When discussing transformation, we usually focus on technology, platforms, or strategy. But beneath all of that, transformation is really about people—and the skills they need to navigate and lead change.
At Genesys, I was tasked with scaling design thinking across the company. But the real story isn’t about design thinking—it’s about skills adoption. Whether it’s AI, systems thinking, or any new way of working, the challenge is the same:
How do you create not just awareness, but adoption? Not just attendance, but behavior change? Not just training, but actual transformation—in the way people work, collaborate, and drive outcomes.
We embraced this challenge during a pivotal moment at Genesys: a SaaS transformation anchored in a bold promise: Experience-as-a-Service. But this was more than an organizational or platform shift. It was a mindset shift. One that required new ways of aligning teams, solving problems, and placing empathy at the center—not just for customers, but for each other.
That’s where the skills came in. We didn’t run a top-down program or push a static framework. Instead, we built a flywheel—a system that empowered individuals, teams, and the organization to adopt and embed new ways of working. Influenced by John Kotter’s Leading Change and the IBM Design Program, our goal was simple: make the skills stick.
Seeing The Layers of Change
Before we get into the flywheel itself, I want to share the lens through which we viewed the change effort. We didn’t just introduce new skills and tools and hope for the best. We were intentional about understanding the layers of change needed for scaled adoption. These were:
- Principles: Core values and guiding ideas that underpinned the framework.
- Practices: Repeatable actions and techniques used to bring the principles to life.
- Artifacts: Tangible outputs that are created and used during delivery. (workshop documents, prioritization grids, journey maps, roadmaps, etc.)
- Mindsets: Shared beliefs, perspectives, and attitudes that influenced how people thought and acted.
- Language: A kind of meta-artifact: the shared vocabulary that helped people communicate, align, and reinforce the culture shift in everyday conversation.
Viewing the change effort this way helped us stay aligned as we encountered roadblocks and as we continually looked for feedback on our progress.
Building a Human-Centric Practice
Let’s address the elephant in the room: Design thinking has its detractors. Depending on who you talk to, it’s either overhyped or outdated. But in practice, when applied at the right altitude and with the appropriate amount of skill, it works—especially in matrixed, complex organizations trying to align around and balance user, business, and market needs.
What we built at Genesys was a scaled practice that was a human-centric, collaborative, and iterative way of working. It helped teams prioritize the right problems, design better solutions, and stay focused on the experiences we were shipping.
The Genesys design thinking practice was grounded in these simple but powerful principles:
- Human: Centered on the people we serve and those we work with.
- Collaborative: Designed to bring together diverse voices and break down silos.
- Iterative: Built to evolve with the work, not stand apart from it.
This wasn’t just for designers. It was a way of working for everyone—product, engineering, customer success, sales, marketing, HR—to become, in essence, Empathy Experts.
Following the Flywheel Approach
A flywheel is a system that builds momentum over time—a self-reinforcing cycle that, once moving, continues to turn with minimal effort and increasing positive impact. Great in theory. Harder in practice.
We structured our flywheel using Kotter’s stages of change as accelerators:
- Establishing a Sense of Urgency
- Creating the Guiding Coalition
- Developing a Vision and Strategy
- Communicating the Change Vision
- Empowering Broad-Based Action
- Generating Short-Term Wins
- Consolidating Gains and Producing More Change
- Anchoring New Approaches in the Culture
Each stage fueled and reinforced the next. Let’s dig in and see what we did, what we learned, and what we’d do differently in hindsight.
1. Establishing a Sense of Urgency
Skills adoption doesn’t start with content. It starts with context. Genesys was transforming. Teams were feeling friction, not just in building a new product or platform, but in orchestrating new experiences for our customers. Empathy became a critical theme. But there wasn’t always clarity on how to build empathy into decision-making. We framed design thinking not as a process, but as a mindset, framework, and toolkit that could enable teams to meet the company’s transformation goals. Anchoring skills adoption directly to that transformation story made it relevant and actionable from day one.
- Lesson: Urgency wasn’t fear-driven. It was relevance-driven.
- What I’d do differently: Share individual empathy expert stories early on to make it more real and relatable.
2. Creating the Guiding Coalition
Skills adoption can’t scale from a single voice. Starting with our primary sponsor, Chief Product Officer, Olivier Jouve, we built early credibility with influential C-level leaders, working closely with those willing to have their teams educated and activated in the practice. We created custom presentations, earned buy-in, and invited leaders to model the behavior. We built trust by delivering value to their organizations early, showing how the practice could directly support their goals.
