Designing Org Culture
A Stanford d.school class, Winter 2024
What's this class about?
Climate change affects everyday life in big and consequential ways. A small town in California and Jordan suffers from drought in similar ways. Organizations such as purpose-driven startups could play a key role in responding to these challenges with their agility and focus on scalable solutions. They face many challenges beyond the core technologies required: demand-side policies and procurement laws, a lack of large, patient capital, and a need to equip passionate Cleantech entrepreneurs with the skills to scale their organizations. We know from other tech verticals that after promising startups receive funding, 55% will fail because of people-related issues. They face unique cultural challenges as they must simultaneously pursue social/environmental impact and financial success. Their passion and pace of growth are often not matched with the organizational acumen required to align their mission/values with their actions, retain talent, and manage diverse perspectives within the company.
Students will tackle purpose-driven startup culture challenges and design culture experiments during the class by leveraging behavioral and experience design frameworks. This is a hands-on course where students follow the discovery, design, and delivery process and prototype culture policies, practices, and artifacts with their partner orgs. Students will learn key design abilities such as moving between abstract and concrete, experimenting rapidly, and communicating deliberately.
Our point of view
To shape organizational culture, we follow a human-centered design approach supported by behavioral sciences and systems thinking. We make culture tangible by focusing on employee experiences and broader team practices.
Our Process
Discovery
We run user research to identify who we are designing for, what problem (or opportunity) we are solving, and to identify bright spots to see if we can build on top of them.
Design
We use experience design to craft powerful moments to elevate employees' work life and create multi-touch point culture programs to shift culture toward intended culture goals.
Delivery
We prototype culture practices with a rich array of prototyping methods, and leverage behavioral experiments approach measuring the impact of the proposed solutions.