, you’re better at seeing opportunities.

Cense helps our clients see things differently so they can do things differently. If you want help seeing or doing things differently, reach out and let’s talk about how we can be of service.

Image Credit: Xhulio Selenica on Unsplash

Using Decision Canvases

2022-05-04 by cense

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:

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:

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

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.

Design Thinking Practice: Designing for What’s Next

2022-02-02 by cense

What does it mean to take Design Thinking and actually apply it in the world?

This was the subject of a series of webinars hosted by the Tamarack Institute for Community Engagement. The webinars featured Co-CEO Liz Weaver speaking with Cense Ltd. President Cameron Norman.

In this first in a series of posts, we outline the key steps in applying design thinking in practice by looking back at this series and begin with the idea of designing for what’s next.

A Framework for Change

The series was set up by a look at designing for what’s next. In this discussion, Cameron Norman introduces the Design Helix – a multi-stage framework for putting design thinking into action.

The Design Helix (below) is based on our two decades of experience designing products, services, and systems at Cense and reflects the literature on design and design thinking. It’s a framework – a means of thinking about design — and not a prescription.

This multi-stage framework is designed like a helix partly to reflect the very fact that most of what humans engage with is created (designed). Design is at the DNA core of what we humans generate into the world — for good or otherwise.

The helix has two major strands that are tied together by activities that go in sequence but may have greater or lesser roles as one progresses through them. The framework is meant to guide design and provide a means to account for the key aspects of the design process. It is not prescriptive in the methods that articulate this design practice. Many different methods can be used to support this work.

Designs are rarely ‘one and done’ and are iterative, thus the helix actually winds its way around and connects multiple iterations together as illustrated in the image below.

Designing What’s Next introduced attendees to this design helix and what it means in practice. The helix will be further discussed and elaborated in a second series that we’ll cover in future posts. A recording of the conversation is below.

We will look at this process in greater detail in future posts as we walk through this series on applying design thinking and reviewing the Design Helix.

For more information on this approach and to apply it to your work, contact us. This is the approach we take with our clients and train those working alongside us.

Concept Scenarios + Storyboards for Service Design

2021-10-19 by cense

If you are looking to generate a sense of what your planned service looks like in practice why not draw it out?

Filmmakers know the importance of the process of storyboarding.

A storyboard is simply a visual representation of what you expect might happen from moment to moment in a service encounter. Storyboards allow us to ‘see’ the service before it’s made and spot potential issues tied to use, resources, interactions, and possible touch-points.

A storyboard tells the ‘story’ of your customer or client and you and your staff as you walk through the service. Storyboards require that you start to develop a vision — literally because it’s being drawn — of who you are seeking to serve.

This builds on the use of personas (which we’ve discussed before) and allows us to visualize relationships between these imaginary participants using data and how they interact with our products and services.

As we can see from the image below when we storyboard we also start to sequence steps involved in the service. For example, when we think of getting a coffee it’s easy to look at the act of ordering and receiving it, yet so much more is going on.

Kumar, V. (2013). *101 Design Methods*. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Sons (p.239)

Concept Scenarios

A concept scenario is a form of storyboarding that begins with data collection and organizing ideas together — often through the use of a whiteboard or visual tool like Milanote. By pulling together ideas in discussion and through examination of concepts tied to your service or innovation, we develop the raw material to put it together with a narrative.

More traditional storyboarding starts with a story and pieces together the elements into a narrative and extracting concepts from it, concept scenarios are more of the inverse. Both yield storyboards. What concept scenarios do is help us to piece together concepts and identify where assumptions might need rethinking.

This method is participatory and involves a few days or weeks to fully undertake depending on the amount of detail you need, the availability of research opportunities, and the resources (human and otherwise) to come together and visualize ideas together.

Practice Notes

Concept Scenarios begin by doing background research and learning about what it is that you are looking to develop and eliciting the various concepts associated with that — asking who, what, where, when, and why. This involves research and then synthesis of this research and group-based discussion to pull concepts together.

A whiteboard or digital space to add those ideas together is a strong asset to support this work. Simple words on a sticky note can work to record concepts and allow for manipulation and movement when used on a tool like a whiteboard or tool like Miro, Mural, or Jamboard.

Next, select the concepts you are most attracted to and best fit with what you’re looking to do.

Step three is to begin imagining scenarios where you might put these concepts together. Consider the key interactions and relationships that are involved, the timing of what is to happen, and the actors involved.

The next step is to visualize these into a series of panels (see above) and illustrate the ideas in a narrative.

The last steps involve interrogating the scenarios to see how they hold up to assumptions and start asking questions about what might be missing and what else might be needed to make the scenarios more realistic or why or how they might be achieved if they are novel or innovative.

Reference: A great summary of this method can be found in the 2013 book 101 Design Methods by Vijay Kumar.

We do this work with our clients. If you want help to learn the method or to use it as part of your service design, strategy development, or evaluation contact us. We can help.

Cover photo by dix sept on Unsplash