Workshop Dates: February 2019

Keywords:

Design transformation, organizational transformation, change management, human-centric change, design thinking, employee/citizen experience, human-centered design, system thinking.

Description:

With technology setting an increasingly rapid pace, companies of all types, sizes and maturities are struggling to make corresponding organizational changes. Indeed, organizational transformation has become the new norm not only for mature enterprises and governments, but even for start-ups and NGOs. With a 70% failure rate, change management schemes based on hierarchical manufacturing models are no longer effective. We need new ways of understanding organizational needs and balancing both digital as well as human technologies in our solutions.

To help meet this need, Design has been growing out of its traditional role, driving innovative products and services, and is now being applied to the organization itself. The same elements which make design impactful as an innovation driver are equally relevant to transforming the organization.

This workshop will equip participants with a human-centered framework for change management, flipping many of the traditional models on their head. We will explore ways to connect leadership vision with organizational capacity and ultimately, activation. Over the course of the workshop, we will learn to create a strong organizational value proposition, helping employees address fundamental problems or needs in order to realize the business vision and attracting employees to fulfill that mission. We will explore strategies for creating and communicating impact, the importance of strategic partnerships when scaling and ways to identify and remove institutional obstacles to innovation - ultimately remaking the organization from the inside out.

The course will consist of a five-day design sprint. Students will work in small, hands-on teams to reimagine and prototype a real organization. You will learn techniques to understand, design,concept and test solutions. We will also spend time discussing relevant case studies and best practices from different industries and organizational types.

Learning Expectations:

• A design case for organisational change


• Connecting leadership strategy with employee activation


• Fostering organizational capacity (people, processes and tools)


• Creating experimental transformation loops


• Scaling organically through partnerships


• Fostering capacity to identify and remove institutional blocks


• Supplementing designer skills to engage in new ways

This course is open to anyone who is interested and curious about how to transform organisations leveraging the toolset of human-centered design. The course will be particularly relevant to those who work in/with large corporations and the public sector or have the aspiration to do so in the future. This five-day experience will be interesting for service designers, product/interaction designers, as well as business and engineering professionals interested in knowing more on how to apply design not just for products and services but for organisational change.

Faculty: