Designing for Transformation

Stories, principles and practical ways in which

business and organisations can innovate to a better future
Alan M oore

www.no-straight-lines.com

About the author

Alan Moores invaluable and unique creative insights present us with an alternative way of working and existing a
better way in which participatory leadership is the new operating system of the workplace where wellbeing and
creating value for the collective good is the new currency of our economy. He articulates what most people are
experiencing: dissatisfaction with their conditioned existence, their tick tock life that they did not choose, but rather
inherited.
Through his book and project No Straight LinesAlan joins up the dots of what he calls our non-linear world and
splendidly paves for us a new future, which is accessible to everyone through innovation, creativity and
craftsmanship. By what we make, who we make it with and why we would be motivated to do it in the first place.
His belief is that creative entrepreneurial expression is vital in bringing new value and better ways of doing into our
world and that we all play a role in this metamorphosis. His passion is seeking transformational solutions to our
present status quo, which he says we must challenge creatively with our hand, heart and mind. Ultimately it is what
we do as opposed to what we say that will transform us economically, organisationally and for our collective
wider society. Simply put our better future depends on it. Collaboration, participation and innovation using all that
is available to us now are key to this better future and our better life.
Alan sits on the Board of Inspiration at the Dutch Think Tank Freedom Lab. He acts as Head of Vision for the
Grow Venture Community; is a board advisor to the NGO Ushahidi, and is as a special advisor to a number of
innovative companies and organisations including publishing, mobile, the theatre and finance.
Contact: alanm@smlxtralarge.com

Text copyright 2012 Alan Moore

All Rights Reserved

Contents
Introduction: the last of our Kodak moments
1 The challenge of living in an ambiguous world
The trilemma of our current age
System upgrade: to a better social, organisational and economic future

To be part of the future you have to hack it

Hacking
The hacker ethic and the craftsman
Adjacency: the process of creativity
2 Be realistic, imagine the impossible, then create it
(1) Ambiguity
(2) Adaptiveness
(3) Openness
(4) Participatory cultures and tools
(5) Craftsmanship
(6) Epic: designing for transformation
3 Stories of Transformation
How the Nova Scotia public health care system transformed itself through people power
Not a management consultant in sight
Better decision-making
Greater commitment
Individual growth
More agility
The aesthetics of designing for participatory leadership
How Patients Know Best is transforming the way patients and clinicians manage chronic disease
Sharing information is power
From waiting rooms to a platform
4 An innovative approach to leadership and innovation
So how do we transform to get from here to there? The story of the birth of the Transformation LAB
The human process of design: from managers to craftsmen, from ambiguity to epic
Standing in the epic circle
Summary
What to do next
Reviews of No Straight Lines

Introduction: the last of our Kodak moments

I am little sad of the passing of Kodak. Some of us, of a certain age, have piles of Kodak slides and snaps, uniquely
connecting us to our childhood and personal histories. Hearing about Kodaks recent demise, filing for chapter 11
Bankruptcy also got me thinking about the current woes, of other organisations and industries that are struggling and
failing as they are unable to adjust to what is to them an ambiguous world.

