Revision as of 13:25, 1 September 2025

Enterprise Design Patterns

The thirty-five patterns are organised in four categories:

Impact Patterns show how to establish and grow your influence and impact as an Enterprise Designer. This is a continuous process starting with your personal enterprise vision and ending when Enterprise Design is mature and fully realised capability of your company.

Behavioural Patterns provide guidance on how to behave in the interactions with your many stakeholders and co-creators. They show you how to establish the trust, collaboration and relationships you need to successfully master the steps described in the Impact Patterns section.

Practice Patterns offer nine practical approaches to good Enterprise Design work. These patterns show you ways to enrich and deepen your design work and how to deal with corporate politics, cultural biases and hidden assumptions to ensure your designs are relevant and effective in bringing change to the enterprise.

Creations Patterns provide guidance on how to improve the creations required to ensure a successful collaborative Enterprise Design program. Effective creations are a combination of content and presentation and these patterns show how to optimise this mix.

Pattern Structure

Each pattern consists of two parts. The first part provides a handy overview of the pattern and its meaning, to help you memorise and reference the pattern in your daily work. Here you find the pattern number and pattern name, followed by an illustration. Underneath the illustration is a quote relating to the pattern as well as references to any other patterns that are related to the current pattern and its context.

The second part contains the details of the pattern, when to use it, how to use it, and what it aims to achieve. Each pattern starts out with a “Context” statement, describing the situation in which the pattern should be used. This is followed by “In this context”, which describes a problem likely to occur in this context, as well as the aspects of human and enterprise nature that make the problem hard to overcome. The “Therefore” section contains the actionable part of the pattern, showing how to address the problem and the actions to be taken. Finally, the “Consequently” section describes how what changes as a result of using the pattern in your Enterprise Design work.

Using the Patterns

The collection of patterns presented here are ‘best practices’ collected from interviews and conversations with many experienced practitioners. Each pattern, when used correctly in the right context, has the potential to bring huge benefits to your work and to the enterprise as a result.

There is an art, however, to knowing when to apply which pattern and how to best apply it when you do. It will take some time, practice and experience to learn to recognise when your context matches that of one or more patterns. No single pattern can be used every time - there are no silver bullets - and you will not succeed by simply throwing every pattern at a problem in the hope that something will work.

The best way to become a master of these patterns is to train yourself to become a master at ‘reading’ the situation: picking up the signals people are sending through their explicit and implicit communications; recognition moods and behaviours around you; listening to the stories people tell each other. And then match the context descriptions of the patterns with your situation to select the patterns most likely to help you. Then practice applying those patterns, observe their effects and fine-tune how you apply them.

Finally, you will probably find some patterns easier to use or more obvious than others. We all have our preferences and it is only natural for us to select actions and approaches we are more comfortable with. We urge you, however, to occasionally push yourself out of your comfort zone by applying some of the patterns you don’t immediately take to. That is the only way to grow. You will be surprised at how often it is exactly the pattern you found least appealing or ‘natural’ that creates the ‘breakthrough’ moment in the situation you are struggling with.

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 The thirty-five patterns are organised in four categories:
-[[Impact Patterns]] show how to establish and grow your influence and impact as an Enterprise Designer. This is a continuous process starting with your personal enterprise vision and ending when Enterprise Design is mature and fully realised capability of your company.
+'''[[Impact Patterns]]''' show how to establish and grow your influence and impact as an Enterprise Designer. This is a continuous process starting with your personal enterprise vision and ending when Enterprise Design is mature and fully realised capability of your company.
-[[Behavioural Patterns]] provide guidance on how to behave in the interactions with your many stakeholders and co-creators. They show you how to establish the trust, collaboration and relationships you need to successfully master the steps described in the Impact Patterns section.
+'''[[Behavioural Patterns]]''' provide guidance on how to behave in the interactions with your many stakeholders and co-creators. They show you how to establish the trust, collaboration and relationships you need to successfully master the steps described in the Impact Patterns section.
-[[Practice Patterns]] offer nine practical approaches to good Enterprise Design work. These patterns show you ways to enrich and deepen your design work and how to deal with corporate politics, cultural biases and hidden assumptions to ensure your designs are relevant and effective in bringing change to the enterprise.
+'''[[Practice Patterns]]''' offer nine practical approaches to good Enterprise Design work. These patterns show you ways to enrich and deepen your design work and how to deal with corporate politics, cultural biases and hidden assumptions to ensure your designs are relevant and effective in bringing change to the enterprise.
-[[Creations Patterns]] provide guidance on how to improve the creations required to ensure a successful collaborative Enterprise Design program. Effective creations are a combination of content and presentation and these patterns show how to optimise this mix.
+'''[[Creations Patterns]]''' provide guidance on how to improve the creations required to ensure a successful collaborative Enterprise Design program. Effective creations are a combination of content and presentation and these patterns show how to optimise this mix.
 ==Pattern Structure==

Revision as of 13:25, 1 September 2025

Contents

Enterprise Design Patterns

Pattern Structure

Using the Patterns

List of patterns