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Designing the Business of Change

Change is often necessary, but never easy. For any organization—whether company, community, or even country—driving lasting change for the better takes a deep understanding of both the overall landscape and the individual factors that contribute to its current state. It also takes an understanding of when and how to intervene.
In Autumn of 2019, I was a keynote speaker at <a href="https://designforbettersociety.com/">Design for Better Society</a> in Belgrade, Serbia, an event hosted by the civil society association Design Thinkers. The two-day event featured presentations, panels and breakout sessions with design leaders, educators, government and community leaders around the world and posed a broad directive: to use design thinking to create value and make the world a better place. I spoke on the Business of Designing Change. More specifically, I discussed how to understand core values within an organization and use them to drive change, as well as how to uncover the trends and shifts in the ecosystem surrounding an organization.
Indeed, effective change always requires thoughtful navigation. For example, a <a href="https://www.fastcompany.com/90464950/mckinsey-study-of-1700-companies-reveals-ceos-dont-understand-design-leadership-at-all">recent study</a> showed that while design leaders are finally getting a seat at the executive table, rarely are these executive teams equipped to integrate these design leads effectively. This trend proves that simply injecting change into an organization is not enough. It’s necessary to actually design for change to enable meaningful and lasting business success.
Every organization has untapped opportunities to grow and shift to make a greater impact on a local and global level. Through Org Activation, frog helps companies make change that matters most for employees and customers. With frog’s <a href="https://www.frogdesign.com/sector/social-impact">Impact</a> practice, we work with teams to find workable, scalable solutions that better their communities and society at-large. At the heart of any of these opportunities, however, is always a willingness to make and embrace change. This requires awareness of how individuals respond emotionally to change, as well as understanding of how to manage change effectively.
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<h6>Mapping opportunities for change management</h6>
The <a href="https://www.ekrfoundation.org/5-stages-of-grief/change-curve/">Kübler-Ross Change Curve™</a> plots emotional response to change. It begins with the initial shock people experience upon hearing new information and eventually moves through stages of denial, frustration, depression, experimentation and decision, all toward creating a new sense of normalcy—one where individuals can fully integrate change into their world. Not only is it a diagram that organizations can use to understand how teams adapt to change to manage change more effectively, it also presents clear points to intervene by providing support and relieving burdens along the way.
In the client example below, we adapted the Kübler-Ross model to identify the emotional response of an aging population experiencing change. At each phase, we identified a specific action that can be taken to directly intervene, addressing their emotional needs at that time.

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Within businesses, the center of change is often the employee. The diagram below shows a different client example that explores how companies can drive volunteerism within their communities. Identifying the opportunity, defining the roles and partners involved and articulating a unified approach clears the path forward and gives the organization a better chance of embracing real change that makes a lasting impact.

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How your organization can make lasting change 
Now that we’ve discussed the power of change as well as the emotional stages involved with effective change management, here are some actionable next steps for how to drive lasting change within an organization.
Give people a framework so they know how to participate and act. At frog, our Org Activation practice is one way we help organizations seize new opportunities, which always involve embracing change. We’ve also developed the <a href="https://info2.frogdesign.com/en/collective-action-toolkit" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Collective Action Toolkit</a>, a set of activities and methods that any group can use to solve a problem and drive change within their chosen community.
Understand the competence level required for the change. Designing change doesn’t happen overnight. Along with understanding emotional impact, it takes building capacity and nurturing existing competencies not just once within an organization, but as an evolving, transformative process.
Use systems thinking to drive change. Look broadly at the ecosystem an organization is involved in, then zero in on contributing factors. For businesses, this involves bringing the customer along, often co-creating solutions that go beyond the launch of a new tool, process, product or service, and instead enables a reframed mindset toward real change.

Kara Pecknold

Kara Pecknold is a Creative Director at frog. She has a background in visual design and design research and is the current lead for frog’s Collective Action Toolkit, a collaboration and creativity tool for group problem solving that is being used worldwide.

