ORGANIZATION & DESIGNLearning organizations as interpretative framework

Joselyne Katherina Nairouz Mora Mat. 858891

Supervisor: Dott. Francesco ZurloCo-supervisor: Dott. Tommaso Buganza

Politecnico di Milano

School of Industrial and Information Engineering

Master of Science in Management Engineering

Design management, Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Organization & Design Learning Organizations as Interpretative Framework

Supervisor: Dott. Francesco Zurlo Co-Supervisor: Dott. Tommaso Buganza

Master thesis by:

Joselyne Nairouz

858891

Academic Year 2016/2017

Index

Index ....................................................................................................................................... 2

Index of tables ........................................................................................................................ 4

Index of figures ....................................................................................................................... 5

Acknowledgement .............................................................................................................. 6

Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 7

Abstract (Ita) ....................................................................................................................... 8

PART 1. Executive summary ................................................................................................... 9

1.1 Problem setting ........................................................................................................... 10

1.2 Research objectives .................................................................................................... 10

1.3. Research methodology .............................................................................................. 11

1.4 Conclusions ................................................................................................................. 12

PART 2. Research methodology ........................................................................................... 13

2.1 Problem setting ........................................................................................................... 14

2. 2 Research objectives ................................................................................................... 16

2.3 Research Process ........................................................................................................ 17

PART 3. The structure of organizations ................................................................................ 20

3.1 Principal models .......................................................................................................... 24

3.2 Constraints .................................................................................................................. 32

PART 4. Design ...................................................................................................................... 35

PART 5. Design in the organizations ..................................................................................... 43

5.1 Models/methodologies............................................................................................... 51

5.2 Learning organizations ................................................................................................ 73

PART 6. Case studies ............................................................................................................. 90

6.1 Learning Organizations - Healthcare .......................................................................... 91

6.2 Learning Organizations - Education ............................................................................ 97

PART 7. Conclusions ........................................................................................................... 103

7.1 Managerial implications ............................................................................................ 110

7.2 Limits and future research (follow-ups) ................................................................... 113

PART 8. Bibliography .......................................................................................................... 115

Index of tables Table 1. Six Design Drivers .................................................................................................... 23

Table 2. Mintzberg’s Five Organizational Structures ........................................................... 30

Table 3. Design management is defined by what you think of design (vertical axis: the

“learning leader” of design), and by what you think of management (horizontal axis). ..... 46

Table 4. A competitive advantage brings economic value added if both substantial value

and financial value are created. ........................................................................................... 49

Table 5. Design Value Scorecard .......................................................................................... 50

Table 6. Operating Governance Model: Degrees of integration across business units ....... 55

Table 7. Design tools and methodologies applied in Learning Organizations ................... 108

Index of figures Figure 1. Galbraith’s Star Model ........................................................................................... 26

Figure 2. Key parts of an organization .................................................................................. 27

Figure 3. Sabine Junginger’s model ...................................................................................... 47

Figure 4. Rewards Systems: One of five points of Star Model ............................................. 54

Figure 5. The Five-Milestone design process (with rewards system design questions) ...... 56

Figure 6. How rewards and metrics can help support integration design needs ................ 58

Figure 7. Design Thinking ...................................................................................................... 64

Figure 8. Pluralism of design thinking .................................................................................. 65

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Acknowledgement

First of all I want to thank to the Politecnico di Milano to give me the opportunity to be part of

this amazing university, I am thankful and proud for all the knowledge in those classrooms not

only with the great professors but also with the colleagues that I met during my master

studies.

To the professor Francesco Zurlo, without his guidance this thesis was not possible to do,

thank you for showing me the importance of design and open my mind to apply this aspect

during my future work life. To my supervisor Tommaso Buganza that helped us to understand

more the way of developing the thesis and for his constant availability to help.

To all my family that supported me during this two years, to give me the love to feel close

from you even if I am miles away from home. To Yinzú and Gerardo you are one big pillar for

me thank you for always help me and care about me.

To my friends and family in this country, Tadeo, Marihum, and specially Ciro and Dani, thank

you for always being there and bring me your kind and sincere friendship.

To my Polimi friends, Sule, Nacho, Andres and Khalid, even if we don’t see too often thank you

for being those friends that can understand me during this process.

To Alejandro, infinite thank you to bring me to this crazy adventure and to always push me to

grow and be a better person.

In memory of my mom, thank you for have made me the person who I am right now, I am

always looking for making you proud of me.

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Abstract

Design includes so many different applications that is difficult to define it in just one concept.

Designers are used to see beyond the box, they are always looking to provide innovation and

bring a different value to people. Design has evolved during the years to move from a simple

tool to a strategic method to apply on businesses. Design in business helps to provide a

different way of doing things, and to think in all the possible ways to solve problems instead of

going directly to the “should be” solution.

Managers are designers, they design the organization world inside companies and how will be

translate all the processes to the social life outside the organization. Managers follow the

activities in the organization to have a positive and effective impact in all the people involve.

The role of people is fundamental inside organizations, the employees are the ones that work

daily to provide to customers the best result as possible.

Changes are something impossible to avoid, companies are constantly facing new problems

and high competition. It is important to be ready to control these changes, a way to manage

all the possible changes is applying learning inside the organizations. Taking care of the five

disciplines proposed by Peter Senge, having a shared vision, work in mental models, construct

personal mastery, develop team learning or create systems thinking, can help organizations to

success at the moment to face new changes. Learning is a competitive advantage because

teach you to move faster to the other competitors.

For companies is fundamental to evolve and stop doing the same things, always to try and to

evaluate other paths, to bring new values and innovations to customers. It is important to see

the opportunities design can bring, not only helps to focus all the attention into the people,

but also as a way to manage the new situations that can appear during the daily activities. This

thesis introduces the main concepts to help small and traditional organizations to recognize

the role of design in businesses, and to understand how transforming to a learning

organization can help them to face the design introduction among their activities.

Keywords: Organization, design, learning, culture, change, people

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Abstract (Ita)

Il termine “Design” può contare su così tante applicazioni tutte differenti tra loro che risulta complesso

riuscire a definirlo in un solo e semplice concetto. I Designers sono soliti guardare “oltre la siepe”,

sempre intenti nella ricerca dell’innovazione e l’introduzione di nuovi valori aggiunti per le persone.

Attraverso gli anni, Il design si è evoluto ed è passato dall’essere un semplice e mero strumento ad

essere un vero e proprio metodo strategico da applicare a diverse tipologie di business. In un’ottica di

business, Il design fornisce una metodologia differente nel “fare le cose”: vengono considerate tutte le

possibili soluzioni del problema invece che dirigersi direttamente verso la soluzione più ovvia.

I Managers sono designers, essi infatti progettano il mondo aziendale all’interno delle grandi

compagnie cercando poi di tradurre i processi interni al di fuori dell’organizzazione stessa. Gli stessi

Managers seguono le attività dell’organizzazione al fine di ottenere un impatto positivo ed efficace su

tutti i soggetti coinvolti. Il ruolo delle persone risulta infatti fondamentale all’interno delle

organizzazioni; sono proprio gli impiegati che, lavorando giornalmente, cercano di offrire i miglior

risultati possibili ai propri clienti.

È impossibile evitare i cambiamenti, costantemente le compagnie si ritrovano ad affrontare nuovi

problemi in un contesto di altissima concorrenza. È importante prepararsi ad affrontare questi

cambiamenti, ed un modo per gestire queste situazioni è quello di inserire l’apprendimento all’interno

delle organizzazioni stesse. Considerare le cinque discipline proposte da Peter Senge, avere una visione

condivisa, lavorare in modelli mentali, costruire le proprie abilità personali e sviluppare il “team

learning” o creare pensieri di sistema, sono tutte attività che possono aiutare a gestire con successo il

momento in cui i nuovi cambiamenti si presenteranno. L’apprendimento è un vantaggio competitivo

questo perché insegna a muoversi più velocemente rispetto agli altri rivali.

Per le aziende è fondamentale evolvere e smettere di ripetersi, si devono sempre considerare strade

alternative per introdurre nuovi valori e soddisfare così i clienti. È importante vedere tutte quelle

opportunità che il design può introdurre, considerando quest’ultimo non solo come uno strumento

utile a focalizzare l’attenzione in direzione delle persone, ma bensì anche come un metodologia di

gestione delle nuove situazioni che possono verificarsi durante le attività giornaliere. Questa tesi

introdurrà i concetti principali utili alle piccole imprese per comprendere l’importanza del Design

all’interno del mondo del business e verrà loro spiegato come il trasformarsi in una “learning

organization” possa facilitare l’inserimento del design all’interno delle loro attività.

Parola chiave: Organizzazione, design, apprendimento, cultura, cambiamento, persone

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PART 1. Executive summary

“Great things never came from comfort zones”

Unknown

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1.1 Problem setting

Design is a practice difficult to define, it will depend of the perspective and knowledge the

individual has. During years, the concept has evolved according the needs and trends at

that moment. Starting as a graphic tool for communication has move to become a

strategy methodology to face problems. This evolution of the practice make difficult to

many people, even for designers, to express the function, applicability and how useful it

can be.

Many times, as future management engineering is difficult to explain how the design can

be applied in businesses, many people believe that apply design practices means only

graphics, expecting from us abilities commonly used by designers. For design-centric

companies could be easier to understand the importance of methods as Design Thinking,

Sprint, creation of a Journey map, construction of a Business Model Canvas, a Service

System Map, or understand easily the concept of Design-driven Innovation, but what

about the traditional and small companies? How we can explain and introduce those

companies in the Design Management movement? Even, how we as management

engineers can understand our role in this movement, and how to don’t get lost and

confuse about the distinction between manager engineering and designers?

1.2 Research objectives

The aim of this investigation is mainly focus in introduce basic concepts to understand

how organizations can start to implement design management practices among it. For

these three main objectives, have been distinguished:

The first objective is focus on present models proposed in the past by authors like

Mintzberg or Galbraith, the importance of People now of design the structure and way of

working in organizations.

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The second objective of this investigation is analyzed the designer’s way of working and

see how the design has evolved during the years, to understand the current practice of it

in the business as a strategy methodology. This will help to see the importance of design

practices to achieve innovation and solve problems in a different and effective way.

The second objective is to highlight the importance in the evolution of design from a visual

tool to a managerial activity, to identify how designers think and behave and how this

behavior has transform design into a strategical decision.

And the third objective is the principal one, the introduction of how organizations can

apply design practices in their daily activities. The aim is to see basic concepts that can

simplify the understanding to traditional and small organizations about design, and at the

same time explain these practices with the analysis of learning organizations suggested by

Peter Senge, helping to prepare individuals to face constant changes and evolution in

businesses.

1.3. Research methodology

The investigation is based on theoretical research, counting with the support of different

articles and books related to the topics. We started with a literature analysis about

designing the organizations to understand the principal aspects in consideration now to

implement changes, and literature about design in general to understand designer’s

behavior.

After understand the importance of people, and the benefits of apply innovative way of

working, the focus was in design practices in the organizations. In this way was possible to

create a synthesis about the methods and the behaviors organizations implement now to

apply design inside their businesses. The research was focus on an overview of principal

contributors and models that implement design among the organizations.

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A general research about design was first implemented to highlight patterns and

repetitive models that have worked during the years in the organizations. After identified

these practices, an analysis of the study realized by Senge about Learning Organizations

was conducted, together with the application of the method in business cases as the

healthcare and education areas.

1.4 Conclusions

The development of the investigation focused in three main aspects, the structure of the

organizations, the design, and the applicability of design in the organizations.

With the analysis of the first part we can verified how important are the human part in

organizations, how their performance going to lead the company’s performance at the

same time. How it is important to develop different methodologies to support people at

the moment to apply radical changes inside the organization.

In the case of design can be highlight the importance of acting in a more open way, taking

in consideration all the possible scenarios and not only the ones that it supposed. The

evolution of design shows how can be implemented in different aspects, and the positive

results can have in the organizations.

Saying this it is possible conclude with the relevance of applying design practices in the

organizations. It is important to remember that the investigation wants to give support to

small and traditional firms to understand the concept and impact of design in their firms.

Simple tools as sketches, storytelling, or to implement reward systems can improve the

company’s performance. An aspect to consider is how people can perceive these changes,

for that reason implementing Learning Organizations is important now to introduce new

design practices. The five disciplines in Learning Organizations can guide people to not

only accept the changes, but instead support them and be an active part of them.

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PART 2. Research methodology

“The more you learn, the more acutely aware you

become of your ignorance”

Peter Senge

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Before the description of the theoretical models, it is necessary to present the

methodology adopted during the development of this thesis. The explanation of the

problems of this thesis and how emerges the interest in this topic, the objectives we are

looking with this thesis, and finally the approach and the process employed during the

investigation.

This study is based on literature review to identify and to analyze some of the main

aspects of apply design in the organizations, and the important role or learning and

people among the organization.

The motivation to study this topic coming from the curiosity to understand a well-

established concept for some, but also not clear for many. Because the shortage of this

practice, as design management, it is important to clarify the main aspects to simplify this

new discipline to people not familiar with the topic.

2.1 Problem setting

In this part, we want to illustrate the ground of where the investigation is based, the main

aspects that emerge now to decide to make this investigation. The problem setting

expresses the main thoughts about the topic, and how it guides to the goals and

objectives to reach, with the necessary research and analysis to make.

As we previously show, the design is implemented in the managerial activities of many

companies. But how it transforms from a visual activity to a strategic method to improve

performances?

This transformation is not an easy path, design must fight during many years to show the

importance role it can plays. The problem emerges in this point, how organizations can

accept implement new and unknown activities for them? This brings us to the initial point

how people react to changes? With this question, the problem goes back to the beginning

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of the organizations, where the traditional methodologies were applied without creating a

high impact in the people and the company involved. But is this completely truth?

The organizations are always looking to improve their performance, searching for the

most efficient and effective way of doing activities and a method to look for this solution

is trying to work in how the organizations worked and its structure. Designing

organizations is an activity that everyday directors, managers, human resources, are

always looking for the best way to divide the organization according the tasks people must

achieve. But this method of design the structure came with a strong factor against it

practice, the people. People have been the main factor in the development of

organizations, without them the gear of the organizations is not going to work. For their

main role, any activity that affects them can directly affect the organization’s activities.

People normally are refused to implement new practices, people feel comfortable with

activities that they already know and that they can feel identified. The design of the

structure of the organizations can affect directly all these people that since the beginning

are rejecting the opportunity to improve with something new. For this reason, we can see

how in many of the methodologies suggested to design the organizations mention always

the human part of the organizations, either referring of the regards they can receive, or

the team motivation and learning they can have with colleagues. The important is to

remember their main role in organizations, that at the end also difficult the evolution of

the organizations because they could oppose to it.

Now to implement changes to the organizations also appear the problem and risk of

failure. To develop new practices doesn’t guarantee that it going to be a success, this

problem can be face it through design practices, responding as designers do. A problem

that emerges is that people are very close to try. For their way of working, designers go

always for try new things, thinking that could be other possible solutions, and not afraid of

fail. They recognize that a failure idea come with a better learning.

With the combination of these two main aspects the human part and their willingness to

change, and how designers face to problems we can arrive to the main problem. How are

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possible implement design methods to facilitate the performance of the organizations

without affect the experience of the people inside of it?

We want to focus in the basic methodologies and tools that organizations can implement

to start to use design on them. For that reason, after the previous analysis we see how the

proposal created by Senge about learning organizations could be one of the first and big

steps organizations can have to face changes and to evolution organically.

The idea of this investigation is to explain in the easiest way how basic factors can improve

considerably the activities, we want to focus in the basic methodologies and tools that

organizations can implement to start to use design on it. Also, show to not design-driven

organizations, traditional, familiar, and small companies, and to people not related to

design management how practices that they realize every day can change for better all

the organization, it could be also useful in third world countries to change methodologies

of studying and implement design in the study programs of the careers. To reveal the best

practices of design applied in organizations, and to offer tools and models that can be

used as guideposts for organizations.

2. 2 Research objectives

Having defined the problem is easier to define the aim of this investigation. It going to

consist in the examination of two concepts, to arrive to the main objective of the

investigation, the design in the organizations.

The goal of this project is to clarify basic concepts and show simple practices that

organization can have to improve the performance of it. To help design managers

understand and implement new and practical processes for identifying the role and value

of design in their businesses.

The first objective we want to address is to simplify the aspects propose by authors in the

design of the structure of organizations, considering mainly the human part of those. The

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second objective is to highlight the importance in the evolution of design from a visual

tool to a managerial activity, to identify how designers think and behave and how this

behavior has transform design into a strategical decision.

And finally, the main objective we want to address is understand how basics design

activities can support the activities of the companies, and how those concepts can be

applied inside the five disciplines of learning organizations proposed in Senge’s studies.

All this investigation is focus in show the importance of people inside the organizations,

every model and methodology analyzed is taking in consideration the employee’s

perspective. We should recognize the important role of people in the process of changes.

With this investigation, we will be able to recognize the importance of guide people to

changes, and how the design cares about them.

2.3 Research Process

This thesis is based on empirical research to support the development of the theoretical

model. The final aim is to present a project where people not familiar to design as

managerial process, can easily understand some of the activities they can perform to

achieve better result in the organizations.

In these paragraphs, we are going to explain the process we followed during the evolution

of this research. The general process follows the collection of material, synthesis of it and

a posterior analysis of the main resources.

Planning: The first step was about the discussion of the schedule of the process, at the

beginning was necessary take a couple of months to get in deep in the topic. It is

important mention that for the characteristics of this investigation is necessary a constant

literature review during the development of the thesis. At the beginning of the work a

quick research of main concepts was necessary to understand which could be the main

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aspects to consider in the investigation. Identify the importance of this investigation,

considering some research questions or objectives, and the topics to cover.

