Description
Design is the creation of a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system (as in architectural blueprints, engineering drawing, business process, circuit diagrams and sewing patterns).
Study for Managing + Designing Position Statement
Working with Design Junctures at the Knowledge-to-Action Nexus
Between 2005 and 2010 the Security Needs Assessment Protocol (SNAP) project team at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research has been working on one central goal for the UN system and its partners — to better generate local knowledge in culturally diverse communities, and apply that knowledge to the design of projects and programmes in field locations in order to achieve greater operational effectiveness for peace and security. This work has been supported by the Norwegian, Dutch and Swedish Foreign Ministries, and has attracted the interest of dozens of agencies, universities and research centers. Having worked on some of the toughest challenges in community security and development over the past half-decade, and cooperating closely with academics, designers and policy practitioners (and increasingly private industry as well) we now believe that the design of local social action for mutual benefit in cross-cultural context will be one of the public and industrial challenges of the 21st century. In running this project, we have been on a steep and challenging learning curve that has brought us to the important subject of design, and what we call "design junctures."
D e s i g n J u n c tu r e s If one imagines the process of formulating questions and crafting viable solutions as a simple flow chart, we might say that a design juncture is the procedural moment where a problem has been identified and the decisionmaker can either A) reach for known solutions, such as standard operating procedures, best practices and other known systems or B) enter into a divergent and creative design phase that allocates appropriate resources for addressing the problem premised on the notion that we don't yet know how best to solve this problem. It is our experience — working across the security, development and humanitarian spheres of international public policy, and at the field, organization and policy levels — that design junctures are both poorly recognized and utilized as moments of opportunity for innovation and excellence. In the field of public policy, we consider this to be a consequential missed opportunity, and we attribute this to a number of factors. Among many possible others, these include:
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A risk-averse universe: At a design juncture, a decisionmaker is faced with a choice to either take the riskaverse path and utilize known techniques for addressing the problem or else take a risk-seeking path that privileges the state of uncertainty that is the prerequisite for design activity. For innovation to take root in an institutional context, it is necessary to lower the risk barrier to design and encourage the creation and application of new kinds of knowledge that can be employed as strategic assets in the crafting of better s o l u ti o ns. A culture of "policy fulfilment" rather than "end-user satisfaction": Policy makers are effectively civil servants. The civic body they serve provides the basis of legitimacy for their actions. Consequently, there is far more attention paid to fulfilling policy that has mandated from above rather than designing solutions for the benefit of the end-user (usually of a service). This militates against the recognition and utilization of design junctures in management. Inadequate theory: Design junctures are theoretically determined and identified, which in turn requires theory about the knowledge-to-action nexus that seems, thus far, insufficiently explored. This conclusion was supported by a workshop in the Netherlands that produced the Hague Conclusions from the Workshop on Strategic Design and Public Policy - provided here as Annex A.
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The absence of "design space" in institutional processes: It is an ironic finding from Snap's research that the design of service-oriented projects and programmes keeps getting pushed down the hierarchy to more junior staff so that more senior staff is freed up to manage both political, intra-institutional, and inter-institutional processes. The act of design has even been subsumed to the perfunctory task of drafting terms of reference, MOUs and other documents. Here, the task description in the contract functions as a proxy for the design process itself, and the time, resources, experience and attention paid to that rather trivial matter constitute the parameters of the "design space." The absence of impact assessments: Insofar as change is sometimes motivated by failure, it is essential that failure be identified and attributed. It is our experience that insufficient monitoring and evaluation techniques for impact assessment make it almost impossible to observe and consign failure to the design phase of actions, thereby further rendering "design junctures" moot to institutional practice. It is our view that attention to design junctures in curricular development, teaching, research, organizational practice, and evaluation procedures constitutes a rich point for a pragmatic research agenda at the nexus between knowledge and action, a n d h e n ce b e t w e e n d e s i g n a n d m a n a g e m e n t . Doing so, however, may naturally challenge some key assumptions about leadership, decisionmaking, cultures of "decisiveness", time frames for action, stakeholder responsiveness, and other matters that now pervade both the public and private sectors. A framework for engagement will be needed, as will a consortium (formal or otherwise) of dedicated actors both able and willing to advance such an agenda. Design junctures are not the whole story. But they are inevitable crossroads in the movement from problem to practice. As such, they constitute a valuable focal concern for those dedicated to innovation, the harnessing of knowledge, and the crafting of the best solutions that are currently unimaginable.
doc_915877781.docx
Design is the creation of a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system (as in architectural blueprints, engineering drawing, business process, circuit diagrams and sewing patterns).
