3.2 Co-Design

APMG Change Management Foundation Exam

Track your progress as you read

Finished sections get a check mark.

1 Chapter 1: The v3 Foundation Exam and the Organisational Context

1.1 Exam Structure, the Five Syllabus Areas and the Certification Path 1.2 Scene Setting: External and Internal Factors Shaping Change 1.3 Change Management, Benefits and Dis-benefits

2 Chapter 2: Understanding the Change Context

2.1 Kelman's Three Levels of Adoption 2.2 VUCA and the Cynefin Framework 2.3 Planned Change versus Emergent Change 2.4 Systems Thinking in Change 2.5 Organisational Culture and Its Three Levels

3 Chapter 3: Diagnosing and Structuring the Change Approach

3.1 Lewin's Force Field Analysis 3.2 Co-Design 3.3 The ADKAR Model 3.4 Evolving the n-Step Process and Kotter's Eight Accelerators

4 Chapter 4: Delivery Strategy, Agile Practices and the Change Strategy

4.1 Delivery Strategy: Big Bang, Phased, Voluntary and Iterative 4.2 Agile Practices and Agile Change Practices 4.3 The Continuous Change Management Cycle 4.4 The Change Strategy

5 Chapter 5: People and Change — Individual Difference and Response

5.1 Differences in People and Personality Preferences 5.2 Neuroscience and Change: SCARF, Mindset and Insight 5.3 The Change Curve 5.4 Bridges' Transition Model

6 Chapter 6: Motivation, Resilience and Learning

6.1 Rewards, Punishment and Pink's Three Motivators 6.2 Positive Psychology, Resilience and Appreciative Inquiry 6.3 The Beckhard-Harris Change Formula and Schein's Two Anxieties 6.4 Competence, Learning and the Learning Dip 6.5 Learning Preferences: Kolb, Honey and Mumford

7 Chapter 7: Key Roles in Change Leadership

7.1 Key Roles in the Change Process 7.2 The Role of the Change Sponsor 7.3 The Change Agent's Role and Personal Influence 7.4 The Role of Local Leadership in Change

8 Chapter 8: Psychological Safety, Leadership and Culture

8.1 Psychological Climate and Psychological Safety 8.2 Carolyn Taylor: How Leadership Shapes Culture 8.3 Leadership Styles and Organisational Climate

9 Chapter 9: Teams and Change

9.1 Team Structures and Change Agent Networks 9.2 Tuckman's Stages of Team Development 9.3 Lencioni: Assessing and Growing Team Effectiveness 9.4 Harvesting the Value of Team Diversity

10 Chapter 10: Stakeholder Identification, Analysis and Engagement

10.1 Stakeholder Definition and Identification 10.2 Stakeholder Analysis, Segmentation and Empathy Mapping 10.3 Stakeholder Mapping and Sources of Power 10.4 Barriers to Engagement 10.5 Planning Stakeholder Engagement

11 Chapter 11: Communication Theory, Messaging and Emotional Connection

11.1 Communication Theory and the Communication Process 11.2 Barriers to Communication and Cognitive Biases 11.3 Messaging: Setting Context and the Tell, Sell, Include Approach 11.4 Appealing to Hearts and Minds

12 Chapter 12: Communication Channels and Planning

12.1 Ways of Communicating and VARK Language Style Preferences 12.2 Communication Channels: One-Way, Two-Way, Lean and Rich 12.3 Communications Planning

13 Chapter 13: Assessing Change Impact and Severity

13.1 Change Management as Risk Management and the Two-Step Assessment 13.2 Step 1: Categorising Impacts and Identifying Impact Areas 13.3 Step 1 Continued: Gap Analysis, Impact Profiles and Monitoring 13.4 Step 2: Change Impact Severity

14 Chapter 14: Resistance to Change

14.1 Causes of Resistance and Oreg's Four Neural Factors 14.2 Common Reasons for Resistance and How to Deal With Them 14.3 Building a Strategy to Manage Resistance

