Recipes for Systemic Change - Helsinki Design Lab

46 Chapter1—The answer had nothing to do with thechairs: it was about the risks. Rather than solvesafety concerns through specific choices aboutseating configurations, we mitigated risk byhaving an additional security guard who couldassist with crowd calming and ushering in theunlikely event of a fire.Through investigation, we learned that the chairs werelocked together in sets of 15 and could not be unlockedbecause of concerns about congestion that would preventpeople from exiting the room in an orderly fashion. Withsome more digging, we discovered that the fire concerns werebased on an occupancy of 300 people, but we would be hostingless than half that number. We began sketching alternatedesign possibilities so that there would be backup optionsif the circle proved impossible. Confident that the initialrejection was rooted in reflex instead of analysis of the risksinvolved with our proposal, we scheduled another meetingwith the venue and politely insisted that the security andsafety manager also attend so that we could have a single conversationwith all sides represented. Ceding this point wouldmean giving up on our goal of engaging all participants inthe finale of our event, a result dramatically counter to thespirit we wanted to cultivate. It had to work!Arriving with floor plans drawn to scale illustrating theample room there was to manoeuvre around our proposedcircle of chairs, and a willingness to carefully and consideratelytalk through the venue’sconcerns, we were able to come toan agreement that would give us theall-important circle while eliminatingany concerns of fire safety onbehalf of the venue. 1 It might soundlike we have a deep attachment tocircular shapes, but we tell this storybecause it’s a way to illustrate whatit means to fuss over the big pictureand the details at the same time bybeing very careful to understandtheir interdependencies and theimpact that both have on the overall success of your efforts.Unpacking this apparent self-determination reveals amore satisfying description of the ‘right’ attitude for strategicdesign. It began with a sense of empathy that made the teamsensitive to the needs of our guests, resulting in shiftingour focus from formatting guests into an event, to shapingan event around guests and patterns of human behaviour.Empathy feeds inquisitiveness and the desire to know whythings work the way that do—why do people get bored anddisengage in most events? This includes an awareness thatsmall and seemingly unrelated things can have a big impact—like the temperature of a room affecting a group’s ability to