APPROACH

Lens 1: Human-centered Design

Problem Framing

We don’t take the original problem at face value - we scope for the problems behind the problem with relentless curiosity.

discovering Insights

We empathetically engage and seek to understand end users and those who serve them to drive foundational insights.

Co-creating ideas

We generate many ideas with diverse stakeholders by looking for inspiration in creative ways and unusual places.

prototyping

We help prioritize and develop the best ideas, make them tangible, seek feedback, iterate, and keep improving.

making it happen

We help sell the dream, tell stories, show value, and lay out what happens next before you bring it to life in the real world.

Scaling and Spreading

We work with you throughout to engender trust, share ownership, cultivate change over time, and customize clear communication.

We practice Human-centered Design, aka “Design Thinking”. It’s a process that values empathy, inquiry, collaboration, and iteration to ensure insightful, holistic, optimized, and aligned outcomes. It’s about continuously stepping into the shoes of end users to connect possible solutions to real human needs and desires. It can feel messy or winding at times if you’ve never been on the journey before, but that’s intentional. We explore what’s out-of-focus to bring it into focus. It’s about sense-making before decision-making. It’s about clarity over expediency.

We think about solving problems and catalyzing change across the six human-centered design mindsets you see here. It can happen in this order…or not! Ultimately, what matters most is deeply understanding underlying problems, inspiring new ideas, testing and refining, and thoughtfully bringing solutions to life in the real world.

Lens 2: Systems Thinking

Purpose | The Why

Why does the system exist?

Every system is organized around a purpose. It’s the larger objective the entire system is structured to pursue whether it was originally set up to do that or not. It’s the fundamental reason the system exists.

Ex. Keeping citizens safe, eradicating disease, driving economic prosperity, treating illness

Connections | The How

How do intangible principles keep the system moving in the direction of its purpose?

Connections are the threads that hold the various pieces of the system together; they’re the relationships that exist between the parts to provide structure.

Ex. Rules, policies, culture, hierarchies, incentives

Components | The What

What tangible, building blocks exist making it easy to recognize the system in the real world?

Components are necessary to make the system work, but they aren’t sufficient on their own. They are often the physical manifestations of the system that people understand to be the system.

Ex. People, staffing, facilities, technology, equipment

Transforming systems is a hot topic for leaders across industries today. Many think that investing millions, if not billions, of dollars in a fancy new facility or state of the art technology, for instance, will have a “transformative” effect. When we talk about transformation, we mean it in terms of a complete metamorphosis. To put it bluntly (and metaphorically), real transformation is not the same as sticking a pair of wings on a caterpillar. Rather, transformation is seeing a butterfly emerge from a cocoon – flying away in all its glory.

Systems are made up of three key elements: purpose, connections, and components. Typically, most organizational energy addresses components with some focus on connections, and that’s often perfectly adequate.

Of course, when there’s a need for change, let alone for transformational change, starting with components will simply not suffice. If you want to do something like keep people healthy, and not just treat or heal them, you have to pull the purpose lever.

While not every challenge requires transformation, when it does, you have to think differently about purpose. Furthermore, even when the problem starts at the component level, we find it helpful, if not critical, to consider the system context. How is that component connected to other components and how do they impact one another? What is that component’s role in serving the overall purpose of the system? What is the component’s purpose and how might it need to change to address underlying problems that better serve the system and those the system serves?

Image credits:

Top section, from left - Joel Worthington (@thephototypinglife), Dan Schwalm, Michael Joyce, Betsy Berg, Amy Lussetto, Henning Angerer (x2)

Bottom section - Joel Worthington (@thephototypinglife)