In order to adequately design for an ecosystem, we must evaluate touch points across a continuum. When we move across the continuum in this way, we are better able to identify the gaps in care patients receive, their pain points, and where the ecosystem breaks for them. This allows us to discover the failures in consistent care and explore solutions.
Chris Kiess – UX Ecosystems: Designing a Patient’s Path to Health Care
Tag: Complexity
Neurodiversity as relation
The neurodiversity movement has been important for shifting what is meant by “human” rights so that both speaking and non-speaking autistics obtain rights to access – be it a communication device, support for that device and for daily life, education, and community inclusion. We remember, however, that these methods of inclusion have, so far, been extensions to the neurotypical way of life – an architecture. We ask, now, how neurodiversity can re-form the architecture itself. What is neurodiversity becoming? How are we becoming with neurodiversity?
Estee Klar – Neurodiversity as Relation
emphasis above by me
Three books, three formats, three sources
I’m currently reading three books. As I was thinking about which one I wanted to read last night I realized that I am reading each of the books in different formats. And not just in different formats, but from different sources.
Continue reading “Three books, three formats, three sources”Technology – required but not sufficient for digital transformation
Digital technology is a necessary component of digital transformation. In fact, digital transformation is only possible because of digital technology. And not only possible, but inevitable. Digital transformation isn’t something you do, it’s something that happens to you.
Digital transformation isn’t about getting better or more efficient at what you already know how to do. Yet, many organizations want exactly that, to simply “automate” the processes they already have, using these digital technologies to keep doing the same things they’ve always done in basically the same way. Online forms instead of paper forms, for example. Thinking in atoms, not bits. They think that the technology is sufficient to make them better; it helps the organization achieve some efficiencies of scale in getting done the things they’ve always gotten done. But this is not transformation.
At the same time, many employees of these organizations are concerned – and rightfully so – about what all these digital tools will mean for them. They are used to working on what is essentially an assembly line: a task passes from someone up the line to them, they do their piece of the task according to some predetermined set of rules or procedures, and then pass it down the line to the next person. Their job is to execute tasks when they’re told, in the manner in which they’re told to execute them. Input – black box – output, where the employee is a figurative black box in very real danger of being replaced by a literal black box of technology.
Digital technology is a necessary component of digital transformation, but is not sufficient to achieve transformation. Digital transformation is about becoming better and more effective at identifying and executing outcomes you didn’t even know were possible, and that requires a change in mindset, a change in culture. Dare I say, a change in purpose. From “we’re going to be the best at doing this thing thought up in the past” to “we’re going to come up with the best ideas and products ever.”
Otherwise your organization, like its employees, runs the very real risk of becoming a commodity itself, that figurative blackbox that is eventually, and inevitably, replaced by a literal black box.
Straight lines and sharp edges
I’m sitting on a plane as it boards, wanted to jot down some quick thoughts. I’ll come back in later to clean it up, add some links (that you are going to want to check out) and make it a bit more coherent.
In a blog post earlier today, Jim McGee discussed the boundary between strategy and tactics, how it used to be “well defined” – some people did strategy, some did tactics, and the two didn’t really overlap. But how it never really was so cut and dried and how we are realizing that. But we aren’t the first.
I’m currently reading Walter Isaacson’s new bio of Leonardo da Vinci, and one of the things that marked him as different in his time (and any time before him) was his realization that there are no straight lines or sharp edges in nature, and his incorporation of this knowledge into his art.
Then of course fractals and complexity.
Speaking of which, Dave Snowden recently wrote about the liminal spaces between the different sections of Cynefin. For example, the boundary between complexity and the complicated; going from one to the other is not a straight line boundary, there is an overlap.
Companies and superlinear scaling
I am about 100 pages into Geoffrey West’s book, Scale, and am having a hard time not just skipping ahead to the parts about cities and companies.
Cities, West says, scale superlinearly (aka increasing returns to scale) whereas companies scale sublinearly (aka economy of scale). Which is why cities typically last a long time, and companies (and animals, for that matter) typically die young.
What if you could structure your company to scale superlinearly? Is it possible? If so, how would you go about making that happen? Would you even want it to happen, or is it a good thing that companies “die” young?
Back to the book….
You should always follow the rules (except when you shouldn’t)
Note: This post references concepts explained in the Cynefin framework.
The typical organizational decision making process treats most operational issues as if they are Ordered, a complicated (or obvious) problem that needs to be solved. Based on your understanding of the situation you develop several courses of action, based on rules or “good practices” that have worked to some degree in the past, and implement a course of action with the belief that you can accurately predict the outcome of implementing the course of action based on past experiences. This assumes, in general, either a relatively static (non-adaptive) situation or a situation that develops in a predictable manner.
Many situations we face today, however, fall increasingly in the complex domain. In this case, you respond to the situation without any separate and discreet analysis or planning. If your actions don’t achieve the desired results, you take what you’ve learned (sense) and respond again. You don’t know what you are going to need to do until the situation presents itself, and you don’t know if it will work until after you’ve tried.
To dip into a pop culture reference, an episode of the TV show “The Last Ship” presented a scenario in which both obvious, complicated, and complex challenges presented themselves, all as part of the same situation. This is a very condensed description tailored to fit this conversation.
The ship is hunting – and being hunted by – an enemy submarine.
The Captain is on the bridge and his staff is providing him the information he needs to decide the appropriate course of action. A well defined task, with years of training and experience, he knows exactly what he needs to do, and his staff know exactly how to respond to the Captain’s orders to achieve the desired result. Obvious.
The ship’s sonar was damaged in a previous action. The Chief Engineer have a sensor that they can adapt to act as a sonar-like device to acquire the target, but have many technical, operational, and other practical considerations they must consider to make this happen. They know the constraints they have and what they need to do to make it work. The Chief coordinates each person’s actions to bring their experience to bear to plan and achieve the predicted results based on past experience. Complicated.
A land team comes across an unexpected gun emplacement threatening the ship. They don’t know exactly how many enemy personnel are manning / guarding the guns, nor do they know the terrain beyond the cover and concealment from which they will begin their assault. When asked the plan, the team leader responds simply with, “Win.” Each member of the team then executes the plan, responding as they learn more about the number of enemy personnel, the lay of the land, etc. Complex.
Organizations tend to look at all problems as if they are obvious or complicated, that we can simply apply a known rule or process and get the predicted / desired outcome. Which is great for when the problem you face is actually obvious or complicated. Too often, though, organizations prematurely try to reduce a complex problem to the point that they are obvious so that we can standardize and automate as much as possible.
When you try to solve a complex problem as if it were obvious, you are just begging for trouble.
no straight lines 