Review protocol: The second step was focus on the literature review. It was based

focusing on a deep analysis of existing studies about designing the organizations, design

practices, designer’s behavior, design new practices and learning organizations. It was

implemented a combination between search on database as google scholars and iteration.

This iteration consisted on the research of some basic concepts related to the topic in

investigation and according the content of the articles and books, try again with another

concept or formalize that research.

To include or exclude relevant studies we proceed with a selection based on titles of the

publication, then with the reading of abstracts identify if that study is useful for our

research and if it is useful proceed with the reading of the full paper and depending of its

content taking the main parts to consider in our research.

We consider many sources from journals to books of different contributors. For example,

some of the authors we can mention are Mintzberg, Senge and Buchanan; or important

journals and organizations as Boston Consulting Group, The Journal of Design, Economics,

and Innovation, the Design council, the Academy of Management Journal, the Design

management institute, between others.

As this investigation is based on empirical research this was the main step for the

construction of this thesis. After the investigation and readings, we can understand better

the environment related to this study, about design, organizations, human-centered,

learning focus, we can identify the main aspects useful for our research and define the

aim of this thesis.

Definition: During the analysis of the literature review the problem has been defined more

in deep, also it was easier to identify the objectives and the questions we want to solve

with this thesis. In this step, we define the aim of the investigation, our main objective is

to simplify the introduction of design in traditional organizations, and giving a look to basic

concepts they can implement to improve the performance in their company. Also after

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the review it was much easier to identify the main concepts, models, and theories that

better suits to the investigation.

Selection and analysis: after having well defined the aim of the investigation and have

done the literature research, we proceed to the selection of the relevant material for the

investigation. Having the material, we proceed to the analysis of it, the process was focus

in divide all the literature review according three main divisions, first designing

organizations or structure of the organizations, second design and designer’s behavior,

and of course third implementation of design inside the organizations, including the

explanation of two industries where learning organizations can be implemented.

Now of the analysis of all the support material the process consists in reading the main

topics of the books, or the complete articles and then proceed to coding, mark all

passages of text that are related to certain concepts of interest for the investigation. It

was made a clustering of topics for example key aspects, models, tools, models, and

problems and in that way to define the structure of the thesis. We continued with the

clustering until having more defined groups and concepts in common.

Accomplishment of the objectives: this last step concludes with the development of the

project, the realization of the manuscript where all the previous steps can be formalized.

The focus of the project was to create a simple text where managers of non-design-centric

organizations can refer to begin with basic practices to implement changes in their

companies.

Planning Literature review Definition Selection and analysis

Accomplishment of the objectives

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PART 3. The structure of organizations

“The conventional definition of management is getting work

done through people, but real management is developing

people through work”

Agha Hasan Abedi

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To initiate change movements, it is necessary to understand in deep the organization. As

we are going to see during the development of this project, the human part of the

companies has a high impact in all the activities and development of the firms. To

understand the problems to solve, one suggestion is to be close to the human resources

department, they can offer to managers guiding and support now to deal with the people

who work in the organization.

First, it is important to define the right problem to solve, creating a business case can

allow an easy understanding of the situation of the company and the direction you want

to go, it includes the key elements of the strategy, the analysis of the current situation,

and the design criteria of the change to carry out in the organization. To simplify the

process, some points can be taken into consideration: (Kesler & Kates, 2010)

- To clarify the Strategic Priorities

- To define the Case for Change

- To set the Design Criteria

To begin with something new, it is important to have a clear strategy, which everyone can

easily understand and feel familiar, in that way it could be possible to align the expected

results. Not having a clear strategy could bring a lot of conflicts between all the parts

involved in the organization, instead of bringing advantages and innovation in the result.

Other important factor to consider in the understanding of the strategy is the

commitment of people, they can feel more engaged with the process if they recognize the

value of its implementation. A complete current state analysis is needed now of initiating

the change revolution, not only financial data, but also the study of customer feedback to

know how the different metrics are working, interviews and focus groups with all the

managers, employees, and everyone involved in the organization. That way, it could be

possible to see different perspectives of the problem and to define it in a clearer way. For

applying design criteria, it is necessary to go beyond the current problems, to think in a

long period of 12-36 months, to see how the change evolution will be, which capabilities

are going to be required in that moment to work in strengthen them in the present.

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Seeing the situation as a long-term view helps finding the most effective units and

processes, the best options to work in cross-functional teams, and where to divide the

decision power.

One of the factors to consider if the organization wants to succeed is focusing in the

strategy alignment with all the organization’s components. One useful model could be the

Structural Building Blocks which takes in consideration four main blocks: (Kesler & Kates,

2010).

1. Customer or market: depending on their requirements the solution is going to be a

single product or service, or an integration of both, the idea is to satisfy and to meet their

needs.

2. Function or know-how: to have a clear and organized way of working, it is necessary

having different units that focus on specific activities, for example finance, administration,

or marketing. This can allow the standardization, reduce duplications, and create

economies of scale.

3. Geography or region: to consolidate a business it is important that it first becomes

strong in their local market, in that way having the experience to go to further places. It is

important to consider that each market is different but some disciplines can be

reproduced and tried in other places. For that reason, the support on local managers is

important, the place culture and way of working gives the local taste and the opportunity

to succeed against competitors.

4. Product: the different types of products are the ones that help building part of the

company reputation, a multiple product line can bring a more complete service and

options to customers, calling their attention and creating value to them.

Another useful framework for the organization design is the Six Design Drivers, it could

work to analyze the initial situation of the organization, with its strengths and weaknesses,

considering basic capabilities and benefits. It helps to find which of the Structural Building

Blocks could be more efficient according the company situation to work with the new

strategy implementation (Kesler & Kates, 2010).

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Table 1. Six Design Drivers

Source: Kesler & Kates, 2010, p. 18.

The functions matrix is a good way to apply changes in an organization, applying

Governance in the Matrix can simplify the understanding of the situation in a company.

With the current global expansion in businesses, the high demand of customers, and the

several brands and products available, the matrix could be a way of easily and quickly

organizing the current situation, despite not being the favourite tool to managers. Some

questions to understand the behaviour of the organization could be:

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- How much authority will be delegated to operating units vs managed from the centre?

- How independent should operating units be from each other versus how much

interaction and coordination is needed among them to leverage shared investments?

- What role will support functions play in the business and with how much power and

influence?

Managing these questions can bring value for the way the interaction between different

roles can be applied after understanding very well the place and the task of each one,

allowing also to work in collaboration and coordination. The work of managers together

with the human resources office can help to take the right decisions, developing efficiently

the executive team, having effective management routines, or working in a cross-

company environment. A good defined matrix increases the speed in decision-making

(Kesler & Kates, 2010).

In his book, Organization Design (1977), Galbraith defines “Organizational design is the

search for coherence between strategy (domain, objectives and goals), organizing mode

(decomposition into subtasks, coordination for the completion of whole tasks) integrating

individuals (selection and training of people), and designing a reward system.”

The success of a company depends not only of the employee's technical skills and

knowledge, but also on the firm’s organizational facility at combining many capabilities

such as research, talents, or marketing, also on the knowledge sharing between many

disciplines. The company’s organization of the resources will either allow them to grow

and succeed or to fail in its business.

3.1 Principal models

The Star Model framework created by Jay R. Galbraith is based on different design policies

to find the best solution to organize the structure of a company guided by management

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and that has a strong influence in the employee behavior. It consists in five different

stages:

1. Strategy

2. Structure

3. Processes

4. People

5. Rewards

For this investigation, we want to focus on the human part, taking in consideration the

strategy and structure specifically talking about this model. In the first one, it is important

to consider the following steps to take to achieve success in the businesses, and in the

second one it is important to know how the organizations are arranged to find the

decision-making power location, this will help us to transform from vertical to horizontal

organizations. Usually in vertical organizations the control of making decisions is based on

the high range hierarchical distribution of the organizations. Horizontal distribution focus

on team working where everyone can participate in decisions making.

Starting from the point of the people’s role relevance inside the organizations, it is

important to take into consideration different aspects to achieve as best behavior as

possible of all of them. In the Star Model, it is suggested to focus on Rewards, in that way

people can feel motivated to perform and complete the goals planned for the

organization, also considering the People, it is important to have good human resources

policies, which can influence and define employees’ mindsets and skills, some of these

policies can be achieved with training, rotation, development, effective recruiting, and

resources selection (Galbraith, 2011).

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Figure 1. Galbraith’s Star Model

Source: Schuster & Kesler, 2011, p. 39.

The rewards can cover aspects as salaries or bonuses, but also some others simpler

aspects as parking facilities or offering free snacks at the office. The human resources

policies could cover hiring processes, internal mobility, or training, improving the skills of

each person to achieve the organization’s goals.

In traditional organizations, normally the focus was on the Structure of organizations, but

with the fast changes on businesses now is looking to how to optimize processes, how to

treat People, and which Rewards to give them to encourage them for their daily activities.

Something important is the connection between each of the 5 topics of the Star Model, a

good communication and the use of a clear language to everyone that brings a consistent

message to all the resources inside the company is necessary.

The Canadian professor Henry Mintzberg established a Framework with three principal

configurations of the organizations. Starting with the part of the organization that can

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determinate the success or failure, going in deep with the coordination mechanism of all

the activities and passing to how the organization manage the decision-making process, in

a centralized or decentralized way. He defined the different parts of organization, the

principal coordinated mechanisms and the types of decentralization.

The Minztberg Framework analyses six different configurations in the organizations:

1. Simple structure- Strategic Apex

2. Machine bureaucracy- The technostructure

3. Professional bureaucracy- Operative core

4. Diversified form- Middle line

5. Adhocracy or Innovative organization

Figure 2. Key parts of an organization

Source: Lunenburg, 2012, p. 2.

1. The Strategic Apex, located all the top management of the organization and its

support staff. It will be depending on the company structure; a Simple Structure uses

direct supervision that can be a vertical or a horizontal centralization. It could be

overlapping in the tasks of the support staff if the group is small.

2. Middle Line, the middle and lower level management who communicate and work

close with the top management. For the activities coordination to apply

standardization, this division form uses limited vertical decentralization, where the

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decision-making is decentralized at the divisional level with little coordination

between divisions. Each division itself is relatively centralized and tends to be like a

machine bureaucracy. In corporate headquarters, technostructure provides services to

all divisions; support staff is located within each division. Usually Middle Line is

implemented for large corporations.

3. Operating Core, it is everyone related to the operations processes, all the workers

that execute the daily tasks. Based on Professional Bureaucracy where standardization

of skills is used as a prime coordinating mechanism, high skills professionals. The

Operating Core applies vertical and horizontal decentralization, even the organization

is formalized, provides also flexibility to give autonomy to professionals. The top

management and technostructure areas are small, there are some middle managers

and strong support staff supporting the core activities. The idea is to achieve

innovation solutions and to offer high quality services. The coordination problems are

common because its size that can vary from moderate to large. Examples of this type

are universities, hospitals, large law firms, they are complex but stable environments.

4. Technostructure, all the necessary tools to support the processes. The specialists in

the design systems, processes, etc. Machine Bureaucracy implements processes

standardization for the activities coordination with high formalization and work

specialization. It is based only on horizontal decentralization, therefore centralized

decisions. The organization has many levels starting from the top management to the

bottom. This type has many support staff and technostructure. The techno-structures

are formed by analysts like engineers, accountants, planners, researchers, and

management personnel.

5. Support Staff, all the people needed for support from the outside, allowing the

continuity in the workflow of the operation activities. This is the last type of

organization added by Minztberg, Adhocracy carries out agreements between the

suppliers such as coordination of the activities, and has low formalization and

decentralization. Support Staff implements advanced technologies looking for achieve

quick innovation and adaptation to changing environments. This type of organization

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is medium size, flexible to adapt to others organizations, and efficient in the use of

resources. Examples of adhocracies include aerospace and electronics industries,

research, and development firms.

Inside Mintzberg study, he also suggested to pay attention to Ideology, the beliefs and

traditions depend on each culture, the way of behaving and acting is going to be different,

also the values each people have; it is important consider it to formulate some norms to

align the organization if is necessary (Lunenburg, 2012).

Mintzberg also suggested different mechanisms of coordination between the different

tasks:

1. Direct supervision, a person oversees others, guides and supervise their work.

2. Mutual adjustment, when the operations are coordinated through the simple

process of informal communication.

3. Standardization of norms, implemented to work in the same way among the

organization, the norms allow controlled activities where everyone can be aligned.

4. Standardization of outputs, specifically when the results are defined. The

specifications and definition of targets allow a coordinate result.

5. Standardization of skills, when it is necessary a specific skill and training for workers,

coordinated with the tasks to achieve.

6. Standardization of work processes, depending of the activities it is necessary to

coordinate and to program all the processes to achieve the required operations.

Finally, per the studies made by Mintzberg he distinguished three different types of

decentralization:

1. Vertical decentralization based on a hierarchical distribution of power, the chain of

command and the authority are distributed beginning with superordinate and

subordinates in any organization.

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2. Horizontal decentralization works with shared authority, where the different people

inside the organizations work in the same level, taking decisions together.

3. Selective decentralization, where the decisions are taken by a specific unit of the

organization previously delegated.

These different types are going to define the information flow and the decision-making

location. Generally vertical fluxes allocate resources, normally including budget and

planning, horizontal fluxes’ goal is to achieve the integration among the different units

(Marciniak, 2013).

Table 2. Mintzberg’s Five Organizational Structures

Source: Lunenburg, 2012, p. 4.

For the redesign of the organization different strategies could be applied to select the

team to work and to take the best decisions in which changes apply (Kesler & Kates,

2010):

1. The expert model

2. Executive team as Design Team

3. Delegated Design Team

4. Multi-level Design Team

In the expert model the team is formed by the leader, a very small group of advisers, and

one internal or external consultant. In this case the executive board doesn’t take part of

the transformation process, the leader is the one who makes the decisions and the rest of

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the group creates the communication and how to apply the plans. In the case of the

structure of organizations this model is normally used when the size is going to be smaller

or members of the executive board are going to be replaced. In the executive team as

Design Team the board works closely with the leader, this model is implemented when

quick decisions are needed, it is fundamental that the executive board works together and

in a good way. One constraint in this approach is the executive team itself, they could be

the ones more resistant to change. Normally they perceive this change as consequences of

previous wrong decisions that they made, so it could happen that they create a wall and

tend to defend their current position, for that reason many times it is better to bring an

external consultant that can show from the outside all the benefits the transformation can

bring.

In the model, Delegated Design Team, the employee’s participation in low levels can be

useful to explore other design options, the idea is to find a small group of high potential

employees that could be more in contact with the low-level activities and that bring

alternatives and recommendations to the executive board. Usually this approach has a lot

of success, it is an action-learning development experience for the employees involved

which embrace the active participation and enthusiasm from them. The bigger problem of

this approach is the low participation of the executive team, they only decide the best

option without getting involved in the solutions creation and this can result of a careful

choice of the most conservative alternative, because normally they don’t take risks in

something that they are not involved since the beginning. This can create frustration in

the delegated team because after their hard-working in finding the most innovative

solutions they hit with the wall of negation. The last approach is the multi-level design

team, the most efficient option between the four where there is a mix between the

executive team and managers in low levels. It is used for projects looking for growth,

innovation and to improve effectiveness. The energy, participation and ideation of ideas is

high, the employees are also involved, for that reason it can’t be applied for the unit’s

reduction in the organization.

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Other approach to implement in the organization’s evolution is the Double design process

where the organizational and architectural design process is generated, this supports the

organizational change and development. This requires a collaborative work between

managers and employees, they could address and accommodate all the possible

organizational challenges, of course without forgetting the user participation giving

feedbacks and analyzing they response to the new changes. The solution improvement is

going to be achieved with the everyday practices and experiences of the team.

The fundamental of the selection on how to work in the organization transformation

depends on the output to achieve, also the culture of the organization has an important

role because the behavior of the people inside is going to influence the response and

effective implementation of the changes.

3.2 Constraints

It is always important to remember that each organization is different and has their

specific characteristics and needs, so also different strategies are necessary per their

behaviour and requests. Good design is based on good strategy.

As with any process it is normal that some complex factors appear, some of those aspects

could be (Kesler & Kates, 2010):

- Innovation in process as well as products, the need to constantly offer something new

and valuable to customers.

- Efficiency pressure to increase volume, keeping in acceptable expenses.

- The Global expansion and the local competition that are becoming more sophisticated.

- The need of changing business models and to manage a more complete portfolio of

business models.

The culture of the organization and the resistant beginning from the management area

can bring many problems to the restructuration of the organization. When the

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environment is more dynamic is necessary to change frequently the work dynamic, and to

apply different configurations in the organization to find the most effective solution. But

the main difficulty of this is the ability of the organization to adapt to a complex strategy,

it has happened many times that organizations assume strategies far from their own

capabilities bringing disappointment to all the parts involved in the process.

One big problem in designing the organizations is the misalignment of goals and

performance measures, people do the activities that the supervisor checks or the ones

visible to others. This can be managed offering incentives to people, not only with objects

and money but taking care of employees, make them feel useful, part of the team, also

working on improving the organization culture, in that way people are going to feel close

to the company, achieving better results. Of course, this is something that needs a lot of

time of hardworking to remove the barriers that people use to build, but considering that

the motivation system looks for aligning personal goals with those of the firm, it is

important to work on it.