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Create Value Maps to put your goals into action

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Planning for Action with the Collective Action Toolkit

You’ve brought passionate minds together, aligned on a common focus and generated ideas to achieve your goal. Energy levels are high as the input of raw passion has been shaped into something tangible; something that can and should be realized. But this excitement can quickly devolve into pessimism as you face the daunting task of making it real.
There are reasons companies face paralysis when it comes to closing the gap between innovation and implementation. It can require investments in unproven technology or involve a cultural transformation within the organization. It could demand the development of different channels to reach customers, or it might mandate making money through entirely new means. It requires a massive step change; a departure from the comfort zone of what is known today.
We know it’s hard, and we also know that you’re not alone. More and more, frog finds itself forming frameworks to catalyze these steps for some of the largest organizations on the globe.
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<h6>The Collective Action Toolkit</h6>
So, how do we transfer our ideas on paper (or whiteboards and slides) to the market and into our customers’ lives? The frog Collective Action Toolkit (CAT) applies a pragmatic and measurable lens to achieving this goal with a flexible set of dynamic, group-oriented, non-linear activities that can be used again and again.
If you’re brand new to using the CAT, <a href="https://info2.frogdesign.com/en/collective-action-toolkit" target="_blank" rel="noopener">you can download it here</a>.
Where a first go-round with the CAT is often generative, you can take a second spin through certain activities with an evaluative twist to help you not only plan for, but actively engage in activities like making phone calls, crunching numbers and even testing prototypes.
Now available within the Plan for Action section of the CAT is a new activity called Value Map, demonstrated here. This exercise helps organizations take real action towards their established goals. Drawing from the toolkit, here are steps focused on transitioning from identifying the “why” of your goal to answering the “how.”
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<h6>First, make it measurable.</h6>
Revisit the goal statement that you developed during the Clarify Your Goal section of the toolkit. This should have established the “why,” or your project’s reason for being. These are your roots and everything stems from here. It is likely timeless, like a mission statement, and therefore broad-sweeping. It is also likely that your goal statement is not phrased in a way that you can immediately test progress against it. Let’s attempt to create a second version of the goal – a measurable statement that clarifies the “who,” the “what” and defines the “how”.
We are helping [__who?___] by delivering [___what?___] through/by [___how?____].
For example, frog worked on a project to support farmers who provide the staple food for their respective country (i.e., the “why”). The idea behind this project was to develop mobile products that would help enhance the lives of smallholder farmers.
To make it measurable, we could restate the goal like this:
frog is helping smallholder farmers by delivering critical weather and market information through mobile phones and local ambassadors.
Now we can use our core goal to track success. As in, how specifically are we helping farmers? Is it by delivering weather and market conditions? It is measured through the number of mobile app users and local ambassadors?
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<h6>Second, develop a Value Map.</h6>
The objective of the Value Map exercise is to more granularly map out how you deliver value and what resources you need to do so. A Value Map is not as daunting as it sounds. If you have your goal restated in terms of “who,” “what” and “how,” then you have the necessary pieces to map the value proposition.
Think of your customers’ journey with you and your service:
<ul>
<li>awareness (how they know about you)</li>
<li>decision (how they decide about you)</li>
<li>engage (how they engage with you and your services)</li>
<li>re-engage (how they think about you and decide to re-engage)</li>
</ul>
With your goal in mind, describe what happens between you and the people you are aiming to support at each phase of their journey, then determine how this interaction can be made possible. These are your “channels.”

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From here, you can create a cost-benefit model.
<ul>
<li>Based on the channels you’ve identified, determine the costs associated with reaching your customer.</li>
<li>Based on the touchpoints you’ve defined, determine the benefit generated at each touch-point with your customer.</li>
</ul>

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<h6>Next, line up the right people.</h6>
It’s time to bring this concept to life through a set of partners. Use the Rings of Connection activity in the Build Your Group section of the CAT to help you map the ecosystem of enablers. The objective is to identify and connect with some “doers”: individuals or businesses who can work with you to make your idea a reality. Doers will fall into a few general categories:
<ul>
<li>Finance Partners – Who will finance the details in your Value Map? How will you get the funding and support needed to make it happen?</li>
<li>Social Partners – Who are the people that can spread the good word about your solution? Who are your social partners?</li>
<li>Subject Matter Expert (SME) Partners – Who are the subject matter experts that you will rely on for critical information and know-how?</li>
<li>Technology Partners – Who will provide the technology to enable your solution and its channels?</li>
<li>Cultural Partners – Who will be your local link? Who will translate your ideas and concepts into experiences?</li>
</ul>
After you identify the people/organizations would be that fills these roles, then connect with them to define terms of working together.

