The CDO School methodology

Lead with design. Grow beyond it.

CDO School takes a radically different approach to career developlent. Most design leadership programs fall into two traps: teaching theory that isn't specific to your unique challenges, or forcing you to choose between formats, topics, and dates.

Our purpose is to develop both skills and attitudes. Our format allows you to become more engaged by helping you arrive at your goal while having a meaningful journey.

For the past five years, we’ve observed that the design leaders who stand out most, grow in five key areas:

1. Business Acumen: In business, budgets and metrics matter, and power dynamics are real. If you don’t understand business, you’ll be at the mercy of it. When you’re unable to connect the work of design to the goals of the company, your impact will be overlooked. Without the ability to think beyond the product, your ability to impact the broader impact is compromised.
2. Strategic Foresight: If you can’t connect short-term decisions to long-range outcomes, your critical thinking will be limited. If you unable to create and maintain a coherent forward view, you’ll struggle to keep your team inspired. Without being able to interpret decisions, read signals, see trends or test your own assumptions, your ability to position, budget, or prioritize design activities effectively will be limited.
3. Relationship Management: Confusion will reign if you can’t get everyone on the same page. When you’re unable to be concise, colleagues doubt you. If you’re unable to be clear, your confidence is left shaken. Without the ability to validate the concerns of your stakeholders, the trust they have in you will be limited. If you struggle to notice who is ready to hear you, you'll waste your emotional energy on those who are not.
4. Operational Management: When you're unable to translate strategic vision into tactical execution, resources are wasted and your team loses direction. If you ignore employee satisfaction and team morale, your best talent will disengage and performance will suffer. If you can't balance quality with speed, implement controls, and adapt to changing conditions, your ability to deliver consistent value will be compromised.
5. Emotional Intelligence: Without regulating your own emotions, frustration reigns. If you don’t build rapport with others, nothing moves forward. If you don’t speak the truth to your team, while ensuring you're not harming them, problems will fester. When you fail to see outside of yourself, you rob yourself of your own agency.

You may notice we didn't specifically say People, Influence, or Communication. That's because people-ing, influencing, and communicating are inescapable. They are ever present and part of every single aspect of CDO School, and cannot be separated into a category of their own.

Learn on your terms, and your schedule.

You have a busy schedule. Growing and sense-making can only happen when you're feeling connected, curious, and calm. Your development and confidence should not be at the mercy of an instructor's schedule. At CDO School, you set the agenda.

At CDO School, our members get out only what they feel comfortable in committing to. As your desire for benefits increases, your commitment to learning will increase accordingly. When our students seek greater benefit, they understand greater commitment should be expected.

Should you desire only quick reviews of the CDO School materials, the cost in time and energy will be minimal. But if your goal is to develop new skills deliberately and take action, a much high commitment is required.

Participation in CDO School can be accomplished in several ways:

1. The Classical Approach: A virtual classroom, regular meetings, with a lecturer or lab instructor. Attendance of lectures, reviewing online materials, performing experiments, later discussing and evaluating progress.
2. The School-in-your-Pocket Approach: Students program learning for themselves and do the work by themselves, methodically progressing from the first lesson to the last in a self-regulating program motivated by personal motivations or goals.
3. The Reader's Choice Approach: No fixed pattern. A sometimes-this-and-at-other-times-that approach, never pinning one-self down to any single approach, but always responding to what seems most comfortable at the time.
4. The Coach or Companion Approach: Work alongside peers or a CDO School coach, who check-in on the special, personal contexts of what progress and realization means. Available and accessible over the long-term, to give real-world, active form to lessons and insights.
5. The Reference Approach: A casual reference for short-term browsing, reviewed occasionally. No heavy benefits are expected because no amounts of time and energy are invested. No expectations of letting others down because the choice is always whats best for the individual.

Merge theory with action.

You don’t become a better design leader just by reading books, liking and commenting on posts, or attending conferences. You must apply what you’ve learned, reflect about what’s working and not, and have confidently adapt when best practices arent working.

Here at CDO School, we combine theory with action. We do that by blending different learning styles, an offering multiple modes of support. To learn, we must be in the right frame of mind and have the energy to absorb new information.

We use four learning formats to do this:

1. On-demand instruction: Take one of our popular courses, receive personalized quick tips, watch a replay from one of our previous events, or discover a new tool or framework from our library.
2. Live events: Attend our live masterclasses, workshops, and AMAs with experts and peers.
3. 1:1 coaching: Receive personalized feedback, specific to your unique situation and needs, directly from CDO School founder Ryan Rumsey.
4. Role-playing: Rather than sit through a bunch of lectures with little time to go deeper, you will participate. Through role-playing, you will practice making hard decisions and having tough conversations with your biggest supporters and skeptics.