The Power of Process

While often regarded as the tool used to achieve a goal, certain processes are inherently valuable in themselves.

There is vast potential for the application of these processes and their results, no matter who is using the tools, can and will create a better world.

For example, what would happen if more people began to apply biomimicry to their work and daily lives?

Not only would we begin to appreciate the 3.8-billion year research and development period of the Earth, but emulation of its models would result in new innovation founded on the principles of sustainability, closed-loop systems and renewable energy.

A reverence for nature’s complexity — an automatic response after one begins to study biomimicry — would also grow our problem-solving skills and sense of community. Nature is multidisciplinary, and dependent on others for its entire well-being.

Along with biomimicry, we can include the entire body of design methodology as one process that will create solutions towards a sustainable future.

As Bruce Mau reminds us, it’s time to take back design from the confines of the way things look, to a much broader conception. Design is the human capacity to plan and produce desired outcomes.

From this starting point, design holds the power to affect our world at every level, unlocking new ways of doing things, and reminding us that we hold the power to choose what kind of world we want to live in.

Transformational change will also amass when organizations, where people spend most of their waking hours, use Appreciative Inquiry (AI) and strength-based development to approach learning and change.

The process would swap our current preoccupation with problem solving for a discovery of what’s working, and how systems would operate when at their best.

AI stresses the most efficient way to create change is to change our way of asking questions. The questions we ask determine our outcomes.

Do we choose to find what’s not working and heap loads of attention on how to fix the problem? Or, do we break conventional decision-making patterns, choosing to find the strengths, assets and innovations already located with the system that we can carry forward when building our preferred future?

Our vote is for the latter, which we believe would unveil new innovation while strengthening an organization’s capacity for change.

Combine all three of these processes and one must ask, is process enough?

What we do know is that if one applies these processes to a compelling vision there are no limits to what can be achieved.