How-to; Service Design Examples using a Systems Approach
Practical techniques that I use as part of an overall design methodology
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This is a list of the examples that describe some of my experiences as a service designer that is designed to help understand what a deeper approach to service design might look like. The approach is probably quite different to what you are used to as this expands the standard version of service design, and that's one reason why I have put this online. These examples incorporate the characteristics of dealing with complexity, and uses systems thinking as a base to develop an approach to really change and transform services fundamentally, and in particular engaging managers and decision-makers.
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Systems Leadership
Engaging with senior managers is something that we should all understand as being fundamental to any real change. Leaders have the ability to make things happen, and to take lead of the change to ensure sustainability. This is an example of how to avoid some of the pitfalls that consultants can make, trying to get leaders to do what they want, rather than what the leader needs to do.
Once connected to leaders, this is an example of a first stage of engagement, to begin the process of working together on the problems that leaders face. This is rapid design is within a system thinking framework and its purpose is to give the leaders a taste of the potential for the design. I use it to help them to experience a design, and then to co-create a strategy for how to take the design forward within their service.
Where I start and design is with the manager of that service. They understand the fundamental difference that my approach can give them compared to traditional change or service design, so that we can co-create a strategy together on how their service should be designed. This results in a deepening systemic understanding through learning. This is an exampe of a managers learning for themselves, rather than from others. And the impact on real mindset change. Systems thinking helping to frame the learning for managers.
Helping a leader to learn new ways of understanding what systems leadership is about, by learning from a prototype team of front line staff. Learning from the workplace is often the most powerful way to learn. This is the usual way that I engage with leaders to help them in a way that helps them to shift their mind-set, rather than develop classroom sessions where their learning is rational.
Implementation and Teamworking
How many of us have witnessed resistance to change from the front line? That can be avoided in certain situations, and this is an example of the groundwork that was made to avoid resistance. For me, engaging with staff should be the normal approach in my work.
An introduction to the development of a team of people who are able to add great value to the organisation and deal with complexity and challenges in the operations without being micro-managed. They take operational decisions themselves. They will improve what they do, and they will be a credit to the manager that leads them.
Helping managers understand systems thinking involves fundamental insights. It forms a corner-stone to fundamental systemic change. Taking someone through this is made far easier using a diagram, as is demonstrated in this example.
In support of an outside-in perspective, this is a framework on how to understand demands coming into an organisation or service, and how to begin to group them for the subsequent design of services. This is the detail of the beginning of my version of service design, which then creates the knowledge to develop the new work flow through the service, and the design of the interactions with the customer.
What is especially important is to analyse the demand so that complexity is understood from a systems thinking perspective, so that the demand and the design can be congruent.
What is especially important is to analyse the demand so that complexity is understood from a systems thinking perspective, so that the demand and the design can be congruent.
Moving from an experiment to a prototype is not simply a move from one activity to the next on the plan. It is a critial point, where leaders decide that the Prototype is going to be the test bed of the new design. The design work itself moves from an experiment that has limited viability and few resources, to a real test of the new approach using real people and changing the underlying system. Changes need to be made, managers need to clear their diaries and then need to make decisions. It is a big and important step that needs care to be performed to be done correctly.
How to engage with stakeholders that your remit of work does not directly include, is often a significant issue when trying to redesign an end to end service. This example is one way of using systems thinking and design thinking, together with participative approaches & techniques, to develop supportive and collaborative design.
Measurement and service design go hand in hand. In true systems thinking fashion, looking at the service from end to end and outside in, the measures that we can create are different to those that the organisation currently uses. This is because managers assign such a way of thinking to measures that speaks of control and data, and internal departmental efficiency.
What are alternative measures? They are those that measure of the performance of the WHOLE service. They are a window into the system.
What are alternative measures? They are those that measure of the performance of the WHOLE service. They are a window into the system.
