Month: June 2014

"Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose," says Eckhart Tolle, a teacher and author of The Power of Now. I agree with this statement and I'm wondering how to change what I observe as a 'culture of worry' in the organisation I'm working with. It's endemic. I've been tallying the number of times in the week I've heard from across the enterprise phrases of worry, including 'my worry is … 'I'll put it on my worry list'. 'Aren't you worried that ….?' 'I'm worried about'. Maybe I've sensitized myself but I'm almost tempted to take photos of all the worried furrowed brows I've noticed in meetings and conversations or find out whether 'being an ace worrier' is a recruitment criteria but neither would be productive or problem solving.

Googling 'organisational culture of worry' turned up nothing – the first time I've ever achieved that in a Google search! Maybe I've stumbled on a potentially completely new research field? It's good in a way because I'm about to start revising my book on Organisational Culture for a second edition so now I might have a new topic to talk about in it with a case study waiting in the wings.

More immediately I'm investigating a couple of things: what is the impact of this observed level of worry on organisational performance, and if the impact is a negative one – as Tolle's statement implies – then what actions can be taken to address it?

There's reams of stuff about the effect of worrying on individuals summed up by one psychologist in the statement that 'Chronic worrying is often driven by a need to worry to "make sure things will all be OK", it will affect your mood; it will also have detrimental effects on your relationships, your work productivity, and your social life.' Not only that, another psychologist notes, 'the list of physical damage that worry can do, because of the biology of stress, is long and scary. Which means that not worrying more than we have to may be the best thing we can do for our health.'

Individually people worry because 'they think something bad will happen or could happen, so they activate a hypervigilant strategy of worry and think that if I worry I can prevent this bad thing from happening or catch it early'. It's associated with threat and negative risk. How often does anyone worry that they might win the lottery or meet the person of their dreams?

So, if worrying is potentially harmful to an individual's health, and people worry as a tactic aimed at avoiding threat and risk can we assume that a culture of worry is detrimental to the health and performance of the organisation? I think so. Individually worry is voiced with (I'm assuming) the best of intentions. But I've noticed that it seems to come into sharp relief when something new or different from the status quo is proposed. When aggregated, it forms a kind of collective worrying that verges on a difficult to breach defensive barrier.

Worrying looks helpful in that it raises perhaps legitimate concerns and anxieties that bear examination. But in many cases voicing a worry seems to stand instead of being curious about how to think things through and take action. It enables people to 'sit around and admire the problem' – another organisational phrase I've heard many times – rather than acting to solve it. The cumulative effect is a lack of energy and action around problem solving, taking decisions, accepting risks, and innovating.

Organisations intent on transforming will not do so by accepting high levels of individual and/or collective worrying. Unless we can convert the worry into more fearless mindset there will be organisational paralysis, and a clinging to the status quo. So what to do?

It's possible that by encouraging and pushing we could change the worry and get to positive action. On this, Christopher Logue's lovely poem says it all.

Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It's too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came,
and we pushed,
And they flew.

But pushing people over the edge is not acceptable in organisations – think charges of bullying, claims to industrial tribunals and similar. So what else is possible for organisations that want to transform but have to redirect the culture of worry that resists change? I wonder whether some of the techniques offered to individual worriers could be usable to reduce collective worrying. Here are three that are worth investigating:

Avoid 'What-if' thinking and remember that it's never as bad as you think it will be' – this a tip that repeats across several pieces that I read for individual worriers. But remember that 'What ifs' are the stuff of scenarios so maybe one way of changing the worry is to take a closer look the organisational situations people are worrying about. Let's act them out in scenarios and see what could happen and how much risk is involved and whether the perceived threats are really there and/or unmanageable. From this they may discover that the outcome might be completely different from the one they'd conjured up through worrying. 'It might even be wonderful, and surprising'. Link to the blog on this here.

Another common tip is to just let go and be in the moment. Interestingly mindfulness training that helps people stay in the moment is increasingly being offered in organisations, Google, and P & G among them and there is a fair amount of research showing how mindfuness practice reduces anxiety.

A third common tip is to 'voice the worry' which is not an issue in most organisations. Probably the issue is that the voice of worry is not heard, or acknowledged sufficiently. It may be that worriers have good points to make but don't express them in a way that is helpful. One suggestion offered on this is for the worriers to turn their worry into a problem to be solved. 'How can I/we tackle the issue effectively …. ?' And/or for the people listening to the expressed worry not to turn off but to really hear the questions behind the worry and engage the worrier in questions like 'What type of action would alleviate the worry?'