Some impacts can be easily recognized when there is not aligning, for example the

organization can be slow to respond and not able to solve internal conflicts, leaders resist

changing, wrong performing in decision-making or the roles are confused and sometimes

overlapped (Schuster & Kesler, 2011).

The size of the organizations can be also a constraint for designing their structures. Size is

a factor that favors small organizations and plays against the large ones, because the

resistance is higher with more people involved. The environments’ complexity and the

fast-moving evolution provoke that firms must move from stand alone to “meta

organizations” where it is fundamental the collaboration among firms. These are

organizations whose members are other organizations, one clear example of this is the

partnership among different firms (Marciniak, 2013). An important point to consider from

organization designers is to try to achieve something that differentiate the organization in

any way, it is necessary to create unique, hard to replicate capabilities among the firm

that can produce lasting and sustainable competitive advantage that allow to distinguish

the company (Schuster & Kesler, 2011). Even the possibility of creating larger companies

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with the combination and acquisition of others is fundamental always fomenting the team

work to facilitate the development of the activities.

35

PART 4. Design

“Good management is the art of making problems so interesting

and their solutions so constructive that everyone

wants to get to work and deal with them”

Paul Hawken

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The concept of design can be interpreted in so many ways, different from the concept to

the real practice, this flexibility often brings misunderstanding about how to conceive

design (Buchanan, 1992).

Design has evolved from a trade activity to a segmented profession, then to a field for

technical research, and now known as a new liberal art of technological culture

(Buchanan, 1992). Each of these different uses of design continue working for different

requirements, but the last one is the one referring to the new develop inside

organizations to apply a different behavior more focused on human-centered. The way

designers mix ideas and find relationships between signs, things, actions, and thoughts

show that design is not only used as a technical tool but also as a new liberal art.

Traditionally different areas are linked with different types of professionals,

communication with graphic designers, industrial designers, and engineers with the

production of objects, designers with a managerial background with activities and

services, and architects and urban planners with the developing of systems and

environments. The design has been applied per the demands of each area of practice,

each science that meets design tended to use it as an “applied” version for their needs,

according to its own knowledge, methods, and principles (Buchanan, 1992). Normally

design is only conceived simply as a decorative art, but there are different areas where

design can have a strong and decisive role.

In Buchanan’s article, Wicked problems in Design Thinking (1992), distinguished four main

areas where designers have a principal role in the contemporary life. The first one is the

design of symbolic and visual communication, this is the most known and it lies inside all

the graphic designers who implement traditional approaches as book or magazine

production moving to photography or television, that of course continues evolving per the

current and fast movement of life, changing the way and the tools for communicating. The

second area covers the objects, all the products, its form and visual appearances, this area

has also evolved according to the customer needs, not only focusing on physical aspects

but taking care about the cultural, social, psychological impact in the person, working

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together with engineering, art, natural and human sciences. The third area concerns about

the design of activities and organized services, at the beginning just focusing on logistics to

reach specified objects, but it has evolved to a more complete strategic planning bringing

decision-making where the Design Thinking makes a fundamental part of the activity, this

area starts to taking care about the experience, how could bring more value. Is it a

relationship between connections? and which are the consequences? how can affect the

everyday activities? The last one is the design of complex systems or environments for

living, working, playing, and learning. Starting with urban planning, architecture and

systems engineering, and now going in deep with the concern of providing ecological and

cultural environments for humans in a more consciousness way.

The distinction of these four areas are clearly defined but with the develop of Design

Thinking the limits are expanding and mixing between them, allowing places of invention

where more than one type of designer works together with others in a co-creation of a

solution for different problems. The way we are living is more a multiple system where the

linear reasoning is not anymore applying, there are different requires that need

combinations of different systems to create the solutions people are looking for. The

designers cannot be longer perceived as just individuals who decorate messages and

produce nice looking products, they are a fundamental part of the complex system for

problem solving, the way of thinking and working can bring better and optimal solutions.

Saying this, design is evolving as a new discipline where acting together with other

different subjects can be implemented as practical reasoning and argumentation, guided

by designers but mixed with others creating a collaborative work where design is used as

communication, construction, strategic planning, or systemic integration (Buchanan,

1992).

The design takes into consideration a current form or situation, but it also is an ongoing

process that continues to redesign and reinvent the traditional methods and behaviors.

The processes are part of a history of different solutions where different actors are

involved in the development of the evolution to arrive to the best solution as possible

(Stang & Georg, 2012).

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The design is an iterative process where the influence of different disciplines allows

offering a complete solution. We can see how the way of working of designers has been

implemented in different sectors, and with positives results. A usual case where this way

of thinking has been a success is in the creation of a startup, these entrepreneurships

normally applied different reasoning to try new paths and success in a world close to

change. The way of transform an idea to an action can be fundamental to achieve good

results, in the article written by Austin, J. R. in the Journal of Organization Design (2013)

he divided the conversion of an idea to reality in three different translation moments. The

first one is the creation of a new mindset, the second the movement from an idea to

action and the third one is shifting contexts.

To implement a new mindset, it is important to create a memorable and exciting moment

to participants, to get their attention and their interest. This moment could be very

quickly followed by the implementation of the process. To create this moment is

important to have the right people involved, to have processed that challenges mindsets,

giving the time needed to the discussion for create a successful breakthrough. The shared

experience brings a momentum and enthusiasm to all people, bringing then a successful

team work and an alignment focus on the new mindset. Of course, when the development

of a new idea starts, coming with it also contradictory feelings about the new mindset.

This creates double and incompatible ideas that can interrupt the transformation to

reality, but at the same time this discussion between two different ideas creates insights

that could bring better results.

Some of the barriers to overcome in the creation of a new mindset are:

- Binary traps, this is a well-known attitude in decision-making. It is about seeing

only two possible options. For example, common binary traps are to assume

something is in favor or against, or the us vs them. This barrier tends to limit new

alternatives and the creation of new and innovative ideas.

- Fear of failure, people tend to repeat same practices because they are afraid to

take risks. Managers must be brave and try new things, they also must encourage

39

others to take risks and to search new possibilities. The idea is to look for

behaviors where people go beyond and not only to do what is expected of them.

- Limited frames of reference, normally people tend to limit the possibilities

between the ones that they know and are familiar for them. It is necessary to

examine different frames to recognize which are the ones that can create more

value.

- Overconfidence, this behavior brings that people think that they know more of

what they really do, this can increase the possibility of failure and the option that

individuals reject any different perspective. For example, when managers have

suggested the current solution, they tend to refuse other new ideas because they

feel that their idea doesn’t work so their reputation can be damaged. To create a

new mindset, it is necessary that people recognize that they don’t know everything

and that you can constantly improve your current situation.

Some techniques can be implemented to handling this first translation moment. First it is

important to analyze the uncertainty points, rather than discussing about the trends,

showing these spaces not yet filled can increase the interest of the people to get involved

in the search of new solutions. Scenario planning can be a useful tool to facilitate the

generation of innovative perspectives and strategies, it can stimulate the discussion of

different scenarios and relevant data. It can also be implemented a blue ocean strategy

where people must examine the firm’s products and markets per the customer

perspective. It can generate a new perspective of the purpose of the business, value of

products, or investment priorities.

The second translation moment refers to moving from ideas to actions, it is all about

changing behavior. Moving from the excitement feeling from the Eureka moment in the

first translation, this step is more difficult because it requires a long-term commitment. It

requires a lot of energy, patience, flexibility, and engagement with all the people involved.

The transformation to actions is not a quickly activity, it is necessary a lot of time, to

practice and to institutionalize all the new routines. One problem of this long-term

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transformation is the commitment of participants, people always expect quickly and

visible changes if not they can feel that is not efficient and lose the interest of it. For

implement new actions it is important to take in consideration also the stakeholders’

perspective, the new ideas must be aligned with the interests and perspectives of them.

The main activities in this second translation moment are conversation and

communication to find the best way to implement the new ideas.

Some of the barriers to overcome in the translation from an idea to an action are:

- Conflicting interests, as mentioned before the stakeholders must be considered

in the transformation of the ideas to action. The idea is to show them the

importance of the problems of the organizations and how this transformation can

improve this situation, but it could happen that come of their interests are not

aligned with the solution.

- Entrenched routines, more established are certain activities more difficult to

implement new activities, greater is the risk that the new ideas will be rejected. It

is necessary to commit hard to the idea, have goal clarity, and support the

engagement of all the members in the organization.

- Lack of entrainment, entrainment refers to the alignment of time cycles within an

organization. The second translation moment requires a long-term commitment of

all the activities among the organization, so it is important to understand the

different types of work cycles and to manage the tensions between them.

For transform ideas to actions some capabilities can be strengthened to facilitate this

change. Some of those can be, training in influence and persuasion to get all the people

involved, stakeholder mapping and engagement, team leadership, and project

management. The implementation of the TAP team expertise tool can be also useful, it

consists in combine scheduled times to adjust team composition as the process evolves.

The main forces to take care are the management of stakeholders, the monitoring of

member motivation and enthusiasm, and the committed leadership.

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The third and last translation moment suggested by Austin (2013) is the shifting contexts.

It consists of the translation of a successful practice in another part of the organization. It

is important to remember that is not to replicate, it is about translate, remembering that

the context has changed so it is necessary to retranslate the actions to the new context.

The barriers to overcome are:

- An insular culture, to implement new actions in a new part of the organizations is

important to understand them first to go there. The best example is how

marketers study new markets now to start to sell previous products successful in

other countries but not yet in the new one.

- Confirmation bias, it refers about how people invest in the ideas they think are

correct without giving the opportunities to the new ones that they could don’t

know. So, arriving to new areas we are going to look for the characteristics that

already work in the first are, looking for the similarities, but at the same time we

are going to remove those ideas that we don’t know even that in the first area did.

It is normal blame the execution instead of thinking about that it fails because of

the new and different context in comparison with the first area.

- Idea championing, the success of an idea in previous situations can blind the

opportunity to arise new ideas, individuals can overconfidence of this successful

idea without taking in consideration that the context has changed.

Some of the tools that can help in this translational moment could be re-prioritizing

uncertainties, revisiting stakeholder maps, and examining needed expertise. Also, the

project premortem exercise where the team should assume that the project fails and start

to analyze what could be the possible causes. As the same time, can be implemented

techniques for customer-centricity and understanding of customer pain-points, these

going to help to understand the behaviors and responses people going to have, and to

identify what could motivates them.

Applying the behavior of designers in thinking not only in the one and first easy solution,

but instead try again and find all the other possible solutions, give us the chance to ask

42

what we really want to achieve inside the organization. The process design implemented

can be divided into two steps: the problem definition and solution, in the first designers

identify all the elements of the problem and the factors to find an appropriate solution,

and in the second one is the combination of the different requirements and factors to

choose the correct option. The normal sequence in a process is not linear, in fact for that

reason is very useful implement design as a problem solving because the way of working

allows you to be more open to other possible solutions and try many times as required.

One problem for designers came from the difficulty of the problem, the behavior is useful

for complex problems but normally those have a high grade of uncertainty. The problem

came because is complicated conceive and plan what does not yet exists, they usually

must “invent” and create something completely new that brings enough value and

experience for the customer. They can also found problems of integration with the people

they worked, for example a product design can face different lines of reasoning: the ideas

coming from designers and manufacturers about their products; the internal operational

logic of products; and the desire and ability of human beings to use products in everyday

life in ways that reflect personal and social values (Buchanan, 1992). The designer should

create a good environment of work between colleagues where they can work together

bringing good solutions for customers, finding the effective option where everyone

related to the solution perceive the value of the product.

“Designers are thinkers, makers, and doers. Designers have the capacity to think before

they make or do” (Buchanan, 2015). For this ability, the designer’s way of acting is so

useful in the current fast speed evolution of the world, they study all the possible

variables in a diverse and quick way to able to achieve the best possible results.

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PART 5. Design in the organizations

“To fear change is to fear being challenged. To fear being

challenged is to fear growth and new possibilities”

Ty Howard

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The design has move from the initial and traditional point to solve tactical problems of

designing products and then services, to be use in organizational problems of operations

in the daily activities of companies. The design starts to be implemented to solve

problems of vision and strategy, preparing the organization to react to the constant

changes in the external world. According this new vision of design managers should act

not only as decision makers also as designers to bring new and creative solutions.

To consider design as part of business, it is important recognize their important role on it,

sometimes the problem of recognition begin from the designer that are not clear about

these new areas. This could happen because of two reasons, for the designer’s lack of

knowledge of management concepts and of management as a science, and for their

difficulty in implement a value model in their everyday practices (Mozota, 2006).

The evolution of design has brought it to be applied as a strategic tool for business, using

technological capabilities to achieve innovation to bring value to users, taking care of what

are they needs, and accomplishing business value with the experiences providing by the

products and services that the company provides (Academy of management journal,

2015).

As mentioned in the analysis of how organizations design their structure and operations,

we can see how the human resources are so important and how working with reward

systems can improve their performance and align their goals with the ones of the

organization.

Now design is integrating to the businesses, many companies are hiring designers,

collaborating with design companies, or acquiring them. In 2013 Accenture acquire Fjord,

in 2014 IBM hired 1500 designers and make partnership with Apple for B2B services,

Samsung are introducing in their team already formed by UX, interaction and product

designers a big number of service designers. This is not only for companies, also the design

has been implemented in public government, for example in United Kingdom the

Government Digital Services added more than 250 designers, the Cabinet Office worked

with designers for the implementation of a new Policy Lab, and a government service

45

provider called Capita has introduced a service design practice (Academy of management

journal, 2015).

Design in the organization can’t be an individual activity to perform, it is presented in each

of the different areas because can bring better performances in different environments.

There are different ways design is perceived and applied in the companies, the decision of

choose one depend of the singular peculiarities of each company.

In a study realized to different design-oriented European SMEs, it suggested that there are

four main powers of design, as differentiator, good business, integrator, and transformer.

The first refer to Design as differentiator specifically talking about the external

competitive advantage that design can provide to the product or service, as design of

products, brand equity and brand design value, customer loyalty, premium price,

corporate image, or customer orientation. Design as good business helping to

organizations increase sales and have better margins, more brand value, greater market

share, better return of investment ROI, and including the impact in the society as

sustainable design. Design as integrator considering the internal competitive advantage,

participating actively in many areas of the organization as a unique, invisible, and difficult

to imitate combination of processes and resources, taking care of the new product

development processes as time to market or visual communication for teams; the design

provides the support to the modular and platform architecture of product lines, to the

user- oriented innovation models and in general to the project management. And finally

Design as transformer connecting with the possibility of create new business

opportunities, improving the abilities to deal with changes, and to understand the market

moves and the company itself (Mozota, 2006)

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Table 3. Design management is defined by what you think of design (vertical axis: the

“learning leader” of design), and by what you think of management (horizontal axis).

Source: Mozota, 2006, p. 45.

As the same way Mozota (2006) has expressed in her study, the Danish Design Council

explained some of the ways design can be implemented inside the organizations. Design

as a service, as a catalyst for organizational change, and as a strategic “Design Thinking”

resource to reframe business models and markets. Other study made by design

management researcher and professor Sabine Junginger suggest also three different

values designs can bring to the organization, tactical, organizational, and strategic value

(Westcott & others, 2013).

The tactical driver more related to the products and processes, to the aesthetic or

functional development, the impact in the return of investment is high because any

modification made can bring new revenues but at the same time could increase cost for

the change of any material or component. Some examples could be which flow can allow

me have a shorter time to market or which materials going to bring me cost advantage.

The second way considerate the structure, function and behavior of the organization

itself, design as organizational driver to see which markets can be reached, the growth

achieved or the impacts inside the organization. Also in this driver is considered design as

connector or integrator, working with a better connection with customers moving from a

product-process centric to human centric organization bringing experiences and value to

47

customers. Some factors that take in consideration could be the brand loyalty or market

share.

And the last way is design as strategic driver, how are the factors that allow me to growth

as a strong business, the position in the market or also the perception of the consumers

about the company. Many companies invest in a long-term strategy providing different

and new experiences to customer that allow them to have a better relationship with them

and keep them loyal to the brand for example Apple and Nike (Westcott & others, 2013).

Figure 3. Sabine Junginger’s model

Source: Westcott & others, 2013, p. 13.

A tool useful to understand the behavior of all the aspects in the organization is the

Balanced Scorecard. It is a tool used by many companies to assess a business’s strategic

priorities and decide which of those priorities need to be consistently tracked (Westcott &

others, 2013). The Balanced Scorecard is based in four main perspectives, financial,

customer, internal business process and learning. This is a method used to measure the

business unit performance.

The Financial perspective take in consideration all the actions that can provide superior

returns based on the capital invested in the organization. In the Customer perspective is

described the customer and market where the organization have chosen to compete, it is

considering market segment, customer’s needs, but also customer profitability, how the

company can be profitable providing products and services to that customer segment. In

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the internal process perspective executives identify the core processes where the

company should focus and on the ones, that needs more attention to maintain the

operations running. And last one the Learning perspective, here the idea is to provide the

infrastructure to enable ambitious objectives in the other perspectives, it will help to the

growth in many aspects, providing the support and the base infrastructure of the

organization. With the use of the Balance Scorecard could be possible have more cleared

each of the aspects that can bring the success of a company (Kaplan & Norton, 1996).

In her study about the four powers of design, Mozota (2006) also analyzed the potential

use of the Balance Scorecard previous proposed by Robert Kaplan’s and David Norton’s as

a decision tool to simplified the understanding to managers of the role of design in the

organizations. Each power identified each perspective of the Balanced Scorecard,

customer perspective-design as differentiator, process perspective-design as coordinator,

learning perspective-design as transformer, and finance perspective-design as good

business. The implementation of the Balanced Scorecard can simplify the integration of

design with the other areas in the organization, this method is often used for audit and

strategy consultants, areas as finance, marketing, procurement, R&D implement it to

analyze the current situation of the solution, so for them is a common language to

understand and facilitate the communications.

