Cense Ltd.

Inspiration, Innovation and Impact

Creating Glue: Viewing Change as an Index

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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:

  1. Knowledge
  2. Skills
  3. Confidence
  4. Outcome Expectations
  5. Conditions
  6. Environment
  7. Social Support
  8. Time and Space
  9. Tools
  10. 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

Unpacking Change

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Change through design is the fundamental feature of innovation. This page and the innovation toolkit that it’s a part of are one of the ways we seek to share our experience of innovation.

Innovation is very natural, but also something we can learn.

To provide alternative ways to learn about innovation and change-making we’ve launched a new podcast. Rather than serving as another web-based radio show, Censemaking is designed to do more. It’s a short-form summary of a new idea in practical change-making every episode.

The first season of Censemaking is focused on the fundamentals of change. Each episode in the first season will focus on one of the ten central pillars of change. Episodes are about 10 minutes long and, just like Censemaking itself, meant to be enjoyed over coffee or over your next break.

Ten Factors for Change

The ten factors of change are both individual and contextual and will be covered in each episode in the first season. These factors are:

  1. Knowledge. The bedrock – no knowledge or no change.
  2. Skills. How we apply knowledge and transform it into activities, action, and change. 
  3. Tools. These tools are what allow us to transform our knowledge and skills into something.
  4. Confidence. Confidence is the bridge between our dreams and vision and our capacity to undertake the work needed to make them real.
  5. Outcome Expectations. We are more likely to hit what we aim for than not.
  6. Time & Space. This is the most under-appreciated and poorly understood concept when it comes to real innovation.
  7. Conditions. Having the right conditions to innovate and having that creation play a useful function when those you seek to serve are ready is as much alchemy as it is science. That doesn’t make it worthy of neglect and it’s something we can design for.
  8. Social Support. Great change doesn’t happen working alone.
  9. Environment. The space around where we work — the context — matters.
  10. Glue. This highly non-technical concept reflects how we line things up together to hold them. This is our strategy and the design for how we transform it and learning into real change.

The podcast is introduced and hosted by Cameron Norman, our President, and this first episode explains how this came about and introduces these ten factors.

Photo by Erwan Hesry on Unsplash

Paying Attention to our Work and Ourselves: A Disruptive Conversation

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Our principal, Cameron Norman, recently joined Keita Demming for a Disruptive Conversation as part of his ongoing podcast series. Listen in and learn about how mindfulness, design, psychology, and paying attention to our change efforts can improve what we do and how effective we are with what we do.

Stop Doing the Wrong Things Righter: A Disruptive Conversation with Cameron Norman

Unpleasant Design

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Fall_Bench_Snapseed

Much of what we speak of when we talk about design, products and space is making things more livable, attractive or delightful. But what happens when we want the exact opposite to happen? That is the concept behind Unpleasant Design. The term comes from work being done by Gordan Savičić and Selena Savić who have been curating examples of the way governments and business alike have sought to discourage behaviour rather than encourage it through design choices.

The team at 99% Invisible recently profiled this work drawing on examples of how design has been used to discourage things like homeless people sleeping on benches, kids loitering around a shop, or ‘unintended uses’ of public washrooms.

The hallmark object to define this way of designing for non- or limited use is the Camden Bench, named after the London-based council that commissioned the original. You might have seen these in places you’ve travelled. They are these weirdly angular, almost always uncomfortable, and barely functional slabs that serve as benches. But unlike the one pictured above, they are pretty much impossible to use as a bed if you don’t have one, which is exactly its point.

Unpleasant design represents an illustration of design’s power for multiple purposes and not always good. While these designs address certain problems that are posed by behaviours that some find undesirable, they speak to a larger role that design can play in social life. Another example of unpleasant design is not about what’s designed into something (such as spikes), but also what’s designed out of something. One example is the presence of ‘leaning benches’ to replace places to sit. Another is the absence of water fountains in public spaces. The latter is less about providing hydration to people, but more about getting them to buy water rather than take it for free.

Design is as much about what is invisible as it is visible, which is why the brilliant podcast 99% Invisible is such an appropriate name for a show dedicated to looking the often un-noticed ways we shape the world and how it shapes us.

Photo credit: Fall by Clive Powell under Creative Commons License and adapted for use.