Beyond these three ideas there are many books offering advice on the topic of worrying. In fact, 3,216 are listed on Amazon.co.uk. But rather than plough through them let me know if you work in a culture of worry, and if so, what actions you can take to change it. I'd love to hear your stories.

PS: If you're feeling worried right now listen to this Bob Marley song

Frequently asked questions about moving office space tend to fall into four categories: the IT implications, flexible working, 'results only work environment' (if you're changing traditional performance measures) and a list on the workspace itself. In the work that I'm doing at the moment it's the final list – on workspace – that we're focused on. Below are some of the questions I've collected in the various pieces of work I've done on recently that people are now asking in the current work.

1. Where will I sit? Will everyone have a workspace?
2. How much space will I have to work in?
3. Will there be space for various types of meeting
4. How much storage space will I have? Is it private and lockable? What about my pedestal?
5. Where will I hang my coat?
6. Will the noise and light levels be different?
7. What do I do if I need to have a private conversation?
8. Exactly when will we move?
9. Do contractors get the same amount of space as employees?
10.How frequently can the floor layout be changed and how easy is it to do?
11.What is the document storage available? (Beyond personal storage)
12.What about confidential information?

I've found that by working with people who are moving offices or moving to a new space within the existing office or generally re-locating it's a whole lot easier for them if they help answer the questions they're asking.

One way of doing this is through space experiments i.e. trying out stuff in their current set-up, learning from this, and feeding the info to the workplace designers. We're about to start this activity in a part of an organization I'm working with. We've come up with eleven experiments for teams to try out in the weeks leading up to their move. The general idea is that each team chooses one experiment per week. Each week they will report back to all on how they got on, what they learned that they can feed to the workplace designers, and whether or not they will change their current ways of working and adopt the new ways or a variation. They then choose another experiment. At the end of the experiment period we'll re-group and come up with the way of working in the new space. Here's the list:

1. Instead of having meetings sitting down in a meeting room try standing up round a high table or try walking meetings.
2. Push all the under desktop pedestals against a wall and practice working without your pedestal to hand. (In the new design people will have lockers not their own pedestals).
3. Each day for a week swap desks with a different person in your team or in the district of your work to see what it feels like if we move into completely flexible desking.
4. Give up email and communicate by some other method. (Twitter, Yammer, Huddle, phone, face to face, text, IM, etc). We will provide training on those that you don't know.
5. Collectively agree to make some of the current space a 'quiet train coach' space where no talking is allowed and people cannot be disturbed if they are in it.
6. Have a day in the week when you run a team effort to clear out your desks and surrounding areas. Make it fun – prizes for the oldest object found, the most dustbin/trash sacks filled by one person of their stuff, etc.
7. Move some of the furniture in the existing configuration to a different configuration e.g. filing cabinets, shelving, etc to create a new space layout.
8. Find some small round tables and suitable chairs to place at the end of/between the current rows of desks so people can informally meet around them.
9. Set up some standing desks to try standing as you work.
10. Remove the items that personalize your current desk and have a display wall in the kitchen or in a common area that shows something about you.
11. Set up a photo wall of everyone who works in the space with their names. Go and talk to someone you haven't met before. See if you each have something that you're working on that is relevant to the other.
12. Post the organizational values and as a team consciously live them for a week thinking how they will show up positively in the new office layout.
13. Try out a clear desk policy.
14. Re-organize yourselves into districts and neighborhoods according to work flow not reporting line.
15. Add one thing to this list and try it out.

The way I've done this in the past is to have an eight week run up to the move where these activities are promoted, tracked and co-ordinated and there is someone in each team who is working with people to iron out (and note) all the stuff that happens in the course of the week.

What space experiments have you tried out as you redesign your physical offices. Let me know.

NOTES: An article about an office layout is here.
Related blogs: Plants in the office, Hotdesking experiment week 1

My American colleagues were very taken by my use of the word 'shambles', or sometimes 'shambolic'. Apparently they are not words in common US usage (neither is 'donkeys years' fyi). I'm wondering if this is because America is so rules bound and regulated that a shambles couldn't occur or is it because US culture makes the notion of a shambles outside their conceptual thinking? By the way if you're wondering, a shambles is a state of total disorder. Here's are recent examples of the words in use.