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Table 4. A competitive advantage brings economic value added if both substantial value

and financial value are created.

Source: Mozota, 2006, p. 47.

Also, is important that managers recognize the point of maturity of the organization to

know which points to tackle, allow to understand how is the current situation about

design and how can be improved to achieve future goals. With the Design Value

Scorecard, the managers could move between the three different drivers, and to locate

the organization activities depending on how advanced is the design practice in that area.

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Table 5. Design Value Scorecard

Source: Westcott & others, 2013, p. 15.

With the evolution in business, the design is looking for provide better experiences to

customers, for that reason we can say we are moving to an “experience economy”. Users

are not only looking for high quality products, they are looking for extra services that give

them gratification in the exchange with the company. A combination of different

disciplines can bring better results for the customer, for example the work made by the

craft of industrial design, UX design and service design offer a solution thinking in different

aspects that can provide satisfaction to the user.

Design is considered most of the time as an integral part of the businesses but their

impact is increasing in a way that sometimes is difficult distinguishes the task of it in each

area of the company, especially in the design companies where all their activities are

touched by design.

It is normal that to apply the new way of design focus on business there will be resistance

from the people involved. Roger Martin (2009) suggested some considerations to break

this mentality. “Take design-unfriendliness as a design challenge, empathizes with the

design-unfriendly elements, speak the language of reliability, use analogies and stories

and bite off as little apiece as possible to generate proof”. We can see how the obstacles

can become our support to arrive to people and try to change their mentality, also the

power of communication with the analogies and stories, people feel more comfortable

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with things they can be familiar and that they already know. These aspects must be

considered for the managers to implement a correct transformation among the

organization.

5.1 Models/methodologies

For the implementation of design in the organization one of the first thing to consider it

the alignment between all the aspects, getting the strategic grouping aligned with the

strategy of the company makes the rest of the design task much easier, for that reason

there are different tools applied for organization design that works to apply the design, for

example the Structural Building Blocks which helps to define in a clear way the aspects

inside the organization.

Other methodology that can help is the Star Model, it is more related to how organize the

structure of the company, and it is a simple and powerful tool to help managers to align

structures, processes, measures and find the correct talent to support a strategy. Taking in

consideration how each organization have their own characteristics and capabilities, this

model could help as a beginning to organize and understand better the operations in a

company. Design focus a lot in the human part of the organization for that reason in the

start model is interesting takes two main factors, people and rewards.

For problem solving is useful implement different approaches that combining them can

bring a more complete solution to the problem, these approaches are leaded depending

on the capability of the company. These approaches are according the designer, business-

like and technological or engineering approach (Academy of management journal, 2015).

There are different approaches to face problems in organizations. The business-like

approach could start with the definition of a problem or a market opportunity coming

from insights or market analysis, then move to the problem and solutions definition

supported by deeper market research and testing, and finally going to the developing of a

business plan based on different factors as market penetration, pricing and distribution

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strategies. There is also another approach to implement when facing a problem, it is the

technical or engineering approach where the way of working is dividing in different

components, analyzing each of those searching the best solution to each problem that

emerge and then combining all to a complete solution.

The first approach depends of the capacity of the managers to analyze the insights and

respond quickly to the market information that they have, it is highly influenced by the

management for that reason can be risky because going to depend on the ability the

manager must control the situation and create innovation. The second approach is more

useful when the problems are simple and already defined, also useful for apply an

incremental innovation.

As part of the beginning of design as communication, we can see how effective are the

graphic designers for example to implement visual graphic messages to transfer an idea,

the sketches are fundamental in a design process to understand in a simply way the

concept and find possible solutions to problems. In the design of the Peter B. Lewis

building by the architecture Frank Gehry we can see how his first sketches become in the

real solution of the building, he didn’t use this sketch only to communicate with his team

but he can also use it as a starting point of the brainstorming that find the final output. He

mentioned how important are these initial sketches in the develop of a project, how it is

necessary to give them form and feeling of what it is seeking, in that way we can

remember them in a vivid way during the rest of the process. For Gehry this first sketch

where the place to start, just the beginning and then all will change, but at the end and

trying different possibilities the team and he decided to go back to this first solution and

prove that was the best one, so this mentality to change, try, and go back is fundamental

in applying design inside the organization. The example of the Lewis building is one where

the first sketch brings the final solution, but it is important don’t fall in love with your idea,

it is necessary to be open to re-do, listen and combine different opinions instead of focus

in your idea only (Boland & Collopy, 2004).

The role of visualization is useful not only for professional designers but also to the rest of

the team with other disciplines because it is a basic tool that helps to explain in a better

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and easy way the possible solutions. Drawings, sketches and photographs are part of

these “artifacts of knowing” because allow describing in the best way the progression and

further steps in the design process. The use of material objects and different visual

representations can make easier the evolution to the change because everyone can easily

understand the process (Stang & Georg, 2012).

Some tools can be applied to transmit the message, storytelling is one strong and effective

method that can help to understand the process. Also, known as model building, it not

only works to clarify the work, but also as a powerful learning process, especially for

teams (Senge, 2014). The idea is to transmit the idea in a familiar but also meaningful way.

The language, consciousness and society are some of the factors that going to guide the

creation of the storytelling. During many years, the way to preserve our history has been

through storytelling, it is not strange to apply this tool to express in a clear way our ideas

to solve a problem, it is a simple and efficient way to transmit our thoughts (Brown, 2009).

With the storytelling, we are introducing the “fourth dimension” to work, the opportunity

to express time. We can see how in customer journeys are expressed time among

different touch points that user must pass to complete the experience. We also integrate

storytelling in other tools as storyboards or scenario matrix. For the design of the possible

interaction users going to have with a product or service, also the use of storytelling is

fundamental, designers must understand the behavior customers going to have, the

actions they are going to take and their responses (Brown, 2009).

The narrative of the storytelling must be in a way that integrates the participants without

overwhelming them with unnecessary data. To construct these stories is not easy,

requires skill and imagination (Brown, 2009). A good story is the one that keeps you

interested on what is next, that guide you through a roller coaster of emotions from

excited, to neutral to again excited, the one that connect emotionally with you.

With storytelling, we construct our solution in a way that makes sense, it is possible to test

the story you have created and in that way to highlight the problems and blank spots in

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the solution, when the assumptions can’t be supported it is necessary to refinement or to

check the solution. (Senge, 2014).

There are two frameworks that can be useful now of redesign the reward system: “The

What” with the Reward System Design Logic, and “The How” with the Design Milestones

Process (Schuster & Kesler, 2011).

The first one refers to the Rewards System Design Logic, on this one there are different

factors which must be considered for the good development in reward system:

1. Compensation delivery mechanisms

2. Rewards philosophy and objectives

3. Strategic drivers

Figure 4. Rewards Systems: One of five points of Star Model

Source: Schuster & Kesler, 2011, p. 40.

The compensation delivery mechanisms state how the core policy is carried out, cover

components as base salary administration, job evaluation, market pricing, performance

management and delivery of variable pay programs. Variable compensation delivery can

include short-term bonuses and long-term incentives.

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Rewards philosophy and objectives include all the core design decisions. The core

elements of rewards systems design are: base pay, compensation governance including

performance management, fringe benefits and variable compensation.

There are three Strategic drivers that are fundamental to take in consideration now to

implement the reward systems design:

- Labor market requirements, define the price of acquiring and retaining defined sets of

talents, based on market forces globally and locally.

- Organizational capabilities, the strengths that help the businesses to compete in their

markets. Capabilities determine what behaviors and actions should be encouraged and

rewarded.

- Operating governance, this will depend on how the decision-making is distributed,

central or disseminated. The more integrated the governance model, the more linked

business units and functions need to be. Harmonized rewards systems and metrics are

part of driving integration.

Table 6. Operating Governance Model: Degrees of integration across business units

Source: Schuster & Kesler, 2011, p. 41.

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Other model applied in integrates design in organizations is the Design milestones process

(Kesler & Kates, 2010). It works as a guidance to know the steps to follow according the

components you have and how to connect them. Organization design decisions depend

mainly in two foundational elements as operating governance model and capabilities. This

model is based on the connections between the business units to find synergies and

leverage scale.

Figure 5. The Five-Milestone design process (with rewards system design questions)

Source: Schuster & Kesler, 2011, p. 42.

a) Milestone one: Business case and Discovery: to begin is necessary define the goals the

organization want to achieve as a new business strategy or to improve performance. In

this diagnostic leaders and designers should ask: “How are current metrics and rewards

contributing to the current problem?” Examine the current measures and see what is

missing and required to achieve the goals. It is important have clear the distribution of

human resources, their location and how the decision-making is distributed, in that way is

possible to align the individual performance with the strategic goals. It is normal that

when a new business strategy happen exists gaps between the behavior of the people and

the organization, it is possible recognize them in the interviews, focus groups and other

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qualitative analysis and it is important write them in a problem statement to remember

them and trying to improve it and finally eliminate this gap.

b) Milestone two: Strategic grouping: in this step is define the structure of the

organization, how create the most efficient teams to achieve the goal. Metrics as

customer, function, geography, or product can play an important role in helping the

leadership team choose the best primary grouping logic. Depending on the metrics to

consider can result to different strategies, for example could be considered for the

strategy of the brand or for a product. One case we can mention is the Gillete’s razor, this

is focalized in product and the metrics to consider are the one related to the product for

example the segmentation of the existing products to avoid cannibalization with the new

ones. Working together in this step with the Chief Financial Officer CFO and the Chief

Information Officer CIO allow clarify the division of each unit and the accountabilities

designated to them.

c) Milestone Three: Integration of the Design: The call for “boundaryless organization” at

GE, IBM and elsewhere has become an urgent matter of working across geographies,

functions and business units to go faster and to gain the benefits of scale. In this step is

when the compensation occurs, it works like a strong way of integration and alignment

between the business units. Two strategic drivers can be applied in rewards design to

apply this integration, capabilities and operating governance can guide the best selection

to choose. The options to create the integration could be between establishing networks

and councils to creating robust planning processes and linking units together with smart

pay programs and measures.

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Figure 6. How rewards and metrics can help support integration design needs

Source: Schuster & Kesler, 2011, p. 43.

The compensation considers the operating profit and the operational performance

metrics, can be vary according your performance but also about the team performance so

for that reason the alignment should be something to take very serious because even an

employee has a perfect performance their reward going to be low if the rest of the

organization don’t work in the same way to achieve the same goals. The figure of the

manager is very important in this step, in the enterprise level occur the discussion of the

output they are looking for, so the incentive to the employees coming from the

management must be consequent and attractive to them. The companies must focus not

only in business process but introduce also human resources processes.

a) Milestone Four: Leadership and Talent: in this point the new organization design is

created, it is a good opportunity to embrace talents and integrate new others. The reward

system is fundamental for attract these new members and to retain the people already

working in the organization. The payment, compensation and benefits must be market-

driven, considering other companies in the market, for example creative designers at

Apple and Nike are paid based on market pricing of jobs, software engineers at Google are

paid at levels necessary to compete with Facebook and others in the same talent market.

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b) Milestone Five: Transition or Implementation: Implementation of complex

organizational realignments often takes many months or more. Rarely do leaders and

designers get it completely right the first time.

A fundamental factor to take in consideration is about this last milestone, the

implementation, it should be a core activity in any design process. The executive team

must analyze together with the human resources the critical actions that affect the

evolution of the company, and think about the plans and following steps to implement.

The success of applying new practices depend of the hard work and discipline, it is

important to set the implementation plan and guide the transition (Kesler & Kates, 2010).

Part of the task of design inside the organizations is the care of the people who work in it,

to achieve a good environment it is necessary to tie talent and organization together. The

team of Human Resources must work constantly in the research of good talents and

taking care of the organization discipline at the same time, in that way they can avoid a

misalignment between resources and strategy, the integration of new talents is

fundamental for the success of the organization. Three options to mix the talent and the

organization can be: (Kesler & Kates, 2010)

- Define the work of the executive team

- Design the direct report structure

- Make the right talent choices

The role of the executives can be fully operational or more strategical, it is important

outline this to identify their management routines, agenda, and responsibilities. Even if a

company is flexible in the line of command is important have very defined all the tasks to

avoid a too independently work creating a misalignment in the strategy. It is important to

find a balance between delegated and get involve in the operational work. In the first one

is important that the manager follows close all the activities but also give freedom to the

team so they can growth and learn, in the second one is possible that the managers lose

too much time that cost money if they want to be in every activity instead of delegate.

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Now of delegate is important design how going to be the Report Structure, define the

roles of each in the team and how going to be the communication. This decision must be

based on the skills of the people and the position of they in the company, but also other

factors as how will be the span of control between managers and employees or the

influence of each position in the organization. The idea of apply design practices in the

organizations is avoid a hierarchical structure where is possible loose the effectiveness,

and focus in a more flexible organization with greater span of authority and better

communication mechanisms.

The talent choices are almost located completely in the human resources team, but also

big part of the decision is taken by the managers. It is important to have a good

communication to human resources and a defined and clear strategy explained to them to

not lose any good opportunity. The design is based in multidisciplinary work so the

integration of new talent into the business is something that usually happens, it is an

opportunity to integrate new and different talent, more aligned to the change the

company wants to make. Also, is important to work and enhance the current talent to

bring them to these new movements and activities. To achieve a good result is important

to try, new skills should not be allocated only in one part, it is necessary that the change

will be applied in all the areas, even with the current talents but the important is that

everyone relates to the strategy to follow. It is not about “designing around people”, it is

about the correct combination of resources, having talent in mind knowing their

capabilities and make the most efficient configuration in a way to explore all the

possibilities where organization can provide the best experiences.

After the right selection of talent is important to take in consideration the team working,

this is fundamental when applying design inside the organizations. The way of working is

in iterative way, design suggested keep trying and searching all the possible solutions, it is

necessary to guide the process when there is interaction with others to have a more

complete solution. It is a collaborative process, this bring a better organizational

environment for successful, finding value-creating designs achieved at the organizational

and the societal level. It is important not only involve the employees in the design

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processes, but also consider the future users. Instead of consider user’s needs as

something to discover we must understand that their needs are constantly changing and

evolving with the design and the development process, for that reason introduce them in

the participation of the process can bring advantages for the company.

The most excited of work in team is the meaningfulness experience, people can feel part

of something bigger than themselves, for managers is important to keep the team

motivated in a way they can have this feeling during all their work and continue evolving

with the same satisfaction that they have at the beginning of the process (Senge, 2006).

Other important aspect to consider now of apply design practices in organizations is the

team that going to develop the activities. One of the method suggested to apply is the

Design Charrette, it is a system to choose the best team to work in a design process that

allows the best as possible generation and evaluation of a problem. Many time now to

analyze a problem the people who identify it are not the best one to solve, when a

problem appears there are around a complete system or factors that the people who face

the problem keep with those, for that reason if someone new came to try to analyze the

problem can start from zero without anything that can limit them to find an innovative

solution. Other factor that can help the creative process is the mix of different disciplines,

when each person can bring different perspectives generating a more strong and effective

solution. The Design Charette starts in architecture and it is applied as a collaborative

working session where everyone participates and shares their opinions about a problem

(Kesler & Kates, 2010).

The principal characteristics of the Design Charette model are:

- Size: the dimension can vary a lot going from small groups of 12 to more than 100

people, all the team meet in a room and stay together

- Work: the sessions are intensive and iterative, just two or more days preferably away

from the office in a new environment where everyone can feel in the same way. The

proceed is first working in small groups and then share together with the others their

ideas, review, evaluate and revise each of the proposal solutions.

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- Option Generation, Not Decision-Making: differently from other design processes in

Design Charette the group doesn’t choose the best option and meet a consensus of what

they prefer. In this case the role of the leader is strong and the idea is to receive input

from all the group and then the leader takes the decision of which solutions can help in

the best way the organization.

For any implementation of a different mindset in the organizations is needed some

competencies and skills that allow an efficient development of the new actions (Kesler &

Kates, 2010):

- Consulting and Facilitation Skills

- Deep curiosity about Organizations as Systems

- Design mindset

- Diagnostic and Analytical Skills

For implement something new is needed to have high confidence and competences

guided by leadership, core competences as good communication and presentation ability,

contracting, assessment, facilitation. The manager must know how to manage conflict and

act in a comfortable way, because it is normal that some problems emerge from the

discussion of the different options and the implementation of changes. It is important to

be open and have a lot of curiosity about how the organization works, not only as a group

of individuals but as an interconnected political, social and information network that start

with the individuals but evolve as a complete system where every person is a gear of a big

machine. The change process is creative and excited but could bring a lot of emotions that

the manager should know how to manage and control it in the most beneficial way for the

transformation.

As business-like approach and technical or engineering approach, it existed one caring

about the design mindset. It is useful now to search for disruptive and radical innovation,

because of the co-design with the users that bring better and quick feedbacks from them.

The designer’s approach explains the steps that they normally follow now to face a

challenge. They start with observations of user’s behavior and context, analyzing the

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constraints presented and the key points, this is the initial phase called Discovery phase.

For this step, some design tools are employed as ethnographic research, visual

anthropology, realize customer journeys or co-creation workshops. The next phase is the

Define phase where the insights from the previous step are analyzed and the problem is

explained in a more specific way. Then they move to the Ideation phase where they try

the concepts through different prototypes and visualizations the different possible

solutions, in this phase also is consider the interaction the users going to have with the

final solution. And finish with the Delivery phase where through feedbacks are tested the

real interaction with the users. This approach is iterative moving backwards and forwards,

interdisciplinary and collaborative. In each phase are considered technical, design and

business factors to create a complete solution. It moves from observation and analysis in

the Discovery, to imagination and design in the Define and Ideation phases, and finally to

the realization of the idea in the Delivery phase (Academy of management journal, 2015).

