“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” - Charles Darwin

“Regard no practice as immutable. Change and be prepared to change again. Accept no eternal verity. Experiment.” - B. F. Skinner

Times are a changing. As we can all observe, there are large political divisions and traditional organizational groups, splintering into smaller transient groups and movements. We, as a society, live and participate in these changing times. As the Society of Addiction Psychology (SoAP), it is incumbent upon us to continuously scrutinize our efforts, structure and offerings to see if they need to be adapted and designed to fit with the current and emerging zeitgeist. Indeed, if we are to remain a robust and effective society we must do this on a continual basis but the question that remains is how?

Now this is usually the part of a President’s Column where the president would enumerate his or her agenda. Although there are goals that I have for my term, they are not the point of this article for this issue. The goal of this article is to seek involvement from our membership on the following questions: What is and is not working? What about our society grates on you? What do we do that you greatly value? As part of this effort, I want to engage you in a deep and meaningful conversation about the design of the SoAP.

In order to assist the organization with our thoughts and to facilitate the framing of a conversation, I have listed in Table 1 the principles of good design by Dieter Rams (www.vitsoe.com/en/gb/about/dieterrams/gooddesign), a remarkable designer who I commend to you. His principles provide a way of thinking about the future. Now I realize that some of our members may fi nd my effort to utilize product design to think about our future distasteful at best. They might take offense to the notion that the SoAP can be discussed in a fashion that equates it with a product. In response, I would say that the word “product” in the second sense of its defi nition “a thing or a person that results from an action or a process.” As such, we clearly construct the SoAP and I think consideration of design can facilitate our actions. Below I will briefl y address three of these principles that I gravitate to and that I think might facilitate our conversation.

Good design makes a product useful.
One goal of changing the SoAP is to improve our usefulness to our current and future members. What changes would make the SoAP useful such that we can retain or increase our membership? What are potential new members interested in and what do they aggregate for?

Good design is long lasting.
I hope we can consider how to embrace change, but this may take longer than one presidential term to complete. How can we make thoughtful considered change part of our DNA? What practices can we embrace in the SoAP that would facilitate seeking out change and incorporating it, not reluctantly, but proactively?

Good design is thorough, down to the last detail.
To be an adaptive and continuously evolving organization will require that we not only come up with ideas that are potentially useful and that garner interest and support. More than that, each modifi cation will require deep consideration and vigorous thoughts about the consequences of those changes and how to incorporate them seamlessly into our current activities.

As a professional, I have learned the value of feedback and of collaboration. So I close this column with a call to the membership for good design to help adapt the SoAP for the future. Please send me your thoughts and your suggestions for action, processes, and goals that would allow us to become most adaptive. E-mail with your feedback and thoughts to wkbickel@vt.edu.