• Labour have attacked the government's response to a backlog of up to 30,000 passport applications as "shambolic".
• Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper demanded Mrs May apologise to thousands of people whose travel plans have been thrown into doubt. She said: "This has been a sorry shambles from a sorry department and a Home Secretary who can't even bring herself to say the word.
• Remember the 2012 Olympics in the UK? There was much talk of chaos and disorder in the offing as preparations proceeded and indeed there was one potential derailer around the security contract (awarded to G4S) for the event which ultimately led to the CEO, of G4S Nick Buckles, resigning. He 'told MPs that he regrets ever signing the Olympic security contract that has turned into "a humiliating shambles" that has left his company's reputation in tatters.'

But this shambles was an outlier not the norm. To everyone's amazement the Olympics were a triumph of organization and, in management-speak, 'achievement of desired outcomes'. The report on this in the Daily Beast 'Take a Bow London' is a delight to read while the more sober report on transport arrangements presented to Parliament after the event in November 2012 notes, with characteristic British understatement, that

Before the event there was a great deal of concern about the ability of London's transport network to cope with the higher than expected passenger levels associated with the Games and to deliver athletes, officials and spectators to and from events around the capital in a timely and efficient manner.

In the event, the Games passed off without a transport hitch and figures indicate that over the whole period of London 2012 over 100 million journeys were made on the Tube; 11 million on the DLR; 10.5 million on London Overground; the Barclays Cycle Hire scheme saw a million hires; buses travelled 40 million km; and there was an average ten per cent reduction in traffic on the Olympic Route Network during peak hours.

This success was achieved by the establishment of an Olympic Transport Authority (OTA), tasked with the responsibility for transport within the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA). The OTA oversaw the programme management of related infrastructure projects and was responsible for the delivery of real-time integrated coordination and control of transport during the Games".

Note the reference in the above to 'programme management'. It turns out that the Olympics were organized using the Managing Successful Programmes (MSP) methodology. A succinct case study from the Association of Project Managers outlines how this was used across the Olympic Games as a whole.

One of the features of MSP is the set of governance themes that underpin it. Typically a steering group is established to steer the project to success and mitigate the risk of anything with a hint of the shambolic happening and there is no shortage of guidance on the roles, responsibilities and benefits of governance bodies like these. For example(s), a 108 page report from the IMF discussing governance is firm that good governance leads to trust, confidence, and economic development i.e. no shambles.

Unfortunately, however, even with governance frameworks the shambolic can happen. Regardless of structure and process heading off a shambles is akin to the proverbial herding of cats and almost all big public change programmes are pilloried for achieving the shambolic. A wonderful exception is this pulling off of the London Olympics. This is attributed to:

• The emphasis placed on the formalities of programme management: bringing structure to the programme, pulling together high-level plans, ensuring cross-programme and/or integration risks were managed effectively, tracking issues and progress, updating the programme brief, continuously clarifying the aims, organizations and governance arrangements across the programme, reviewing the effectiveness of governance structures and adjusting them to meet changing circumstances and to evolve with the lifecycle of the programme, learning from previous programme experience to spot where things may be falling through the gaps, identifying scope gaps and overlaps in good time thus avoiding a more expensive and difficult to manage situation if left unaddressed, staying alert and responding to changing contexts and environment and responding flexibly to these.
• And more importantly, attending to the often neglected human aspects of programme management. On this, Heather Sinclair, Programme Assurance Manager said, 'It's important to establish good working relationships, to ensure challenges and problems can be resolved quickly.' She also says it's vital to take a pragmatic approach – dealing with so many different organizations, both public and private sector and both large and small, means that a 'one size fits all' approach isn't always going to work. 'In fact with the best will in the world it's never going to work. So it's important to have a thorough understanding of everyone's roles and who is responsible for what – and not be afraid to let people get on with their jobs. A flexible approach and being able to communicate your aims effectively is crucial to get people on side, build cooperation and get things done,' she says.

One way London 2012 approached essential relationship building was to form networks across organizations to bring together people with similar remits to enable communication and sharing of best practice. These networks ranged from informal knowledge sharing forums, to more structured and focused decision-making groups. Janette Lissaman, 2012 Programme Office Manager said, 'A paper report does not mean you know what is really happening. What you need is for people to be open and honest with you and good communication is key. We have to deal face to face with stakeholders too.'

Her colleague agreed: 'Winning over the hearts and minds of your colleagues is just as important as the process. The ability to manage successfully relies on collaboration and creating a programme management family. Constituent parts of the programme are massive programmes in their own right.'