Chapter One
The challenge of living in an ambiguous world
When faced with disruptive ambiguity few embrace that ambiguity, to understand it, to listen deeply and think very
hard about transformation how to transform, and how to design for transformation. This is a challenging thing to do
and few do it well, and increasingly more organisations are vicariously living in the groan zone as we transition from a
linear world to a non-linear one.
I would argue that our industrial world has reached the edge of its adaptive range, the failure of large corporations,
the banking crisis, pensions, venture capital, healthcare, and media organisations crossing the moral rubicon by
hacking into the voice mails of murdered school children to sell tabloid newspapers to harvest advertising revenue
are all exemplars. We are witness to a systemic failure of many of the institutions that have brought us so much
prosperity, health and the promise of better future and it is this convergence of failures that requires us to understand
the challenge from a new perspective.
The trilemma of our current age
The institutions, organisations and systems that we still use were designed and built for a less complex world.
Consequently, fault lines are running through our society as we are overwhelmed by a trilemma of social, economic
and organisational complexity. The design challenge involved in resolving these questions comes because this nonlinearity is causing a comprehensive restructuring of society at large.
Still there is deep institutional and cultural resistance to real change. And, as the forces of disruption increases often
the resistance of organisations under threat does not abate but intensifies, until flailing against this unknown or
misunderstood enemy they exhaust themselves take your pick from the slew of industry and organisational failures.
Their demons are pretty much the same.
My challenge to organisations is that they need to reflect mindfully on the significant shifts in our society today,
although new technologies are the tools for change our research shows that this is a social revolution where in the
face of institutional failure people are learning to get what they need from each other. So what do we as humanity
need? We need I would argue: greater opportunity, greater freedom, greater empowerment, a revitalised sense of
justice; a world where mutualism and participatory cultures are the default setting, where openness is seen as resilience
and diversity is understood as a good thing. Where we have greater autonomy and that seeks a greater aesthetic in
everything we do: beautiful buildings; civic spaces; organisational design, it is as easy to make something beautiful as it
is to make it ugly. So why choose the latter over the former? In many ways these demands can be defined as a
Human-OS (operating system).
This OS is the key driver to the systems change we are witnessing. I see this Human-OS in the transformational
change of all the examples cited in No Straight Lines: from agriculture, hospital design, and healthcare service design,
educational programmes, the response to complex civic challenges, manufacturing, NGOs, the nature of finance,
innovation and commerce itself. This OS is the story of why our networked world with its new Human OS is directing
the shape of our post industrial future, which is why on the floors of our factories, in the waiting rooms of our hospitals,
the classrooms of our schools, people are asking not, what if, but how? How can we create a world designed around
the wider needs of humanity, and that serves humanity in ways in which our industrial society no longer can?

The level of disruption for our institutions cannot be ignored nor repressed. It also at the same time presents us with a
unique opportunity and design challenge.

System upgrade: to a better social, organisational and economic future

What is emergent is a new model that demonstrates those ambitions. A car company created as a community that
can build cars 5 times faster at 100 times less the capital cost. Alternatively, a VC firm that says its a venture
community and that the next silicon valley is not a place, but a platform that already has 15,000 members in 200
countries, which argues everyone should be funding startups. Or, at the other end of the scale, a firm in Dalston, East
London, micro-lending to some of the 6m+ people in the UK who do not have access to a bank account, because
the banks will not lend to them. Whose customers pay back 95% of their loans? Who have also saved rent
associations 12.5m and helped over 150 entrepreneurs start micro businesses. Or, a service that helps patients
better manage their chronic health care, which reduces wrong diagnosis, over prescription of drugs, stops clogging
up hospital waiting rooms and specialist time. Or, an entire public healthcare service in the territory of Ontario when
faced with significant challenges in how to run its healthcare system, used what is called participatory leadership to
ensure their best possible future was evolved and developed by those that used and ran that service a very
different scenario to our own current NHS woes.
Each of these examples demonstrate how to design around the needs of humanity rather than around the needs and
orthodoxies of an industrial world. They are all examples of unique blends of old wisdom and cutting edge
technology combined with a literacy that enables humanity to take a positive step forward. They prove that people
are not motivated purely by commercial need, that people can be producers, co-creators, consumers, investors and
evangelists, and that we can design better for societies, organisations, and commerce all at the same time.
They also point to a better future in which what we have worked out is that a better world is shaped by what we
share: wealth, knowledge, resources, and culture. We now have the possibility to truly transform our world, to be
more resilient, to be more relevant to us both personally and collectively, socially cohesive, sustainable, economically
vibrant and humane, through the tools, capabilities, language and processes at our fingertips. So the question is then
how do we get there?
To be part of the future you have to hack it
Embracing an ambiguous world: In 2006 IBM produced a report called The enterprise of the future. The survey of
CEOs revealed that 8 out of 10 CEO s saw significant change ahead and yet the gap between expected levels of
change plus the ability to manage it had tripled. Why? I would argue these leaders did not have the means to see, or
did not want to acknowledge, an unfolding story: that we are decoupling from a linear industrial society and so were
unable to embrace; nor articulate the emergence of new organisational structures, legal frameworks, new production
and design processes. Not the underlying societal trend that sought greater mutualism, opportunity, freedom,
diversity, and empowerment, that were in direct contrast to the increasing unfairness and monoculture of a wholly
consumer orientated society.

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