Organizations thrive when their ideas don't get trapped in meetings. They thrive when meaning travels further than the flipchart. That's what this Amplify the Impact storybook is built for: to extend the life of your conversations and catalyze new possibilities.
If you're an OD practitioner looking to deepen learning, extend engagement, and amplify results—this is the kind of tool that helps turn one great session into a spark for sustained change.
PLENARY
Designing the Operating Model of the Future
Speakers: Greg Kesler & Mackenzie Luong
We opened Day 2 with a big question: How do we rewire our operating models to match the pace and complexity of our future? Greg and Mackenzie reminded us: It's not just about systems or structures—it's about leadership at the edges, team-level innovation, and clarity that scales.
What quote from Greg or Mackenzie really stuck with you?
How did the room respond to the idea of "operating models of the future"?
What image or metaphor was most central in the visual capture?
Where in your org does this operating model thinking want to be applied?
Storytelling isn’t the afterthought—it’s the accelerant. Capturing the emotional memory of an event is key to moving ideas into action.
BREAKOUT
The Grassroots Game-Changer: Using Community Organizing Principles to Create Dynamic, People-First Organizations
Robyn Rohde & Kelli Snow
This session explored how grassroots organizing principles can be applied within organizational systems to unlock participation, equity, and momentum. A powerful look at how local methods scale to meaningful change.
What story shifted your understanding of community-led change?
How did this session expand your idea of influence and power?
What symbols or community metaphors emerged visually?
Where in your org is grassroots energy waiting to be activated?
BREAKOUT
Creating Your Own Human-Centered, Adaptive, and Impactful Design Methodology
Regan Miller & Gary Frank
Regan and Gary opened the space for participants to co-create and refine their own design methodology, rooted in personal values, adaptive principles, and bold experimentation. Less theory, more authorship.
- What was the biggest insight about your own approach to design?
- What elements did others include that you want to try?
- How can design methods be more human and more alive?
This session handed you the pen—and the permission
Graphic Recording Insight – The Power of Methodology
This session illustrated the journey of designing one’s own methodology—not as a rigid system, but as a living, adaptive practice. The image begins by reminding us that many methods started with nothing and evolved through iterative learning. At the core is the big question:
"How does human-centered design underpin our work?"
Key ideas:
- Start With the Right Questions: Methodology isn’t about finding the perfect process—it’s about uncovering the right problems and asking better questions.
- Understand Qualities & Build a Frame: Effective methods are grounded in the attributes that matter to the people doing the work. This session invited participants to articulate those values and build their approach from there.
- Engage Early, Engage Often: Methodology is not a final product. It’s a practice of readiness, a container for trust-building, and a means of surfacing deep assumptions.
- OPM Case Study: Brought principles to life by showing how openness, discovery, and storytelling enable better planning and design alignment.
- It Evolves: “Conversations are the work.” The drawing underscores that the messiness of creating method is what makes it meaningful and real.
“Fundamental methodology = asking the right questions”
BREAKOUT
How Your Decision-Making Process Can Become a Lever for Organizational Change
Mike Arauz (August Public) & Tom Hunt (Pivot Energy)
Mike and Tom invited us into the often-unseen layer of organizational life: how decisions actually get made. With clarity and provocation, they helped us notice the invisible systems shaping everyday actions—and revealed how reshaping decision-making can unlock energy, equity, and effectiveness at every level of the organization.
- What insight shifted how you see decisions being made in your org?
- Where is power hiding in your current process?
- What visualized flow or metaphor emerged about clarity and trust
- What’s one decision-making principle you’d bring back to your team?
This session illuminated decision-making as a source of strategy, not just execution.
BREAKOUT
Practice Makes Progress: Using Practice to Activate Org Design
Lorraine Damerau - Damerau Consulting
Lorraine brought a grounded, energizing perspective to the often high-level world of org design. This session reframed “practice” not as rehearsal for the real thing—but as the real thing itself. Through stories, models, and movement, Lorraine helped participants see how repeated action, small tests, and reflective loops build lasting organizational muscle.