Discover Define Ideation Delivery

This method is known as Design Thinking and with other similar approaches allows

individuals to develop a complete solution through the definition of different steps to

follow. It is a method based on iteration and collaboration, useful for discover needs,

recognize key insights, and create a quick prototype test with stakeholders to then rapidly

launch.

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Figure 7. Design Thinking

Source: Academy of management journal, 2015, p. 2.

Designers start to care about the important role of human needs in the solution, in that

way Design Thinking was born. They start to search the feasible combination between the

requirements on businesses, both technical and economic, without intervene in people’s

needs and rather looking for improve them. Design Thinking enhances the capabilities that

we can have as designers and problem solvers, instead of applying traditional, repetitive,

and known methods to solve problems. Abilities as being intuitive, to recognize patterns,

to construct ideas with value, to know how to express ourselves, are some of the skills

that Design Thinking can foment in organizations (Brown, 2009)

According Buchanan (Buchanan, 2015) there could be four different meanings for Design

Thinking:

1. Cognitive Process in the Brain

2. Creative Inquiry

3. Imaginative Act

4. Spirit or Culture

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The meanings start with the capacity of the brain to collect, store, and process the

information, and how it takes decisions based on this to find the best possible

combination between all the options. Design thinking also is useful for analysis, develop a

creative inquiry, asking all the questions needed to understand the problem and find the

best solution. It is necessary two main steps, the analysis and the synthesis. This practice is

implemented for the designers, in specific they divided the process in the analytical,

creative and executive phases, to then proceed to the communication and

implementation of the solution.

The Design Thinking allows the person to find unprecedented solutions, it is an

Imaginative Act of the Mind, the opportunity to find new possibilities and how to develop

it to have the best results as possible. The last meaning refers to how the culture of an

organization can guide the Design Thinking, instead of starting from the individual it starts

from the characteristics and abilities of the organization or of a whole community, the

creation of the solution came from the combination of the different thinking of all the

individuals. It can be difficult to apply because mix the rational solutions with the

imaginative meanings, it uses all the qualities and values of all the people involved.

Figure 8. Pluralism of Design Thinking

Source: Buchanan, 2015, p. 11.

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Having clear how the implementation of Design Thinking can bring innovation through the

analysis and develop of creative solutions, Buchanan (2015) suggested also four main

moments to facilitate the evolution from an idea to a real solution. Very like the steps

previously discussed he distinguishes these four steps:

Invention Judgement Connection and Development Integration and Evaluation

The Invention is seeking for new ideas, there are some strategies in design to search these

innovative ideas but could arrive to the same results known. The idea of this moment is to

achieve a new solution, something potentially strong to bring new values and experiences

for the people involved, and solve the problem in the most efficient way. Then in the

second moment it is necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of the ideas coming from the

invention, they must be desirable, feasible and viable solutions. Desirable when the

solution offer something meaningful for the people; feasible concern to technology,

production and behaviors of people; and viable when it fixes in the culture, capabilities of

the organization and on the social practices.

The third movement refers to the Connection and Development of the idea, analysis of

the main features of the solution coming from the previous two steps. Develop something

useful, usable and desirable. It does not refer only about products; the design also can be

applied for services or to find new experiences to offer. The last moment is the Integration

and Evaluation, it is important because is the step where the solution can be studied and

know if we achieve the innovation that we were looking at the beginning of the process.

The design can help also to manage different aspects in organizations, such is the case of

the workplace. Many times, the workplace is only considered to analyze economical

aspects of the organization. Some aspects as space efficiency, reconfiguration costs or

energy use are part of the factor analyzed to study the cost efficiency. However, the

workplace can also have a high impact in organization’s people, processes and technology

(Mozota, 2006).

Design approaches can be useful to design the workplaces. Starting with the traditional

approach from the twentieth century where the management of workers were based on

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“Taylorism” and the standard, industrial and mass production of goods following the

“Fordism”, passing through the 90’s with the process reengineering and early 2000’s that

focused on operational effectiveness, we can see how during the history the focus was in

a product technical engineered but not caring too much about the design and the user’s

needs. Taylorism refers to the analysis of business decisions according previous data

researched and tested quantitatively. Fordism is based in the Henry Ford’s working

philosophy about the mass production run by autocratic management, high division of

labor, little workplace democracy, but with the consolidation of high wages.

The competition of talents between the companies is high for that reason the people are

force to be continually in a constant movement of learning and growth, this coming also

for the expectation of the Generation Y workforce. This generation came with a well-

developed network, high degree education, multilingual, and being strongly self-

determined, for that reason they are expecting a workplace where they can growth

professional and personally. The problem is coming from the traditional way companies

still working, this generation are looking for something completely different of what they

found, hierarchical structures, high routinized activities and not flexible companies

(Academy of management journal, 2015).

Other important aspect to take in consideration in the workplace is about how they

implement the technology, big data, cloud computing, internet of things, social media, or

high-speed connectivity, all these and more factors can highly influence in the daily

processes and bring the company in an advantage position against competitors.

When we refer to experience is how the individuals feel, but it is not something that only

happen inside them, it is about the interaction they have with the environment where

they develop. In general, the environment refers to all the things that surround us, the

infinite objects, activities, signs and symbols with which we interact in the daily to day. All

these components are nothing without the interaction of the people with them that give

them sense. The role of design in workplaces is to create these environments where

people can feel comfortable and fulfill them with meaning. The design enters in the

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crafting of a strategy and vision of the future, crafting of the operations or also creating

the products and services that have impact in people’s lives (Buchanan, 2015).

There are three different aspects where design can influence in the workplace:

1. Practical action

2. Intellectual understanding

3. Emotional engagement

The practical action refers to all the physical aspects that can interrupt the good

development of the activities, for example doors that don’t open or maybe difficult and

uncomfortable movement to use machineries. In the case of intellectual understanding

design plays the role of communicator, all the information and instructions to develop the

activities, it must be clear and simple in the design is the one that can through images and

good use of language communicate in the best possible way. And emotional engagement

refers to the human feelings in the interaction with the environment, the pleasure,

satisfaction, disagreement or any other emotion humans can experiment in the

workplace.

There are too many factors that can influence the workplace experience. Starting from the

organizational design, incentives or rewards and management procedures, like we see in

the previous chapters the importance of these. Also, have an impact in the business

process design, the support tools, information services, physical and virtual environment,

the interaction between the organization and the employees, partners or customers, the

organizational culture, communications and human resource programs.

These factors can influence in the employee’s experience in the workplace, the (Academy

of management journal, 2015) suggest take in consideration these six elements:

1. Collaboration, co-creation and co-production

2. Creating a narrative

3. Design the employee experiences

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4. Focus on value and values

5. Identify real and compelling needs

6. Sensory and emotional engagement

The design always goes for the collaboration between equals, not just consultation but

real participation of all the individuals involved in the project. From employees to

customers, everyone should be integrated and considering in the process. The creation of

a narrative help to understand in a clear way the process, not only storytelling with high

and lows parts, but the control of the sequence, progression and duration of each step.

For the Design of the employee experiences is not only taking care about the workflow

and tools to implement in the process, it is about going deep into the employee journey to

understand where are the touchpoints and work on those, the workplace influence in the

emotions and satisfaction of employees so it is important to invest time on it to find the

best working environment for all.

When we talk about workplace is not only about physical spaces, also it is important to

explain to the employees the importance of each of their roles in the organizations, how it

contributes in the organization’s values and how working in a good environment can bring

a new value for customers. It is important that they understand the importance of the

creation of the personal value, their contribution in the organization’s value and how

should be aligned the values of the organization, employees and customers. For a good

design of a workplace is important to start analyzing the user’s needs and how could be

possible providing valuable experiences, then pay attention to the employee’s needs and

which activities could satisfy in the best way both needs. All the possible tangible

elements are taking in consideration in the sensory and emotional engagement, also the

digital interaction and the physical environment, these influences in the experience and

performance of employees. The different spaces can be designed per the feeling it looking

for, from relaxation to concentration, to stimulate the collaboration or creativity. A good

design in workplaces can enable a better integration, collaboration and interdisciplinary

way of work.

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Traditional companies focus all their effort in the profit and economic gain that of course

is necessary for maintain the organization, but they usually tend to forget about the

impact that employees can have in the development of the activities. It is important to

express the importance of profitability but the experiences we can provide to employees

could be more important, the environment we can create in the organizations and how all

of those connect with each other creating a better environment to all and resulting in

better performance.

As mentioned at the Design part explanation in this work, having a Design Mindset helps

to face the problems in a different way, designers always frame the problems with the

right questions to ask and generate a wide range of options to choose the best solution

between all. They work in iterative way and taking in consideration different perspectives.

Designers can be considered as ambidextrous thinkers, always having in consideration all

the possible options, from the possible to the practical to the most effective one.

Implementing this Design Mindset is easier have Diagnostic and Analytical skills to ask the

right questions and make sense of the answers, can determinate the roots of the

problems we need to solve without forgetting to take in consideration the impact of the

possible solutions to the whole organization.

In the article Bringing Design Back In (Stang & Georg, 2012) is explained how having a

Design Attitude can facilitate, questioning and monitoring the other possible

opportunities to a solution instead of going directly to the known alternatives.

After the analysis of the Gehry’s work in the Lewis Building, it shows how managers and

the rest of the team normally use to look for a “crystallized” design solution where the

solutions keep close to the ones that the team already know, instead of a “liquid” state

where the factors keep changing and the solutions are broader (Boland & Collopy, 2004).

For the manager is fundamental applying the design to achieve better results not yet

thinking. The importance of apply a design vocabulary in the daily activities of the

manager can engage the rest of the team to be open to the transformation from

traditional practices to something new, in this way all of them can start to act as good

designers. Implementing a design language and put it on practice among all the

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participants in the organization, can also to help top managers to share a common

vocabulary and point of view when formulating their own design-value formulations.

It is all about implementing design in all the possible aspects that concern the

organization, it can be applied from different perspectives as we have seen before. The

design centric is a combination of design aspects in the structure, leaders, process or

culture in the organization. In the case of structure we have seen how designing

organizations can be fundamental in the development of the activities, how the location

of different areas can depend on the effectiveness of the decision-making, and how big

can be the impact of the organization structure in the people involved in it. Design has to

be part of the C-suite referred to all the organization directors and managers, the way

they face different problems and how it can help them to start to look for solutions

beyond the “should be” answer.

The Design centric can be also considered in the leadership, depending on how the

activities are managed could result into different results. Leaders in companies can take

better strategical decisions when considering design practices, it will be a competitive

advantage in comparison with others. For that reason the importance to care about the

talent and have it connected close to the organization culture and values.

The Design Thinking is considered as the principal model to apply design centric in

processes, it helps to analyze problems in a different way, and to find all the possible

opportunities. Design Thinking guides the processes since the problem analysis moment,

through the definition of the possible solution, and then ideation of it, to finally pass to

the prototype and test. It creates a cycle between learning, improving and testing that

helps to develop better quality of the company products and services. It is a constant

learning, improving and testing cycle and, as such, lends itself best to process execution. It

is not only taking care about product development but also processes effectiveness,

services definition and all the daily activities inside the organizations.

Finally design have to centric also in the culture, we mentioned before how the culture

can be one important constraint at the moment to apply changes in organizations and the

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introduction of design in it. For example authors like Mintzberg and Buchanan analyze its

impact in the organizations. Mintberg specifies how important is to study the people’s

culture because it going to define the behavior and values of the people, in that way it

could be define it the most efficient way of working with the people of the organization.

Buchanan mentions the culture or spirit as one of the different meanings design thinking

has, showing when a solution is viable when match with the culture of where going to be

applied.

This last is fundamental to create an evolution environment, the culture of the people and

the organization itself can have a big impact in the development and growth of a

company. To work with the change of the culture of the organization is necessary have

people involve in the process, one model that help to process this change is the proposal

by Peter Senge. Learning Organizations can help people to accept and to get active involve

in the culture transformation, and in the activities improvement.

To choose the right implementation plan is not something easy to decide. There could be

different ways to achieve it, one that allows a slow development during a period giving the

time required to not create an abruptly change, and the other one “pull the Band-Aid off

fast” when there is a critical situation as recover market share or an external change

already happening for example. For the transition, we should remember that is needed

build new capabilities, implementing new actions and reinforcing current skills, it takes

time this change to the new model. A method is use tipping points to represent tangible

actions or decisions that are different from the current activities, these are only symbolic

actions because don’t have a strong impact in the power dynamics (Kesler & Kates, 2010).

For the implementation of new practices in organizations it is needed new way of acting of

the people inside it, the evolution of businesses requires an evolution of all the people

involve. It is not only about one person working as the big strategist and the other

following instructions, it requires a complete evolution of the organization, and it requires

evolving to learning organizations.

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5.2 Learning organizations

Peter M. Senge, an American engineering, senior lecturer at the MIT School of

Management, developed a full investigation on how organizations should become

Learning Organizations to achieve common goals and succeed in the fast-moving

businesses. He explained how the learning ability is something intrinsic in all of us, we

born with the capability of learn, as an early age babies start to learn all the principal

aspects needed for their growth. For that reason, develop Learning Organizations should

be not difficult to do, but the reality is other because many circumstances can be

presented starting from the reject of people to change their current practices. Moving

from the traditional management, organizing and controlling to a learning organization

where some of the principals are vision, value and mental models.

The learning organizations look for increase their knowledge and innovate in their work

routine. The organizational learning should be supported by all the team in the

organization, their cultural values of openness and excellence, all the mechanisms used

for the information flow, and in concrete the systems thinking that tie all the fundamental

factors for the evolution of the organization. The learning organizations are not only about

to improve in policies, budgets, or organizational charts, but in ourselves.

For apply learning in organizations is necessary the continuous testing of experience, and

the transformation of that experience into knowledge, useful to guide the companies

through successful activities. In Chinese, the word learning connects to study, to

accumulate knowledge, and to practice constantly, this mean how the human can through

learning master self-improving (Senge, 2014)

Organizations implement some ways of learning as creating a good information flow and

knowledge creation, performance reviews and evaluation at the end of the project, audits

from internal and external resources, team feedback, problems analysis, simulation,

stimulate creativity, benchmarking, experiment new routines, between others. Through all

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these activities organizations can standardize some practices, create knowledge and

follow the continue learning in the daily operations (Carroll & Edmondson, 2002).

Knowledge sharing requires appropriate communication systems. With the evolution in

technology each time is making easier to communicate with others through e-

communications facilitating the work in organizations based in different parts of the

world. This is not only the first tool, technology have also allow to communicate in a more

clear way through programs where the compression can be achieve with images, tables,

schemes, diagrams or any kind instrument that are easy to implement and that bring

successful results.

Some actions that organizations can implement to accelerate learning are building

informal networks that can be useful for collaboration, provide to innovators connection

with internal and external resources, finding new partnerships and creating channels of

communication to avoid discontinuity in the information (Carroll & Edmondson, 2002).

To establish new practices in businesses is important to know the characteristics of your

organization, to understand if you have possibilities to put in practice a learning

organization. First it is necessary to imagine the characteristics you want if you are going

to have a learning organization, to define policies, interactions, behalf of people, the

difference between this ideal situation and your current one, between others. Then

enhance the definition of a learning organization, analyzed previous cases, and defining

what are the main features the organization could has. With the mix of these two phases

you can construct a list of at least five characteristics. The next step is to study these

characteristics and ask you “What would it bring me…?”, doing a testing of the options

you have selected. After this analysis is the moment to pick and to refine the

characteristics that better match with your organization. It is important not only include

obvious characteristics, but also include some of those that makes you doubt about the

implementation of it in the company, challenging characteristics that is success can bring

new and innovative results to your organization. Now is moment that you go to real and

start to define what obstacles can be present in your way, what you need to do to arrive

to the organization defined by the previous characteristics. And finally mix the

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characteristics and the obstacles and create for each option an indicator that helps you to

define the evolution of the project, to know the progress you have made (Senge, 2014).

According Senge (2014) the first steps to design learning organizations are:

1. Establishing the groups

2. Divergent thinking

3. Clarity or simplicity

4. Convergent thinking

5. Presentations and priorities

6. Implementation

In the decision of choose the groups is necessary to include two types of participants, one

type including all the people that believe in the change and in the improving of the

organization, and the other type the people that because of their position in the

organization are involved in the learning effort even they are not interested. This step is

interesting now to mix different roles and hierarchical positions into discussion about the

same problem, it is a way “to dance to the same music”. The group then going to be

divided into two, the one that supports the ideal organization how it going to be, and the

one that defends the current situation with its strength and difficulties, like team A in pro

of the creation of a learning organization, and team B the ones that discuss all the possible

negative effect this option can have, presenting all the obstacles and possible barriers.

Both parts are important because it going to help to define what to do with the current

resources to achieve the ideal situation. Working in this way help you to define the “How

do we get started?”.

In the second step, Divergent Thinking, the discussion among all the participants starts.

The number of participants can vary from ten to two hundred people, not necessarily

working together but interrelated in a way that the topics are relevant for the others. The

time will depend about the number of people, the discussions must be of forty-five

minutes or a little bit more, but the complete workshop could take from four hours to two

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days, it going to depend of the number of people involved and the topic to discuss. The

environment should be a large room with enough space for all the teams, with the

supplies needed as flip charts or felt pens, the wall can be used to hang the papers and

facilitate the communication and understanding of all. Some of the answers discussed

must solve inquiries like benefits of apply learning organization, actions to take, barriers or

obstacles, changes to make, areas to work on or eliminate. These are only main topics to

discuss, but each case is particular and for that reason also require topics to discuss.

