Slidedeck for workshop at Intersection Conference 2015, Berlin, April 2015. This slidedeck was used as an introduction to a conference-workshop, presenting the context and core requirements for development of a new type of toolset for enterprise-architecture, strategy-development, design-thinking and more. The aim was to invite participants to explore their own process of thinking and modelling within design, to further develop those requirements, and to rough out paper prototypes of what such a toolset would look like and how it would work.

1. How do we think?
- modelling our own modelling
Tom Graves, Tetradian Consulting: April 2015
the futures of business

2. A question:
How do we think?

3. We spend our professional lives
helping others with
their thinking
their tasks
their needs

4. we’ve done it for decades…
CC-BY Jon Bennet via Wikimedia

5. visualising complex information…
CC-BY Danielstirling via Wikimedia

6. Yet what support do we need
for our thinking?
our tasks?
our needs?

7. How can we help
ourselves?

8. So how do we think?
How do we do our work?

9. We could describe our work
as a fractal, recursive loop:
•sense
•make-sense
•decide
•act

10. CC-BY-NC-ND osm_art via Flickr
The first step is the hardest…

11. capturing ideas…
CC-BY decoded_conf via Flickr

12. we iterate towards a solution…
CC-BY-ND Damien Newman
(Damien Newman’s ‘The Squiggle’)

13. using all kinds of tools…
based on work by Damien Newman
(whatever tools work best for us)

14. but the tools don’t connect…
based on work by Damien Newman
(no direct means to join everything up)

15. so we join the dots by hand…
CC-BY-ND Chung Ho Leung via Flickr

16. How can we stop
dotting the joins
with all these disparate tools?

17. How can we
join up our tools
to support
joined-up thinking?

18. A story so far…

19. Three questions
to ask of anything…
(which really does mean ‘anything’)

20. What kind of thing are you?
(and why are you the way you are?)
What are you associated with?
(and why that association?)
How do you change?
(and why that change?)

21. Important:
everything as an
‘equal citizen’

22. ideas towards a data-structure…
(everything as an ‘equal citizen’)

23. envisioning a unified toolset…
(shared data-structure provides continuity)

24. continuity across the Squiggle…
illustrates work by Damien Newman
(shared data-structure provides continuity)

25. The real scope…

26. lots of dots…
CC-BY mrsdkrebs via Flickr

27. capture from whiteboard…
CC-BY juhansonin via Flickr

28. capture from sticky-notes…
CC-BY DoNotLick via Flickr

29. capture from sketches…
CC-BY-NC-ND katiekills via Flickr

30. capture image to connect…
CC-BY francisco_osorio via Flickr

31. connecting from sketchnotes…
CC-BY-NC-SA jaremfan via Flickr

32. structured sketch-diagrams…
CC-BY luigimengato via Flickr

33. free-form to structured…
CC-BY-NC-ND CannedTuna via Flickr

34. formal, fully-structured…
CC-BY-NC-SA activeside via Flickr

35. maybe into this kind of format...

36. anywhere, any device…
CC-BY-NC-SA Ed Yourdon via Flickr

37. maybe used together…
CC-BY-NC-ND Antonio2335 via Flickr

38. drawing and digital combined…http://kcamara.com/ANALOG-MEMORY-DESK

39. portables and handhelds…
CC-BY-SA IntelFreePress via Flickr

40. even down to dumb-phone…
CC-BY-NC-ND veesees via Flickr

41. or maybe here…
CC-BY-NC-ND US DoD via Flickr

42. a complete intersection…
CC-BY-ND Kecko via Flickr

43. So here’s the challenge…

44. A core constraint:
everything depends on
everything else

45. A core principle:
things work better
when they work together
on purpose

46. What happens in the design-process?
In each stage, what information do we
need to capture? - and why?
What information do we need to share?
- and why?
How do we 'join the dots' across
the whole of the Intersection space?

47. How do you think?
(how do you describe what you think?)
How do you connect the dots?
(for others as well as for yourself)
What would you need
to help you do it better?

48. Contact: Tom Graves
Company: Tetradian Consulting
Twitter: @tetradian ( http://twitter.com/tetradian )
Weblog: http://weblog.tetradian.com
Slidedecks: http://www.slideshare.net/tetradian
Publications: http://tetradianbooks.com and http://leanpub.com/u/tetradian
Books: • The service-oriented enterprise: enterprise architecture and
viable services (2009)
• Mapping the enterprise: modelling the enterprise as services
with the Enterprise Canvas (2010)
• Everyday enterprise-architecture: sensemaking, strategy,
structures and solutions (2010)
• Doing enterprise-architecture: process and practice in the
real enterprise (2009)
Further information: