Recipes for Systemic Change - Helsinki Design Lab

24 Chapter1—The first mechanical ‘tree-felling machine’was patented by Andreas Stihl in 1926, a full 64years after Mr. Lincoln’s untimely death.2—Tinkering is increasingly entering educationdebates as an important skill for many to have.For one well-articulated argument see ’A NewCulture of Learning‘ by Douglas Thomas andJohn Seely Brown.and when done right the result is sharp strategic intent that isuseful in chopping planning tasks down to size. Investing thetime to articulate the ecosystem of the problem and create abalanced ‘portfolio’ of prioritized areas of action accelerateslater choices by providing principles to guide decision-makingon a more discrete level.If we take seriously the cheeky example of Lincoln thelumberjack, how else might he have accomplished his goal?Without losing the vision of chopping down a dauntinglylarge tree, Lincoln the would-be chopper would have lookedto what opportunities were available around him. He couldhave spent the first five hours and fifty-five minutes attemptingto design and build a new chopping implement. Butthat is hugely risky when existing tools are known to workdecently well and the investment required by new tools iscertain to be huge. 1 Conversely, he could have immediatelyaccepted the givens and started chopping right away witha dull axe. The danger with this option is that the task ofchopping becomes so laborious that Lincoln tuckers outbefore being able to complete it. In this case, using an alreadyavailable option (the axe) and putting his efforts into refiningits effectiveness (honing) represents a shrewd balance ofopportunism and ambition.Described here is a way of working that is natural tomany entrepreneurs, hackers, inventor-engineers, designersand tinkerers 2 of all sorts. Navigating the space betweenopportunity and ambition is familiar to anyone who workswith clients, yet working under a brief defined by the clientcan be very difficult when the instructions are closer to visionthan strategic intent. This is often the case, however, becauserobust strategy is difficult to develop a priori, before engagingspecific ideas about services and artefacts that exist in timeand space, and have human consequences.Investment into clarifyingintentDesignVisible resultsLinear approachROITime