The best part of teaching is learning what it is that students gain from the course that you’ve offered, and where they have encountered obstacles that could be removed in future iterations. 

I have just finished teaching a new course in innovation by design under the title Design Thinking for Social Change. It was new to me in pointing the frame of innovation towards “social change” rather than the commercial opportunities presented by emerging technologies and markets. The student body was also new to me – rather than the design, engineering and business majors I have encountered in the past, this time I met a group of students enrolled in a two year Master of Divinity (M.Div) program at the Pacific School of Religion here in Berkeley. 

The third difference from “traditional” design thinking coursework was the content I introducted under the heading of “design consciousness”. I’ve offered some of this material before, but aplified it into the intersection between “social change” and “divinity”. 

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The Hebrew word for “teaching” is “torah”. It is also the name that is given to the most sacred of Jewish texts, what is known as the five books of Moses, the Bible, or the old testament. The inference is that all wisdom about living in the world is to be found in the dramatic and often strange stories of the Torah. 

Jewish ritual includes the wonderful practice of studying a section – a portion, or in Hebrew “parashah” – of the Torah each week. We take it in the order that it is read, beginning with Genesis 1:1 when we find the world being created in its entirety in 6 days – and ending with Deuteronomy 34 as Moses looks over the promised land from the heights of Mount Nebo, but is unable to enter. 

Part of the tradition is an offering of commentary on the portion of the week. Last week was the portion that concerns the building of the Tabernacle, the holy sanctuary that in Hebrew is called the Mishkan. The long story – covering a total of 15 chapters of the Torah – includes a detailed description that God delivers to Moses of the design of the Mishkan that is to be a sacred place where God can dwell amongh their people. So detailed that drawings have been made and models constructed with remarkable similarity regardless of when it was done or by whom.

I was given the honor of making this offering at my community service, which through Covid has been happening via Zoom. It was the perfect account to draw out the “torah of design” – what the Torah has to teach us. To reach that teaching, I looked at it through the lens of design consciousness – our awareness that the world of material culture is a world of our own making, and so we are learning how to make every kind of artifact in it by design; with clear intention and with exacting skill. By design we make things work the way they’re supposed to and beautiful so we can live with them. 

(continue to see the 14 minute video of my “drash”)

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A few months ago  I was asked by the  Ignite Institute  to produce  this “living workshop” – a series of online courses dedicated to “wisdom leadership”. They  intend it  for a community of passionate change makers seeking social transformation towards justice . I am excited to be a part of this growing community.

The workshop – called Wise Design Leadership – consists of 6 modules of about ten minutes each. At the end of each I set a reflection to help the participant internalize the lens of intentional creativity for  their growth as a leader.

 

You can get the full Ignite experience by clicking the image above. You will find all Ignites  offerings and be able to sign up to receive updates when they post new  content  in development.

Alternately, you can see the workshop modules below – just click on any of the links:

Module 1: Introduction (10:27)

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At the beginning of the semester teaching “Design for Business Leaders” at Hult I presented a reprise of the lecture I have previously posted here that I delivered at SFSU College of Business. It’s similar in outline, but quite different in the specific narrative – as is to be expected of material that is still in development. Each of these is a prototype that I hope to bring to focus and clarity in the book about design consciousness that is my ongoing project.

I’m currently preparing to deliver an updated version of it at the Pacific School of Religion that I’m looking forward to.

I have broken the lecture that was delivered via Zoom during the Covid lockdown in San Francisco, into 4 parts – to make it more digestible, and to allow me to cut out sections where we took a break but didn’t pause recording.

Part 1: Introduction to Design Consciousness

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We’ve just wrapped up a difficult semester at Hult in DES328: Design for Business Leaders – a design course that was Zoomed to business students on every continent who have never been exposed to studio culture – the work habits of designers. The course was directed to giving students a process awareness without getting bogged down in design craft – though it is impossible to learn design process without doing some design. And impossible to do design  without some amount of craft.

So I decided to keep it simple – have student work in dyads and have each design a “personal brand” for the other.  My hope/expectation was that out of this relationship, a deeper experience of empathy would be gained for someone who was at the same time “client” and “user”.

I was blown away by the results – the depth of (empathic) relationship that did manifest, the creative energy, and, in the cases of a good number of students, the commitment to the art of design and willingness to push through their deficit in drawing, CAD and prototyping skills.

Francesco de Conto an Italian student captured this energy in his final presentation that he prepared as a 6+ minute movie. He managed to encapsulate the intent and lessons of the course in a way I never could.

So, if  you want to know anything about what future business leaders need to know about design, take a look:

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