Ideating Interventions
This is the final installment in a three-part plug-and-play model we are called a Planetary Probe, designed to seamlessly adapt to your specific organizational context. In this segment, Dara and Charlene offer a set of activities aimed at envisioning actionable interventions for identified challenges. These activities range from assessing the urgency and force required for change to mapping out decision-making processes within your organization. Participants will also explore the trade-offs of potential actions, culminating in a future-state mapping exercise to chart a course toward a more desirable outcome. We imagine these activities being picked up by others, reimagined, and tested. Read Part One of the probe model here and Part Two here.
Click on the links below to jump to each activity:
Activity 1: Acting and Reflecting
Activity 2: Risk and Power Mapping
Activity 3: Future State Mapping
Activity 1: Acting and Reflecting
In order to create a vision for the future with actionable next steps, participants should consider what is required to make the necessary change, what the trade-offs would be with any proposed action, and what possible interventions could be helpful in moving toward a desirable future state.
There are multiple frameworks (such as the Theory of Change model) that help map possible choices you can make and include prompts around inputs, processes, outputs, outcomes, and impact. However, we want to look at the complexities and challenges of planning for change and the importance of acting and reflecting as a practice in dynamic and complex contexts of impact work. Acting and reflecting as a process helps recalibrate our pathways/choices to take stock of and respond to changes in order to reach the desired future. This continuous process allows us to pivot and change strategies to achieve the future we want. It sometimes helps us redefine the goal we have already set.
Participants are shown the following diagrams Figure 1,2,and 3 and asked to consider how their choice-making processes determine possible future outcomes.
Figure 1. Decision-Making: A Field of Future Outcomes.
- Our present is an experience—specific, tangible, observable, and quantifiable. It can lead to multiple possible futures.
- The past is **somewhat forgotten, somewhat tangible, observable, and quantifiable, but not experienced by you now. The past is not a good indicator of what is to come in the future.
- The future(s) is an idea (or collection of ideas)—abstract, intangible, unpredictable, imaginary, unquantifiable, and unknown.
Figure 2. Decision-Making: Identifying Relevant Pathways.
- The pathways/choices to get from our present state of challenges to our intended vision of the future are many. They need to be focused yet flexible, strategic and creative, practical and hopeful, and most importantly action-oriented and reflective.
Figure 3. Decision-Making: Acting and Reflecting on the Relevance of Pathways.
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Activity 2: Risk and Power Mapping
Overview
As challenges persist, we must reconsider perceived risk and account for more-than-holistic problem solving—taking regard for potential outcomes when planning more exploratory interventions on a range of scales.
Participants should consider how they might intervene in the scenario they have identified through pervious mapping. At this point, it is necessary to consider who the decision-makers are along the way and how decisions are made within the context of or structure of the organization.
Part A — Risk Mapping
Participants should brainstorm possible interventions to address the identified and previously mapped challenge, listing accompanying desired goals and weighing risk in the Risk Matrix.Figure 4
Figure 4. Risk Matrix.
Part B — Power Mapping
Participants should refer back to the organizational structure they mapped when thinking about roles as well as the low points in their scenario challenge map.
- Within the organization, who is responsible for decision-making in the context of the challenge scenario? What is their role and how do they typically go about making decisions?
- Consider the social groups and influencers that might affect any decision making within the organization or interaction.
- Are there any proactive or reactive forcing mechanisms involved in either decision-making process?
- Would there be any kind of necessary force to push decision-making in any direction?
Having identified the actors involved (decision-makers and influencers), participants should situate them in the Power MatrixFigure 5 and consider possible connections, avenues, and approaches to both directly and indirectly reach these actors and influence their decision-making process.
Figure 5. Power Matrix.
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Activity 3: Future-State Mapping
Overview
Mapping future visions allows us to examine desirability, feasibility, and viability while considering when and how stakeholders are involved, resources are gathered and data is collected. Although hypothesizing journeys and risk analysis can help with decision-making, the fact remains that the polycrisis is fundamentally unpredictable and requires agility in the face of (very likely) failure. What happens when the decision-making process becomes a process of making the best, bad decisions?
Participants imagine and hypothesize a revised journey incorporating learnings and possible interventions to work toward building a plan for a desirable and hopeful future.Figure 6 Based on their new knowledge of planetary consciousness, this vision map will act as a tool to communicate amendments to pathways, changing actors, updated processes, and necessary mechanisms to incorporate into a plan they can bring to their team and continue to develop.
Figure 6. Updated Sample Journey Map, with current-state mapped in orange and future-state in blue.
Part A — Journey Mapping Revisited
Participants should map their revised journey of the identified scenario including a chosen intervention from the previous activity. This mapping should be done in another color, on a piece of tracing paper, or on a new blank template. Elements to consider include:
- Phases of the experience (if applicable)
- Process-specific interactions
- Emotional markers
The following prompts are provided to participants to help them think through this:
- What is your choice of intervention?
- How will it work?
- Who will you collaborate with?
- What will be the outcomes?
- Where and when will this take place?
- Are there any challenges? What are they?
Part B — (Re)Identifying Key Factors
Participants should identify the following (referring back to the terminology cheat sheet as needed):
- Agents: Unbound, Model-bound
- Agent Pathways
- Affordances
- Motivation and Force
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Figures 1-3. Sequeira, C. (2023). Decision-Making Pathways. Center for Complexity.
Figure 4. Risk Matrix template. PlaybookUX. (2022, January 4). Don't Guess...Use An Assumptions Map. https://www.playbookux.com/validate-your-assumptions-with-an-assumptions-map .
Figure 5. Power Matrix template. The Change Agency. (n.d.). Power Mapping and Analysis. The Commons. https://commonslibrary.org/guide-power-mapping-and-analysis.
Figure 6. Sample Journey Map, with current-state mapped in orange and future-state in blue. Bagarella, G. (2019). Mapping user journeys for a better workforce system in Massachusetts. Medium. https://medium.com/massgovdigital/mapping-user-journeys-for-a-better-workforce-system-in-massachusetts-6080b1d07006.