There is no clean boundary between design and implementation.
You are sensing from the desk review, implementing from the moment you enter the landscape, and redesigning from the moment the first fomentFoment: A small, deliberate, time-bound intervention designed to test and influence how the system responds. generates a response.
Three sentences change the whole method.
Scoping, media scans and previous evaluations already begin to shape the provisional read of the system.
Presence, questions, funding and alliances alter expectations and relationships before any formal activity begins.
The first system reaction creates new evidence. The next decision should be based on that evidence, not defended against it.
Eight steps make the work navigable.
Select a step. Each has a purpose, a minimum output and a route into the deeper Playbook concepts.
Scope the landscape
Define where you will work and why – geographically and in terms of the system you are entering.
A provisional boundary, landscape concern, early actor and strandStrand: An actor group and the practices through which it shapes the landscape over time. hypotheses, and an explicit list of what is not yet known.
Deepen through: Landscape · Systems · Stakeholders
Use the proposal sequence as a clear structure – and make room for recursion in practice.
Describe a clear sequence, outputs, responsibilities, decision points and resources. Steps 1–6 can be presented as design; Steps 7–8 as implementation.
Within that structure, expect overlap, loops and return. New evidence may justify changes to the boundary, team, heading, opportunity point or foment. Document the reasoning and use agreed review and change-control processes.
Keep legal, fiduciary, safeguard and public-purpose commitments fixed. Revise propositions, methods and activities through an explicit decision process.
Who is doing what, when, where, why, how – and to whom?
The final phrase distinguishes a description of behaviour from a reading of regulationRegulation: Any way actors shape what others can or cannot do, including rules, money, prices, custom and persuasion. It is broader than government regulation.. It asks whose practices are affected, constrained, enabled or redirected by the action.
Turn “we know” into provisional statements that can be tested against what the landscape does.
Shorten the time between action, observation, sensemaking and the next decision.
Amplify by extending relations, stabilizing systems and supporting successful ripplesRipple: An effect that spreads from an initial disturbance but weakens unless something sustains it. In the Playbook, it may remain dependent on the intervention., while adapting to each context.
Embed the functions, authority, capability and resources that must continue without the intervention.
Use the pathway as navigation.
Read the full Design and implementation chapter.
The full reading provides the conceptual foundations, examples, sources and methodological detail behind this page.
Terms used on this page
- Strand
- An actor group and the practices through which it shapes the landscape over time.
- Heading
- The direction in which the landscape is currently moving, produced by many actors and their interactions.
- Regulation
- Any way actors shape what others can or cannot do, including rules, money, prices, custom and persuasion. It is broader than government regulation.
- Foment
- A small, deliberate, time-bound intervention designed to test and influence how the system responds.
- Ripple
- An effect that spreads from an initial disturbance but weakens unless something sustains it. In the Playbook, it may remain dependent on the intervention.