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<h6>Finally, tie it all together. Launch, measure, revise, repeat.</h6>
From both the Value Map and the Rings of Connection activities, you now should have something you can act on. You know what you’re trying to achieve down to the channel level. You also know what the relative cost might be for each channel approach. And finally, you know who you must form partnerships with to make this all work. It’s time to start initiating conversations to build and execute.
This will take time, especially since you’re now relying on more parties and not just yourself and your core team. As such, it’s important to hold your team, your partners, and your service to key measures of success throughout the process. You can use other CAT activities to generate these metrics and to implement continuous learning and feedback loops to ensure you stay true to your goal.
Check back with us to learn how to use the CAT activities to hold our initiatives accountable. As always, if you have any feedback or ideas, we would love to hear from you!

The Collective Action Toolkit (CAT) is comprised of activities and methods that enable groups of people anywhere to organize, collaborate and create solutions for problems affecting their community.

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Kara Pecknold is a Creative Director at frog. She has a background in visual design and design research and is the current lead for frog’s Collective Action Toolkit, a collaboration and creativity tool for group problem solving that is being used worldwide.
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The Collective Action Toolkit Quick Start Guide

Groups of people around the world get asked to try and solve all sorts of problems, both big and small. How do people from unique backgrounds come together with their different skills and perspectives to make change happen? We’ve heard stories from all over the world, and while there is no perfect way to make change happen, we know that having a shared process can help groups move in the right direction. The <a href="https://www.frogdesign.com/work/frog-collective-action-toolkit">Collective Action Toolkit</a> (CAT), which was launched in 2012 and re-released in a revised edition today, provides a set of activities that enables groups of people to organize, build trust, and collaboratively create solutions for challenges impacting a company or a community. Groups can use and adapt these tools to solve problems, build new skills, and gain important knowledge to better support their needs. The toolkit is part of <a href="https://www.frogdesign.com/work/frogthink">frogCamp</a>, our approach to sharing the processes that we use with our clients at frog, so that more people can have access to the tools we use to solve challenges every day in multidisciplinary teams. Thousands of problem solvers have downloaded the CAT in the last four years, and sent us valuable feedback about how it can be best used and potentially improved. For example: <a href="http://www.pointb.is/#top" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Point B</a>, an organization in Myanmar, used the exercises in the toolkit to develop a curriculum for training the next generation of change makers in an emerging democracy:
<blockquote>“We started using the CAT because it was the first toolkit that was really made for local people who want to create change in their communities. We used the CAT to build our team and create strategies for how we were going to work together, what kinds of programs/projects we wanted to work on and where we wanted to focus our work.” —Rochelle, educator in Myanmar</blockquote>
Based on the input of people like Rochelle, we set out to do a revision of the CAT. We spoke to and surveyed people to find out how we could further improve it, and potentially extend it into new languages. As a result of what we learned, we refreshed the visual style to improve the overall usability of the toolkit, and added a French-language translation to our English, Chinese, and Spanish editions. Along with these updates, we heard from some toolkit users that they wished there was a simple quick-start guide to get them going with the toolkit. What follows are 5 quick steps you can do with a group to get started with using the CAT. All you need is a group of people, a space to meet, some pencils and paper, and a few hours of time. (We also recommend that you have some snacks on hand.)

Step One: <a href="http://www.frogdesign.com/work/frog-collective-action-toolkit.html?utm_campaign=CAT2016&amp;utm_source=DM" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Download the toolkit</a>

Step Two: Share your skills and talents
Start with the “Skill Share” activity from Build Your Group section. After about 30 minutes, your group should ready to take things further with a set of known skills. First, get into groups of 5 to 6 people. Each of you gets two sheets of blank paper and a pencil or a pen. For five minutes, individually write on one sheet of paper:
<ul>
<li>The name you’d like the other group members to call you</li>
<li>Your skills and talents</li>
<li>One recent accomplishment</li>
</ul>
On the second sheet of paper, take five minutes to create a drawing that expresses who you are and what you like. Over the next 15 minutes, each person in the group takes two minutes to share who they are and what they created. One member of your group should take notes about the group’s overall skills.

