Northome Group

🔸 "If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery 🔸 I love this quote, especially at this time of year. I am thinking of it in three contexts: 〰️ User needs or problems to solve. 〰️ Leading, management, and organizational evolution 〰️ Goals and goal setting 👉 How might we create engagement in the root of problems so they are better solved by the genius that comes from experts building off of one another? 👉 How might we get to the core of opportunities so we can not just meet them but exceed them? 👉 How might we create cultural clarity that unlocks good decisions? 👉 How might you enable individuals to long for the "immensity of the sea"? #goals #leadership #innovation #serendipity #practicingserendipitist #strategy

One last thank you to Santiago Vallejo for his contributions to Creative Collisions this year! Santiago Vallejo shared his insights in the article: Change dot AI, Creating competitive advantage in #generativeAI. In this article, he argues that an organization's ability to adapt to and effectively utilize change will prove to be a significant competitive advantage in the GenAI landscape. He identifies three recurring deficiency themes across industries and sectors: lack of clarity, lack of clear benefits, and lack of guidelines for #GenAI application. 1. Lack of #organizational #clarity: Despite public announcements of GenAI initiatives, there is often a lack of clear communication regarding the practical implications for employees and stakeholders. 2. Uncertainty regarding benefits and trade-offs: #Ethical considerations and questions of personal relevance are prevalent. Discussions often center on whether utilizing GenAI constitutes "cheating" and if engagement with these systems equates to training our future replacements. 3. Lack of #guidelines and ambiguity in #implementation: Even organizations actively engaged with GenAI struggle to define clear rules of engagement. While some proactive entities have issued guidelines on GenAI usage, many have deployed tools without providing adequate context for their application within the organizational framework. And suggests that a combined model for change that includes the basic tools from Design Thinking, like empathy and journey mapping, with a structured change management model would provide a more comprehensive view of the context in which person and machine will interact. Read more: https://lnkd.in/eTzF-4qE Thanks Santiago Vallejo! #changemanagement #designthinking #AI #leadership #innovation #design

👉 Henry Lee is an innovative interdisciplinary designer and researcher with a passion for creating human-centered experiences through a blend of research and design intelligence. He is also a Tech and Public Policy Visiting Fellow at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy. This year, we were lucky to get Henry's insights in two articles on Creative Collisions: 〰️ Design & Consumption, "Diderot by Design" in which Henry design and the diligent focus designers must have on real user needs: "Although #designers alone may not control all aspects of a #product, a #strategy, or even a consumer request, they can be at the forefront of pushing for true solutions to unmet user #needs (and not leading with a technology or popular solution) and push to create open #ecosystems that don't force user behavior but instead, maintain loyalty by being the best #solution, #experience, and #design. We can and should break through and push for better, not just more, and with a circular mentality. By conducting research and asking the right questions, we can refrain from adding to the Diderot Effect." Read the full article: https://lnkd.in/eguB8hPZ and 〰️ Design Anchors and Time, Big Basics and Small Radicals. In this article, Henry explores 'what happens when a human-made object exists for such short periods of time that it is nearly nonexistent to our minds? What happens to a product when it isn’t around long enough to be placed within a time period?' Read the full article: https://lnkd.in/eBwC8n8R  Thanks Henry Lee! #design #leadership #designthinking #research

💡 How do you build your creativity practice? ❔ When do you think you're most creative? It might be when you're under extreme stress. This year we were thrilled to have Andrew Lebowitz share his insights and experience as a creative practitioner and also an EMT. 👉 You can read more in his five-part series, Creativity Under Stress: https://lnkd.in/gXGNRSz9 #creativity #innovation #leadership #design #designthinking

We've all been there... #burnout Lucy Hinton brought her thoughts on the topic to Creative Collisions this year, in the article, Balancing Burnout: Finding Resilience and Equilibrium: "Burnout. The topic hangs in the background in team meetings. It mingles in meetups and networking coffees. It could be a filter on LinkedIn. Sort by flavor of burnout: entry-level, mid-career, senior, or in-between roles. It transcends skill sets and industries but seems particularly present in design and technology right now. As someone who has experienced burnout in two different creative industries, I want to share my experiences in practicing resilience and finding methods to balance my desire to provide value without sacrificing stability."  👉 Read more: https://lnkd.in/gJs3fF44 Lucy Hinton is a #designer and #researcher with deep #experience in #creative and #empathy-based work. She’s fascinated by the things that people build to influence others’ behavior and loves talking to people to understand where these interactions fall short. A former costume designer, Lucy is used to constraints that many UX folks don’t worry about (air temperature, portability, weight, ease of cleaning in a sandy environment), and she intuitively questions norms that others don’t see (“I want to try new ways of cooking a pizza”). She currently brings her expertise to UX Design and Research at Fathom Consulting in #Minneapolis, MN. Thanks Lucy Hinton!

