 Service design is, by its very nature, a highly collaborative practice. This is one of the reasons why we love it so much. But it also means that you can't get anything meaningful done on your own. You'll always have to convince someone to share their resources with you. Whether it's at time, money, or attention. And this goes for both external clients and internal stakeholders. But how do you do that? How do you get people on your side? How do you get them to buy into your plans and ideas? Well, that's what you're going to hear in this episode. Hi, my name is Mark van Tijn and welcome to the Service Design Show. I have found that many service design professionals rely on a form of hope as their main strategy. Hope that they will say the right things at the right time to their right people. Now, while hope is really powerful and something that you definitely shouldn't use, it's probably the least effective strategy in this case. But hey, I can't blame them. The service design textbooks don't teach you how to clearly communicate the benefits of your work in a professional context. They just assume you know. But as it turns out, it's a bit harder than it looks. And what ends up happening is that you eventually get stuck and frustrated. Stuck working on the small and incremental stuff that you feel don't make any meaningful difference and frustrated by the fact that you're missing out on opportunities to work on bigger and more fulfilling challenges where you know you could have made a bigger impact. And the worst of it all is that you're not only cutting yourself short, but also the people who would benefit from a design driven approach if you could only get them to see the value of it. Well, the truth is you can. You'll only need to exchange your strategy of hope for a set of proven tools, methods and frameworks. Recently, a fresh group of professionals graduated from my selling service design with confidence program where they learned about these tools, methods and frameworks. And in this episode, they're going to share the most valuable learnings with you. So if you're also struggling to get your CEO, manager or client to fully buy into the benefits of service design, grab your notebook and start making notes because there's a lot to unpack in this episode. Finally, if you want to get on the waiting list for the third and last cohort of the selling service design with confidence program this year, head over to servicedesignshow.com slash confidence. The cohort is scheduled for October, but there is a limited number of seats available. So to increase the chance that you'll be able to secure a spot, make sure your name gets on the waiting list as soon as possible. Head over to servicedesignshow.com slash confidence for all the details and you'll also be able to find the link in the show notes of this episode. In our busy lives, it can be very hard to find the time and most of all, permit yourself to invest in your professional growth. But if you want to have more mature conversations with business leaders and find the opportunities to work on more fulfilling challenges, I can only encourage you to take a look at the program. But hey, don't take my word for it. Let's dive into the stories of the service design professionals who did. Let the show begin. Welcome to the show, everybody. Hey, good to see you all. Happy that you made it all the way to the end of this journey. This journey called selling service design with confidence. We're going to do a graduation call, a call to give back to the community and celebrate with each other that you come so far, share some practical lessons, maybe share some of the challenges that you have been running into. It should be a lot of fun. And I'm looking forward to hearing your stories at the end of this program. We have seven participants and I have to start somewhere. And today we're going to start with Sweden and Dimitris, you're first. So could you give a brief introduction? Who are you and what do you do these days? Yes. Hello, Mark. Hello, everyone. So my name is Dimitris. I was as a UX and service designer. I have just jumped in on a new role in the new company. So everything is really fresh. I have been working and still work mostly in-house. And this is my first role that's mostly going towards service design. Previously I've been working mostly with UX design. All right. Cool. I see a lot of people who are transitioning into service design get into these questions. And I can imagine that this was also interesting for you. Now you've transitioned from your art transitioning from your UX to service design. I'm curious what kind of challenges did you encounter when you tried to communicate the benefits of service design? So mostly it has been that other stakeholders have been like a regular to invest in and give time for research. So they mostly want to jump into solutions right away. And this has been the part that's mostly been challenging trying to show the value of why we should invest in more research and looking at the product or the service with a little bit more of design mindset. And now we hear that more often that stakeholders find it challenging or find it hard to invest in research. But what was the consequence for you of that? Mostly not be able, not getting time, resources, and any backing to do any research which made it really hard to actually show the value and give me time and energy and the resources to do what we want to do. Yeah. Do you actually, quote unquote, do proper service design or proper? