prioritize, define, develop and implement aligned people strate-gies,
culture and employee experiences. The DOWE co-creation
model is a combination of design and change processes enabled
by engagement and capability throughout. These are arranged as
a series of five phases, each with progressive learning loops of spe-cific
activities.
The five phases of DOWE as explained in the “CYC
Book Summary”:
“Understand, the first phase of design, is made up of three
learning loops: People and Context, Insights and Criteria.
Activities in People and Context include: aligning purpose and
scope, identifying early assumptions and key questions, planning
and implementing user research. The Insights learning loop begins
by using different mindsets to develop insights from raw data col-lected
during user research. As a result, thinking is reframed and
drives the development of the provocative proposition. Learning
is further catalyzed through the creation of visuals. Criteria uses
what was learned to establish the most critical requirements in two
sets: from the organizational point-of-view and the employee
point-of-view. This becomes the decision-making tool later on
in the DOWE process.
“Create and Learn applies learning ‘into the creative design
process and combines it with generated ideas through play and
experimentation’ in co-creation with others. The learning loops,
Explore, Brainstorm and Play, net ‘brainstormed ideas to develop
and refine for the new strategies and experiences.’ In Explore, the
design team ‘builds knowledge and inspiration by learning from
everything and everywhere, hunting and gathering anything that
could inform their perspective… it goes beyond doing primary
and secondary research – it seeks stimulus to synthesize con-cepts
and ideas.’ In Brainstorm, facilitation guides people to ‘work
together to generate options, ideas or offerings that could solve for
critical needs and define or enhance a work experience.’ The phase
concludes with Play, where the team experiments with ideas to see
how they relate to one another, how they work or how they might
be modified to work.
“The DOWE process converges with the Decide phase, which
is comprised of the Prototype and Select learning loops. Prototype
engagement
THOUGH MUCH HAS
BEEN COVERED ABOUT
ADVANCES IN SOFTWARE
AND AUTOMATION,
EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE
HAS RECEIVED FAR
LESS ATTENTION IN
COMPARISON.
is another form of exploration that further refines ideas and gath-ers
intelligence toward bringing the team closer to decisions. Select
brings the development of the Strategy and Design Blueprint to
full fruition when the team chooses what best meets three con-straints:
what is viable, what is possible and what satisfies the
previously established criteria?
“The Plan phase comes next and prepares the organization for
the change that inevitably accompanies the implementation of the
Blueprint to 1) ensure that change reaches sufficient depth and
breadth across the organization while maintaining connectivity/
reinforcement across all content, actions and activity, and 2) covers
what will be done and how during implement. The DOWE pro-cess
walks the design team through iterative planning to form the
Roadmap and Action Plans.
“In this last phase of the DOWE process, Implement, the
Strategy and Design Blueprint is brought to life with the
implementation of the Roadmap and Action Plans through
the learning loops of Manage, Measure and Sustain. Manage
goes beyond carrying out plans, it manages meaning in the cre-ation
of a new reality at the individual, team and organization
levels. Measure serves to ‘gauge progress toward key mile-stones
and enable timely adjustments’ as well as ‘provides data
and content for communication and contributes to the change
narrative.’ ‘Both a process and an outcome,’ Sustain drives con-tinued
momentum and ensures that changes stick for as long as
they’re needed.”
Though every organization can benefit from it, Design of Work
Experience has requirements not everyone is willing to satisfy.
First and foremost, it only works for those that care about people.
DOWE also demands the investment of talent, time, effort and a
commitment to doing things differently in order to get different
results – culture work needs all this because people do. “Sounds
like a lot of work,” some may say. The challenge to that might be
to ask: How is it working now? What if nothing is done? One
only needs to read the headlines to see the consequences of neglect
and the excuse of ignorance is no longer valid. Perhaps it should’ve
been this way all along, but the best disruption for HR would be
to put the “human” in human resources. n
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HRPROFESSIONALNOW.CA ❚ SEPTEMBER 2018 ❚ 27
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