The Case for Design of Work Experience (DOWE)
1. Culture Matters.
Your organization's culture could be an asset or liability. It can either help achieve the full potential you have in your people, or it could contribute to the failure of your business.
2. There's a competitive market for top talent.
High potentials, high performers, and top leaders have choices. The work environment has to attract, develop, and retain them.
3. The Future of Work is here.
Boundaries are breaking down or changing, work is being redefined, new paradigms are emerging. Workplaces need to continually innovate in order to remain relevant.
4. There's a desperate need to meet these challenges.
Best practices are a little wrong for most. Organizations need to know how to create a culture and accompanying experiences at work where both people and business thrive, but many don't know how to uniquely do this.
5. There's hope.
Design thinking has expanded beyond developing products to creating experiences. This paves the way for us to apply this mindset to the workplace, finally bringing forth a “how-to” for culture: “Design of Work Experience” (DOWE). DOWE, pronounced [ˈdü ˈwē], uses employee-centered, interdisciplinary design to develop ideal workplace experiences to their context--ones that bring business strategies, company values, and culture to life.
DESIGN OF WORK EXPERIENCE OVERVIEW
Is your long-standing organization in need of change, or is your company just starting out, and you want to get things going in the best ways possible? Do you want to distinguish yourselves as above and beyond all others? Perhaps there’s a gap between your intended and de facto culture, or you want to avoid a catastrophe where culture is the blame for failures? If you said yes to any of these, your next question might be, “How do we do this?" DOWE can help.
DOWE ensures that whatever is designed becomes a reality through change, covering the “what” and the equally important “how”. It satisfies the need for discernible, relevant solutions for your organization’s specific context. It shifts the paradigm from for the people to by the people, ushering in new possibilities that didn’t exist before.
The approach is comprised of 4 major components, the combination of DESIGN and CHANGE processes enabled by CAPABILITY and ENGAGEMENT. The use and development of capability while continuously engaging people are necessary for the successful practice of DOWE. DESIGN and CHANGE have specific sets of activities, organized as a series of iterative learning loops, to indicate the non-linear, but progressive nature of the process. Ultimately, the model yields an in-depth understanding of the current state, a strategy for the future state, and a plan for how to get there.
THE FIVE PHASES
When you dig deeper, you will see the next level of the process is segmented into 5 phases: UNDERSTAND, CREATE & LEARN, DECIDE, PLAN, and IMPLEMENT.
1. UNDERSTAND
This is the first phase of design, made up of three learning loops: People & Context, Insights, and Criteria. Activities in People & Context include: aligning purpose and scope, identifying early assumptions and key questions, planning and implementing user research. The Insights learning loop begins with assuming different mindsets before developing insights from raw data collected during user research. As a result, thinking is reframed and drives the development of the provocative proposition. Learning is further catalyzed through the creation of visuals. Criteria takes what was learned from user research and insights to establish the most critical requirements in two sets: from the organizational point of view and the employee point of view. This becomes the decision-making tool later on in the DOWE process.
2. CREATE & LEARN
The phase applies what’s been learned “into the creative design process and combines it with generated ideas through play and experimentation” in co-creation with others. The learning loops, Explore,Brainstorm and Play, net “brainstormed ideas to develop and refine for the new strategies and experiences.” In Explore, the design team “builds knowledge and inspiration by learning from everything and everywhere, hunting and gathering anything that could inform their perspective…it goes beyond doing primary and secondary research – it seeks stimulus to synthesize concepts and ideas.” In Brainstorm, facilitation guides people to “work together to generate options, ideas, or offerings that could solve for critical needs and define or enhance a work experience.” The CREATE & LEARN phase concludes with Play, where the team experiments with ideas to see how they relate to one another, how they work or how they might be modified to work.
3. DECIDE
The DOWE process converges with the DECIDE phase, which is comprised of the Prototype and Select learning loops. Prototype is another form of exploration that further refines ideas and gathers intelligence toward bringing the team closer to decisions. Select brings the development of the Strategy and Design Blueprint to full fruition when the team chooses what best meets 3 constraints: what is viable, what is possible, and what satisfies the previously established criteria.
