The Design Brief
This month, we are taking a break from our usual Blog, Bench, and Evidence format to share a full-length introduction to the Design Brief Lab—the starting point for the upcoming organization design labs.
Before jumping to solutions, we need to decide what is worth redesigning and how we will approach the work. The post explores five connected components that provide this foundation: leadership intent, project scope, design team selection, project planning, and project management.
In the coming weeks, you will receive another email with instructions for accessing your free Design Brief Lab. In the meantime, this month’s post provides a preview of the work and an opportunity to consider which organizational system you would like to redesign.
All organizations are designed, consciously or unconsciously, and we can redesign them to achieve the results we want. Before jumping to solutions, we need to first decide what is worth redesigning and how we will approach the work. A well-crafted design brief provides a clear foundation to guide the work of the design team. It connects and aligns leaders' intentions with project scope, design team selection, and project planning and management. These five components provide just enough structure to guide the work while leaving room for inquiry and imagination.
Leadership Intent
What is worth creating?
We begin by identifying the problems and possibilities motivating the redesign. What is not working today? What could the organization become capable of doing in the future? Dissatisfaction with the status quo provides the motivation (pushing forces) to change. Imagining a better future gives the design team something worth creating and pulls the organization toward the desired future.
Problems come from many sources, and the design project executive sponsor clarifies the significance of both external and internal problems and secures the resources and authorization to conduct a redesign project. Many of our problems result from external forces we do not control, such as competitors, economic conditions, government policy, and regulatory changes. Some of our problems are of our own making and result of the current design. Regardless, we have to design the organization to prevent as many internal problems as possible while responding to external conditions.
The challenge is to clarify the sponsor's ambition and expected benefits without prescribing the solution. Too little specificity and any design will do. Too much detail stifles creativity. Your task is to ask open-ended questions and listen with curiosity to understand the sponsor's ambitions for the organization. This first step defines success and guides the project design process and the eventual system design.
Project Scope
What are we designing?
The project scope translates the leadership intent into boundaries for the design work: what is included and what is excluded. Begin by defining what activities and decisions are included in the redesign. The design process focuses on this organizational system of interconnected activities and decisions. Next, identify the organizational parts and levels involved in these activities and decisions. The last scope component is the locations included, where the activities and decisions actually occur.
For each of the three scope components (system, levels, locations), make what is included and what is excluded explicit. Many excluded activities and decisions may become connection points to the system, and we will address these interface points during the design process. The trick is to define the scope so that it is broad enough to address the leadership intent yet focused enough to be manageable.
Unlike a typical implementation project, design is an ambiguous endeavor because we do not know the eventual solution in advance. Consequently, you can expect the design process to reveal additional issues that will require you to revisit the scope decisions made here in the design brief. The scope in the design brief is a starting point and will likely evolve over the life of the design project. The boundaries identified here provide useful guidance on the knowledge and perspective the design team needs.
Design Team
Who needs to be involved?
Organization design is a collaborative effort that requires a variety of knowledge and perspectives. You will want some of these to be included as core design team members, while others can be acquired by involving people at relevant points in the design process. When choosing the design team, consider their scope-relevant work experience, country-culture background, and capabilities and motivations.
Start with the project scope to identify the relevant experience needed on the design team, including roles, responsibilities, and knowledge. Scope-relevant knowledge can come from education and experience doing the activities and making the decisions included in the scope. Additionally, the perspectives gained from performing these at different levels of organizational responsibility can also be useful. Look for people with depth in the relevant areas, as well as a broad understanding of how their thinking integrates with other relevant activities.
The design team will also benefit from diverse country-culture perspectives. Begin with the locations identified in the scope to identify the core country cultures to include. This will provide a starting point for selecting the core design team members. Then expand your thinking to include the stakeholders who are directly involved, influence, and are impacted by the activities and decisions being designed. What country cultures are represented by the stakeholders? If there isn't room on the design team for all country culture perspectives, you can use other sources and methods to gain those insights during the design process.
Look for people with the experience and cultural backgrounds you need, who are also curious and open to new experiences, think in systems, keep seeking better ways to do things, and persist through inevitable challenges. Cognitive capabilities, motivation, social skills, and the ability to learn are four key characteristics of effective organization designers. Look for a foundation in these capabilities in each member and complementary strengths across the team, recognizing that people can continue to develop through the design work. Keep in mind that design team members will be on temporary assignment and have other responsibilities; they will need support from their manager to contribute effectively to the design project.