That's good advice to take on the human aspects of programme management and there's more. The 2012 Olympics avoided dropping into shambolic by:

• Securing united leadership support from the outset
• Breaking down organizational silos and bringing together different people by theme rather than by function,
• Using various cross-cutting approaches to issues to build relationships across departments and organizations
• Preparing people for working in the new environment when issues would need to be identified and resolved quickly by those with the expertise, authority and experience
• Developing skills in dealing with unpredicted situations appropriately and efficiently
• Using the senior levels of governance to focus on preparations and setting strategic direction (not delving into the detail).

In my experience selecting the right Steering Group members is critical to getting the technical and the human aspects of a programme right. I liked the list of selection criteria from one local authority's practical workbook introducing people to the specifics of a programme steering group. The suggestion is that steering group members should have the time, inclination and clout to be able to:

• Do things (not just sit there)
• Make positive proposals (when ideas are needed)
• Ask questions (if information is needed)
• Offer alternatives (to create agreement)
• Build on proposals (to cement group vision)
• Test ideas (not reject them out of hand)
• Explain opposition (not just flat rejection)
• Help others (to cement solidarity)

I'd add in that if someone is a Steering Group member that it should be clearly stated as one of their performance objectives, that a sufficient amount of time is allocated to the role – it's part of the day job, and not something to be squeezed in around it, and that they are measured on their contribution to the effectiveness of the programme.

If you take all the steps outlined above you will have taken the right steps to head off a programme shambles. What tips have you got on this topic? Let me know.

Can leadership (style/approach etc.) be designed as part of an organization design project? I read this question on the Organization Design Forum Linkedin group discussion board. There are 13 comments on it mainly saying 'no'. Just as a point of interest the same question is on the European Organization Design Forum group discussion board with no comments. Why is this? (A different blog topic maybe).

The question set me thinking. In a piece of work I did last year in the US we were looking at moving people out of their private offices and into open plan working. Many of the positional leaders (i.e. those graded as in senior roles) were horrified. They wanted to know – my paraphrase – how people would know they were 'important'.

The symbols of power or status (think red carpet) were part and parcel of their leadership role. And they felt they owned them and were entitled to them. It was part of the leadership culture. It's still somewhat like that. The US Federal Government, for example, allocates "The greatest amount of workspace at the executive levels (300 USF per person) and the least amount of workspace at the support staff levels (64 USF per person)." In the report quoting those figures are other figures from 9 benchmarked organizations. All but one allocates far more space to executives than to junior staff this, in spite of the fact that senior people are more likely to be out of the office than support staff.

There are some in a positional power position who enjoy the trappings that tend to go with it, and others that reject them. Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, is well known in the city as a regular cyclist rather than a luxury car driver, as he said … 'I love cycling. I cycle every day.' I wonder whether those leaders who reject the symbols of power are more effective leaders? A few notably effective social/political change leaders immediately spring to mind: Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela (not that he had a lot of choice), the Dalai Lama. Business leaders in that category of rejecting power and status symbols don't immediately spring to mind. Let me know if you can think of some.

However, I do know of some business leaders who reject these leadership symbols as a kind of inverse power play. So I was intrigued to see this report – with good summary infographc – on executive air travel that states: "The most senior executives are much less stressed by flying in economy-class seats; it is lower-ranking managers who are bothered. The authors suggest this is because GMs and CEOs often set travel policies and therefore wear their economy-class membership as an emblem of shareholder value." And presumably thereby hope to show what effective leaders they are.

So back to the question 'Can leadership (style/approach etc) be designed as part of an organization design project?' Stuart Wigham, who asked the question, elaborates on it saying:

I guess my thoughts are centered around can you fundamentally change an organization leadership approach without changing who the leaders are within a hierarchy (assuming a conventional/traditional organization). I've seen organizations change but I am not convinced I've witnessed this change without shifts in who the leaders are as well as the approach they take. I guess it comes down to the question of can individuals change? My immediate response to this is yes of course, in fact attitudes and behaviors tend to be fleeting and contextually bound so we're changing all the time even if we do not acknowledge it. So it then comes down to a question of underlying belief systems which tend to be more fixed, and in this sense I wonder even if I can shift someone's behavior through manipulation of the environment. (My bolding)

Manipulation of the environment could involve taking away the explicit symbols of leadership including the private offices. It could mean relaxing the dress code – have you noticed that in many organizations the male executives tend to wear suits and ties and the lower graded staff don't, or if lower graded staff do then people think they are acting above their station? For a delightful blog on the symbolism of office clothing read this.