- What does “practice” look like in your organization right now?
- What barriers show up around consistency or experimentation
- What routines or rituals might you take home from this session?
This session reminded us that progress isn’t a phase—it’s a practice.
KEYNOTE
Helping High Growth Companies Pivot to Sustainable, Profitable Growth
Michele DiMartino
This session invited us to reflect on leadership alignment as a lever for sustainable scale. Michele shared stories and strategies for helping fast-moving teams pivot from growth at all costs to growth with intention. Her approach emphasized the role of team coherence, strategic clarity, and systemic interventions that support meaningful, long-term results.
- What insight or story from Michele hit home?
- What emotions were surfaced about growth vs. sustainability?
- How was "alignment" visualized?
- What's your own organization's leadership challenge?
This session bridged structure and leadership—crucial for scale.
Visual Synthesis from Graphic Recording
In this energizing and deeply relevant keynote, Michele DiMartino helped us understand the unique organizational strain and opportunity found in high-growth environments. With a visual roadmap that unfolded like a leadership diagnostic, she walked participants through the patterns, pitfalls, and pathways to help fast-scaling companies pivot toward sustainable, values-aligned operations.
Core Themes and Visual Insights:
Signals + Symptoms of Misalignment
- “We can’t continue as we have been” — a rally cry for recognizing the tipping point.
- Signs of duplication, inefficiency, and innovation fatigue surfaced as red flags of unsustainable growth.
- Leaders often ignore or misread signals until it’s too late.
Alignment of the Leadership Team
- The first move in the pivot: strengthen the leadership core.
- Misalignment often appears as resistance, cynicism, or strategic avoidance.
- Leadership alignment is about more than agreement — it's about shared commitment to “what we stand for.”
Culture as a Growth Limiter
- When legacy mindsets ("not invented here") or nostalgia dominate, culture can slow down innovation.
- Extreme inclusion or hero entrepreneurship can dilute strategic clarity.
The visual reminded us:
- Culture isn’t static — it must evolve to support the next chapter.
- Intentional Choices: From Values to Action
- How we make decisions reflects how we live our value
- It’s about turning intentions into action.
- Talent Decisions and Team Architecture
- Making the right people choices is central to sustaining velocity.
Michele highlighted both enterprise and individual considerations — from strategic capabilities to personal values.
This session landed on a powerful note: organizational design isn’t abstract — it’s deeply human. It touches identity, trust, motivation, and meaning.
BREAKOUT
Human-Centered Organizations: A Tear-Down to Build-Up Approach
Eileen Bartholomew & Brad Clark
Sometimes we need to take things apart to see what they’re really made of. This session offered a teardown of organizational structures—with a focus on what needs to be rebuilt to make them more human, more just, and more effective.
- What was most striking about the teardown approach?
- What assumptions did you leave behind?
- What would it look like to rebuild your org’s core design?
This session was about seeing clearly and rebuilding
If you want people to carry forward change, they need more than a plan. They need a story they feel a part of.
Breakout
Unlocking Agility with Product-Based Org Design
Speakers: Billy Carberry & Megs Tyler | Accenture Strategy
This session asked a bold question: Are you hearing echoes of working in a new way? With energy and precision, Billy and Megs invited us to rethink how we organize work—not by function, but by product. They unpacked what agility truly means and showed how product-based design can become a lever for speed, accountability, and sustained innovation.
Key Takeaways from the Map:
- Agility isn’t just speed—it’s structure. 94% of operating models don’t fit for rapid growth, and 74% need to be rethought entirely. Product-based design gives teams the focus, autonomy, and outcome clarity to move faster and smarter.
- It starts with outcomes. Defining the end-to-end outcomes an organization exists to deliver helps uncouple outdated structures and rebuild systems designed for responsiveness.
- Enterprise agility is a portfolio mindset. Think in terms of sensing, adapting, and responding—across teams, systems, and strategy. Team size, decision clarity, and ownership become design levers.
- Design for activation. Don’t stop at structure. Consider communication, cadence, and clear ownership. This is about tightening the matrix, not just redrawing the org chart.