4. PLAN
PLAN prepares the organization for the change that inevitably accompanies the implementation of the Blueprint to 1) ensure that change reaches sufficient depth and breadth across the organization while maintaining connectivity/reinforcement across all content, actions, and activity, and 2) cover what will be done and how during IMPLEMENT. The DOWE process walks the design team through 8 iterations of planning to form the Roadmap and Action Plans.
5. IMPLEMENT
In this last phase of the DOWE process, the Strategy and Design Blueprint is brought to life with the implementation of the Roadmap and Action Plans through the learning loops of Manage, Measure, and Sustain. Manage goes beyond carrying out plans, it manages meaning in the creation of a new reality at the individual, team, and organization levels. Measure serves to “gauge progress toward key milestones and enable timely adjustments” as well as “provides data and content for communication and contributes to the change narrative.” “Both a process and an outcome,” Sustain drives continued momentum and ensures that changes stick for as long as they’re needed.
This is the first phase of design, made up of three learning loops: People & Context, Insights, and Criteria. Activities in People & Context include: aligning purpose and scope, identifying early assumptions and key questions, planning and implementing user research. The Insights learning loop begins with assuming different mindsets before developing insights from raw data collected during user research. As a result, thinking is reframed and drives the development of the provocative proposition. Learning is further catalyzed through the creation of visuals. Criteria takes what was learned from user research and insights to establish the most critical requirements in two sets: from the organizational point of view and the employee point of view. This becomes the decision-making tool later on in the DOWE process.
2. CREATE & LEARN
The phase applies what’s been learned “into the creative design process and combines it with generated ideas through play and experimentation” in co-creation with others. The learning loops, Explore,Brainstorm and Play, net “brainstormed ideas to develop and refine for the new strategies and experiences.” In Explore, the design team “builds knowledge and inspiration by learning from everything and everywhere, hunting and gathering anything that could inform their perspective…it goes beyond doing primary and secondary research – it seeks stimulus to synthesize concepts and ideas.” In Brainstorm, facilitation guides people to “work together to generate options, ideas, or offerings that could solve for critical needs and define or enhance a work experience.” The CREATE & LEARN phase concludes with Play, where the team experiments with ideas to see how they relate to one another, how they work or how they might be modified to work.
3. DECIDE
The DOWE process converges with the DECIDE phase, which is comprised of the Prototype and Select learning loops. Prototype is another form of exploration that further refines ideas and gathers intelligence toward bringing the team closer to decisions. Select brings the development of the Strategy and Design Blueprint to full fruition when the team chooses what best meets 3 constraints: what is viable, what is possible, and what satisfies the previously established criteria.
4. PLAN
PLAN prepares the organization for the change that inevitably accompanies the implementation of the Blueprint to 1) ensure that change reaches sufficient depth and breadth across the organization while maintaining connectivity/reinforcement across all content, actions, and activity, and 2) cover what will be done and how during IMPLEMENT. The DOWE process walks the design team through 8 iterations of planning to form the Roadmap and Action Plans.
5. IMPLEMENT
In this last phase of the DOWE process, the Strategy and Design Blueprint is brought to life with the implementation of the Roadmap and Action Plans through the learning loops of Manage, Measure, and Sustain. Manage goes beyond carrying out plans, it manages meaning in the creation of a new reality at the individual, team, and organization levels. Measure serves to “gauge progress toward key milestones and enable timely adjustments” as well as “provides data and content for communication and contributes to the change narrative.” “Both a process and an outcome,” Sustain drives continued momentum and ensures that changes stick for as long as they’re needed.
All aspects that factor into how one is satisfied at work can be purposefully designed (or co-designed), including: behavior, interactions, climate, people practices, workspace, processes, etc. Unlike much of what’s out there in the world of “human resources best practices,” DOWE is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Its remarkable power comes from designing solutions out of a deep, empathetic understanding for an organization’s unique context, rendering solutions that are relevant and impactful.
Everyone can benefit from this. When engaged in great experiences, employees are bound to find meaning in their work, leading to more productivity and higher performance. From the business perspective, DOWE can bring a mission and vision to reality, align the organization, differentiate the company, harness previously untapped potential, and support overall success.