Approach

We are designers. We sometimes travel by different names and disguises, but we design - with you. We work together to design or redesign a future, strategy, plan, team, program, project, event, process, network, system, supply chain, organization, business venture, course, curriculum, or life.

Our design intent is to encourage individual and organizational development through systemic thinking and action. Simply, we help people think and act systemically.™ Our approach and methods are from a systems perspective. They are grounded in four systems principles, as articulated by Robert Flood and Mike Jackson:

Think about and manage the whole.
Achieve meaningful participation.
Be reflective.
Enhance human spirit and freedom.

While each individual and every organization are unique systems, they exhibit typical behavior patterns that can be understood and changed using one or more systems methods. The behavior is in the system. These methods manifest the systems principles and address the behavior patterns. We generally use, adapt, or blend one or more methods in each engagement. The methods we use include the following:

Appreciative Inquiry
Balanced Scorecard
Future Search
Interactive Planning
Organization Workshop™
Project Retrospectives
Soft Systems Methodology
Scenario Planning
Strategy Maps
System Dynamics
Total Systems Intervention

System (n.): a collection of elements forming a whole.

Thinking (n.): a way of reasoning, judgment.

Systems thinking uses the ideas of emergence and hierarchy, communication and control to understand systems and their behavior.

Systems practice employs systems ideas to manage complex processes and artifacts for the benefit of individuals, organizations, and society.

Designers should live close to the sky, for perspective.

"Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context - a chair in a room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan."
- Eliel Saarineen, Time, July 2, 1956

"What were you thinking?"
- Dr. Phil