Study for Managing + Designing Position Statement
Working with Design Junctures at the Knowledge-to-Action Nexus
Between 2005 and 2010 the Security Needs Assessment Protocol (SNAP) project team at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research has been working on one central goal for the UN system and its partners — to better generate local knowledge in culturally diverse communities, and apply that knowledge to the design of projects and programmes in field locations in order to achieve greater operational effectiveness for peace and security. This work has been supported by the Norwegian, Dutch and Swedish Foreign Ministries, and has attracted the interest of dozens of agencies, universities and research centers. Having worked on some of the toughest challenges in community security and development over the past half-decade, and cooperating closely with academics, designers and policy practitioners (and increasingly private industry as well) we now believe that the design of local social action for mutual benefit in cross-cultural context will be one of the public and industrial challenges of the 21st century. In running this project, we have been on a steep and challenging learning curve that has brought us to the important subject of design, and what we call "design junctures."
D e s i g n J u n c tu r e s If one imagines the process of formulating questions and crafting viable solutions as a simple flow chart, we might say that a design juncture is the procedural moment where a problem has been identified and the decisionmaker can either A) reach for known solutions, such as standard operating procedures, best practices and other known systems or B) enter into a divergent and creative design phase that allocates appropriate resources for addressing the problem premised on the notion that we don't yet know how best to solve this problem. It is our experience — working across the security, development and humanitarian spheres of international public policy, and at the field, organization and policy levels — that design junctures are both poorly recognized and utilized as moments of opportunity for innovation and excellence. In the field of public policy, we consider this to be a consequential missed opportunity, and we attribute this to a number of factors. Among many possible others, these include:
•
A risk-averse universe: At a design juncture, a decisionmaker is faced with a choice to either take the riskaverse path and utilize known techniques for addressing the problem or else take a risk-seeking path that privileges the state of uncertainty that is the prerequisite for design activity. For innovation to take root in an institutional context, it is necessary to lower the risk barrier to design and encourage the creation and application of new kinds of knowledge that can be employed as strategic assets in the crafting of better s o l u ti o ns. A culture of "policy fulfilment" rather than "end-user satisfaction": Policy makers are effectively civil servants. The civic body they serve provides the basis of legitimacy for their actions. Consequently, there is far more attention paid to fulfilling policy that has mandated from above rather than designing solutions for the benefit of the end-user (usually of a service). This militates against the recognition and utilization of design junctures in management. Inadequate theory: Design junctures are theoretically determined and identified, which in turn requires theory about the knowledge-to-action nexus that seems, thus far, insufficiently explored. This conclusion was supported by a workshop in the Netherlands that produced the Hague Conclusions from the Workshop on Strategic Design and Public Policy - provided here as Annex A.
•
•
• `
•
The absence of "design space" in institutional processes: It is an ironic finding from Snap's research that the design of service-oriented projects and programmes keeps getting pushed down the hierarchy to more junior staff so that more senior staff is freed up to manage both political, intra-institutional, and inter-institutional processes. The act of design has even been subsumed to the perfunctory task of drafting terms of reference, MOUs and other documents. Here, the task description in the contract functions as a proxy for the design process itself, and the time, resources, experience and attention paid to that rather trivial matter constitute the parameters of the "design space." The absence of impact assessments: Insofar as change is sometimes motivated by failure, it is essential that failure be identified and attributed. It is our experience that insufficient monitoring and evaluation techniques for impact assessment make it almost impossible to observe and consign failure to the design phase of actions, thereby further rendering "design junctures" moot to institutional practice. It is our view that attention to design junctures in curricular development, teaching, research, organizational practice, and evaluation procedures constitutes a rich point for a pragmatic research agenda at the nexus between knowledge and action, a n d h e n ce b e t w e e n d e s i g n a n d m a n a g e m e n t . Doing so, however, may naturally challenge some key assumptions about leadership, decisionmaking, cultures of "decisiveness", time frames for action, stakeholder responsiveness, and other matters that now pervade both the public and private sectors. A framework for engagement will be needed, as will a consortium (formal or otherwise) of dedicated actors both able and willing to advance such an agenda. Design junctures are not the whole story. But they are inevitable crossroads in the movement from problem to practice. As such, they constitute a valuable focal concern for those dedicated to innovation, the harnessing of knowledge, and the crafting of the best solutions that are currently unimaginable.
doc_915877781.docx