A CENSE of Discovery

Designing for Seasons What if we designed for seasons, not static systems? A living systems approach to creating better services and systems means designing like gardeners, not engineers. The implications for health systems is enormous.... https://censemaking.com/2026/07/09/designing-for-seasons/

Leading The Networked Organization Are you networked as a leader or an organization? A networked organization is one where the ability to succeed at the mission of the organization is strategically dependent upon, by design, others.... https://www.cense.ca/leading-the-networked-organization/

Writing

Two Questions to Start Designing When we work with clients, partners, and students who are unfamiliar with design, we often start with asking…... https://www.cense.ca/two-questions-to-start-designing/

What are the features of health that we can shape? What elements or domains are part of the areas where we can reasonably hope to craft services and supports that add value to people's experience of health? Four things start us off.

When we reimagine what a health system could look like from scratch, we invite conversations that lead us to places we wouldn't go to otherwise. This is the gift of design futures.

Complexity sets traps as it tells stories. Moving faster doesn't tell them better, but gets us to add more complexity, not less.

What does does designing for classroom complexity look like?

Classroom complexity brings together policy, practice, and design challenges for those seeking to make education and learning more effective. I'm exploring what this looks like, and why it's not a simple fix.

Strategy and preparedness in health systems can learn from other contexts like the recent incident in Finland where one of the most prepared countries in the world missed something that was right under their nose.

The complexity of the present day has echoes of COVID-19 -- we can learn lessons from then to apply to today's complex world.

If we design for impact, but don't evaluate our work, what impact did we have? That's not a frivolous question. Evaluation is the pathway to understanding impact and ensuring that the designs we make create and promote health, not harm it.

Learning in Complex Contexts with Design-Driven Evaluation

Weakness of Strong Signals

When wisdom seems thin, and complexity seems high. What way do find through it all? My thoughts on what happens when we go past our ability to make sense of where we are and our place in a complex world.

Want to resist the algorithmic prison that our feeds have become? It might be time to check your email.

Happy holidays and may the season bring the best out of the tension of light and darkness, hope and fear, and rest and energy.