All transformations are multi-dimensional. So is organizational transformation. We work on four pillars for a meaningful, long-lasting, and versatile change.
We help organizations to;
Purpose is the aspirational reason for being; it provides a call to action for an organization and holds meaning for all stakeholders. Purpose is the answer to your “why”; why does your organization exist, and why does this matter?
The existential crisis of organizations is here; organizations suffer from confusion, distraction, and disorganization. Clearer more than ever, the focus on shareholder value maximization is simply not enough for them to survive.
When done right, purpose can be a purely strategic tool in guiding and aligning each stakeholder around a common cause to reach the desired outcomes. A shared purpose gives organizations comfort and a sense of direction.
“He who has a why can endure any how.”
Frederick Nietzsche
Purpose enables people to develop a deep understanding of the reasons behind their efforts and motivates them to invest their time and energy. They look forward and see where their organization wants to be and how they can contribute to this shared future.
As HMD, we believe purpose is deeply rooted in the organization’s DNA. To surface it, organizations must embrace a laborious journey of self-discovery and reveal their core first. They must then align it with their envisioned future and clearly define their role in this vision.
Insight-driven innovation is about investing in and advancing the necessary skills and capabilities to create impactful innovation driven by deep human insight, rather than the market or competition.
Only 50 years ago, the average Fortune 500 life expectancy for a company was 75 years. But today, it’s only 15 years … and it’s getting shorter round-the-clock. The constant turnover in the Fortune 500 can be explained by Schumpeterian creative destruction and could be seen as a positive sign of human-centered transformation.
If we look at companies like Apple, Amazon, Salesforce, Intuit, Airbnb, who replaced former giants in their respective work areas, most of us see technology as their commonality. However, taking a closer look unveils that the creative destruction is being driven by their endless pursuit of understanding human and insight-driven innovation.
One of the most critical ways for organizations to build resilience and prove their authenticity is through insight-driven innovation; it is the way to create success stories that eventually alters the organization’s course.
As HMD, we believe that the journey of insight-driven innovation is catalytic and would only be possible with collective effort. For this journey, an organization should build a unique and human-centered innovation discourse. Built on that, the organization should increase its capacity for spotting human insights, empower all people to become insight-hunters and give them the right tools and mechanisms to make the innovation efforts sustainable and measurable.
A pro-change culture is the one that favors change, encourages agency, shows tolerance for mistakes, enables collaboration, and flourishes creativity.
Nothing reveals your culture like a crisis. During constant change, having a strong culture is the only way for organizations to enable meaningful transformation.
Organizations are the tribes of the modern world with their unique living environment, habits, relationships, rituals, values accompanied by an authentic way of working. However, culture is not static; it is not the sum of your policies, working models, and processes inherited and copied by the next generation. Culture is a continually evolving occurrence manifested by the people.
“Culture is the organization’s immune system.”
Michael Watkins
Culture is a process of sense-making for organizations; it provides a shared view of “what” and an understanding of “why.” For a meaningful transformation to last, it has to come from within and through each individual. Only then can you build a robust immune system for your organization to survive.
As HMD, we believe that creating a culture is an evolutionary and collective process, an experimental discovery journey. Our dialogic approach helps organizations unlearn and relearn new ways of working through co-creating values authentic to your tribe. We codesign interventions to turn the culture code into daily practices and behaviors which will live in the rituals, stories, skills, and environment. These novel mechanisms are measured and scaled so that collective action can impact organizations’ every cell.
Change agents are restless believers who act as catalysts for change by inspiring and influencing key individuals in their organization. They might be few in numbers, but they are A LOT in their capabilities to ensure any organizational change success.
Every organization has a pool of change agents that usually goes untapped. Change is a social construct, and the transformation efforts only make sense if they can tap into the capacity and the potential of these people.
Change agents are the most precious resource for any organization that wants a constant and sustainable change. However, these people are discouraged continuously with “excel sheets” and potential failure scenarios or labeled as naive/idealistic/romantic individuals (as if any of that is a bad characteristic). In other words, they have been “bullied” by others who are reluctant to change and hide behind the numbers, who proudly serve the status quo and do not dare a leap of faith into the unknown.
Human beings are not a resource to be managed; they are agents who want to impact the world. Giving people agency is at the heart of human-centered organizations. Once organizations identify these agents, recognize their value, and empower them, transformation becomes a habit. It goes beyond being a one-shot intervention in vain but instead becomes an ongoing co-creation process where every individual embodies change.
As HMD, regardless of the project’s nature, we focus on increasing the agency and unleashing individuals’ creative confidence in an organization. We design mechanisms to spot the change agents in an organization and invite them into the creative problem-solving process. Our methods, diving deep into the Design Thinking and Art of Hosting principles, allow room for co-creating, enhancing creative problem-solving skills, learning, and strengthening inquiry skills.
