★★★★★ 4.9 • 2,500+ designers
The strategic confidence to lead your Design Team — not just manage it.
The complete system to know where to take your Design team, how to measure what matters, and why the calls you're making are the right ones.
Review all of the FAQs prior to checkout. If anything isn't clear, just email us.
Trusted by design leaders at companies like Google, Apple, Zillow, and more
Sound familiar?
You have the title, yet it still feels like you're second guessing yourself
You're making strategic decisions every week — about direction, investment, prioritization, partnerships — but you stuggle to see how they all connect. Not because you lack intelligence, but because nobody ever showed you how.
Your strategy is a roadmap without a destination
You have priorities. You have a plan. But when someone asks "what's your org strategy?" you hear yourself improvising. You know a list of projects isn't a strategy — you just don't have the structure for what is.
Your team ships great work. But you can't draw a clear line from design quality to business outcomes
You can't connect what your team does to what the business measures. So when budgets tighten or reorgs happen, your team's value is the first thing questioned.
You're spending your energy on the wrong people
You're trying to convince the most resistant stakeholders while ignoring willing partners who could help you build evidence. The result: exhaustion, slow progress, and no allies when it counts.
The system
Nine modules. Each one gives you the sense making for a decision you're already making on instinct.
This isn't a collection of tips. Each module builds on the last — from diagnosing where your strategy stands today, to communicating it in a way that compels action, to measuring whether it's working. One connected system.
Module 1 · 12 Lessons
When you can't articulate your org strategy
Capture the Elements of Your Current Strategy
Strategy isn't a document — it's the art of planning and directing. Diagnose what you actually have using the four essential elements: vision, priorities, measured outcomes, and game plan. Most leaders find they're strong on two and fuzzy on the rest.
Module 2 · 16 Lessons
When your strategic ideas keep getting shot down
Present Ideas That Get Approved
Designers default to inspirational storytelling. Executives make decisions through analytical storytelling. Learn the SCR framework — the same structure management consultancies use to get billion-dollar recommendations approved — and walk into your next meeting with an argument that creates tension and compels a decision.
Module 3 · 13 Lessons
When you can't connect design work to what the business cares about
Know the Direction and Focus of Your Business
You can't frame design as a resolution to business challenges if you don't understand the business. Map your company's strategic direction, competitive positioning, and business model — so you stop guessing what leadership cares about and start speaking to it directly.
Module 4 · 17 Lessons
When stakeholders resist or go around your team
Raise the Impact of Your Team's Work
"Buy-in" is a self-centered concept. What actually works is applying behavioral design to your colleagues — the same empathy and prototyping skills you use on users. Diagnose why partners resist, design your own value proposition, and become the team everyone wants to work with.
Module 5 · 20 Lessons
When you can't prove your team's impact in numbers
Make Your Strategy Actionable with POKRs
OKRs are broken without cause-and-effect. Strategy Maps show how design quality connects to business health. Build a measurement system using POKRs — perspectives, objectives, and key results — that gives you and your team a shared definition of what "winning" looks like.
Module 6 · 20 Lessons
When leadership asks 'what's the ROI of your team?'
Connect Your Work to Business Math and ROI
ROI is four questions: What do I get? How much? When? What does it cost? Learn to answer all four, build scorecards that executives can read in two minutes, and turn "what's the ROI of design?" from a threat into a conversation you welcome.
Module 7 · 13 Lessons
When your team is drowning in urgent work
Prioritize What to Do (or Not) Now, Next, and Later
Leadership-level prioritization means deciding what to stop doing. Use the ERRC Grid to simultaneously eliminate, reduce, raise, and create — then organize it into a plan your team can rally around and your executives can follow.
Module 8 · 16 Lessons
When you're fighting every battle alone
Find Your Sidekicks and Champions While Managing Emotional Energy
Stop trying to convince the most powerful and most resistant person in the room. Map your stakeholders by power and willingness, start with sidekicks, build evidence, and earn trust strategically. Cynics are mimics — they change when they see champions succeeding.
Module 9 · 3 Challenges
When it's time to put it all together
Post-Course Challenges
Return to your Module 1 strategy and rebuild it with everything you've learned. Then communicate it using SCR to two different audiences within 30 days. The course ends with action, not a certificate.
What changes
You stop reacting to the organization and start directing it.
