CDO School enrollment is open + big updates to our programming

Hi Reader,

It’s official! Enrollment for CDO School is now open.

We've just rolled out a pretty sizable update to our programming, and I'd like to share more about that change with you. This is a wordy email, so if you'd rather watch a video, here's a 5-minute Loom about the changes.

Our cohorts have been very successful, and there's room to improve

For the past four years, Second Wave Dive (the company behind CDO School) has been rebuilding education for design leaders from the ground up. Our particular focus has been based on what is relevant and impactful today for those who have moved into management. Our participants have grown their influence as leaders at companies like Google, Vimeo, Mural, Etsy, DocuSign, ANZ, and more.

Historically we've sold a single course as an 8-week intensive cohort. Each cohort was sold through an application process and consisted of a blend of asynchronous and live programming. On average, we've had ~35 students per cohort and participants from over 20 countries. Our NPS is 100, and our CSAT is 92%. Pretty dang good! More importantly, though, we've developed strong bonds with every student and have seen them thrive beyond their expectations. Weekly, we get messages from our members about a meeting that went surprisingly well, a business case they successfully presented, or the impact they demonstrated with actual metrics.

While this model has worked well (over 700 students!), it's meant that anyone who enrolled committed to 5-6 hours a week of work. Over eight weeks, that's a lot of extra work!

While we've consistently received very positive feedback about the materials, there are four areas we want to improve:

Only half of the attendees in each cohort could fully participate over the eight weeks. While everyone has expressed a desire to participate fully, real life is real, and we want everyone to prioritize their health, families, and security at all times.
The program was built with 140+ lessons, 100s of hours of videos, and dozens of concepts and frameworks. Again, it's good stuff! The instructional materials were used heavily during each cohort, but for the rest of the year, those materials have been mainly unused… they're just sitting there!
The price for our 8-week cohorts was $3000 USD. Yes, they were worth that price. BUT, we didn't love selling something at that price. That price just felt too out of reach for so many.
Lastly, and this is the big one, the most frequent feedback we get is, "I wish I could spend more time on this one topic." Given our desire to keep things at 5-6 hours per week and spread out over eight weeks, this model wasn't working for deeper topic-specific learning.

After running these programs for four years, we’ve learned that all the material is very relevant. Still, depending on where you are in your career or what situations you’re dealing with, some content is good enough as on-demand, while other materials need deeper dives with our cohort structure.

So, we've changed things up a bit.

A 12-month membership to learn, practice, and successfully execute now and later

CDO School is now an annual membership. It's pretty much was before, but we're making it official now. Basically, we've made the entire curriculum available immediately when you join and rather than one cohort, you'll get two on the specific topics you need help with most when you need the help.

Our courses provide the instructional backdrop, our cohorts provide the accountability and engagement to help you implement the lessons at your job, and our community offers the support you need when you need it most. This is why we don't focus on only one type of learning.

Simply put, when you lead Design, Design is the product. We help you mature that product by:

Driving, feeling, seeing, and having impact beyond your craft
Prioritizing work, influencing cross-functional partners, building trust, improving the experience for users, measuring impact, communicating clearly, and confidently lead healthy, high-performing design teams
Learning business, but also relationship, communication, and strategy skills
Exposing you to as many other scenarios and ways of thinking as possible
Teaching you how to anticipate, make bets and communicate the implications of design decisions on the business and vice versa. I guess, ultimately, it’s confidence, right? We want you to be confident that you know what you're doing and not simply reacting to new trends, frameworks, or speculation.

Oh, we're lowering the price from ~~$3000~~ to $2000 too.

Tldr; We love cohorts, and we’ll continue with them. We don’t love that our cohorts are eight weeks and intense because we all have full lives we want to lead. The new approach gives you more control and opportunity with your learning at a lower price. We think it's a better overall experience as well.

What you get with CDO School Membership

Membership is based on an annual plan and comes with on-demand course access, cohorts, and a virtual community. Here are the details:

Get immediate access to all 11 (and growing) on-demand courses.
- Our courses cover systems approaches to Measure Design with Confidence, creating a Design Org Strategy, gaining business acumen in a Business FUN01 way, and much more.
- You can follow our original 8-week program or take courses individually.
- You can receive a certificate of completion for each course you complete.
Join two live cohorts per year. Cohorts are live, 3-4 programs where we take a deep dive on one area. These combine both instructional and coaching methodologies. Cohorts are delivered to peers across the industry and have been the most valued aspect of our training. The focus is on helping you make real-world progress now.
- We run cohorts each September and April. Our next cohorts start the week of September 18, 2023
- We'll send a follow email about our cohorts, but as a teaser, we'll be covering North Star Maps, Quality Scoring and ROI Math, Managing Up, Down and Out, Design Org Strategy, and Job Role Positioning.
- Individuals can take one cohort at a time. This ensures you’re able to apply what you learn in real life.
- Check out more in our FAQs.
Access to our Second Wave Dive community
- 100s of resources
- 40+ downloadable templates (Figma, Mural, Miro, Docs, Sheets, etc.)
- 45+ video replays from prior community events
- 400+ active community members
- Weekly community events and syncs

Join CDO School as an individual or as a team

If you are interested in joining CDO School, you have two options:

Become a CDO School Member - If you are currently experiencing "The Messy Middle" of your career, join us as a Member. Our upcoming cohorts begin September 18th.
Join CDO School as a Team - Collective confidence is how you scale impact. We've run team programs with Google, DocuSign, 15five, ANZ, and more.

I'll share more updates about our courses, cohorts, and takeaways in the coming days. If you have any questions in the meantime, reply to this email. I'm looking forward to learning with you!