How to Embody Design Thinking Training as an Organization

A guest post by our partners at ExperiencePoint

As an innovation leader, you know the key to success is bringing human-centered approaches to talent, challenges, and working methods. Companies that prioritize their customers’ needs bring in almost 6x more revenue than their competitors, and those that are customer-obsessed and innovative harness the power of design thinking. 

At ExperiencePoint, we believe that design thinking provides organizations with an approach to transforming work culture, improving customer experiences, revolutionizing product ideation, saving costs and bringing in new streams of revenue. However, implementing design thinking isn’t a simple plug-and-play solution. Many organizations have tried and failed to leverage the approach, leaving scars in their wake.

To overcome these false starts, organizations need to treat design thinking as a transformational approach that helps employees solve problems from the outside-in. In this blog post, we’ll explore the key ways organizations can embrace design thinking and how ExperiencePoint can help throughout the process.

1. Spread Design Thinking Knowledge 

The first step is to spread design thinking knowledge to everyone in the organization — for example, by employing a cohort-based learning platform like NovoEd that scales to your business. Having team members from various levels and departments participate in a design thinking program is the best way to spread information naturally and in a manner that is accessible to all. When team members from different levels participate in design thinking training, they build momentum and inspire others to do better work. While people may have different proficiency levels, everyone must have a shared understanding to embed design thinking into the work culture. Therefore, providing scalable training that is accessible to every participant, regardless of experience level or journey entry point, is critical to success.

2. Apply Newly-Learned Skills

The next step is to develop and apply new skills. It’s not enough to simply develop problem-solving skills through design thinking; you must also be able to turn them into real business outcomes. Successful design thinking training combines hands-on learning with in-the-business problem-solving, so employees can easily apply new skills back on the job and excel at action-oriented projects.

3. Enable New Behaviors

Innovation isn’t just about coming up with new ideas. Leaders also need to create environmental conditions where people are encouraged to adopt these new behaviors and mindsets. By providing a clear framework or process for teams to follow, organizations give workers the space and time to validate new skills, maximizing the impact of new behaviors.

4. Build a Community of Design Thinking Practitioners

Fostering a community of practice is essential for sustaining organizational change. Self-sufficiency is key, and it’s achieved through a community of practice made up of change catalysts and internal facilitators who provide proactive and reactive support, building internal expertise in the process. External experts may abandon employees to apply learnings on their own, but a community of practice allows workers to turn to internal expertise for timely guidance, maximizing the effects of training.

5. Share Your Design Thinking Successes

Finally, sustaining change by demonstrating outcomes is crucial to embracing design thinking. Quick wins keep the momentum on adapting new behaviors, fuelling that virtuous cycle of continued improved business results, which is what organizations need to see to buy into design thinking. Emphasizing and sharing these business impact wins through specific protocols ensures that organizations do not give up before seeing a payoff.

Design Thinking is not a Plug-and-Play Solution

Embracing design thinking requires a company-wide transformation that helps employees solve problems from the outside-in. By spreading design thinking knowledge, developing and applying new skills, supporting new behaviors, fostering a community of practice, and demonstrating outcomes, organizations can embrace design thinking successfully. 

About the author:

ExperiencePoint is a NovoEd partner and a world-leading innovation capability-building company. We help organizations scale and sustain workforce-led transformations by providing their people with the skills and conditions for innovation to thrive. Become part of our innovation community by subscribing to our monthly newsletter.

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