In October, I got to work with the fabulous DXW design team on re-vamping their community. It was energising to work with another community on a fresh set of challenges.

The ask

dxw are a design agency that deliver digital services for government, charities and public sector organisations. There has been a lot of change in the organisation over the past year or so, and the design leads wanted to spend more time focusing on the community. Music to my ears.

I went in to give a talk and run a workshop with the design team. The intention was for this to be a kick-off session for the community.

What went down

I delivered a bespoke talk about setting up a community and how the make-up of the community can affect organisational culture. This is a meaty topic, and I was glad to be able to share some pointers. I got to bring up a slide that I used for a lightning talk at SD in Gov a few years ago.

The overall message of the talk was to be very intentional with your community. Think about what you want to get out of it, and think about the steps you have to take to get there. I used case studies from my work on communities in education, government and charities to highlight each point.

I followed the talk with a workshop where I drew out what the designers want from their community (user needs), and the first steps to take after the workshop.

I wanted the workshop to be pacy and interactive, so there were lots of fun little activities. We did triz/ the anti-problem to talk about what a terrible community would look like. I also rolled out the agile ‘product box’ technique, to get people in the frame of designing their community in the same way they design services. It was a whistle stop tour of the technique, but it was really effective, and definitely something I’d like to experiment with further at a later date.

We worked towards the alpha prototype of the community and I left them with my community kick-off canvas as a next step. The design team had clear ideas on where they were headed as a community, so I’m very optimistic about their trajectory. I am now emotionally invested, and will inevitably pop my head in, in a few months to check on their progress.

Can you workshop culture?

Part of my talk covered aspects of culture, and how communities can go a long way in helping define an employee’s perspective of working culture. With DXW this is especially important, as you have people from the agency embedded in other organisations. With the limited time they spend together as DXW’s design team, the way the community ‘feels’ becomes very important.

You can’t transform an organisation’s culture in a 90 minute workshop, but you can be very intentional about the community’s aims, how you experience the community, and how it is run. A small aspect of how a community is structured can have a significant impact on wider organisational culture.

Gerry Johnson and Kevan Scholes’ (1992) Cultural Web model.

Looking at popular culture models, like Johnson and Scholes (1992) Cultural Web, you can see that it could affect several aspects of the cultural paradigm. For example, the organisational structure of a community can be top-down (the design lead is the community lead) or bottom-up (practitioners run the community and make decisions). These are the at opposite ends of the spectrum, and will affect the flow of power, become part of the organisational structure, and can reinforce/liberate from control systems. And that is just one aspect of how a community is structured.

“Communities don’t exist in vacuums.”

It is important to think about how your community will function within your organisation. And even more so, how leadership and daily practice can support your community in making cultural change. It looks like DXW are in good hands with their design leadership, I wait with bated breath to see where their community journey takes them.

Does your community have a brilliant culture? Let me know how you made that happen in the comments below.