This is how we will work

work

Last week was the official launch of the inaugural Exhibit Change Designership . It is undoubtedly exciting to announce the project and to see interest brewing and spreading already.

Applications are open NOW until August 15th. Spots will be filled on a rolling basis, so there is no reason to wait to apply. 

This designership will be about work, hard work. There is no coming here and coasting through, the cohort won’t stand for it.

Working hard for something you don’t care about is called stress, working hard for something you care about is called passion. 

This work is driven by passion. The passion burns inside you like a fire just yearning to be stoked.

When the passion is high, so are your emotions. It is expected that this cohort will get into debates, good healthy (sometimes loud) debates that are fuelled by our inner values and desire to be heard. We are not always going to agree, we may not even like each other sometimes; but we will respect each other. We will discover shared goals. We will come up with better solutions because we will listen to perspectives that are not necessary the same as ours.

Having conversations, passionate and critical, will be one aspect of this designership that will be crucial to getting deeper into some icky territory. Yes, icky being the technical term. It is only in the icky space when you can draw on your empathy to understand that your way is not the only way. You might get some bumps and bruises along the way, but it is worth take a trip there.

Conversations are not enough. They are the start to something more. We will capture conversations and look for insights. This is the hard work. It is easy to capture what was said and maybe even what is under the surface, but it is making the connections between what was said and looking for the opportunities to offer a solution that is challenging.

We will show our work. We want to combat the trend of only displaying final products and instead we will invite others to give us feedback often and early. We will iterate and reflect. We will work together in small groups and on our own to stretch our thinking. We will produce and prototype as a way to test our assumptions. We will put our heart and soul into our work but not be so in love with our ideas that we can’t let go.

We will be working with “wicked problems”, by definition these are problems that don’t stop changing and evolving just so you can work on them. They keep moving, so it is like hitting a moving target. So we have to be patient and understand that we cannot solve the whole problem at the same time. That would be taking on too much at once. This work is hard. Especially when it feels like change is slow moving and all you want to do is bang your head against the wall.

Luckily we will have each other.