David, Ken, Klause & All: The interest in and concern about measurement [evidence] is considered to be sense-ability 101 for many in the change-making business. Nothing earth shattering there. Certainly many in practice are well aware that a central complexity in many client requests for timely help today is that they have no existing conditions picture from which measurement can be derived. Few organizational leaders would need to be reading the PhD Design list to be aware of this fact. This has been the case for decades.

Does that mean that we all throw up our hands and go home? No not at all.

Keep in mind that most organizations are still emerging from numerous back-to-back eras in which data was difficult to capture and not particularly valued…into a new era when capture is easier and its value is increasingly recognized across a wide spectrum. Regardless this is often an issue at the outset of change-making projects today whether you refer to them as design thinking or not.

Not sure who you are hanging out with but no one that we know of is selling snake oil as change-making. As stated above, it is certainly true that for a long time data capture was not mainstream for most organizations and that remains a harsh reality of the context in which change is being undertaken right now.

Also keep in mind that the goal is often organizational related and not to create an object, differed from another object that is going to sit on a public shelf somewhere.

In organizational work often value and measurement are situational. Certainly most organizational clients would feel no obligation to share any aspects of their hard work externally with a couple of self-styled gatekeepers sitting over on the PhD Design list who have decided it is important…:-) In the real world other forces are in play. Often other values are in play.

The many good folks helping others with driving change in organizations and societies are not only aware of the measurement challenge but many have for years been working this challenge in numerous ways regardless of all the context imperfections. Most change making practices have arsenals of existing condition capture tools from simple to rather complex. These would extend far beyond anything that Bucky was doing. (He was not particularly interested in organizations or cocreation.)

At Humantific we execute and teach organizational leaders everything from how to capture/create visual today-tomorrow pictures in real time to how to undertake customized existing condition picture creation (based on research combined with visual sensemaking) to future picture creation as well as how to work with leaders on cocreating the BRIDGE between the two states of today and tomorrow. This is difficult work. No design academy that we know of is teaching what we do today. In addition we have an entire stream of R&D research around new generation dialog mapping tools connected to big data and innovation.

What practice leaders tend to do is look at and look for the opportunities in emerging situations rather than at whether or not some folks over on various discussion lists are happy or not.

When it comes to existing conditions capture and measurement, don’t miss the forest for the trees. Right now there is tremendous energy and resources being invested around change and measurement being fueled in large part by availability of and interest in big data coupled with sensemaking. In the next few years you will see significant increases in technology tools around current conditions tracking and measurement questions.

Already there are systems in play that have begun to measure many, many aspects of what the humans inside organizations (and societies) are doing, including all internal and external communications. Be careful what you wish for. Whether everyone likes it or not the pendulum is rapidly swinging. The days in which organizations (and societies) were operating by the seats of their pants are rapidly closing.

Let’s save Bucky Fuller methods for another day…:-)

GK.

On Jul 29, 2013, at 4:01 AM, David Sless wrote:

> JK, Ken, and all,
> 
> Misreading me is your prerogative. I don't feel a need to responding. But for those of you on this list who might be interested, let me pose the issue in another way.
> 
> The so called  "change-making business", even if it doesn't say so explicitly, is in the business of bringing about useful change (at least for someone, some organisation, or society). I ask of those involved in this business who want to discuss it in a public domain that they give a public account of what they do and the difference (change) they make. Hence my preoccupation with plausible publicly examinable before and after evidence. I'm not after science, nor am I after ultimate answers, just some publicly examinable before and after accounts. Stories about getting from A to B, if you will
> 
> Similarly, if we are to believe that design is, as Simons put it, 
>> transformation of existing conditions into preferred ones.
> Then we should be able to ask, what are the existing conditions, what are the preferred ones, and what is the evidence that design got us there?
> 
> There are lots of interesting intermediate questions about such things as which methods get us most effectively from A to B, is it possible to describe A and B? If not why not? Is the story more important than the outcome? etc etc. I could go on, but I've made my point.
> 
> David
> -- 
> 
> 
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