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Walk a little bit more with like the first diamond of design thinking process, which is like the biggest problem that people want to jump to the second one. Yeah, because we all know our customers and users and clients already like why should we do research, right? The classic. I'm curious, was there anything in the program that you were able to take away that helped you to sort of maybe not solve this problem because I don't think these problems, you can actually solve them, but maybe get over it a bit easier? Yeah. I mean, there were like several parts. I think the one that stick most to me was being able to connect, design to growth and costs, and a little bit talk about that business mindset and actually give numbers and the capacity to be able to talk with the people that actually takes those decisions and show them why service design is and should be helping make those decisions. And you meant something about numbers that's usually not a very common ground for service designers? Like how were you able to use numbers in order to get into these conversations? By showing and actually connecting growth and costs. So that could be, for example, show that a specific action could lead to increase in sales, increase in profits, or maybe increase in market share, or looking at the costs that can be decreased by using service design, such as, I mean, maybe like fastest delivery of or taking away like one step of the process that actually is more of a hindrance than actually helps customers. Makes sense. How is this different than maybe how you used or approached this? Well, because this and this is one of the things like I learned in the show that try to help the stakeholder you're working for to make those arguments to their boss. And this is not something that I did earlier or I tried to. I think that would be like the most important thing. Hmm. You help your stakeholder to actually sell service design. Yeah. Okay. Finally, what I would love to hear from you is if you have like one tip for somebody who's listening and maybe experiencing the same challenge because I know that this is a common challenge, what advice would you give them? To learn to ask the right questions, which sounds really easy, but like so hard, so hard of an art to master and master the art of storytelling because knowing the numbers and being able to show them is like one part. But the other part is that you actually have to say it in a way that people will understand it. And where would people learn good storytelling? Oh, that's another question. I mean, I got some really good tips from you. But I think you have had some maybe in the show people talking about it. Yeah. Yeah. That could be a good place to start. I agree. There are a few episodes on the service design show that focus on stories and storytelling and the power of stories. So, yeah, that would definitely be a good starting point. Anything else, Dimitris? Or was this it? No, nothing for me if you have any other questions. No, I think this is a good summary and happy to hear that you sort of made progress through this program. Good luck in your new role and thanks. And I'll move on to our next participant, which is Max. Hey, Max. Hey, Mark. Hey. Same question to you. Let's start with where are you based? What do you do? And no, let's just start. Let's keep it simple. Let's start with that. I'm based in Munich. I work currently for an agency setup as an in-house design team. Before I was working in an agency, so I can have a bit of both experiences. I was trained as a product designer originally in Delft, in the Netherlands. And yeah, ended up in service design because I like that the outcome is open and not fixed. Yes. Yes, that's one. That's the beauty of service design and also the challenge while selling it at the same time. Exactly. I'm also curious from you. You have been on the agency side, now you're in-house. If you had to identify, let's start with this question. If you had to identify, what is more challenging, selling service design being on the agency side or selling service design when you're in-house? At this day, I would say in-house because we also are in the position to actively approach our clients and tell them how we can help them. And I know that it's a different situation than when maybe your client approaches you with pain points or some expectations or thoughts. At least then the conversation is coming from two directions. Well, we also often start in a conversation where we think there can be added value of user service design and then there's not necessarily a clear pain point experience yet. So we need to dig deep. That's interesting. I think a lot of people who are on the outside sort of envy the people who are on the inside and think that it's much easier like selling it and operationalizing it. But apparently it brings its own challenges, which I've heard more often. If you had to pick one challenge, what's a struggle that you've experienced with communicating benefits to internal stakeholders? The first one is indeed finding pain points. I mean, in many cases people are doing their projects, they're doing their thing, they get familiar with agile way of working. They're obviously on a good way. And there are multiple things on their agenda that they could do to go one step further. So then next to that you also end up talking about timing. And then often service design feels as something that can be done later or as really in general, I think, and something extra to think about the customer a bit more deeper. Yeah, it's an add-on. It's nice to have like when everything works, then we'll at some point have time to do service design. That seems like quite a big