You have a strategy — not just a plan
Vision, priorities, measured outcomes, game plan. Four elements that hold together, that you can articulate to anyone, and that give your team a clear picture of what you're building and why.
You can measure what your team actually does
POKRs, Strategy Maps, and scorecards that connect design quality to business outcomes. Not because someone demanded a metric — but because you want to know if your direction is working.
Your arguments land the first time
SCR structures your thinking so that every proposal creates tension and leads to a clear resolution. You stop pitching and start making recommendations that compel action.
You know where to spend your energy — and where not to
Stakeholder mapping, evidence gathering, and prioritization give you a strategic game for the organizational side of the job. You invest in the relationships that move things forward and protect your energy from the ones that don't.
Who this is for
For design leaders who are done waiting for "The Business" to get it.
You don't need to be a VP. You need to be at the point where gut feel isn't enough and you want a system you can trust.
Design managers building their first org strategy
You were promoted for your craft. Now you're accountable for direction, measurement, and stakeholder relationships — and the skills that made you a great designer don't cover any of it. You need frameworks, not advice.
Directors and VPs who need a system, not more intuition
You've been leading long enough to know that instinct alone doesn't scale. You need a connected approach to strategy, measurement, and communication that holds up under scrutiny — yours and everyone else's.
Leaders who want to stop guessing and start knowing
You've read the books. You've sat through the talks. But you still don't have a repeatable system for the strategic side of the job. This course gives you one — and you'll build your actual strategy as you go.
What students say
They came for skills. They come back because it changed how they lead.
"This has been the most valuable resource I've had in the last 5 years. I apply every single module in my day-to-day work. It's phenomenal!"
Glau Czarnota
Design Operation Lead, ANZ
"In short, CDO School is the best money I have spent on my career."
Gene Moy
Senior Manager UX, aPriori Technologies
"Having context around metrics that relate back to desirability and viability objectives is way more helpful than being told 'go make an OKR for this thing'."
Vickie Culbertson
Interaction Designer, Google
"The pace and size of activities was bang on. The content is original and not spoon fed. It really challenged me to think!"
Owen Hodda
Design Practice Lead, ANZ
"This is a masterclass on how to teach adults."
Isaac Steiner
Lead Product Designer, DocuSign
"The experience and learnings have fundamentally changed the way I work."
Justin Hoyer
Service Design Lead, NTT
Your guide
I spent 20 years making these decisions without a system. Then I built one so you don't do the same.
I'm Ryan Rumsey — founder of CDO School and author of Business Thinking for Designers. I spent two decades as a design executive at Apple, EA, USAA, and Nestlé making strategic calls on instinct, sitting through leadership reviews I wasn't prepared for, and fielding ROI questions I didn't know how to answer.
The frameworks in this course are the ones I wish I'd had. I've since taught them to 2,500+ design leaders from Google, Apple, Zillow, Uber, and more — not as theory, but as tools they use Monday morning. Every framework is borrowed from where strategic decisions actually get made — management consulting, business school, behavioral science — and adapted for how design leaders actually work.
This is the complete system. Nine modules that connect into one playbook for leading a design organization. You're not just learning concepts — you're building your actual org strategy as you move through the course.
One system. Nine modules. Every framework you need.
A self-paced course that gives you the decision-making, measurement, communication, and prioritization system for leading a design organization — not just running one.
Design Org Strategy
$447
one-time payment · lifetime access
- ▸9 modules with 120+ video lessons
- ▸Structured practice exercises for every module
- ▸Templates for every major framework
- ▸20+ frameworks & tools
- ▸Lifetime access
The CDO School Toolkit
3 courses · lifetime access
$997
3 courses · $1,341 value
Get Design Org Strategy + The Strategic Designer + Executive Communication & Influence — from individual strategic skills to organizational leadership, the complete system.
- ▸Everything in Design Org Strategy
- ▸The Strategic Designer course
- ▸Executive Communication & Influence course
Questions before enrolling? Just email me. Want to enroll your team? Inquire about group pricing.
FAQ
Common questions
I'm not a manager yet. Is this too advanced?
How is this different from The Strategic Designer?
How is this different from the book?
How long does it take?
Can I expense this through my company?
Do you have a Code of Conduct?
Still thinking it over?
Email me directly: ryan[at]thecdo.school
I read everything. If you want to talk through whether this fits your situation or what you'd get out of it — just ask.
Ryan Rumsey
Founder, CDO School
