RETHINKING ARCHETYPES

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2 days ago
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OLD RULES FALL AWAY

The case is strong for acknowledging that the old rules regarding strategic planning in a relatively stable world don’t apply anymore. In the face of *VUCA those days are gone. Making that acknowledgment it’s also good to not get strategic planning mixed up with, confused with, core innovation processes which are designed to be, not one-shot takes, but rather central to the toolbox of adaptability and continuous reinvention. (See *VUCA ALTERNATIVES in *NOTES TO READERS below.)

Many of our organizational changemaking readers will know that strategic plans and innovation methods are two very different things. In the fog of a competitive marketplace it’s not difficult to find them being confused, by oversight or by design.

This book is not about strategic planning! Our focus here is on innovation process evolution in the face of constant change and rising complexity of challenges facing collective us. For many today, getting to the future is not a quarterly or yearly event but rather a bird-by-bird exercise undertaken everyday with tools that are adaptive to multiple contexts.

Fundamental to this book and contrary to some of the community vibes floating around, we want to convey that there are multiple ways in which to get to and or create the future, multiple ways to participate in the still emerging Design for Complexity practice community.

It is inherent in the diversity and complexity of the community that there is no one single prescriptive silver bullet. Differences certainly do exist.

TWO PROCEDURAL BANNERS

Being packaged up with different words and promises, much of that diversity can be understood to exist under the two procedural banners; Future Casting and Strategic Intervention. (See *ACKNOWLEDGING NO SHORTAGE OF TERMS in *NOTES TO READERS below.)

These basic approach archetypes consist of either jumping to an imagined TOMORROW and then working iteratively backwards to TODAY or alternatively jumping off from TODAY building iteratively towards TOMORROW. Each has its ideal contexts. Some Design for Complexity Approaches flex to both archetypes while others are focused on one or the other.

Whether we all like it or not, the reality is that presently some of the strong advocacies have been bent in a competitive marketplace towards undermining one over-the-other when both are extremely useful. If you are down the rabbit hole thinking there is one future-making approach it's a good moment to rethink and expand that aperture.

MANY FACTORS IN PLAY

Perhaps not so much in academia, but in real world practice, much depends on what organizational leaders see as the priority at any given time, both short and longer term. Fundamentally leaders ask themselves whether this is a moment to expend resources creating a new vision, a new “system”, a new organization, a new future model?

Is it a moment to engage in systemic thinking regarding how best to evolve/transform what currently exists? Is it a time to be doing both as part of wider considerations?

Many factors typically play into that consideration. Organizational leaders reflect on how well or how poorly their organization is proactively adapting to continuous external change, and or participating in the invention of the future. Timing-wise; Future Casting tends to be occasional and Strategic Intervention continuous.

In a literature sense, to quote pioneers Sidney Parnes in 1967 and Russ Ackoff in 1974, some approaches are looking at and acknowledging “messes” [Strategic Intervention], some are envisioning clean slates [Future Casting]. In one way or another, both end up grappling with current conditions.

LINEAR / NON-LINEAR

Happy to share that one of the many things discovered while doing our first book Innovation Methods Mapping looking across multiple communities of practice and an 80+year time period was that since the 1960s no innovation process creator/author has ever intended his/her model to be linear. Often poor graphic representations undermine that message. Poor, not deep enough, skill-building can also impact how process tools are being understood and utilized.

Often cheap "straw-man argument" shots are not very scholarly. Oddly pointing out the need to avoid “reductionist thinking” while simultaneously selling the idea that no skill-building is going to be required to navigate and tackle complexity has become a palatable, a little-too-obvious approach seen in the never-a-dull moment marketplace.

While strategic planning might be linear, no innovation process included in this book is intended for use in that manner. (See RETHINKING MAPS vs COMPASSES in this book.)

ARCHETYPE 1: FUTURE CASTING

STARTING POINT: Future Casting begins with a vision of the future and then cycles back to the existing organization to determine what fits, what needs to be altered and what needs to be left behind.

