From service design to systems change

In order for design to transform business, it must first transform itself. It must leave behind the language and mindset of engineering. Get past scalability and extensibility. Systems and components. Agility and usability. Usefulness and seamlessness. Efficiency and friction. Data and metrics. Patterns and code.

The Transition Design Approach Emphasizes:

The need to frame problems within radically large, spatio-temporal contexts that include the past (how the problem evolved over long periods of time), present (how the problem manifests at different levels of scale) and future (visions of the long-term future in which the problem has been resolved).

The n

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YOU’VE FOUND A HIGH-LEVERAGE INTERVENTION WHEN YOU can see the long-term pattern of behavior shift qualitatively in a system: when, for example, stagnation gives way to growth, or oscillations dampen dramatically. This kind of breakthrough happens most readily when you can make alterations in the structure you’ve mapped out. You either add new elem

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Given this understanding that "control" is at best an illusion and at worst a devastating violence to living systems, the question that Bateson was asking is: How does change happen? How does a family change? How does a marriage change? How does an ecosystem change? How does a culture change?

An understanding of living systems reveals that change c... See more