After this general discussion is necessary to pass to the third point and clarified the main

topics. From the previous discussion take ten or twelve coherent points of it. Then it is

needed to reduce more the list, in the fourth step Convergent Thinking. The list must be

reduced to three items, the idea is having an active participation where everyone in each

group can defend their point of view about to remain or eliminate one of the topics. Then

the fifth step is about the presentation and priorities, this going to depend of the number

of participants, but the idea is to express the three main significant points of each

perspective in team A with their suggestions about the creation of the learning

organization and team B with the barriers or obstacles. It is not needed reach consensus;

the most important part is that every participant can feel that they can express their

opinion and everyone listen and consider their point of view.

The last step is the implementation, after the previous discussions the actions to take are

clearer, now it is necessary to assign the actions to take and to define the tasks for each of

the chosen projects. Then the process starts, the team must take notes, learn, and analyze

the performance. Later between thirty or sixty days, these results must be presented to

the complete group. In this point, you could achieve a shared vision or having worked with

mental models.

Senge (1990) distinguished five main components to consider now of develop a Learning

Organization:

1. Building Shared Vision

2. Mental Models

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3. Personal Mastery

4. Team Learning

5. Systems Thinking

The disciplines of personal mastery, mental models and systems thinking help to examine

and change the way of thinking. Shared vision, systems thinking, and team learning are

focus on changing interactions (Senge, 2014)

First is important that the organization have a defined goal and vision to where they want

to go in the future, after this it is easier to guide all the people inside the organization into

a common future where everyone understand and have a Shared Vision of the next steps

to make. Having all the people the same goals facilitate the work, the people are not going

to move to the future only because someone told them, but because they want to achieve

that goal, they don’t feel it as something alien but as something that is part of them. This

is an important aspect that managers should take in consideration, they need to translate

individual thoughts to a Shared Vision that everyone can feel part.

For achieve a Shared Vision in the organization it is important to have defined how the

people behave, and for this is fundamental understand the mentality of the people

involved. The Mental Models explain how we could interpret different situations, from

assumptions, generalizations or pictures that facilitate the understanding and the

response we could have. This is something difficult to describe even for each person

herself, it is not easy to know how going to be the reaction so it is important to get involve

with the behaviors and responses people must different situations in the organization. The

process for the Mental Model should start from our inside to deeply understand our

reactions, then learn from those and describe them to others to distinguish which could

be useful for the purposes of the organization.

It is important recognize where the organizations and the employees are, empower

people that constantly resist to change and are not able to share common mental models

could be counterproductive. It can create a division between management and

employees, and increase organizational stress losing the direction.

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As just mention it is important first to understand each person their abilities, for that

reason the Personal Mastery should start with the control and comprehension of us.

Having conscience of our characteristics can be achieved better results with a deep

understanding of all the important aspects to bring the most efficient solution. The

Personal Mastery must be applied in a mature way where it is necessary lay aside our

personal vision and see the problem in a broader way.

The role of the individuals is fundamental in the organizations, and how each of them

interacts with the rest of the team can bring the best results. The Team Learning

highlights not only the benefits to work as a team but the importance to learn also as a

team. The intelligence of the team can exceed the intelligence of the individuals in the

team, the growth of the individuals can be quicker than when they work individually, we

can see many examples of Team Learning in sport, performing arts, sciences and of course

in business. The proceed start with dialogue where the individuals share their assumptions

and think together. It is an opportunity for the organization if teams can’t learn, the

organization can’t learn.

The organizations have constantly evolving and learning, there are not an excellent point,

it is necessary to keep with the practice of the discipline to always get better results and

not maintain or go back to previous results. The idea is arriving to learning organizations

as a discipline not only as a model that is implemented, prove it and then forgotten, the

success will come with the constant evolution and growth in the learning.

A system is a combination of different parts that work separately but each of their

conduct can influence in the others, it is necessary to look the system and not as each

individual part. Systems Thinking is a framework use to simplified the view of the system

as a whole, it can be normal that when a problem arise we start to look the small parts

because we think can be easier to intervene and it can bring a quick solution to the

problem, but we have to remember how the parts are interconnected and at the end it is

better work in the complete system that in one part that can create problems in its

influence in others parts.

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The success in business will be in the correct combination of these five components this is

not an easy task, many time is easier to apply each component individually that find the

correct equilibrium between all. For this reason, the Systems Thinking is the main

discipline, the fifth discipline. It is the one that integrates all the others to work in the best

possible way, remembering that the whole can exceed the sum of its parts. Each of

components have their specific role, Mental Models help us to understand the way we see

and act in the current situation, Building Shared Vision allow us to look for a long-term

goal in common, Team Learning help to achieve this view and work together in harmony

with all the people involved in the process, and Personal Mastery maintain the personal

motivation important to achieve the goal and don’t get lost from the system. The Systems

Thinking in Learning Organizations work as a shift of mind, from personal vision to a whole

vision on the world and how we can integrate and the impact of our actions on it.

BUILDING SHARED VISION

When there is a new idea that everyone loves, many people can say is shared vision, but it

is not only about that. Having shared vision is something deeper, it is something inside all

the participants, a force, a powerful feeling, a belief about something in common. Having

a truly Shared Vision is when all the people are connected, following the same aspiration.

One of the reasons to people getting involved in Sharing vision is their desire to be

connected to something bigger than them. For the learning organizations having a

common vision is fundamental to focus all the energy into the same goal.

Vision is something that currently is mention a lot in leadership, but it is important

differentiate how most of the time the goals are coming from only one person or from a

small group that can generate different points of view and some resistance from others.

The organization needs that everyone involves of it have a common vision so can find

satisfaction in each person to develop all the activities needed to achieve the result.

Some companies have their idea of Share Vision just for beat a competitor, the example

can be the competition between Pepsi and Coca-Cola, but this an idea that can arrive to

an end, it is better have something in mind that allow creativity, constant learning and

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growth that bring the excitement of build something new. More than focus on beat the

opponent is better look for the excellence.

Having a Shared Vision help to change the relationship between the employee and the

organization, it is no longer their company but our company, a sense of belonging arises

from each person involved on it, it creates an identity. Also, the work changes from an

individual work to team and collaborative work. Shared vision helps us to express also our

ideas, the organization is open to listen and take care about the interest of the employees,

the vision not only emerge from the high rank directors but the fundamental of change to

Learning Organizations is providing the opportunity to everyone to be heard and see what

they want.

The base of design must be applied also in the searching of Shared Vision, it is common

that the people can identify what they want but not how to do it to arrive to that result,

for that reason is necessary analyze all the possible options available and iterate in a way

to find the best path to achieve to the final goal. The risk can be very high but people can

try because everyone is aligned in what they want.

The motivation must start also by ourselves, developing a personal vision of what we

want. Normally we have expectations that also concern the relationship with others, so

our initial vision finally becomes a common idea. Having a personal vision that then

transform to Shared Vision, it brings a higher commitment to the individual, instead of just

joining to an idea that other has developed. This is part of the design basis, an activate

participation where everyone can contribute with their ideas and then develop them. The

Personal Mastery can simplify the process to develop a personal vision and arrive to a

Shared Vision with the others in the organization.

“Learning in organizations means the continuous testing of experience, and the

transformation of that experience into knowledge—accessible to the whole organization,

and relevant to its core purpose.” (Senge, 2014)

As mention before is important not implement ideas to others, for managers the best way

to work is through communication between the group where all the ideas can be

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discussed and see the pro and con of each. For the Shared Vision, it is important to

understand how each personal vision can be part of the result. Individuals normally see

their own “picture”, each see the solution in a different way, the communication will allow

to create a consistent result with the combination of each idea creating a common vision

coming from each part. Also, one advantage of this common goal is that the vision doesn’t

rely only on your shoulders, but instead you have other companions that want to fight and

work in the same idea as you want.

As we mentioned before at the review of some of the constraints of design the

organizations, the size can be a factor that has a strong impact in any decision in the

organization. To reach and to maintain Shared Vision will be more difficult and complex in

larger size organizations in comparison with the small ones. Small organizations have the

advantage of being more flexible and able to adjust and adapt a Shared Vision (Bui &

Baruch, 2010).

The best scenario for the Shared Vision is starting from the communication of the idea,

then the people involved start to feel enthusiastic and start to talk and plan how can be

achieved that vision, and finally with this exchange of opinions the decision of the final

goal is made. But this is almost never truth, in the step where people start to discuss

about how they can achieve the goal is normal that other views arise so start a conflict of

views that then past to polarization when each go for the side that they prefer. In this

moment is important the role of the Mental Models, the reflection and inquiry of the best

option. It is not about give up of your idea but it is about construct together with all the

possibilities the best solution for the organization. It is important to remember the

important role of communication and discussion, for practice design methods is

fundamental have a counter point that allows you to growth, always having in mind to

provide an aid that encourages the work rather than criticizing it to evolve an idea.

Provide constructive criticism and not only destructive ones.

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MENTAL MODELS

The Mental Models focus on how we perceive the world, the internal images we

construct, and the ways of thinking or acting. This practice is fundamental when are

necessary implement new ideas, depending on how we recognize the idea will be a

specific result. Mental Models is not only about how we perceive the world but also how

we take actions, for that reason the importance of work on it. The construction of the

Mental Models depends on each person, two different people can see the same thing but

can perceive it differently, and of course can act and react in different way. The mental

models can impede but also can accelerate the learning in the organizations.

One important factor to take in consideration is the openness, it is necessary create a

harmonious environment so everyone can feel comfortable to give their opinions and in

that way, we can learn how their Mental Models worked. Openness refer to be able to

speak what they concerned and in the correct moment. For example, usually not all the

people talk about a problem they see in the company at the morning, they wait until the

last moment or even they only discuss the problem outside the office where they don’t

feel judged; the idea is that the people feel free to share their vision and perceive that

their concerns are considering. Knowing better the Mental Models of the individuals that

work in the company, best and most effective respond to problems can have the manager.

In the workplace is common that the people feel evaluated and even judged, as defensive

routines people don’t share their thoughts that can block the process of learning. People

are more focus on protect themselves from the constant examination rather than open to

the learning situation. Some people believe that Mental Models are never complete, that

is going to depend about the environment and the relationship you have with it.

To implement Mental Models in organizations is necessary learning new skills and apply

institutional innovation that helps to use these skills in daily activities. There should be a

connection and balance between the business and personal skills. These two sides are

fundamental especially for managers, normally they can learn new things but at the same

time they could be close to those methodologies that are not base in business context. To

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study the Mental Models with managers, one tool is to work with them in the analysis of

different alternatives in the future to know how they would manage these different

scenarios. This will help managers to not think in only one possible option for the future,

developing in them a more flexible and active respond to changes. It is important that in

the organizations instead of focusing in developing long-term perfect plans, invest more in

learning plans where people could be more aware for the changes and the new trends

that constantly appear in businesses.

In the discussions of Senge (2006) with different managers of big companies they

suggested these ten principal rules for Mental Models:

“1. The effectiveness of a leader is related to the continual improvement of the leader's

mental models.

2. Don't impose a favored mental model on people. Mental models should lead to self-

concluding decisions to work their best.

3. Self-concluding decisions result in deeper convictions and more effective

implementation.

4. Better mental models enable owners to adjust to change in environment or

circumstance.

5. Internal board members rarely need to make direct decisions. Instead, their role is to

help the General Manager by testing or adding to the company mental model.

6. Multiple mental models bring multiple perspectives to bear.

7. Groups add dynamics and knowledge beyond what one person can do alone.

8. The goal is not congruence among the group.

9. When the process works it leads to congruence.

10. Leaders' worth is measured by their contribution to others' mental models”

Even these are specific rules, Mental Models can’t be treat as a close philosophy, it is

necessary to be flexible to each person and each organization way of thinking and to

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implement what is the best in that case. Many mental models can exist at once, even

some would disagree between them. All of those should be tested to analyze which is the

one that fix the most to the organization culture.

The relationship between Mental Models and the fifth discipline System Thinking comes

naturally, the first one based on analyze how the people think and the other on how those

thoughts can solve problems. It is important that people can accept other Mental Models

to work in harmony with the Systems Thinking. At the end, the idea is creating a “library of

Mental Models” based on systems archetypes, that then going to be suited into an

organization. With the integration of Systems Thinking, the Mental Models going to move

from movement dominated by events to long term patterns of change and the structures

that produce those changes.

PERSONAL MASTERY

For achieve successful changes is necessary have a learning organization but this is only

possible when you have people motivated and able to learn. It is necessary that the

people reach a “Personal Mastery” level where they are always looking for personal

growth and learning to improve their daily activities. The Personal Mastery is not only

about competences and skills, it is more about spiritual growth and how individuals want

to evolve for better. It has two fundamentals steps, the first one focus on what is

important to us and the second one learning in how to see the current reality to be more

aware of the present moment. Knowing what we want and the situation of where we are

now we can have a clear idea of what is needed to achieve or goals. Having this “learning”

is not about only acquiring something new but it is about to clarify our desires with our

opportunities and strengths to arrive to the final output, to understand the abilities and

what we need to arrive to the goal, learning how to control our activities. Something

important about the people that have developed Personal Mastery is that they are not

only aware about their abilities, they also know about their ignorance and incompetence,

and they are mature enough to understand how to overtake those and growth.

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Having this mentality is a fundamental part of the organizations, all the people involved in

it and the organization itself can be fully committed for the well-being and the correct

development of all the activities inside it. It brings a shift in attitude in the workplace,

where work can be perceived as something more than only generate incomes, the

individuals can recognize the value of it and understand their important role. The

companies must look for the development of people just as they look for financial success,

with this can be achieve more successful results.

For organizations is not easy transform the way of working of employees to Personal

Mastery, it is not recommended force the people, they can oppose because they are

losing the freedom of choice. The managers should create an environment where people

feel enthusiastic to try new practices coming also from their suggestions, where they can

feel safe to develop new visions. This environment could embrace the Personal Mastery

showing how personal growth is valued for the organization.

To work in the Personal Mastery is important take in consideration specific aspects as:

1. Commitment to the whole

2. Compassion

3. Connection with the world

4. Integrating reason and intuition

The Commitment is something bigger than us, it is a truly and sincere desire to serve

others without taking care selfish thoughts. Compassion is only perceived as an emotional

state, but it is also awareness. People perceive more about the environment they are

developing, they start to understand the consequences and impact they have in the

organization so they develop more compassion and empathy to the people around them

and the organization. With the commitment and compassion is easier to understand the

organization instead of only focus on personal desires and growth, it is having a broader

vision and not a self-interested. The babies are the perfect example of how we recognize

the world around us, they learned with test and error how they are part of the world, they

start to recognize their body, then their family and when they start to growth the

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relationship with others, this is something that we lose when we get older. We start to

forget about the connection we have in the world and how our actions can have a result,

we learned slower than before and most of the time we closed to looking the world and

their new movements. In management, the intuition can bring results never imagined

before, the managers can recognize different opportunities according their experiences

and what they think about a problem, but it is important mix together this intuition with

the reasoning.

The people with high level of Personal Mastery control perfectly this mix, for them is even

difficult to distinguish when they are using one of those. This bilateralism is a design

principle, designers employ naturally all the possible resources in a way to analyze all the

possible solutions without going in specific in one option. Most of our intuitions don’t

make “sense”, and for that reason a person who develops Personal Mastery can

effectively use the reasoning to analyze how could solve the problems in a different but

logical way. Follow these intuitions managers can have new and innovative results. The

best inventions achieve in the world are discovered following this idea of intuition,

because if not also following intuition can bring errors but the important thing is take

those mistakes as learning for future success.

“The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from

which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction. There is no logical path to these

laws. Only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach

them.” Albert Einstein, 1918. “Prinzipien der Forschung: Rede zum 60. Geburtstag von

Max Planck” in Mein Weltbild

“Doing the obvious thing does not produce the obvious desired outcome” (Senge, 2006)

TEAM LEARNING

In a group of people is normal that each of them move forward into different directions,

the Team Learning look for a work environment where everyone feel in harmony with the

rest and start to going to the same direction without forcing it. One perfect example is

how the sport teams work, they synchronize their moves in a way that the other can know

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what their companions going to do. It is about going for the same goal, a Shared Vision,

learning about the abilities of the others and integrating your abilities with them. The

synchronization is so perfect that is common see in meetings that all arrive to the same

point without any discussion or vote, but we must be careful about this point, Team

Learning is not about be submissive, it is about participation and learn how to work

harmonically with the rest of the team.

Individual learning could not influence too much in the organizational learning. It is truth

that is needed to develop Personal Mastery and capabilities in everyone, but for create a

continually learning in the organization is necessary a Team Learning that translates into

visible actions for the growth of the organization.

Team Learning has three different dimensions. The first one is to think wisely about the

complex problems; the team must recognize the potential of having different minds

solving a problem and accepting that it is better that only have one. The second is about

work in coordination but also looking for innovation, different sport teams and even music

bands explain how they improvise and even they can follow in synchronization the

direction, the action of one complement the action of the other. The third one is the role

of one team members in other teams, Team Learning is a collective discipline, for the

activities of one team could be necessary previous actions of another team.

In any team, the activities of dialogue and discussion are needed to find the solution of a

problem. Teams usually don’t distinguish very well both activities. In the dialogue, there is

a free exploration of all the factor involve the problem, in the discussion everybody

expresses their ideas and the other ones listen it to then proceed to search for the best

option or combination to solve the problem.

