Change Management through Design

What is this workshop?

Technology is changing our world faster than citizens, businesses and governments can respond, leading to uncertainty and increasingly negative outcomes. And, while organisations of all types, sizes and maturities are struggling to adapt — rethinking their external customer/citizen value propositions while simultaneously reinventing themselves internally — traditional change management schemes based on hierarchical models are proving less and less effective.

Although ‘digital transformation’ has become the new solution buzz word, experts like Chris Skinner have pointed out that digital is about culture and people rather than technology. To bridge this gap, businesses, governments and NGOs are finding an unlikely partner in design — building, buying or partnering not only to create cutting-edge products and services, design’s traditional role, but to foster innovation and organisational transformation as well.

Design Transformation is an emerging, holistic and people-centred approach which focuses on building ‘social technology’ for the 21st century. The method drives innovation by developing the mindsets, skills and tools which enable people to co-create the processes and culture necessary for success in today’s ever changing world.

Design’s focus on human needs and behaviours, positions it as a powerful player in the Transformation space. Indeed, the same methods and principles which create amazing products and services for customers and citizens are equally applicable to building strong, innovative and change-embracing teams, processes and cultures. The Design Transformation process bridges three traditional silos: leadership vision, organisational capacity building and co-created process change to deliver real and meaningful impact. It leverages the power of leadership vision while acknowledging that organisation-wide behaviour change in each individual employee is essential to success.

This workshop uses a hands-on project-based approach to explore the Design Transformation process for fostering innovation from the inside out.

The workshop consists of a five-day Design Transformation sprint which will equip participants with a practical human-centred framework for change management, flipping many of the traditional models on their head.

Participants worked in small, hands-on teams to reimagine and prototype part of a real organisation. Over the course of the week, we placed special emphasis on UN SDGs, particularly Goal 9, dealing with Innovation and Goal 11, sustainable cities and communities.

Students learned techniques to understand, design, concept, and test solutions. We also spend time discussing relevant case studies and best practices from different industries and organisational types.

This workshop was designed for anyone interested and curious about how to transform organisations leveraging the toolset of human-centred design. The workshop was particularly relevant to those who work in or with large corporations and the public sector or have the aspiration to do so in the future.

If you want to learn more about this initiative from a former student, read this post: https://boonych.medium.com/organisational-change-through-design-4571816f244d