DRIVERS: Numerous versions of *VUCA now exist to explain the various external forces driving need for change in many industries and organizations: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity. Whichever lens you find most useful all involve embracing the notion of continuous change occurring whether everyone likes it or not.

APPROACH APPLICABLE TO:

Arena 3: Organizational ChangeMaking

Arena 4: Societal ChangeMaking

For Orientation See NextD Geographies Framework

KEY METHODOLOGY DYNAMIC:

Taking the opportunity to set aside, leave behind the constraints of the existing system.

KEY CONTEXT ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: (acknowledgements vary)

Rising complexity of challenges and systems
Upstream from briefs in orientation
Assumption-free methods
Human-centered / Life-centered in orientation
Distinguish between content knowledge and process knowledge
Need for content and process knowledge present
Guide on the side / not hero sage on the stage
Orchestration/facilitation rises as challenges scale in complexity
Codified process knowledge accelerates cocreation
Innovation Harmonics connects strategy, innovation redefined, technology, process, cognition, behaviors, culture

KEY ELEMENTS: (elements vary)

Visual SenseMaking
Strategic Cocreation
Future Fit Assessment
Intervention Assessment
Open Systemic Challenge Framing
Rebalancing Innovation Power Dynamics / Psychological Safety
Orchestration of Ai
Deliberate Inclusion / Maximizing Brainpower
Connects strategy, innovation defined, process, cognition, behaviors, culture

FUTURE VISION SOURCES: (sources vary)

Situationally cocreated future vision
Leadership generated vision
Institute of the Future / research vision
Ai generated future vision
Visual SenseMaking makes the future visions come alive

TOOLBOX/METHODOLOGY: (combinations vary)

Hybrid Think Blending / Mixed Methods
Some approaches contain a blend of two disciplines. Others are blending 10+ cross-disciplinary knowledge threads. Example Threads: Design Thinking, Applied Creativity Thinking, Systems Thinking, Open Innovation Thinking, Complex Creative Problem Solving Thinking, Visual SenseMaking Thinking, Design Research Thinking, Complex Facilitation Thinking, Systemic Framing Thinking, Power Balance Thinking, Organizational Development Thinking, Ambidexterity Thinking, Innovation Behaviors Thinking, Innovation Acceleration Thinking, Design Doing, Inclusive Culture Construction Thinking, Inclusion Leadership Thinking, Complexity Navigation Thinking
Integration/orchestration of AI where appropriate

SECRET SAUCE:

Every Design for Complexity Method defines their secret sauce in different ways.

TIMING:

Tends to be occasional

SKILLBUILDING:

Some Design for Complexity approaches have introductory and advanced skill-building programs.

ARCHETYPE 2: STRATEGIC INTERVENTION

STARTING POINT: Strategic Intervention begins with unpacking the realities of the current situation/organization/system and cascade forward into future evolutions. The inclusion of a thoughtfully created information field exists in some versions.

DRIVERS: As described above, numerous versions of *VUCA now exist to explain the various external forces driving need for change.

APPROACH APPLICABLE TO:

Arena 3: Organizational ChangeMaking

Arena 4: Societal ChangeMaking

KEY METHODOLOGY DYNAMIC:

No assumptions are made regarding knowing what the challenges / opportunities are before beginning.

KEY CONTEXT ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: (acknowledgements vary)

Rising complexity of challenges and systems
Upstream from briefs in orientation
Assumption-free methods
Human-centered / Life-centered in orientation
Distinguish between content knowledge and process knowledge
Need for content and process knowledge present
Guide on the side / not hero sage on the stage
Orchestration/facilitation rises as challenges scale in complexity
Codified process knowledge can accelerate cocreation

KEY ELEMENTS: (elements vary)

Visual SenseMaking
Strategic Cocreation
Problem/Opportunity Finding
Problem/Opportunity Acknowledgement
Ethnographic Research / Insight Creation
Open Systemic Challenge Framing
Rebalancing Innovation Power Dynamics / Psychological Safety
Orchestration of Ai
Deliberate Inclusion / Maximizing Brainpower
Innovation Harmonics connects strategy, innovation defined, technology, process, cognition, behaviors, culture

VUCA DYNAMICS SOURCES: (sources vary)

A vast array of formal and informal sources are publicly available depending on the industry and or community context. Ai can help accelerate the assembly of this VUCA material. Constructing Universe Diagrams depicting the agreed up complete picture of the problematic/opportunistic context is just one of many diagrams that are typically created. There might be systems within systems in such diagrams. All depends on the context and focus.

TOOLBOX/METHODOLOGY (combinations vary)

Hybrid Think Blending/ Mixed Methods
Some approaches contain a blend of two disciplines. Others are blending 10+ cross-disciplinary knowledge threads. Example Threads: Design Thinking, Applied Creativity Thinking, Systems Thinking, Open Innovation Thinking, Complex Creative Problem Solving Thinking, Visual SenseMaking Thinking, Design Research Thinking, Complex Facilitation Thinking, Systemic Framing Thinking, Power Balance Thinking, Organizational Development Thinking, Ambidexterity Thinking, Innovation Behaviors Thinking, Innovation Acceleration Thinking, Design Doing, Inclusive Culture Construction Thinking, Inclusion Leadership Thinking, Complexity Navigation Thinking
Integration/orchestration of AI where appropriate

SECRET SAUCE:

Every Design for Complexity Method defines their secret sauce in different ways.

TIMING:

Tends to be continuous

SKILLBUILDING

While numerous overlaps between the two modes exist, each represents a different kind of changemaking capacity. Both capacities add significant fire-power to any organization's adaptive capacity and thus are extremely valuable to have on-board.

CLOSING

At the end of the day what is most important is to find a changemaking partner with an approach that syncs with your organizational and or community needs/objectives while being robust enough to constructively challenge old patterns, engaging with your most strategically minded leaders.

End.

This is a chapter in progress being shared prior to the book's publication.

*NOTES TO READERS

*VUCA ALTERNATIVES

Aimi Winkler points out: “Alternatives to VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) include BANI (Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear, Incomprehensible), which describes systems prone to sudden collapse; RUPT (Rapid, Unpredictable, Paradoxical, Tangled), focusing on rapid, layered change; and TUNA (Turbulent, Uncertain, Novel, Ambiguous), similar to VUCA but emphasizing novelty. Other approaches focus on antidotes like Vision, Understanding, Clarity, and Agility (V.U.C.A.) or concepts like Flux”

*ACKNOWLEDGING NO SHORTAGE OF TERMS

Many of our readers will know that while there is no shortage of terms for approaches seen in the marketplace today, most map to either Future Casting or Strategic Intervention, a few map to both.

Active Arena 3 and Arena 4 terms include; Backcasting, Speculative Design, Open Frame Design, Strategic Design, Transition Design, Transformation Design, Systemic Design, Systems Change, Systems Design, Complexity Navigation with numerous variations of some approaches in existence.

Some approaches begin with assumptions that the mess is known upfront. Others do not.

Some are adaptive to systems and fuzzy situations. Some are focused on one or the other.

Some are high in theory. Some are high in practicalities.

Some engage with plain language use. Some do not.

Some are human-centered. Others less so.

Some contain behavioral orchestration. Some do not.

Some privilege convergent thinking (decision-making). Some do not.

Some include systemic challenge framing. Some do not.

Some place great emphasis on discussing “boundaries”. Some do not.

Some tilt towards kumbaya. Some are more strategic.

Some have visual sensemaking fully integrated. Some do not.

Some embrace the [hero] stage-on-the-stage model. Others embrace guide-on-the-side.

Some contain both.

Some are based in academia, some in practice.

Some align with Ambidextrous strategic ambitions. Some do not.

Some connect to psychological safety creation. Some do not.

Some scale to inclusive culture building. Some do not.

Today most approaches contain some form of Think-Blending with various 2 to 10+ combinations of ingredients translating into very different approaches. Which ingredients are driving the train is key. Numerous options now exist, some more codified, coherent and clear than others.