Recently I came across an article of Kate Ivey-Williams called ‘Death by Double Diamond’ where she explains her experience about implementing Service Design within companies; The Implementation phase of Service Design concepts is still a big challenge and gives lot of opportunities for agencies and Service Design professionals. Now this article got me thinking the frustration when it comes to implementing Service Design Concepts within corporate business. Why on earth is it so hard to get Service Design going, to get potentially great concepts implemented. All I read about is the successes, but I can’t help but feel that the success stories are a little bit misguiding or at least don’t give me the entire story. If I want to further develop myself and the company I work for and successfully implement Service Design concepts I need to understand not only the success stories but also the failure stories.
Reading up on the successes of Service Design It seems that there are roughly 2 types of companies out there; The ones that have a general idea about Service Design and somehow have Service Design in their DNA. Startups for example; they somehow already start with a user centric approach and have a good sense of servicing their end-consumer and they are relatively small, able to get things done. But not only startups have this advantage, there are also big corporates who seem to handle this in a productive way. But how do they do that?
The other ones are companies that have no Service Design feel whatsoever, they have been stuck in their way of thinking for years and are not even open to any kind of innovation; “We came this far, so why change?”, or any other path dependency rhetoric that you might think of.
The latter one is where the challenge is. It seems that Agencies or in-house Service Designers have no problem explaining the concept of Service Design and its methodology of Design Thinking. It is even possible to organize several workshops to come up with new ideas and concepts that would help the company innovate. So far, so good. But then it comes down to implementation and somehow the positive energy gets lost in corporate politics. As you want to implement your new product or service you not only have the ‘normal’ challenges of a new product, you also need to change the status quo of the company. And changing any status quo can be somewhat of a challenge.
In regards of an organization’s status quo consider the following:
Culture: The company’s culture can be a great thing in which an organization can thrive, but when it’s stuck it can be a stubborn child and hard to change. Remarkably, when talking to individuals within a company it strikes me that almost everyone understands the importance of Service Design and becoming a user centered organization; it makes good sense, but somehow the entire company is unable to adopt.
Leadership: With the right leadership, it shouldn’t be hard to implement new products and services, but when you are not the CEO, or not even a board member it seems almost out of reach to get Service Design concepts going. Even if your CEO understands the potential, it is still hard when the board or executive layer doesn’t grasp the methodology and the importance. In the end, they are the ones who need to empower their employees and sign off on projects and budgets. Leadership should be about empathy, empowerment and facilitation.
Vision: When a company lacks a good solid vision, Service Design and Design Thinking can help to paint that picture. Without this vision, any concept that you are able to produce will become just a project. Within Service Design you need the bigger picture to give ideas, concepts, services and products meaning. You will fail when a project’s only goal is to label it ‘done’ in the end. Continuous improvement should drive the success. But be aware; having a vision is not enough; you need to actively promote that vision in order to get everyone on the same page. This takes time and effort.
Organizational Structure: Of course, this has to do with leadership but one of the basic things in Design Thinking is working in cross functional teams. When your organization is ordered in a hierarchal way it is already a challenge to get the right people together, but if the silos within the organization refuse to work together for any reason it is almost impossible. This is where the ‘not-invented-here-syndrome often kicks in and proves to be a load.
Egos: This is in my experience one of the most challenging issues and rubs off on all the above. Egos are not very good for your organization; they tend to uphold the company’s culture by focusing on their own position; they tend to be poor leaders undermining empowerment and personal development of their team members and lack understanding of the bigger picture. They are also responsible for not opening up the organization. I often think that egos must have invented the not-invented-here-syndrome.
Budget: Yes, you need funding in order to get going, but without the intrinsic conviction of Service Design you won’t get far. Budgets don’t need to be huge, but they need to be allocated and uncompromisable.
Now, this seems almost hopeless but I bet there are a lot of people in the Service Design business who recognize this and have conquered some of these issues successfully, maybe even all. So please share your experience, articles or thoughts so we can try and make corporate business a better place, a place where Service Design can thrive.