DESIGN SYSTEMS. Love'em? Hate'em? There are no shortages of thoughts... Tim Drabandt shares his point of view in The Rise of Design Systems: A Double-Edged Sword on Creative Collisions. TL:DR "In the face of increasingly bland experiences, we must remember that no #risk means no #reward. As #designers, it's our responsibility to question the status quo and push for #innovation, especially within the #constraints of what’s been defined. By focusing on #delight, embracing #creativity, and taking calculated #risks, we can break free from the conformity trap and create digital experiences that are truly unique. The future of design lies not in rigid adherence to systems but in our ability to bend and shape these systems to serve our creative vision. Let's embrace this challenge and continue to push the boundaries of what's possible in digital design." Read more: https://lnkd.in/gp7VhkSG Thanks for being part of Creative Collisions this year, Tim Drabandt! #design #strategy #designthinking #designsystems

👉 👉 How do you stay #curious? How do you continue to maintain "out-loud #enthusiasm for #asking"?? As James Diers writes, "Successfully solving any design problem — whether it’s about your brand, marketing, product, digital experience, or your business at large — always starts with thoughtful asking and exploring. There’s no shortage of evidence showing how curiosity breeds growth, from org leadership and clinical psychology to social discourse and even racial self-examination. Yet when people present themselves in the context of a résumé or professional role, they’re far more likely to highlight answers they found at the end of some road (e.g., solutions they’ve devised, results they’ve generated) than a passionate capacity for questioning." Read more on Creative Collisions: https://lnkd.in/g9NyRg8E #curiousity #designthinking #creativity James Diers is a strategist, writer, researcher, and creative shapeshifter who thrives on collaborative problem-solving in complicated spaces. Sometimes, he makes words and stories; other times, he helps teams navigate toward actionable insights and meaningful change. His work at agencies and consultancies has helped to create value for Fortune 100 brands as well as smaller organizations and intrepid startups. #northomegroup #strategy #design #innovation #leadership

⭐ WHAT A YEAR! ⭐ Thank you to everyone who has been part of Northome Group this year! It's been a banner one, and we're excited to take that momentum into 2025. 👉 As we close out the year, I want to specifically thank the following experts, friends, and partners who wrote, spoke or contributed to Northome Group this year: Amber Reimer, Killeen Hanson, Andrew Lebowitz, James Diers, Mark Buccella, Katie Iwanin, Valerie Felice Lancelle, Aimee Vue, Joe Williams, Henry Lee, Santiago Vallejo, Lucy Hinton and Tim Drabandt. The expertise within this group is off the charts. 👉 We also want to thank all of you for being part of our community! If you are interested in what we do, check us out on the following: 〰️ General Info: northomegroup.com 〰️ Writing and discussion: https://lnkd.in/gPeeazHa 〰️ Email: hello@northomegroup.com Enjoy the time, space, and craziness the holidays provide--- and we'll see you in 2025! #strategy #innovation #leadership #serendipity #design #designthinking

Workshopping Workshops... 👉 As human-centered design began to emerge in the mid-20th century, engineers started combining the idea of a workshop as a physical place to build and tinker with a process for collaborative problem-solving. What I like about “workshop” is it vividly captures the image of a team rapidly prototyping and testing their ideas. But in recent years, it’s become more difficult for workshops to maintain that feeling of scrappy real-world collaboration. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gHcwzAea Thanks to Mark Buccella for sharing your insights and expertise on Creative Collisions this year-- #workshops #design #leadership #designthinking #designsprint

WHAT A YEAR! 🎉 Thank you to everyone who has been part of the Creative Collisions and Northome Group community for the last year. Some highlights: 🔸 Subscribers are up 177%! 🔸 We rebranded to better suit our growing audience and topics 🔸 We held two Virtual Summit events! If you missed them, CHECK THEM OUT: 〰️ Spring: https://lnkd.in/gHMtEUF2 〰️ Fall: https://lnkd.in/gB6YCwT7 🔸And we were able to collaborate with so many great experts with diverse expertise and perspectives. Thank you to: Mark Buccella, Amber Reimer, Katie Iwanin, Andrew Lebowitz, Joe Williams, James Diers, Tim Drabandt, Lucy Hinton, Henry Lee and Santiago Vallejo, among many others. There are more exciting things to come in 2025 but until then... 〰️ Check the writing of Northome Group experts and friends at https://lnkd.in/gPeeazHa 〰️ Our work at northomegroup.com 👉 Nora's other adventures and some sneak peeks at https://lnkd.in/gPM_rQpd #innovation #leadership #serendipity #entrepreneurship #design #designthinking #strategy #experiencedesign