What I believe – a credo for my practice
Note:
It has been a while since I have posted something here. I have used the time of the Covid Pause to further clarify my thinking. I just wanted to quickly put down some of my thoughts – mostly for my own sake. Will come back to edit and clean up.
Realizing Better Futures – What I believe.
All Human Enterprises are Living Enterprises. They are best understood as complex Evolutionary Systems – There are no simple answers to Life and the [[Living Enterprise]]
For a Living Enterprise to flourish and thrive over time in a changing context – it must have certain Capabilities and Capacities.
In the face of our challenges, [[Realizing Better Futures]] is what matters – it is an incremental/evolutionary and practical thing, not an idealistic thing – Realizing alternatives is what Innovators do – therefore the discipline of Innovation Management Matters more to Realizing alternative and better Futures than just design.
This ability to flourish [ remain whole, healthy and vital ] is a result of Practice and something that matures over time – This Practice is [[Meta Design]].
Empowering the Living Enterprise is what is important – Create an Autonomous, Autopoietic Enterprise. Social Challenges are best addressed collectively by the Enterprise as a whole.
The Meta Design Practice spans several modes of Being and Becoming – These include the ability to discover generative external and internal structures, dynamic behaviors, foresight, representations, change-making etc,.
Because the process of Realizing Better Futures is Transformational and requires paradigmatic Shifts – Transition Leadership becomes critical to success – Leadership can also become ingrained in an autonomous enterprise.
To be such an Enterprise that can evolve and change, you need certain characteristics – [[Cx]] – this comes from the understanding that [[Living Enterprise]] are Complex Evolutionary Systems, embedded in Complex Realities – particularly because these are Human Enterprises. Developing such Capabilities happens through Practice.
Social Challenges come about due to pathologies in [[Meta Design]] Practices. The [[Integral]] nature of the Living Enterprise is compromised in some ways – often due to inappropriate interventions (Designs). They can also happen unintentionally.
How to critique and analyze Complex Evolutionary Systems is a separate Body of Knowledge. It informs Meta Design, but is not a part of it. Briefly, CES are multi-dimensional, multi-scalar – and not very easy to reduce to simplistic representations. Experts have many theories that provide explanations as well as Ideas for how to making things better. These ideas are usually siloed and aggravate the fragmentation.
This is because, social realities are not only described using Complexity or Evolutionary Ecological thinking. We are in the Search for Better Explanations and Understanding – particularly a Casual Explanation that can help us design interventions and Drive Change. We uncover hidden and invisible, things, forces, relationships.
Nothing should be held sacrosanct – always question – the more strategic the challenge – the deeper the questioning. The [[Meta Design]] Practice dismantles existing structures, thus opening up spaces and offers alternative representations for Strategic Choice and Decision Making.
Designing is essentially a task of making choices – Some of these choices are Strategic. This act of making Strategic Choices, is pivotal to [[Realizing Better Futures]]. Better is not [[Normative]] – though there are certain Universal Principles that can be leveraged.
Strategic Design is best addressed at the Enterprise Level using Ecological and Evolutionary thinking. This is what makes it unlike traditional design. That changes how your approach Interventions, Architectures and the orchestration of Transitions.
There are no global answers or solutions – all answers are specific to your contexts. Depending on the seriousness of the Challenge – there is a need to go Upstream before one goes downstream. An enterprise must take its evolution in its own hands. Learning, something that is included in the idea of Meta-Design practice is critical.