Smart Dubai Government: Renew

CULTURE PRACTICE

Design Thinking

Culture transformation and change management program for the Smart Dubai Office across 300 employees towards a unified purpose and organization-wide goals using design-thinking.

MANAGING CHANGE

With organizations of a nearly two decade history merges with two other government entities, the ensuing culture-shock often resets the founding principles of leadership, and impacts every touch point from customer service to internal stakeholder management.

Working closeting with key leadership at the C-level, we deployed Design Thinking principles to identify, shape and deliver an introspection and ideation program across a 300-strong team to meaningfully define a new organization charter. Our aim was to tactically help employees at each level of the organization collectively discover their purpose, values and goals. Over a 6-month period, in close collaboration with key leadership at the C-level, we equipped a team of mentors to lead the program, and later coach colleagues within their own circles of influence.

INSIGHTS FIRST

Instead of a taking a purely top-down approach, our teams gathered pain points across the spectrum of employees, to rally leadership towards 3 primary drivers for change. Running workshops, we built internal competency to craft narratives, ideate, prototype and craft engaging stories to communicate desired changes from within the organization.

The program culminated with an organization-wide “Open Day” allowing teams representing all employees to present their ideas, solutions and priorities to key leadership, as well as a panel of external judges.

WORK AREAS

We help leadership build a case for change and defined a future state for the organization. We worked to identify a unified purpose, values and actions. Our workshops spanned design thinking, prototyping and storytelling. We articulated policy and procedure reformation recommendations and managed the change management program.