Project Plan
How will we organize the work?
The overall design project includes 12 distinct but interrelated labs. After the design brief, we can organize the remaining 11 labs into three phases: discovery, design, and deploy. These three phases provide natural points for review and detailed planning throughout the project. It is useful to begin with an overall plan of labs and an estimated timeline. However, the detailed project planning is best done at the beginning of each phase.
The discovery phase is an exploration process where information and options expand as needed to build a rich understanding of the key design inputs. Discovery begins by understanding the stakeholders and their requirements, including who is involved, who has influence, and who the system will impact. Then the team identifies the empirical evidence regarding what we already know works, doesn't work, and under what conditions. Identifying and studying examples of similar systems provides the team with creative inspiration. Finally, relevant organizational context factors and connected systems provide the information needed to align and integrate the new design.
The design phase begins with an understanding of the design principles that define good design. These principles provide the foundation for assessing the current system, if applicable. Using inputs from the discovery process, the design principles, and the diagnosis results, the team develops a conceptual design and then a detailed design for the new system. The team then builds the detailed design into a working prototype, which it tests and refines until it is ready for a pilot study. The team conducts a pilot study to learn what works and what doesn’t, then makes refinements before broader deployment in the organization.
Deployment of the new system is the project's final phase and an implementation effort with its own planning and management. Unlike the previous two phases, this last phase is less ambiguous, providing for more detailed activities and a defined schedule. The team develops a detailed deployment plan that identifies the deliverables, activities, schedule, and resources unique to the project. A key part of that plan is a refined case for change and a communication plan for those involved and impacted by the new system. Finally, the team establishes an ongoing assess-and-improve process to ensure the system continues to evolve and stay relevant as conditions change.
As you can imagine, the time each phase takes varies widely depending on the system's scope, how much time each team member can contribute each week, and the design team members' abilities. Begin by estimating the time needed for each phase based on the project scope and the time team members can realistically commit. Use these initial estimates to discuss feasibility with the sponsor, then refine the schedule as the work becomes clearer. As project details develop, you can adjust this to fit your specific situation. Be realistic in your estimates and build in time for inquiry, reflection, testing, and revision throughout the project.
Project Management
How will we guide progress and adapt?
Creative design projects unfold and evolve over time, requiring frequent review and adjustment as the path becomes clearer. The design team must manage four interdependent variables to succeed: design quality, scope, schedule, and resources. Scope, schedule, and resources together influence design quality. Changes in one of the three variables will require adjustments in one or both of the other variables in order to maintain the desired design quality.
Design quality is the degree to which the emerging work will likely fulfill the leadership intent and requirements identified along the way. Assessing design quality requires judgment by the design team in collaboration with the project sponsor, informed by evidence, including measurable results where available.
Design work offers continuing opportunities for exploration and refinement based on inputs from a wide variety of stakeholders. Deadlines provide a useful forcing function, requiring the team to decide what further inquiry is necessary and when the work is ready to move forward. Regular schedule reviews help maintain that discipline while allowing deliberate adjustments when additional work is justified.
When project scope expands and the schedule pushes the team forward, the variable that is often adjusted is the level of effort, the time contributed each week. The challenge is that design team members are typically on temporary assignment, and their regular job responsibilities don't disappear while they work on the design team. This constraint, coupled with the nature of organization design, which requires extended periods of concentration to make progress, creates a dilemma for the team. One technique to manage this issue is to set aside a day each week for uninterrupted design work, with equivalent arrangements for distributed teams and different working schedules. This requires support from team members' managers and the project sponsor.
The five design brief components provide a starting point for the design project. Review them together and assess the alignment and consistency among all five. Then engage the sponsor(s) in a systematic review and revise as needed to address any issues and suggestions. If the sponsor decides to support the project, you are ready to assemble the team and get started.
The design brief gives the team a clear, shared understanding of the project objectives and why it matters, what is included, and how the work will be organized and managed. It captures the best current understanding and provides a baseline for deliberate refinement as the team learns. A well-constructed design brief helps manage ambiguity while keeping the focus on building the system that will fulfill the leadership intent.
