Curriculum

1. Building a digital mindset (e.g., understanding artificial intelligence, building a digital presence)
2. Building communities of practices in organizations
3. Innovative models of knowledge sharing and social learning
4. User experience and experience/empathy mapping
5. Assessing opportunities for new digital solutions to organizational challenges
6. Aligning digital solutions to strategic organizational challenges

• 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.

• Samir Desai
• Malika Viltz
• Ryan Smerek
• Michael Schiro

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

1. Organizational Design Models and Their Essential Components
2. Cultural Contexts for Design
3. Building Blocks of Organizational Design
4. Human Factors
5. Talent Management Issues
6. Employee Value Propositions
7. Relationship between Organizational Design and Culture
8. 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

• Brad Smith
• Renetta McCann

Overview

Cognitive design is about understanding human cognition—drawing from the fields of cognitive psychology and behavioral economics—to design solutions that bolster the achievement of personal and organizational goals. Throughout this course, students will learn how the mind works, its many biases and heuristics as well as how to overcome the mind’s decision-making flaws. Ultimately, with a better understanding of what influences human judgments, decisions, and actions, LOC practitioners can design impactful processes and programs for employees and organizations. Students will work on project teams to tackle a current business decision challenge of their choice that is governed by biases to design a cognitive framework for improved organizational decision making. Expected outcomes of this course include understanding how the human mind makes judgments and decisions, advanced design thinking strategies, and how to build mechanisms that can help overcome cognitive biases and improve performance and decision making in organizations.

Topics

1. System 1 and System 2 Thinking
2. Cognitive Biases and Heuristics
3. Choice Architecture and Behavioral Economics
4. Intuition vs. Data-Driven Decision-Making
5. Design Thinking and Cognitive Bias Reduction

Benefits

• Come to an understanding of how the mind works with respect to how we make judgments and decisions and how to apply these ideas in your current and future roles.
• Design nudges that help overcome cognitive biases and limitations.
• Design mechanisms (cognitive repairs) to improve decision-making and performance in organizations.
• Understand ways to foster group creativity.

Instructors

• Bob Tweedie
• Masha Alexander

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

1. Defining the strategic solution narrative
2. User experience
3. Prototyping and experimenting strategies
4. Stakeholder management
5. 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

• Ryan Smerek
• Kim Bayma

Prerequisites

• MSLOC 430: Creating and Sharing Knowledge
• MSLOC 435: Designing Organizations
• MSLOC 452: Cognitive Design

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.