Step Three: Identify the challenge you’re trying to solve
We recommend trying the “Find True North” activity from the Clarify Your Goal section. After about 45 minutes, your group will have a shared sense of what you want to accomplish working together. Stand in a circle with your group. One person should have a piece of paper and a pencil to write down what people say during this activity. One at a time, each person should share what he or she wants the group to achieve collectively. The person who has the piece of paper writes all those goals down. Once everyone has shared their goals, each person can place a star next to the top three goals they heard from everyone present. As a group, each person should share why they chose the goals that they did. The goals that received the top votes should then be rewritten on a sheet of fresh sheet of paper that everyone can use as reference.
Step Four: Make a plan for action
Work as a group to develop a timeline for how and when you will achieve these goals. You might also want to decide on the next time you’ll meet together. Your group should now have an area to focus on and a timeline that can guide your group forward. Consider using the “Set the Timeline” activity from the Plan for Action section if you get stuck.
Step Five: Evaluate what you have learned
Now that you’ve done two activities from the toolkit you’re ready to familiarize yourself with the rest of the toolkit and choose your own activity. But first, it’s important that your team reflects on what you have learned. Take about 30 minutes to have your team members fill out a Learning Card. All you need to do is answer three simple questions:
<ul>
<li>What did we do?</li>
<li>What did we learn?</li>
<li>What do we want to do next?</li>
</ul>
In answering the first and second questions, you and your group members will be able to discuss how the previous activities went. If anyone in your group feels like the activities weren’t successful, you can ask them what you might want to change in the future to make the group more successful. For the last question, invite your group to look through the toolkit to decide what activity would be most appropriate to try next. In the coming months, we will be sharing more stories from CAT users around the world, so we can continue to grow a strong network of people who are working together to make change in their communities. Stay tuned for a future post to find out how to keep your group and your goals moving forward.

David Sherwin

David Sherwin is a Fellow at frog, co-founder of Ask The Sherwins, LLC and co-author with Mary Sherwin of Turning People into Teams: Rituals and Routines That Redesign How We Work (Berrett Koehler, 2018).

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frog Kara Pecknold presented a version of this article during Digital Shoreditch in London, England.

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Empowering Communities, Creating Citizens

In the book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Global-Competence-Activities-Succeeding-International/dp/0874255872" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Global Competence: 50 Training Activities for Succeeding in International Business</a>, we learn that there are at least 66 ways that we as humans differ. From what we value to how time is understood, this vast set of differences is a reminder that it can be difficult to find a means to align on a shared goal when seeking to make a change in our communities or organizations. During our experiences working with various groups, companies and organizations across the globe, frogs have found themselves continually challenged with how to overcome these differences.
Since we’re always asking ourselves how to arrive at a workable solution, there seems to be a range of responses that can emerge:
<h2>Give the group a solution</h2>
This response reduces focus on the differences and could improve the situation, but may not ensure sustainable growth over time.
<h2>Put the tools in the hands of the community and let them self-organize to drive and own their solution for change</h2>
This is a great idea if you have a process of engagement. Our work with <a href="http://designmind.frogdesign.com/2014/01/launching-point-bs-design-thinking-center-for-community-engagement-in-myanmar/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pointB Design Thinking Centre for Community Engagement</a> has highlighted how the second option is a powerful way to empower a community and create a new type of citizen. Citizenship, a broad topic at the best of times, holds a shared set of structures that permits engagement or a path to follow. Finding the right process and path, while often challenging, is more likely to yield solutions that can last. In many cases, what can be more important than the solutions themselves are ways the process can create more participatory citizens who own the solutions. Over the past six months, pointB’s community incubator has taken advantage of accessing the tools in <a href="https://www.frogdesign.com/work/frog-collective-action-toolkit" target="_blank" rel="noopener">frog’s Collective Action Toolkit</a> and turning the outcomes into an opportunity to develop stronger citizens in Myanmar: “improving local governance in Myanmar calls for a deeper understanding of interrelated issues and the ability to think strategically about how to respond to the needs of citizens” and because of this, “the tools [in the CAT] provide structure and stability in a process that can be quite complex and confusing.” <a href="http://www.pointb.is/#top" target="_blank" rel="noopener">pointB</a>  is one group that is pursuing a means to grow more engaged citizens. We recently surveyed a set of our users who have worked with the Collective Action Toolkit and received many stories of how this type of structure can provide the path for engagement, even at the most basic level. We believe that when we have a path for engagement we can better understand each other and the ecosystem we’re trying to impact.

