The Change Management Game: a fast and fun exercise in applying design/thinking to digital transformation

“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” – Andy Warhol

As designers, we are often on the front-line of digital transformation. The very products and services we create can act as triggers for change across the rest of the organization. And when not approached holistically, product and service innovation can even lead to friction with other, more traditional teams like Finance, Risk, Procurement, and HR. For this reason, designers frequently find themselves with the incentive, but not the power, to drive internal change.

This workshop aims to set up designers to be more effective change agents within their organizations through a fun, hands-on exercise in change management. Based on our experiences in the workplace and from teaching, we will craft a fictional organization and narrative to make change management through design relevant, understandable, and doable.

Participants will work in teams driving change from both bottom-up and top-down perspectives. As the change narrative unfolds, we will introduce additional real-world elements like headcount and budget cuts, pivots, and new leadership.

We will conclude with a group post-mortem about the exercise, our learnings, and next steps for bringing change back to each participant’s own organization.

Here are a few of the key themes related to digital transformation which we will explore:

• The importance of from where/who the change “ask” comes.

• Efficient and effective ways for gaining context, grounding, and reframing the effort around human needs.

• Ways for analyzing the organization in order to discover and leverage existing building blocks for change.

• Defining, building and testing a change MVP.

• Finally, tips and techniques for going beyond the water’s edge and into the crucial work of implementation.