- Lesson: The coalition was small but intentional—people with credibility and a predisposition toward the practice.
- What I’d do differently: Formally onboard and train executive allies to accelerate their influence.
3. Developing a Vision and Strategy
The strategy wasn’t “roll out design thinking.” It was: build a system for behavior change. That meant creating a shared mental model, a common language, and a set of tools appropriate for every function of the business.
We structured adoption around four learning levels:
- Explorer (awareness, via digital training)
- Practitioner (application, via collaborative bootcamps)
- Coach (facilitation, through deep learning and leadership)
- Champion (executive leadership and sponsorship)
Each level came with clear learning pathways, markers of success, and progressive ownership.
- Lesson: Strategy was about building a scalable capability, not launching a one-size-fits-all program.
- What I’d do differently: Share examples of what “good” looks like at each level and create better bridges for practice between the distinct certification levels.
4. Communicating the Change Vision
We communicated through stories. We showcased wins. We taught in every workshop, meeting, and playback. We wrote internal articles, facilitated company playbacks, and spotlighted people who were embodying the practice. Storytelling wasn’t just about sharing; it was about reinforcing what we valued.
- Lesson: Repetition + storytelling + peer role modeling = more likelihood of sticky change.
- What I’d do differently: Build platforms for user-generated success stories, rather than having it always flow through our team.
5. Empowering Broad-Based Action
Adoption was 100% opt-in. We made it accessible to everyone, regardless of title or function. We offered templates, bootcamps, coaching, and let teams integrate the practice however it made sense for their workflow. Design thinking was never about replacing people’s roles or skills. It was about augmenting their existing capabilities and helping bridge the gaps between functions. We helped people step into the practice without feeling like they had to change who they were.
- Lesson: Ownership follows empowerment. People rise when given autonomy and tools.
- What I’d do differently: Add more feedback loops and develop smaller, bite-sized content to complement the larger engagements.
6. Generating Short-Term Wins
Bootcamps brought alignment. Playbacks encouraged reflection. Case studies proved business impact, both at the tactical and strategic levels. Teams were solving real problems, and we made those stories visible and easy to share. These weren’t just internal wins—they were social proof that skills adoption led to real impact.
- Lesson: Wins create belief. Belief drives momentum.
- What I’d do differently: Create a formal way to track and store win stories, along with quantitative impact, and always position design thinking as an enabler, not the hero.
7. Consolidating Gains and Producing More Change
As momentum grew, we kept evolving the practice. We redesigned the visual framework to be Genesys-native, rebuilt the toolkit via 25 Miro templates, launched the Champion program for executives, and expanded our project support into Finance, Marketing, HR, and Sales. All of these efforts reflected our adaptation of the practice based on real-world feedback, iterating as new business needs emerged.
- Lesson: Capability building is a system, not a campaign.
- What I’d do differently: Stand up and support communities of practice for cross-functional learning.
8. Anchoring New Approaches in the Culture
By the time I left, over 5,000 Explorers had been trained, 1,000 Practitioners activated, and 50+ Coaches and 50+ Champions were certified. Design thinking wasn’t a program anymore. It was embedded in how the company worked, planned, and aligned. The language was there. The behaviors stuck.
A former colleague once told me, months after I left, that she thought of me when someone used the word “Playback” and subsequently delivered just that—a human-centered, story-driven presentation about the status of their project.
Someone we didn’t know and didn’t directly touch, using a methodology we introduced without us in the room. That’s the outer layer of language. That’s when I knew it had taken hold.
- Lesson: Culture is what people do when no one is watching. That’s how you know skills adoption has become the norm.
- What I’d do differently: Build succession plans and work harder to adapt new behaviors to existing cultural touchpoints, rather than replacing them outright.
Final Thoughts: A Flywheel for the Future
Design thinking was the tool. But the real story is leading change through skills adoption. And what it means to do it successfully at scale.
The models we used: Layers of Change (principles, practices, artifacts, mindsets, language) Kotter’s approach (urgency, vision, systems, empowerment, storytelling) and Flywheel mechanics (self-reinforcing cycles of momentum) can be applied to almost anything, especially AI skills, which will require new capabilities at every level of an organization.
When the future demands new skills, leaders will need more than training. They’ll need structures to put into place to make adoption stick.
They’ll need flywheels.
And once you know how to build one, you can build another for anything.