Questions to Spark Application:
- What do you currently call a “product” in your org? Is it clear?
- Where are you still organized around function vs. outcome?
- What structural shifts would help you adapt faster or at greater scale?
- How might you move your org. from unsustainable to unlocking agility?
KEYNOTE
Custom Built for Success
Brandon Peters & Taylor Ziegler (Harley-Davidson) with Liz Vales Damron (Liz Vales Consulting)
This keynote pulled back the curtain on a transformation in progress—Harley-Davidson’s apparel and licensing org. is evolving from a legacy model to a modern, globally connected system. While the brand’s iconic culture remains, its new direction is bold: broaden appeal, embrace omni-channel strategy, and tap into top-tier talent from companies like Puma and Nike.
Key Takeaways
- From Legacy to Lift-Off: Harley’s apparel arm started as a general merch group—defined by parts, not possibilities. But under new leadership, the team leaned into a vision of simplification, relevance, and scale.
- Mindset Shifts Fuel Change: The transformation moved the org from an “aged, American, complicated” structure to one that's modern, global, and omni-channel. One powerful belief emerged: Harleys are for everyone.
Strategy into Action:
The process followed a three-part transformation approach:
- Assess the current state
- Engage leadership in design
- Activate and realign- Strong sponsorship and co-created tactics helped move the vision off the page and into practice.
Give People the Freedom to Go:
Empowered employees and simplified org structures drove the highest employee engagement Harley’s seen.(Not a small feat in a brand built on tradition.)
Intended + Unintended Outcomes:
Reduced complexity and growth-readiness were wins, but cross-functional tension and dealer confusion also surfaced—proof that even the best-aligned strategy needs iteration.
Reflection questions:
- Where might your organization be holding onto “heritage” too tightly?
- What could change if you gave teams the freedom to go?
- What unintended outcomes have taught you the most?
This keynote reminded us: transformation isn't about abandoning legacy—it’s about designing from the frame up.
About Dana & Janine – Practical Partners in Making Insight Actionable
If you’ve ever walked out of a powerful session and thought, “Now what?” — you’re not alone. That’s the space where Dana Wasson and Janine Underhill love to work.
Dana, founder of www.Take-Action.com, is a systems-minded strategist who helps teams make decisions, prioritize action, and track what matters. She works alongside leaders to bridge the gap between what’s talked about in a session and what actually gets implemented back at the office. With her tools and frameworks, complexity becomes manageable, and strategy becomes movement.
Janine, founder of www.IDEA-360.com and The Epiphany Lab, is a visual futurist and story guide who helps people remember what matters and see what’s possible. Through graphic facilitation, narrative synthesis, and strategic storytelling, she captures not just what happened but why it matters and how to carry it forward. Her work doesn’t just create a record. It creates momentum.
Together, Dana and Janine bring complementary tools that help ODF participants and organizational design professionals not only design better systems, but also turn insights into shared understanding, action, and impact. Whether it’s designing a roadmap, visually mapping a future state, or surfacing the hidden tensions that need attention, their work meets you right where you are and helps move the conversation toward meaningful, lasting change.
This conference storybook doesn't just capture ideas—it's designed to propel them forward. Dana and I believe that the future belongs to those who can see it, map it, and share it in a way that sparks collective action. Amplify the Impact is our way of turning dialogue into design for a better tomorrow.
The "NEW NORMAL" needs some soaking time and deep listening. Allow this Digital Storybook to take you back to the conversations, ideas, and questions that emerged in our time together.
WHAT, SO WHAT, NOW WHAT!
- Think about WHAT we talked about and then ask yourself the SO WHAT questions.
- SO WHAT does this mean, SO WHAT needs my attention, SO WHAT might a next best step be?
- Then ask, NOW WHAT? NOW WHAT might I do to incorporate a fundamental need into the things I am working on? NOW WHAT might I begin to listen for to support you by offering tools and conversations that help to build a full memory, help you share the information with your team, so you can keep the momentum moving forward.
Digital Storybook by IDEA360