For achieve the most effective synchrony between a team is necessary a lot of practice,

the members must know each other and feel comfortable to work. The process must be

continually practice, perform, practice again, and in each step always looks for learn and

improve. It is important to be mature in the moment to work with others, it is not about

falling in love of your idea and not accept others opinions, for a good development you

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should accept when it is better the others view, it is not about winning or losing it is about

a good team working and to find the best solution.

It is important to observe and questioning other opinions to improve them, but this is not

possible if we are only defending our option. For a good team working is important to see

each other as colleagues looking for the same goal. The difficult part of course is the

willingness of the members to perceive others in this way and not as competition. As

mentioned before is not about that you must to agree to others opinion, rather it is about

having different point of views to work on those and create a joint decision.

The constant work with others can improve the work environment, creating a better place

where everyone can feel comfortable to work. The experience of developing in Team

Learning is not something that came only from individuals, it is about the interaction

between the individual and the environment where they developed (Buchanan, 2015).

This is something important for the managers that will guide the organization activities,

they must create a work environment where allow people to growth and develop

themselves.

Team Learning require Systems Thinking to integrate all the factors that influence it

together in one, developing the strategy, shaping visions, designing policy and

organizational structures could be some of the tasks that teams must develop and that

can be only achieved with the systematic work. Also, it is important consider the Mental

Model and the language of the team’s members, in that way will be possible estimate

cause- effect response and to deal with complexity.

SYSTEM THINKING

Systems Thinking is a discipline to allow sees “The whole”, it shows the interrelations

instead of different things individually working, analyze the patterns of movement, and

change instead of static behaviors. Nowadays we are generating massive amounts of

information and data that applying Systems Thinking can be useful for reduce its

complexity.

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For the success of this practice it is necessary to be aware of the complexity of the

problem you have, there could be two types of complexity the detail and dynamic

complexity. The first one is used when there are many variables and the second one for

situations where cause and effect are subtle and where the effects overtime are not so

obvious.

In the case of detail complexity can be implemented conventional forecasting, planning

and analysis methods. For dynamic complexity, the situation is different, the effects in

short and long run have different and dramatic effects not easy to predict. The real

challenge for management is understand this dynamic complexity, not only detail

complexity. Some examples can be how to balance the market growth with the

production capacity, find the best mix between prices, product/service quality and design

or maybe improving quality without increasing too much the costs.

The focus for Systems Thinking is in the Shift of Mind, seeing interrelationships rather than

linear cause-effect chains and how evolves the process of change. For arrive to the main

factors that influence the activities is necessary to identify the actions that recur again and

again to learn from them and improve the practices. Humans are natural learners, we can

see how young children easily understand and develop new practices with no major

problem, for that reason implement System Thinking could be at the beginning not an

easy task to do but as a something new that you learn everything can improve with

practice.

The Shift of Mind have a relationship with the learning, when refer to learning it is not

about the idea of taking in information, the real learning is going more in deep about to be

human, we can think in how babies learn everything, it is going to do something we never

we able to do, it is about how we can re-create ourselves.

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PART 6. Case studies

“In a learning organization, leaders are designers, stewards and teachers. They are

responsible for building organizations were people continually expand their

capabilities to understand complexity, clarify vision, and improve shared

mental models – that is they are responsible for learning”

Peter Senge

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During the analysis made by Boland and Collopy in the book Managing as Designing

(2014), we can see a clear example of how using design can change the way of working,

how the architect Frank Gehry teach to his team in the construction of the Peter B. Lewis

building lessons of rework and invention of new solutions. Gehry worked intensive with

his team in having a quick solution for the design of this building to finish with the decision

to throw this draw, showing them how they can be able to develop solutions but now it

was necessary to create the best one solution, something that really creates value.

6.1 Learning Organizations - Healthcare

The difficult financial situation during these years has also hit the healthcare professions,

fewer people are studying fundamental careers as nursing, and doctors prefer to apply

private practices letting the public system almost empty. For this lower number of people

working in healthcare, it has been implemented longer working hours with less resource

support, this had come with many errors during practices because exhaustion (Carroll &

Edmondson, 2002). It is necessary start to implement different practices to improve the

service for patients but also the experiences for the workers.

About the explanation introduce by Peter Senge concerning how the learning

organizations could improve healthcare he pointed: “the reforms will not work unless the

medical community leaders build successful learning organization effort”. The hospitals

have a strong role in the daily life of people, for introduce learning organizations the

attention is not only in the employees but also the unique relationship they have with the

community (Senge, 2014).

Healthcare organizations normally are looking for improve their quality in all the aspects,

focusing on needs analysis and performance measurement. To transform to learning

organizations is necessary also focus on the culture that values people giving to them the

support needed, stimulates the new ideas that arise, foment, and develop teamwork and

adopts staff recognition systems (Luxford & others, 2011).

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It could be included different medical organizations, from the basic individual doctor-

patient relationship, to a bigger one as nursing homes, hospitals, or health-maintenance,

and to a bigger scale in system of health that impact in a larger region or society.

The learning in healthcare normally is focus on individuals more than on teams. The

studies and training made from a person improve their abilities giving to them the

opportunity to develop best practices. This improve their performance, allow them to

have a high reputation that increase the number of patients interested in their services

and led them to practice more through repetition. This repetition gives them more

opportunity to improve what they have learned.

But this reputation could also come with bad practices, the motivation to improve

decrease because individuals feel comfortable in their current position. The idea of

implement learning organizations is avoiding this, and constantly to search for improve

the daily activities instead of get use to routines (Senge, 2014).

This method of learning from experience is not enough. In the case of routines this can be

insufficient for a high scale system, for example when doctors or nurses start to get bored

of the same activities they are not aware of the new cases that can come and stop to learn

new things. Also, other inconvenient for learning from experience is that not all the

problems can be reduced to technical solutions, in healthcare is common have

unexpected cases where is needed different training and practices to solution them. The

research in this industry is a daily basis, doctors and nurse’s knowledge must be in line

with the new discoveries, innovations and improves to provide to the patients the best

experience as possible (Carroll & Edmondson, 2002).

The research is not the only way of learning for healthcare, also disappointing outcomes

can derive new knowledge coming from the reflection and analysis of what happened,

also proving different possibilities of different scenarios developed with the construction

of benchmarking or brainstorming.

Despite routines could block innovation, few standardizations are required in healthcare

organizations, for example tasks like providing to patients the right drugs or the right tests

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at the right time can be always similar but the idea is improving the systems to develop

and improve these kinds of daily activities. The standardization must be balanced with

attitudes and structures that encourage discovery and exploration to growth (Carroll &

Edmondson, 2002).

Adaptation to external environment is not enough for the current world, learning

organizations are looking also for enhance internal capacities and learn from past events.

In the case of healthcare, the external factors are not enough to improve the patient care,

because of their complex and unique characteristics it is necessary to recognize the

cultural change and start to working from the inside of the organization to see with what

we can count. Qualitative, quantitative data, as also maintain and improve staff

satisfaction, can some of the aspects that can improve later the patient care (Luxford &

others, 2011).

For the nature of healthcare, the human factor is strong, there is a constant and

significant relationship between the people involved. The organizations are always looking

for improve quality, safety, and service, to develop a shared purpose and having a shared

vision between all the people involved in the health care can help to existing skills and

knowledges. The improves in healthcare are many from improving patient wellbeing,

attracting, and retaining top quality staff, applying constant training programs, or

continually making research. The people involved in daily activities are too many, and they

constantly get into the same activities without paying too much attention in the improves

they can implement. Some of these routines could be patient admissions, delivery of

medications, billing, buildings maintenance, and many others. Normally is necessary the

coordination between a team where everyone have a different role and where exists

different shifts where is required the communication and perfect “synchronization” in the

changes of roles (Carroll & Edmondson, 2002).

Julie Morath, the chief operating officer of Minneapolis Children’s Hospitals and Clinics,

recognize the importance of the patient and their safety: “The culture of health care must

be one of everyone working together to understand safety, identify risks, and report them

without fear of blame. We must look at ways of changing the whole system when we

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manage to zero defects”. In healthcare, it is important to have in consideration who is the

“final customers”, they are patients and we are talking about their health and live, so it is

a hard and delicate task to take serious when we talk about the experience we can give

them.

For communities, the local hospital is the place where they can go to find assistance in the

first place, Senge suggested four main efforts to take care to apply learning organizations

in those places (Senge, 2014):

1. Start at the top

2. Enable everyone to participate in improving the whole enterprise

3. Follow your curiosity, and encourage others to follow theirs

4. Link the hospital to its community

For the first one is important start in “the head”, the important role of leadership as in all

the other industries. For stablish a systematic change is necessary a guidance coming from

the leadership, if the board or CEO are not able to start a full dedicated effort to create

the change the learning organization going to move in a very slow pace. The commitment

in leadership level should be strong and constant, normally a change start as something

interesting and new, everyone starts to get interested but if the person in charge is not

able to maintain this enthusiasm the effort could be a waste of resources and time. Also,

other important point is the role of the personal in the hospital, normally is perceived that

the executive board knows what is best of the organization and the rest of the hospital

does not, and for apply this learning organization the teamwork and collaboration is vital,

it is about hearing others opinions and implement the best integrated solutions. It is usual

that people expect that the effective changes come from the top, this is constraints from

the way of working in the health care system but for achieve a learning environment the

relationship must be more human and focus on the capabilities of each in the system.

The second one is focused on the participation of everyone, it is important that all the

individual units interact between them, and the improvement that each can have inside

the unit also take in consideration the impact in the other units and share it with them. In

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the medical field is difficult find the collaboration between equals, the competition is

strong and the barriers that they can construct around their job could be high. Senge put

the example of how doctors perceive the waiting room as something useless and that they

don’t care, forgetting the high impact it can have in the experience of the patient and that

all the service worked as a whole system connected with the doctor at the end. When the

leadership accept the full commitment for the change it is necessary to have a shared

vision, where everyone is invited to participate and make comments and suggestions

about all the aspects to concern in the hospital.

As many design methods, the 5th discipline encourages the curiosity, be creative and

embrace others to work actively in that way. For the third effort, we can consider the

approach in design, always try to find something new, something better, something to

improve the current situation, asking if is there something else to do that add value and

increase the performance. The curiosity must come beside the willingness of change in the

people involved, in the healthcare community normally people are excited to growth,

improve and learn. But, it is something to take care in the leadership level, if the CEO have

not willingness of learn the organization stays in the traditional way of work where the

CEO only teach and control all the organization without taking risk in something new and

without consider the opinion of the others.

The last effort to focus in the application of the change to learning organizations is the link

between the hospital and its community. Thinking in a high scale and not individually can

bring bigger advantages to the community, the collaboration between many hospitals in

the same area allow provide better and complete services. And it is not only about the

hospitals, also with the integration of the community in the improvement, taking their

suggestions and showing how they can learn and implement new behaviors to develop a

better atmosphere. With the cooperation between all the actors it can create a learning

community between schools, political and economic leaders, healthcare chief executives

and medical society leaders.

To achieve these efforts is fundamental that the organization changes its way of working

starting from the high level of directors. Carroll & Edmondson (2002) suggest three to

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begin focusing in three main ideas: increase the capabilities for organizational learning in a

way to improve quality and other outcomes, the leadership is fundamental in all the levels

of the organization, all the managers have to be engage in the transformation to the

learning organization, this can be achieved when leaders take a broad view of all the

aspects in healthcare, the interdependencies between individuals, teams, task flows,

systems, and cultural meaning.

The importance of team working is essential also in healthcare. Even that senior clinical

leaders and executives apply new practices looking for new values, the impact is low in

comparison with the opportunities that can come applying the same in a team working

scale. Executives could start to improve the performance in a specific area, supporting the

values of excellence, the learning and caring, and then show the example to other teams.

In that way, all the people involved can clearly understand the advantages, moving to a

shared vision, and achieving an organizational cultural transformation (Carroll &

Edmondson, 2002).

“Minneapolis Children’s Hospitals and Clinics made patient safety a strategic goal and built

learning mechanisms such as focused event studies, safety dialogues, and blameless

reporting of problems into their work practices” (Carroll & Edmondson, 2002).

Brock Nelson, CEO of Children’s Hospitals, and Clinics, openly describes his “personal

epiphany” in being able to enact a new policy of disclosing more information and

personally apologizing to a family that had lost a teenage child who had initially been

misdiagnosed (Carroll & Edmondson, 2002).

One example of how organizations implement learning practices, is the case of the

Minneapolis Children’s Hospital and Clinics. The cross-functional collaboration can bring

better result to performance, such is the example made by a clinical nurse specialist and a

pharmacist in hematology/oncology, with the support of the pharmacy manager they

agreed to meet once a month to discuss about safety actions for patients. This initiative

foments that other teams in different areas started to do the same improving the

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collaboration and each activity in the hospital, all of them have started to share vision

about what they want (Carroll & Edmondson, 2002).

6.2 Learning Organizations - Education

As other organizations, education has applied methodologies to transform to a learning

organization. Some of the aspects education should look to success are knowledge,

information, and reward system. Educational organizations have invested the time in

develop the know-how, knowledge, and skills, and in action inquiry, acquisition,

examination, sharing and processing of information (Fullan, 1995).

As many other industries in education the role of all the people involved is important,

everyone come with a specific way of doing things and culture, then trying to connect in

the best way possible the conduct with others creating the most effective environment for

everyone.

“Leadership on this sector is about culture building that allows educators, students and

parents to be a part of a team that learn together” (Sackney & Walker, 2006)

To apply learning organizations the schools could be one of the best places to do it, the

educators, parents, students, and the rest of the education system are always open and

able to learn and search for improvements in the field, their commitment is useful to

apply any changes. The process of learning in education is a daily basis that the people

inside it perceive it as a normal activity, in learning laboratories as workshops people

normally get excited and involve on it, the interactive learning attracts all of them to act

actively. One problem arrives in the interaction between teachers and administrators, the

us vs them that is present in all the industries and that create a high barrier to learning.

Other problem could be inside the team of students, it is necessary support each of the

view of each participant, embrace their participation without judging and look for team

collaborative working, the result of this collaboration is greater than the sum of the

individual parts.

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The schools must remain as a reference place to learn, where people join and share their

opinions to construct a better system, there should be common goals to align the work

and the learning. The schools are only a small part of the education, the community

interacts in so many different environments where learning have also to be applied,

colleges, universities, museums, science centers between others. In universities, the

participation could be different, the role of the students changes from a guided behavior

to a willingness of doing the things they prefer, in comparison with kids on schools that

teachers must follow more all the activities.

In the case of high education, universities can apply the five disciplines proposed by Senge

in many ways. A method highly implemented by universities around the world is the

partnership and cross-sectoral alliances with other universities or institutes to make

research and achieve innovation (Senge, 2014).

In education, the impact of professors is high, depending on their values and attitudes the

result can change. According their values and willingness they are the ones that can start

and guide the transformation to the learning organization. Their job is transmitting

knowledge to learners but not only that, in universities the academic staff make research,

develop new knowledge, and publish it to share these discovers into the world and benefit

a wider audience than only students. The motivation normally comes from student

motivation more than staff motivation, but with the willingness to build something

different coming from the Personal Mastery of each professor could be possible achieve a

Shared Vision among all the people involved in the institution. Concerning Team Learning,

academics are highly qualified in terms of formal education, later they continued

developing other practices through the learning gain in conferences, working with PhD

students, learning at work with colleagues and individually (Bui & Baruch, 2010).

The different individuals involved in education can be many, so it is important to follow

and study their performances to analyze the success or errors in the daily practices.

Generally, are necessary to measure three different aspects, the performance for

teaching, the administration staff, and the research performance. In school’s research is

not a common practice, and among universities could be ones focus on purely teaching

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and others working with research. The research universities are of course the ones that

have more opportunities to learn (Bui & Baruch, 2010).

In higher education institutes where research is not applied, the knowledge basically is

transmitted by staff to students reducing the chances to learn and reflect. The research

universities are more likely to have different elements that can facilitate the learning, for

example singularity of purpose, time, resources, contacts, and relationships with others in

similar conditions of research in the same or other fields (Bui & Baruch, 2010).

For change is necessary to apply continuous learning, work together to see what the

community can create together to benefit all, in that way the community can evolve

together. To guide a school into a learning organization we must start in no considerate

hierarchical administration on it, where teachers can be considered as others co-director,

together with the parents and students as part of the board members, this will facilitate

the problem-solving processes. With the movement of the technology and how the world

is changing the students will barely need to go to school for learn information, but

something important are the skills of collaborative learning and process judgement they

can learn there. The role of the teacher is important to achieve this, they must move from

the front of the room and work close to students as a guide and model (Senge, 2014).

The challenge comes with this, changing the mentality of teachers. It is important to

remember the important role and impact they have in education, so it is necessary to

change their Mental Model from a “teacher-centered” to a “learner-centered”. Perceiving

the opinion of students and rest of the staff is the only way in education to achieve a

Shared Vision. Institutes should move all their efforts to align hearts and mind of all the

staff to construct together the ideal school or university (Bui & Baruch, 2010).

The transformation from the schools must be a change in the collaborative work cultures

focus on the continuous preparation and professional development of teachers to create

and assess learning conditions for all the students. Some fundamentals characteristics that

teachers must manage and control very well are: collaboration, teaching and learning,

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continuous learning for themselves, moral purpose, and the change process (Fullan,

1995).

