Strategic Design

Regardless of the sector, working in complex organisations requires us to navigate uncertainty, pain points and often rigid internal and external infrastructures. Knowing what to do and what not to do in these environments can be defined as strategy. From how to analyse an organisation and its potential to how to creatively intervene towards its shifting to desirable and sustainable change is what this module will cover. Throughout this learning journey students are challenged to gain a deeper understanding of strategic design and leadership by undertaking systemic research and learning how to design and implement strategy for a business, team, or organisation.

Principal Aims

The aims of the module are for students to gain a deep understanding of how to identify strategic problems in an organisation. How to frame these as design questions and apply a multi-solving, networked and systems thinking underpinned approach to ideation and solution implementation. The design process will take students through diverse critical lenses of the pillars of sustainability, encompassing aspects of the social, economic and environmental.

Principal Learning Outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate an understanding of how organisations are set up.
• Demonstrate an ability to recognise strategic problems.
• Identify the factors and conditions necessary for sustainable strategy to emerge and be implemented.
• Document and demonstrate how to design and conduct different types of strategy testing.
• Demonstrate an understanding of team structure and restructure for actioning on the strategic choices.
• Demonstrate a critical understanding of strategy and its possible trajectories, mitigation, success and potential failures.
• Demonstrate capabilities in rendering complex information in forms of a visual textual poster format for effective dissemination.
• Demonstrate capabilities in effective presentation for professional contexts.

Syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

In this module students will be analysing a specific organisational context and seeking to explicate its structure in order to define and asses its strategic standing. This critical, yet creative journey will challenge students to identify factors and conditions necessary for sustainable strategy implementation, anticipate its trajectories and possible failures and successes towards long-term and life-centred change. This module will involve design research, ideation, prototyping and testing sessions and will challenge students in their knowledge and capabilities in systems thinking and design thinking.

Interdisciplinary

This module as all modules on Design Studies are interdisciplinary and invite a broad and diverse cohort to participate in its learning. The knowledge gained in the process is not discipline specific and can be applied in any strategic context.

Subject specific skills

• Strategic foresight
• Strategy prototyping and iteration
• Business acumen
• Systems mapping
• Systems thinking
• Design thinking
• User-centred design
• Data-driven design
• Ethical design practices
• Strategic communication
• Innovation management

Transferable skills

• Critical thinking
• Creativity
• Adaptability
• Collaboration
• Communication
• Project management
• Time management
• Cross-cultural adaptability and communication
• Networking
• Strategic planning

Indicative reading list

Dark Matter and Trojan Horses: A Strategic Design Vocabulary -Dan Hill

Design Leadership: Securing the Strategic Value of Design - Raymond Turner

Thinking in Systems - Donella Meadows

On Purposeful Systems - Ackoff & Emery

Please note: Module availability and staffing may change year on year depending on availability and other operational factors. The School for Cross-faculty Studies makes no guarantee that any modules will be offered in a particular year, or that they will necessarily be taught by the staff listed on this page.