Module 3: Design
Complete this individually before gathering with your team.
The purpose of this exercise is to help you consider how the future you imagined in Dream and the insights emerging through Discover might begin to shape the design of your organization. You are not attempting to redesign the entire organization. You are identifying one area where greater alignment may be needed.
Begin With the Future
Return to the preferred future you identified in Dream.
We believe God may be inviting us toward...
Now consider the questions and assumptions you surfaced in Discover. What are you beginning to see more clearly about what this future might require?
Looking at these together, identify one area of your organization where the current design may need to evolve.
The design opportunity I want to explore is…
(For example: how decisions are made, how new leaders are developed, how resources are allocated, how teams collaborate, or how people are released to experiment.)
Consider the Skeleton
Think about the structures that currently shape this area of your organization. Consider roles, systems, decision-making, resources, rhythms, processes, and repeatable practices.
What currently supports the future you are pursuing?
What may be creating friction or making that future more difficult?
What might need to be strengthened, changed, or created?
Consider the Skin
Now consider how the future you are pursuing might take shape among your actual people and within your particular context.
Skin is the contextual expression of your design. The same principle may take very different forms depending on the people, place, culture, relationships, and history of an organization.
What do you know about your context that should shape how you approach this design opportunity?
What expressions already feel natural and life-giving among your people?
Where might you be relying on a model or approach that does not fully fit your context?
Consider the Spirit
Think about the deeper life animating this design opportunity. Spirit is the convictions, values, postures, and relationships that shape how people will actually inhabit what you design.
What convictions and values need to remain at the center?
What attitudes, behaviors, or relational patterns would allow this design to flourish?
Where do you sense God may already be at work?
Name the Design Opportunity
Looking across Skeleton, Skin, and Spirit, what feels most important?
Complete the sentence:
If we want to move toward the future we have identified, we may need to...
Bring your completed Design Alignment Canvas to your team conversation. You’ll compare what you noticed and discern together which design opportunities deserve further attention.