Teachers must be the example for students in the collaborative work, they must foment

this collaboration culture inside and outside the school at the community with the work

with the parents. For the teaching and learning teachers must understand how difference

are the students, they must implement and always learn different and new teaching

strategies to meet a wide range of individual needs. With every generation come new

learning, teachers must become continuous learners, improve is a never-ending

proposition, they should understand themselves to be able to transmit knowledge to

students. The role of students is fundamental during a major part of the people’s life, the

most important point is that they are present at the beginning of the development of

people into society, for that reason the moral purpose is a factor that impact a lot in their

activities, they must look for to make a good difference in the lives of the students. And

last the factor of the change process, as mentioned before the societies are constantly

changing and evolving, for that reason teachers must learn how to understand and

manage the process of change with constant learning (Fullan, 1995).

Senge (1990) suggests some learning disciplines to take in consideration for the

implementation of learning organizations in education:

1. Use systems thinking as an incremental starting point

2. Weaken the stranglehold of fragmentation on curriculum and subject

3. Promote dialogue between parents, bureaucrats, administrators, teachers,

students, and government leaders

We must start with system thinking as the first discipline, in that way is possible enable

the enthusiasm and useful as a powerful way to involve participants in generative

learning. For example, in schools one method could be the discussion of a literature in

class, instead the professor read for the class and explain they leaves to students the

discussion in that way they participate and think as a team enable the opportunity of

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learning. Activities like this one allow the capabilities growth, the active participation

where everyone can expose their points, the change coming from inside out.

Some features of improvement in education include development and training,

management and planning, changes in instructional practices, and review of curriculum

and instruction (Fullan, 1995). With the fast and constant changes in the world, also the

changes in education must be aligning with this movement. The modification and changes

of curriculum and subject are present in all the levels of education, from schools to

universities, it is necessary keep the curriculum always updated. Usually the boards in

charge of the curriculum modifications tend to substitute one topic for another instead of

use it for complement or reinforce.

Like mentioned before the process must be actively, everyone must participate, and for

this create a correct dialogue between all could simplified the work. The best way to

implement the change is start small and work incrementally. For the success in the reform

of education is treating everyone as colleagues, create a community instead of just small

groups.

One method applied in current education system is the Site-based management, where

the central-offices delegate responsibility to each educational institute gives them the

opportunity to have a more participation at local and community level. Give more

flexibility in decision-making the results can be better, for example teachers could feel

empowered to collaborate with other colleagues if they see that their opinions are taken

in consideration, also can make changes in their pedagogy always searching for

improvement (Fullan, 1995). For a constant learning the development and training

programs can be useful for professors, this help them to be in line with the current trends

and improve the relation and collaboration with others colleagues through team-skills

programs (Bui & Baruch, 2010).

A trend perceives in higher education is about how to connect the needs and preferences

of students through interdisciplinary courses. This trend facilitates the teamwork and

team learning. Interdisciplinary teams foster in a better and easy way the organizational

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learning through the cultural exchange, Team Learning, knowledge sharing and Systems

Thinking (Bui & Baruch, 2010).

Considering the movement of the world, and how design is helping with the integration in

the work with co-design, working together different disciplines to align knowledges and to

find solutions, it seems that the application of the five disciplines proposed by Senge in

education help to facilitate the integration of new practices in the organizations.

There are eight recommendations to simplified the learning organizations creation in

education: (Fullan, 1995)

1. Develop local action plans to transform schools

2. Reinvent schools around learning, not time

3. Fix the design flaw: use time in new and better ways

4. Establish an academic day

5. Keep schools open longer to meet the needs of children and communities

6. Give teachers the time they need

7. Invest in technology

8. Share the responsibility: finger pointing and evasion must end

We can see how fundamental the relationship between educational institutes and the

community can be. The role of education is present in person’s life since small ages and

during big part of their life, depending on what people learn during all these years going to

bring better results as individuals that will be reflected during their participation in their

communities and work environment in the future. It is a task that required a big effort to

“reculturing” people’s mind and way of acting, it is a massive change that could bring

effective future results.

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PART 7. Conclusions

“If you want to succeed you should strike out

on new paths, rather than travel the worn

paths of accepted success”

John D. Rockefeller

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Starting with the idea of how design has evolved during the time we can mention the

study realized by Buchanan in the article Wicked problems in Design Thinking (1992),

where he considered four main areas where design is employed: design of symbolic and

visual communication; design of objects, all the products, its form and visual; design of

activities and organized services; and design of complex systems or environments.

Similarly, in the article the four powers of design, Mozota (2006) combine the aspects of

the traditional Balance Scorecard (financial, customer, internal business process and

learning) with design aspects to conclude with four different ways design can be also

implemented in the organizations, design as differentiator, as coordinator, as transformer,

and design as good business. Then in the issue Design Management Review vol. 24 (2013),

we can see how Westcott & others suggest the study made by Sabine Junginger where he

divided design also in three main divisions, design as tactical driver, as organizational

driver, and as strategic driver.

We can see how design has evolved during the years and the important role it has in the

strategies decisions of any organization. Design has been applied to shape and reshape

the organizations, from traditional ones to design-centric companies, the different facets

designing can have, are many and the benefits are infinite.

In the previous studies of the three authors just mentioned, it is clear how they coincide

in one main aspect, design as organizer and supporter. For the development of the

activities design has always have an important role in the decision-taking, either as

communication tool or problem-solving tool. Also, it cares about functional aspects as the

operations design, and the goods and services performance that create value to everyone

related to the organization.

The most important value that design gives to organizations is the ability to focus all their

attention into the people served by the organization. For the success of businesses, it is

fundamental to consider the individual’s needs, to try to find a way to achieve harmony

between the firm’s operations and the daily activities of the community, to take care of all

the aspects that can affect them, only in that way people can perceive the importance of

the organization and its value.

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Employing just few and basic design practices, organizations can achieve business growth,

find innovations and entrepreneurial spirit, having improvement in their activities,

increase their market share and brand awareness, and creating new values for customers.

Designing business not only brings value for customers but also for employees, improving

the workplaces, caring about giving to them better experiences in the workplaces, allow

the company to have top talent resources that bring an effective productivity and

operational activities, are some of the visible benefits design can gives to employees.

Design is based in the quality experience that the organization can provide to their

employees. This will create a continuous cycle in the relationship with the organization

and the people involved in it. Employees feel comfortable in their work environment, they

are going to perform the activities better, providing better products and services to

customers, customers going to feel satisfy about their offer and going to go back, the

organization gain reputation and increase market share so they will continue performing

the same actions to encourage employees to continue with the hard working, and it

repeats again.

The role of design in the organizations is not only for influence in the behavior and the

ways of thinking of everyone involved, it is looking also to offer and to improve a better

experience for everyone around in an increasingly complex world.

The implementation of design can be complicated, to innovate and to do things different

can challenge the status quo. Many good ideas fail for the rejection of the people to try

new practices. The organizations must balance the different interests with the new ideas

and find the balance point. The risks of failure are high and people usually are not ready

for that, but it is important also to highlight the learning opportunities that failure brings.

Always a consolidated idea will be more attractive than a draft, the idea is to foment

among the organization a spirit of innovation, to look for something new, to learn new

things, and to always try.

One important aspect to take in consideration for traditional and for design-centric

companies is its rediscover and constant evolution. One mistake is to keep doing the same

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things, even if they have been successful in the past it is important always reinvent, learn

new practices, to take risks to look for new opportunities, and to avoid static behaviors.

The idea must be focus on embracing risk and focusing in reaching new markets with new

opportunities, a constant learning in how to improve the performance.

Learning organizations are companies that facilitate the learning, and look for the

constant growth of everyone in the organization and the evolution of the organization

itself. It is based in the ability to learn faster than your competitors. They are

“organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they

truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective

aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together”

(Senge, 2006).

For stablish a good organizational learning is needed a combination between values, skills,

and support structures. These factors don’t come quickly, it is necessary a lot of hard

working, it requires to take a long-term commitment to implement the change in the

organizational culture. A fundamental part of the organizations are people, when they are

motivated to work in a life-long learning they can cultivate personal values. Those are

going to be translated to clear goals, facilitating the evolution in the work environment,

resulting to team working with others having their same vision.

The organizational learning increases the effective actions through knowledge and

understanding. The learning process is a constant cycle between actions and reflections,

try, test, and try again. Positive results become part of testing routines until the idea gets

already consolidate, the routines evolve over time when individuals get familiar with

them.

The relationship of design and organizations is about how to find the correct place to

apply design in an organization, and at the same time managers changing their

understanding of applied design in the business management. The design management

moves in a dynamic process from project design management to strategic design

management.

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The manager role is fundamental in the implementation of design practices. Managers are

responsible for designing the organization’s world, and for the worlds that organizations

make for others in the social life around us.

The traditional functions in management are controlling, directing, planning, and

organizing. Managers should enlarge their focus and to provide the tools and support to

enable the best conditions for the people in the organization. To apply new changes and

enhance a learning culture is fundamental this support coming from the management

area.

A good design management must embrace the communication, motivation between

workers, and incentive to stimulate, support and reward the good performance of the

team. Even though not all the companies born with a design perspective, individuals born

with a learning spirit. This could be useful now to implement something new, simplifying

the design introduction in the organizations.

Concerning this investigation, some tools and methods have been analyzed. Each has its

own peculiarities and characteristics. We classified them together with each of the

disciplines suggested by Senge:

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Table 7. Design tools and methodologies applied in Learning Organizations

Source: Own construction.

In the case of the Personal Mastery it can be include the Reward System Design Logic, it

considers the recompense and incentives people going to receive according their

performance, this will encourage individuals to always look for grow personally. The

Workplace design can influence in the Personal Mastery, depending on how people feel in

the environment they are more enthusiastic to improve themselves. Also, it can be

included the first Translation moment referred to the New Mindset, the energy coming

from this moment can create attention and interest to the individual to follow and

develop what is needed to be in line with the new practices.

For Mental Models the second translation moment referred to the Movement from an

idea to action can influence in its implementation. This moment is all about changing

behavior, correlated with the aspect of the way of thinking in the Mental Models, and how

individuals can react to different situations. A very important method that can be

implemented in this discipline is Design Thinking. It can support the people’s behavior

now to search for innovative solutions, implementing organized steps to guide the actions

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during the process. For example, the Design Thinking meaning as cognitive process in the

brain is a fundamental aspect to take in consideration in the Mental Models discipline.

In Team Learning many approaches can be included, this made sense because of the high

percentage of activities the organization develop in teams. The first one is the relationship

of talent since the beginning of the work, the correct selection of people could bring the

success in team working. The Design Charette going to support in the process of Team

Learning, referring in the optimal size and work process. And finally, the third translation

moment referred to Shifting Context, when teams already develop a successful idea and

transmit it to other areas, working in the organization as a whole and not as individuals.

For achieve a Shared Vision is fundamental the communication among the organization.

Some techniques as Sketches and Storytelling can simplify the information in a way

everyone can understand. This is important now to Build Shared Vision.

In the fifth discipline is the combination of all the others, Systems Thinking refers to

perceive the organization as a whole, integrating all the aspects together. The models that

take in consideration many aspects of the companies are Star Model, Design milestones

process and the Structural building blocks. In each of them are consider each part needed

to complete the structure of the organization, the steps to follow to contemplate each of

the pieces that going to form the complete organization, human perspective, but also

consider the operation perspective.

The approach to face changes in any organization must be always looking for the most

effective method and a possible combination of tools. This mix between different models

can bring better results. It is important always to remember that each of company has

their unique characteristics so unique processes should be implemented.

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7.1 Managerial implications

In this section, it going to be developed the managerial practices, showing the actions that

managers should take in consideration to foster changes inside the organization.

A manager is an individual who oversees the correct development of the activities inside

the organizations, normally counting with a group of people to develop together those

activities. The findings of this research show the important role managers have in the

transformation of the organizations, and their influence and relationship with the other

members of the firm. Applying new practices as design management activities can bring

huge changes in the work environment, people normally are closed to these changes

because are new and different for them, giving the responsibility to the manager to

foment these changes.

For a business is necessary of course the control of the financial resources to succeed, but

the balance sheet manipulation does not bring a tangible and visible value for customers.

For that reason, managers, should equilibrate their effort between implementing new

ways of thinking applying design practices, and not only care about numbers metrics.

To achieve successful design strategies, it is not possible doing it without facing

substantial changes, like for example in the processes and structures. Managers should

embrace the overall mindset of all the people inside the organization, to support them

among the new practices. The firm’s leadership should be the first one to engage to these

new changes, to work as example for others and to support them through the new

activities.

One core leadership strategy for managers is to be a model, an example for everyone. To

apply any different practices is important first to start for ourselves, in that way we can

spread the new changes with the example. Talking about applying new practices can open

the mind of some, but actions speak louder and can arrive to many.

Applying design practices in the organizations is a long-term and continuous activity. It is

not something easy to perceive, so requires time to see the improvement. This happens

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because to manage the change it requires most of the time in the transformation of the

firm’s culture, the process is gradual and normally long. So, when managers want to

incorporate design in the organization, they should be aware to analyze the activities in a

long-term perspective.

The design applied in the organizations always is focus on human-centered, focus on

customers, but also in the human part of the organization as the employees and of course

managers. Even they are the ones to guide the application of design, also is necessary take

in consideration models that consider them as the first actor to include in the

transformation. Without the manager vision, the implementation could be much more

complicated. Applying simple practices that help managers in improve and keep the

control in the correct variables to achieve a better result in the implementation of

changes.

Normally the character of the manager should be sufficient strong to respond quickly and

to control fast social, economic and political transitions per the requirements on the

system and its employees, and the design transitions are not different in this aspect.

The manager must have an open mind to embrace the design in their day to day activities,

the manager should act as an idea generator who gives form to new possibilities with a

well-developed vocabulary of design, that can bring different and new results in the

develop of the activities. In the design of the Lewis Building, Gehry explained how

managers must be trained as decision makers; they are form-givers who can shape

organizations and economic processes. He mentioned how the world continue forming

mediocrity solutions coming from people close to change, in the education, practice and

research of managerial activities is necessary to apply a design attitude to solving problem

As management engineering students, the opportunity to act and think as designers can

give us a complete and better solution to our problems, providing better experiences to

the people that will work with us and to customers, and to growth as a more integrated

professional, being more flexible to changes, it is necessary we as future managers open

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ourselves to the largest number of possibilities we can have acting in a more integrated

way.

The role of the manager is important during all the processes in the business, the design

can be only applied for taking decisions or also to applied a design attitude. The first one is

traditionally linked with management, where the manager should choose an option

between different solutions to a problem, but having a design attitude go beyond this

view, it is problem solving but taking in consideration more opportunities and going out of

the known to find something new. A good design solution is not the one that emerges

from the beginning as the unique solution, it is the one that comes after multiple analysis

and iterations.

For the characteristic of iteration in design processes the participation of many in the

problem solving could help to avoid repetitive solutions. One of the traditional

characteristic of a manager is to work as the leader of a team, but this is not the case. Of

course, they will work as a guide to the process, but it is fundamental that they have a full

commitment in act also as team-players, the collaboration between all the team will be

what leads to the success of the new practices.

In learning organizations, the idea is creating a complete group of people able and

enthusiastic to growth and develop new practices to improve their activities. The

leadership role is not something that should happen only in the CEO or executives level, it

must be distributed broadly in all the organizations, manager is the one that should

promote the develop of each person to become the best version of themselves.

Finally, it is important that managers start to focus also in the economic value and

financial benefits of design. Many times, this aspect is not taking seriously because it is not

clear how to address it. There is a driver that can help to analyze this value, the RODI

return of design investment. It is necessary that managers start to study in deep this

because the benefits coming from design are many and very clear, the design-centric

companies are performing better and growing more than the ones that maintain in

traditional practices.

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An important aspect to always consider is that there is not a secret for success, it is not

follow the same steps in all the organizations and success, it is about understand the

culture and dynamics of each of the organization taken in consideration. Firms are like

humans each of them have their particularities, so it is necessary that managers

understand this and apply the correct models that fit to each organization.

“The manager does things right; the leader does the right thing”.

Bennis Warren. On becoming a leader, 1994.

7.2 Limits and future research

(follow-ups)

After the analysis of the managerial implications the limitation of this research are going

to be presented with the future research suggestions. With the development of the

investigation some limitations appear during the process.

The first limitation was about the literature in the topic. It is not easy to find a clear

distinction between the design of the organizations and the implementation of design in

it. Many times, the concepts are mixed creating confusion in the research process. At the

end, this limitation helps to create a path in the design evolution, coming from just a tool

to a strategy support.

Second limitation is about the design management literature. There are a lot of

information about design-centric companies, but lack of material about traditional and

smalls companies that want to start to implement design practices.

Talking about the future research suggestions it is important to consider the opportunity

to enlarge this study. With the idea of introduce design management in small and

traditional companies, it is important to support the investigation with analysis of business

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cases. Doing interviews or focus groups could be useful to understand the current

situation of design in this kind of organizations.

Other opportunity to follow the investigation is focusing directly in managers with a

design background, in management or also in design careers. Studying their behavior, how

they introduce design, and how they implement it in non-design-centric companies.

With the realization of this investigation it was possible to see how designers are

constantly defending themselves about their important role, and how many managers are

close to implement radical changes in their practices. Using this and focusing in a more

quantitative investigation, the case studies can be also focus on how many engineers are

implementing design, and how many designers are applying management practices in

their daily activities. In that way, could be possible understand the value and important

role of each activity in the organization, and the fundamental idea of working as a

correlative discipline.

Finally, a possible future research could be focus on the economic and financial impact in

the application of design inside the organizations, simplifying the benefits to traditional

firms.

In conclusion, this investigation is only a small step in the introduction of design

management in traditional organizations.

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