With the idea of symbols in mind I went into a meeting of senior leaders last week in which they spent time talking around the point that 'if we are going to transform the business then we need to change the culture'. What they didn't seem to have a great handle on was that they colluded in the current culture by tacitly adopting and endorsing the symbols of it. I wondered if they would be able to recognise that and then maybe decide to change the symbols.

So, on the spur of the moment I asked all the men in the room to take off their ties. There were about 15 men – only one of whom wasn't wearing a tie at the time (the tech guy which speaks volumes!). So that left 14 people with ties. The most senior person present instantly rose to the challenge and took off his tie. For a brief moment I wondered what would happen if he had refused to. One person did say he wasn't going to, the rest did. One put his back on later in the meeting but the others stuck with tielessness. Later in the afternoon I saw one of the men in another meeting still without his tie and I remarked on it to the person I was with. She said she'd never seen him without a tie before.

The point of this exercise, and because it wasn't planned there wasn't time for any real exploration, was to suggest the idea that culture change and business transformation/redesign could be aided through leaders and others consciously recognizing, changing or removing symbols. Each organization has cultural symbols specific to it. In a previous blog post I mentioned the doors of the building I worked in. They opened by a push button, not by pushing the door. Once the button is pushed the door very, very slowly opens. I think this is an unintended symbol but to me it represents a very powerful cultural indicator.

Symbols are one of the elements examined in The Cultural Web, a well-known approach for looking at an organization's culture, developed by Gerry Johnson and Kevan Scholes in 1992, (see a more recent discussion of this here). They mention car parking spaces as well as office space and layout, other obvious visual symbols are name badges (do they have job titles on or not), uniforms, notice boards, signage, artwork, and so on. (The other cultural elements they discuss are stories, rituals and routines, power and organisational structures, and control systems).

It's often newcomers who notice the organisational symbols because they have to make choices about whether to participate in their meaning. (Should I wear a tie or not?) But longer serving people who've ceased noticing the symbols can bring them into the spotlight to examine their power. I remember an exercise I once did, taken from The Artist's Way at Work which involved photographing my workday. It was fascinating to walk around with a camera really looking at the context and environment through a camera lens, the visual symbols at least became very obvious and thus easier to work with.

So here's a suggestion for you. One workday take photos of all the leadership symbols in your organisation. Consider whether by adding, changing or removing these you or the organizational leaders themselves could redesign their leadership style and approach. I think symbols are a part of what can be consciously designed into an organization and have the potential to change leadership style and approach. What do you think? Let me know.

In World Future Society special report 20 Forecasts for 2014 – 2030 I read that 'foresight' is the single most critical skill for the 21st century. Here's why:

Foresight is critical to achievement in all areas of your life, including your major life decisions. People who lack foresight are likely to find themselves unemployed when jobs are unexpectedly lost to new technologies, competition from overseas, or shifts in consumer tastes. Foresight is the key to survival in a world of disruptive innovation.

And then come some hefty claims:

Foresight enables you to see opportunities, avoid threats, and chart the fastest path to your goals. The key to success is seizing opportunity when it arises. But you need to see the opportunity and be prepared to take action. That's why foresight gives you power and agility to achieve any goal you want to achieve.

Over-ruling my sceptic meter (on high at this point) I learned of the seven ways to 'Spot Tomorrow's Trends Today'. OK, since I have some interest in both achieving personal goals and supporting organizations in achieving business goals I read on to find that one of the seven ways of gaining foresight is to:

Develop Scenarios-—Futurists often describe the future development of a trend, a strategy, or a wild-card event in story form. These scenarios can paint a vivid picture that can help you visualize possible future developments and show how you can prepare effectively for future risks and opportunities. Scenarios help you to blend what you know about the future with imagination about the uncertain. Scenarios help you move from dreaming to planning and then to accomplishment.

Hearing that the Oxford Futures Forum holds regular conferences around scenarios I investigated. This year's aimed 'to join two established communities of thought and practice – the design research community and the scenario planning practice and research community … to enable generative dialogue, productive collaboration and deep reflection on the connections between scenario thinking and practice and design.' You can read more about the intention of the meeting here

I successfully applied to be invited and I've just spent two days with seventy or so people working in scenarios and/or design. I've come away a lot of learning/questions/resources to think about, explore and develop in organization design work. So conference organizers goals achieved – at least as far as I'm concerned. What stands out for me:

Organization design the 'agile' way. I was glad to meet people also interested in agile, iterative, open-ended, and unfolding methods of design. I'm newish to the field of agile methodology and intrigued by its potential application to organization design. Take a look at this introduction to Open Unified Process. The four principles it is based on: Collaborate to align interests and share understanding, balance competing priorities to maximize stakeholder value, focus on the architecture early to minimize risks and organize development, evolve to continuously obtain feedback and improve could well be adapted for use in organization design work.

