How communities are initiating the Doughnut. What’s similar, what’s different, and how might other cities “start well”? — Cities across the world are exploring Doughnut Economics, shaping up their Doughnuts, sourcing the ingredients, playing with the mix, and reimagining the health of our communities and planet. Some are further along in their Doughnut journey than others, with funding, government and research support in place. …

23 November–4 December Good things “In 1.5 hours, to create an empathetic bond, feels like a kind of magic.” And with that the the first Empathy Talks pilot is done. On 25 November we ran a 2 hour pilot via Zoom. 4 people joined — 1 as speaker, 3 as listeners. All…

16–20 November Good things People are being so open and giving with advice on the Empathy Talks approach. This week we spoke with excellent people from KaosPilot and Complexity Surfers / Horizon Bricks /Animus. We have 1 if not 2 pilot experiments happening in the next fortnight. People are coming out of…

9–13 November — Good things Spreadsheets creating warm fuzzies Who knew a spreadsheet could feel so nice. The Revenue sharing sheet (template kindly shared by Lina Patel) we’re using to determine individual and shared contributions to our Empathy Talks educational experiment has helped us understand each others motivation and willingness to engage in the work, and see each other…

How the pandemic led a social enterprise to build everything they were dreaming about for 2040, now. — The Three Horizons Framework (3H) helps by asking people first to make their assumptions explicit, and then to explore emerging change as a way to reframe what they think, what they want, and what they do. …

I consider Kate’s video a go-to for understanding and applying Bill Sharpe’s Three Horizons Framework. From 3:56 Kate describes how to use the framework for deeper dives in group strategy workshops. I’ve extracted her step-by-step guide below. H1 — BUSINESS AS USUAL A — What is business as usual? What are the key characteristics of the prevailing system? B — Look back — how did we get here? What values, cultures…

“Tackling complexity” has taken on a different meaning for me since my early days as a design researcher creating and testing banking apps. I now work as a strategic designer at Paper Giant applying systems thinking and human centred design-led approaches to complex socio-economic challenges. …

We were somewhere around our eleventh cup of tea in one day when the realisation we were in England began to take hold. Five other realisations also quickly took hold: Systems are a dance, where we identify and mingle with all parts interconnected at micro levels as they interact together over time; A system performs a transition. Change as part of transition is not linear, instead happening in waves, and within emerging contexts;