Co-Design, But Make It Real: Six Mistakes Organisations Keep Repeating
Co-design has become one of those words that gets sprinkled into every strategy, grant submission, and community engagement plan. It signals modernity. It signals openness. It signals that an organisation is progressive enough to not design in a vacuum. But the truth is, the word is now used so loosely that it has started to lose its meaning. In the last few years, I’ve worked with leaders who are genuinely trying to co-design well—and others who are unintentionally reenacting the power patterns they thought they’d left behind.
Co-design, when done properly, is a profound shift in how an organisation sees itself. It asks leaders to stop thinking of communities as subjects to be studied or consulted, and instead as partners in the creation of knowledge, ideas, and solutions. It demands slowness, care, and courage. And because of that, it exposes the parts of an organisation that are still operating from fear, urgency, or control.
What follows are the six mistakes I see organisations make most often—not to shame, but to illuminate. These are patterns that continue to show up across government, non-profits, community organisations, and the private sector. And as confronting as they sometimes are, these patterns are also the doorway to something better: a kind of co-design that is honest, brave, and genuinely collaborative.
Mistake 1: Calling It “Co-Design” When the Solution Is Already Decided
This is the most common pattern, and often the most unintentional. An organisation decides it wants to “co-design” a program, but senior leaders have already framed the problem, shortlisted the options, and locked in the direction. Staff go into community sessions with a deck of predetermined ideas, and then wonder why the group doesn’t come alive.
Real co-design begins long before ideas enter the room. It starts at the level of curiosity—allowing the possibility that community members may have insights that fundamentally reshape the perceived problem or direction. When the solution is pre-decided, even subtly, communities can feel it. They sense the quiet rigidity. They sense that they are being invited into a room whose walls are already built.
Doing co-design well requires an uncomfortable but necessary acknowledgment: “We don’t know yet.” It requires holding the problem lightly enough that new information can influence it. Only then does community input become meaningful rather than performative.
Mistake 2: Moving Too Fast for Trust to Form
Co-design is human work, and humans do not build trust at the speed of a project plan.
I often see organisations with the best intentions rush the process: two workshops, a survey, a stakeholder meeting, a report. Fast, efficient, tidy. But community trust has its own tempo, shaped by history, context, and lived experience. People bring their stories into the room—stories of having been ignored before, or asked for input that went nowhere, or forced to participate under the guise of choice.
When urgency overrides relationship, co-design becomes brittle. People engage less deeply. They offer surface-level suggestions rather than generative insights. Some groups withdraw silently. Others challenge loudly. Either way, trust becomes an obstacle instead of a foundation.
To slow down does not mean to be inefficient. It means to honour the relational work as legitimate labour. A cup of tea, a phone call, or a second conversation can be the difference between shallow participation and true collaboration. Co-design is not just the workshop—it is everything that happens before and after.
Mistake 3: Choosing the Wrong People to Represent the Community
Another common pattern is the assumption that one or two representatives can speak for an entire community, lived experience group, or cultural cohort. Organisations often seek “the community voice,” as though such a thing exists in singular form.
Communities are never monolithic. They contain diversity of experience, difference in power, and internal dynamics that outsiders cannot see. When an organisation selects participants based on convenience or existing relationships, it can unintentionally reinforce existing inequalities—giving airtime to the most confident, the most available, or the most institutionally aligned.
Real co-design requires care in participant selection. This means asking questions such as: Who is missing? Who is structurally excluded? Who holds knowledge that cannot be accessed through formal channels? Who has lived experience that challenges the dominant narrative?
Representation is not about numbers—it is about relevance, depth, and diversity of perspective. When the right voices are in the room, co-design becomes richer, more nuanced, and more grounded in reality.
Mistake 4: Treating Co-Design as a Workshop, Not a Relationship
Co-design has been commodified into a format: sticky notes, butcher’s paper, breakout groups, coloured pens. But the workshop is not the co-design. It is just one container.
True co-design is a relationship-based methodology. It includes the conversations that happen as people are walking into the room. It includes the email check-in after someone shared something heavy. It includes the way conflict is held, the way stories are listened to, and the way cultural protocols are honoured.
When organisations focus on the workshop and ignore the relationship, the process collapses into a series of activities rather than a shared journey. People feel processed rather than valued. The end product may be colourful, but it lacks soul.
The most impactful co-design processes I’ve seen are those in which facilitators and participants build a sense of mutual care. People feel safe enough to challenge organisational assumptions. They feel supported enough to share lived experiences that would not surface in a traditional meeting. Relationships create the depth that makes co-design real.
Mistake 5: Extracting Stories Without Emotional Safety or Reciprocity
Storytelling is at the heart of co-design. But stories are not data points—they are offerings. They come with emotional weight, cultural meaning, and personal history. When an organisation invites people to share their stories without creating the conditions for emotional safety, harm occurs. And harm lingers.
I’ve seen sessions where participants shared deeply personal experiences—trauma, loss, family stories—only to have those stories absorbed into a whiteboard or reduced to a dot point in a report. That is extraction, not co-design.
Reciprocity must be built into the process. This includes practices such as checking in with participants after sessions, giving them access to the ideas or insights developed, acknowledging their contribution publicly, and ensuring their voices shape the final direction in tangible ways.
Emotional safety is not a bonus—it is essential. Without it, people will either not share or they will share too much and feel exposed. Neither supports meaningful collaboration.
Mistake 6: Thinking Co-Design Ends When the Workshop Ends
The final mistake is one that undermines even the most thoughtful co-design processes: ending too early.
Organisations often interpret co-design as the gathering of ideas, not the carrying of them. Once the workshop is done, the post-it notes are packed away, and the report is drafted, the project team shifts into decision-making mode alone. The community’s role becomes historical rather than ongoing.
But true co-design carries participation through the full lifecycle: co-defining the problem, co-creating ideas, co-testing prototypes, co-refining the model, and co-owning the outcomes. Communities should not be invited only to ideate—they should be invited to iterate.
When people see their insights shaping the work over time, trust deepens. When they see their feedback tested, refined, and honoured, partnership strengthens. And when they are invited into governance or shared stewardship, co-design becomes more than a method. It becomes a culture.
So What Does “Real” Co-Design Look Like?
Real co-design is not glamorous. It is not fast. It does not fit neatly into a Gantt chart. But it is profoundly transformative.
It looks like shared ownership rather than token input.
It looks like patience rather than urgency.
It looks like humility rather than expertise.
It looks like relationship rather than transactions.
At its heart, real co-design is a shift in power. Organisations stop designing for communities and start designing withthem. They stop assuming they hold the answers and start recognising that knowledge is distributed—not hierarchical. They stop seeking efficiency at the cost of depth and begin to honour the process as much as the product.
And here’s the truth: when co-design is done well, the solutions are better. They are more grounded, more culturally aligned, more sustainable, and more trusted. Communities become partners in implementation, not just participants in consultation. Staff grow in empathy and capability. Leaders gain clarity that cannot come from inside a boardroom.
Co-design, when made real, changes everyone.
If your organisation is planning a co-design process—or if you’re currently in one and can feel the cracks forming—you don’t need to navigate it alone.
Book a free 30-minute consult on co-design scoping, where we can map your readiness, identify risks, and shape an ethical, community-led approach that actually works.