The only problematic word in these principles is 'architecture' which some might take to mean the organization chart. But 'architecture' in software is much more encompassing. Some definitions are here. For organization designers substituting the words 'whole system' for 'architecture' would work.

I talked with people who are applying agile techniques into government policy making – the work of Christian Bason, of Mindlab in Denmark is particularly interesting. He's got a book coming out later this year on Design for Policy. We had good discussions on the challenges posed by trying to introduce open and agile approaches into traditionally organized governmental systems.

What's missing? One group in this evolving conference (no presentations, just self-organization and self-direction in 90 minute slots) came up with some terrific notions on what is missing/ choreographed/removed/airbrushed out from scenarios and design development in general. In one session they developed an embryonic toolbox that put in the richness and reality that could be in scenarios.

They did this by taking a starter office photo – of the type that designers show to clients – and applied other pictures and artefacts to answer the question 'What important things are missing/left out of the bubbles of design futures visualizations? (e.g. risks of environmental futures, disabled, stereotypes, gender norms, value of people's data, broken technologies, design frictions, clutter, continuity of mundane, religion, flags, expression of values). Everyone present instantly wanted to buy the toolbox! Maybe it will appear on Kickstarter.

They went on to suggest that we didn't talk about the propaganda/politics in scenarios, asking who's creating them for what purpose? They wondered whether scenario designers should be credited, and what transparency of scenario construction could mean.

Risk and uncertainty in design and scenarios – this was a fascinating if esoteric and at points struggling discussion as we wrestled with the question that someone put forward about whether we were designing for mitigating risk or handling uncertainty or both/neither. There were lots of illustrative stories – mainly about procurement of stuff where it was impossible to state exactly what would be delivered by when, (uncertainty) but the outcome was that the 'fit for purpose' product would be delivered in the time frame (low risk). (I vividly remember on one project we were bidding for the request for me to state the numbers, dates and content of all the change management workshops I would deliver into the project before I'd even met the client or knew anything about the situation. I thought it was an insane thing to ask but it was a procurement process requirement). Anyway, out of this discussion ultimately came a testable method for designing via unfolding scenarios – unfortunately we didn't get as far as working out how to change procurement processes and requirements.

Language: One of the joys of this interdisciplinary gathering was making sense of each other's' specialized vocabulary, learning new phrases and finding different interpretations of commonly used ones. What's the difference between narrative and story? Is 'narrative' too academic a word for day to day managers? What do we mean by 'turbulent environments'? Are use cases the same as personas? Do concepts like 'high concept pitch' and 'boundary objects' have a place in scenarios and design work? People 'showed and told' their favourite phrases 'tacit to touch it', and 'economy of line' were two that I Iiked. I'm wondering what new words/concepts I've absorbed that will enter my speech.

Muddles and models: emerged in a session on iterative policy development. The 'muddle' bit was credited to Matt Andrews, not at the conference but at Harvard Kennedy School. He talks about introducing reforms in a complex environment not by doing lots of assessment studies but by iteratively capability building via feedback to solve problems that people care about. "In a sense, this is like saying that you need to muddle through the sea of icebergs in your context, ensuring that every step helps you navigate better in future".

Context and design: aspects of context were referred to all the time in the sessions I went to. Nobody in these thought you could design anything, including scenarios, free from context. But the question was how does context make design and how does design make context? Someone quoted from the Stuart Brand book How Buildings Learn: What happens after they're built? and I remembered the Winston Churchill quote 'We shape our buildings, and afterwards, our buildings shape us'. So a nice reminder in this that as the context is constantly changing so should our designs.

Resources: these were decks of cards to aid the design process that people brought to the 'Deck-head' session
Mindlabs Method Cards
Systems mythology toolkit
The Thing from the Future

So a worthwhile 2 days, I learned new things to try out, met great people, and developed and changed some perspectives. Whether I developed foresight I have yet to find out.

What are your methods for developing your scenario, design and foresight skills? Let me know.