Recipes for Systemic Change - Helsinki Design Lab

Subsection113Expected Studio OutcomesThe Studio experience will produce outcomes on threelevels. The direct outcomes are specific deliverables such as aframework for strategic improvement and a set of ten opportunities.Indirectly the Studio can be thought of as a vehicleto build momentum and influence within your network byproviding an engagement with meaningful content. Finally,because the week will be an intense experience, our observationsare that one of the substantial outcomes is a personaltransformation that comes from hands-on experience with anew way of working. Participants generally leave the Studiowith an invigorated sense of the possibility of working in across-silo team and a deeper understanding of systemic challenges.PeopleProcessProblemPlaceThe Studio’s target at the end of the week is twofold:1. Articulate a clear vision or framework for strategicimprovement describing the ecology of the problem.2. Propose an architecture of solutions that highlightsthe top ten opportunities to help move closer to thevision.Today’s challenges are as much about vision as they areabout designing the transition to accomplish that vision. Assuch, the opportunities are the critical hinge between theway things are now and how things could be. Together thesetwo outcomes form a bridge between current realities and aprojective 1 future, reinforcing the importance of stewardshipand integration within strategic design.The collection of opportunities are likely to be wellinformedguesses more than detailed proposals, but articulatingthem—even as hunches—is a way to avoid the generalitiesand abstractions that strategic conversations often get lostin. The specificity of the hunches, supported by sketches anddiagrams, act as an arbiter between the Studio and their finalreview guests to help avoid situations where individuals areusing the same words but talking about different things.1—Imagining new configurations after analysisingexisting ones, and ‘projecting’ thesenew ideas into the world with compelling anddescriptive imagery and narrative.Framework for Strategic ImprovementA strategic framework is the result of breaking down theinitial challenge, putting everything on the table, and thenre-assembling it in a synthetic manner. These are the Studio’shigh-level thoughts that plot the course of the conversation