Curriculum
Each of the first three courses – Creating and Sharing Knowledge, Designing Organizations, and Applying People Analytics – provides an in-depth exploration of different ways to build your skills as a practitioner. In the final capstone course, Designing Solutions for Organizational Effectiveness, you focus on applying design practices and methods to a design case - a current, real-life organizational challenge.
Required Courses
Creating and Sharing Knowledge
In this course, students explore digital workplace technology and its impact on organizational knowledge and organizational learning in the workplace. The course introduces concepts and frameworks to enable students to understand knowledge sharing and learning within communities and networks of practitioners, understand the unique attributes of digital workplace technology as it applies to organizations, and understand current uses of that technology to change the way people work or learn. Finally, students learn to apply course concepts by designing solutions to business case challenges.
Topics
- Building a digital mindset (e.g., understanding artificial intelligence, building a digital presence)
- Building communities of practices in organizations
- Innovative models of knowledge sharing and social learning
- User experience and experience/empathy mapping
- Assessing opportunities for new digital solutions to organizational challenges
- Aligning digital solutions to strategic organizational challenges
Benefits
- Develop a digital mindset in how technology can help organizational challenges (e.g. artificial intelligence, learning management systems, social learning).
- Use an approach to look at enterprise technologies that softens the perception of complexity and continuous change.
- Use MSLOC design process to develop a technology solution to a strategic organizational challenge.
Instructors
- Samir Desai
- Malika Viltz
- Ryan Smerek
- Lisa Tallman
Designing Organizations
Overview
This course provides an extended look at the concepts and frameworks commonly used by organization design practitioners and talent management leaders. Exploring these models highlights how to facilitate an organizational redesign, including how to diagnose the system, imagine design possibilities, and construct processes for change. You will apply these concepts to business/non-profit cases to increase your ability to facilitate the work of leadership teams in solving implementation challenges posed by a variety of strategic imperatives.
Topics
- Organizational Design Models and Their Essential Components
- Cultural Contexts for Design
- Building Blocks of Organizational Design
- Human Factors
- Talent Management Issues
- Employee Value Propositions
- Relationship between Organizational Design and Culture
- Measurement Processes and Strategies
Benefits
- Gain experience diagnosing and designing with consideration for an organization's strategy, politics, culture, talent and key processes
- Develop awareness about yourself as an organization design practitioner and learn skills that will help effectively enter strategy and design conversations
- Understand how talent management can be aligned with strategy and organization design
- Know which metrics are used for organization design and talent, specifically related to high potential talent tracking and succession planning
Instructors
- Bruce McBratney
- Brad Smith
- Renetta McCann
Applying People Analytics
Overview
This course provides an overview of culture, engagement, and organizational networks. You will explore how these approaches can be used to analyze and solve organizational challenges within the context of shifting organizational structures, new ways of working, and the increasing availability of organizational data. For the final team case project, you will integrate interpret culture, engagement, and social network analysis data and make evidence-based recommendations to senior leadership in support of change.
Topics
- Evidence-based Decision-making and Problem-solving
- Organizational Culture
- Employee Engagement
- Social Network Analysis
- Applying Analytics to Solve Organizational Challenges
- Analytics and Ethics
- Audience-Focused Data Presentation
Benefits
- Gain experience interpreting and integrating data from culture, engagement, and social network analysis surveys
- Examine and apply culture, engagement, and social network analysis concepts, theories, and metrics used within organizations
- Build skills for generating evidence-based insights to offer practical recommendations about organizational issues
- Practice presenting to an executive-level audience, including effectively framing a problem and persuasively making recommendations
Instructors
- Katerina Carbonell-Bohle
- Brendan Neuman
Designing Solutions for Organizational Effectiveness
Overview
MSLOC 456 is the capstone course for the Designing for Organizational Effectiveness Certification. Through the first three academic quarters of the certification sequence, you follow MSLOC design methodologies to facilitate the ongoing development of your culminating project, a case that defines a strategic organizational effectiveness problem and proposes and tests an innovative, enterprise-level solution. In this course, you will put the final touches on your solution design and develop a plan to use an iterative process that relies on prototypes or experiments to gather fast feedback during the early stages of implementation. The course includes feedback and critique on your solution and plans from your Certification cohort peers, your mentor and instructors.
Topics
- Defining the strategic solution narrative
- User experience
- Prototyping and experimenting strategies
- Stakeholder management
- Design thinking for implementation and evaluation
Benefits
- Synthesize and apply concepts from courses and co-curricular certification activities into your organizational effectiveness challenge.
- Complete an innovation solution design and implementation plan for your case organization.
- Get feedback and insights from experienced practitioners on your solution design and plans.
- Develop your organizational effectiveness point of view and toolkit.
Instructors
Prerequisites
- MSLOC 430: Creating and Sharing Knowledge
- MSLOC 435: Designing Organizations
- MSLOC 455: Applying People Analytics
Cohort Activities
DOEC candidates must also complete certificate-specific co-curricular work during the first three academic quarters of the program. Co-curricular activities require approximately 6-10 hours of additional work each 10-week academic quarter.
Course Schedule
Course schedule table for Fall 2023 'MS_LOC 430 Creating & Sharing Knowledge'
Course |
Instructors |
Class Meeting Day/Time |
2024 Intensive Dates (Evanston) |
MS_LOC 430 Creating & Sharing Knowledge |
Desai, Smerek
|
Wednesdays 5:45 to 7 p.m. CT |
10/25/24 - 10/27/24 |
Course schedule table for Winter 2024 'MS_LOC 435 Designing Organizations '
Course |
Instructors |
Class Meeting Day/Time |
2025 Onsite/Intensive Dates (Evanston) |
MS_LOC 435 Designing Organizations |
Renetta McCann Brad Smith |
Thursdays 7:30 to 9 p.m. CT |
2/7/25 - 2/9/25 |
Course schedule table for Spring 2024 'MS_LOC 455 Applying People Analytics'
Course |
Instructors |
Class Meeting Day/Time |
2025 Onsite/Intensive Dates (Evanston) |
MS_LOC 455 Applying People Analytics |
Katerina Carbonell-Bohle Brendan Neuman |
Thursdays 5:45 p.m. to 7:15 p.m. CT |
5/2/25 - 5/4/25 |
Course schedule table for Summer 2024 'MS_LOC 456 Designing Solutions for Org. Effectiveness'
Course |
Instructors |
Class Meeting Day/Time |
2025 On-Site/Intensive Dates (Evanston) |
MS_LOC 456 Designing Solutions for Org. Effectiveness |
Ryan Smerek |
Mondays 5:45 to 7:15 p.m. CT |
7/11/25 @ 6 p.m CT - 7/13/25 @ 3 p.m CT |