15 Chapter 15: Change Analytics and Exam Readiness

15.1 Measurement Types and the Change Delivery Scorecard 15.2 Building a Change Analytics Strategy 15.3 Exam Technique and Final Revision

3.2 Co-Design

Key Takeaways Explain This Topic AI

Co-design is an approach to design that attempts to actively involve all stakeholders in the design process

It is not a particular style of design, not ignoring evidence or professional advice, and not an excuse to sell a decision

Co-design requires trust, the ability to challenge power, and a willingness to learn

Benefits include better solutions, greater usability and stronger buy-in because people accept what they helped create

• Done poorly it can be expensive and time-wasting, leading to resentment and cynicism
• Last updated: September 2026

Co-design opens the second half of the Organisational context and approach area, and it is the value CM3 leans on most heavily. It is worth learning by its definition, its exclusions and its conditions, because the exam tests all three.

What co-design is

Co-design is an approach to design that attempts to actively involve all stakeholders in the design process . It is an approach focused on the process of design.

The operative word is actively . Being asked for comments on a completed design is consultation, not co-design. Co-design means stakeholders are in the room while the answer is being formed, with genuine influence over what it becomes.

What co-design is not

CM3 is unusually explicit about the exclusions, which makes them prime exam material:

Not a particular style of design. Co-design describes who is involved and how, not what the output looks like.

Not ignoring evidence or professional advice. Involving stakeholders does not mean the group's preference overrides expertise, data or regulation. The engineer still gets to say the structure will not hold.

Not an excuse to 'sell' a decision. This is the most important exclusion and the most common abuse. Running a workshop about a decision that has already been made, in order to generate the appearance of involvement, is not co-design. Participants always detect it, and the damage exceeds anything you would have suffered by simply announcing the decision.

Benefits

Three benefits are named:

The result meets stakeholder needs and is usable. The people who do the work know things about the work that no designer does — the exceptions, the workarounds, the ten-second step that becomes ten minutes at month-end.

People are more willing to accept something they were involved in creating. This is a genuine psychological effect, and it connects directly to Kelman: participation moves people towards internalisation rather than compliance, and to SCARF, where involvement protects autonomy and status.

Better solutions and greater buy-in. The two reinforce each other — a solution that actually works is easier to buy into.

Where to look for co-design opportunities

CM3's practical advice is that the change manager should be actively looking for opportunities to include people in designing the solution, or even just the path to the solution. The crucial nuance:

Even when the destination for the change has been dictated from above, the path to get there is usually open for debate .

That single sentence resolves the most common objection to co-design — "we don't have a choice about this change". You usually do have a choice about how it is implemented, sequenced, supported and communicated, and that is enough surface area for genuine involvement.

The examples CM3 gives:

• Situation Where co-design fits
• Compliance-driven change There are often many ways of implementing the policies
• A new work-from-home policy Actual staff should be part of the drafting process
• An improved staff review process Ask managers and staff what would actually work
• New offices Let the staff work on the layout
• What co-design requires

Co-design draws on workshop facilitation methods to ensure participation from all stakeholders, and it requires three conditions:

Trust — participants must believe their input can actually change the outcome, and leaders must believe participants will engage responsibly

Ability to challenge power — if the most senior person in the room cannot be contradicted, you will get the senior person's design with additional signatures

A willingness to learn — including from people whose job title suggests they have nothing to teach you

These are demanding conditions, and their absence is why co-design so often degrades into consultation theatre. A change manager assessing whether to use co-design should test all three honestly before committing.

The pitfalls

Done poorly, co-design can be expensive and time-wasting, leading to resentment and cynicism . The mechanism is worth understanding: participation raises expectations. If people invest three workshops' worth of effort and the outcome bears no relation to their contribution, they are worse off than if they had never been asked — they have lost the time and learned that involvement is decorative. That lesson persists into the next change.

The practical safeguards: be explicit at the outset about what is fixed and what is genuinely open; report back on what was adopted and, where an idea was not adopted, why; and do not run co-design at all if the answer is already decided. Setting clear boundaries about what is non-negotiable is exactly what CM3 recommends in early messaging — it helps people understand where they can contribute and co-design change.