A few months ago we wrote about, Point B Design + Training (pointB), which launched in Mawlamyine, Myanmar. pointB is setting out to tell a new story in Myanmar’s emerging democracy: they have goals intended to develop a new generation of makers who will lead change by tackling their community’s social issues.

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Creating the Citizen Experience in Myanmar

These change agents are 17 young adults who have completed their traditional schooling in Engineering, Education, Zoology, and some are even working in local government offices. They are looking to bring a new way of thinking to their work and community.
frog helped pointB to develop a curriculum—based off of our <a href="http://www.frogdesign.com/work/frog-collective-action-toolkit.html">Collective Action Toolkit</a>—that provides training for these change agents. I was privileged to participate in facilitating their first needsfinding module in a six-month course.
Needsfinding looks a lot like frog’s practice of Design Research; It requires immersion into the local community in order to understand the needs, attitudes, and behaviors of citizens. At frog, we want to understand how people think and behave and rather than creating an online survey to do this, we interact directly with people to uncover the unexpected insights that could shape a product or service. When you are new to this idea and you haven’t been required to observe these needs, it can feel a bit strange to walk up to strangers and ask them questions. Over the course of five days, the pointB team “learned by doing.” This process helped teams build up their confidence and uncover insights that could shape ideas for impact.
To frame the week, we started by mapping out an ecosystem of needs that put the citizen at the center. We sought to put ourselves in the position of someone living in a rural community and imagine what aspects would be important to them.

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Three priority areas surfaced as we created the ecosystem map and teams formed to take on the challenge of understanding citizen needs in education, transportation, and communication.
Hypotheses were developed to put forward any assumptions about the topic. Research plans and toolkits were crafted by hand to allow for the collection of data at each interview. We spent time practicing our interviewing and documentation skills in order to be good listeners and observers of the world around us. From there, each team went out into the local community to learn more.

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The communication team began with the idea to create a proposal for a new cell tower. Through discussions and a reframed view of what it means to be a change agent, they shifted their idea to something they could have more control over: a solar training kit. This concept would increase rural knowledge of renewable energy by providing much needed power access for any type of communication. It also had the potential to become a viable business for remote locations. In order to test this hypothesis and ensure their assumptions were correct, the communications team developed a set of research questions around power usage and solar understanding. By further testing their ideas in a local village, they learned that focusing the training on children could be a better way to educate the entire community and ultimately encourage the growth of solar business.
The education team wanted to look at how to increase motivation and inspiration in students when the typical learning environment has been more focused on rote memorization. They were able to get a meeting with a headmaster at a government school and got permission to interview students, teachers and parents in one afternoon. They have now launched a day course to test their ideas for a different kind of learning experience with primary students.

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The transportation team focused on the needs of bus drivers and passengers as they looked to uncover ways they might improve the ride experience when the current system had cost and comfort challenges. For many, this was the first time they had ever approached someone they did not know to ask them questions about their life and values. “I was shaking,” said one change agent. “But I did it!” From their learnings, they have positioned a safety campaign to increase awareness around bus safety. They were even able to get a local business to support the campaign by providing safety banners for the bus.
The most profound shift I noticed was watching how each team began his or her process with ideas that required someone else to bring the solution to life. By the end of the week, they had transformed their thinking and come up with solutions that were both citizen-centered and actionable. Now we are excited to watch their concepts unfold and take form in the community!
To learn about their first impressions of the course, you <a href="https://vimeo.com/99531362">can hear from them directly</a>.
To follow their ongoing journey, you can follow pointB on <a href="https://twitter.com/pointBmyanmar">Twitter</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Point-B-Design-Training">Facebook</a>

Kara Pecknold

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