challenge. Did the program give you anything that you were able to take away and use to maybe solve this? Again, solving is probably not the right word, but move you forward. Yeah, don't be hesitant. Yeah, of course. In a way that, I mean, I had some arguments or stories available, but I think I was looking for a way to structure them and to find the right order. I could literally talk for hours about my wonderful discipline and my job. And that supports definitely not the solution, but where to start then and how to build your story. And what I learned from the course and what works really well for me is to ask the clients first about the big goal and then about their challenges, as the mountain exercise we learned in the course, because this gives a great entry point to tell also about the more soft or short-term service design benefits, like bringing stakeholders together, start seeing the benefits of listening to your users. And that was something that I was always struggling with because it's something that can not really be expressed in numbers or less easy on one hand. And it's also something that I really like about my job. I really like that that's one of the benefits. But by asking the client first about their challenges, achieving the bigger goal, it gives me a great entry point to tell about these benefits that they will experience on the short term. Yeah, that's interesting. I think we love our work. We love what it can bring, how it can transform organizations, how it can transform businesses. So whenever people ask us, we are more than willing to talk and share about it, but that's not per se the best way to actually get people to literally buy in. They might be interested to hear this, but it doesn't mean that they will actually give you a challenge or an assignment or the trust to work on a project that's on a challenge that they are working in. Yeah, exactly. Now, also the question for you. If you could give somebody who's in a similar situation, maybe also in a house and is struggling with the same thing, like one tip that could maybe help them move forward. What would that be? Yeah, the simple answer is at least the one that I said, is the mountain exercise. Talk not only about the bigger goals, but also about the challenges, but then add it to that one. Indeed, sit together and talk about the roadmap to avoid ending up on the shelf and telling you that service design maybe should come in later when they're finished doing other things, but also showing the client by doing that exercise together that it does fit in with all the other things that they are doing already. And it can connect all the projects in such a way that you maybe even get more value out of everything you're already doing. Show that service design is not a single exercise that you just do for a few months on its own, but it can really improve all the single activities or initiatives that you're doing. Yeah, so basically like doing a stakeholder map, but then just for projects or goals or activities to understand the context in which you're going to operate as a service designer, right? Yeah. Awesome. Thank you. This was really helpful and good to hear that you're also moving forward. Thanks, Max. And let's move on to our next participant and that's going to be let me grab my notes. Manuel, are you there? Yes, hello, Mark. Hey, Manuel. Same question to start with for you. Could you describe your situation today a bit? Yeah, I'm currently based in Denmark. I'm working in-house as a UX designer. However, after the course, I'm also thinking about the ways service design could benefit the startup I'm working in. I'm curious, what was your motivation to join a program that is about selling service design with confidence? I think it all started by listening to the podcasts in Spotify and I was listening to the different people sharing their expertise. And I just wondered about this idea that you mentioned several times throughout the show, the double binds, and I had been facing those throughout my career. So I just had the feeling that this could be an interesting road to go down. And for the people who haven't listened to every episode of the service design show, what was the double bind? What are double binds and which double bind is specifically that you encountered that made you think, well, this might be something that I need to dig deeper into? Well, the way I understand double binds is these sort of requests that have contradicting endings. So an example that I usually face is having a stakeholder ask for innovation, but at the same time they want the project to follow a straight line and have a very strict timeframe. Sometimes it's not sensible when talking about design because you learn as you go through the process and there's insights and ideas that emerge that just invite for the project to iterate rather than to finish in a specific day. Yeah, yeah, those are, we have many of them and if somebody who's listening right now wants to dig deeper in some of these double binds, it's the episode with Chris Ferguson and David Dunn. There are two episodes on double binds, so definitely worth checking out. So Manuel, related to communicating the benefits of service design, what would you say was your biggest challenge? I think speaking the right language, it's easy to think that other roles misunderstand design and trying to approach them using the design lingo might just fall on deaf ears. So through the course, I think that was one of the biggest learnings I had. Thinking about reaching out to people, understanding their fears, their goals and also their language to be able to come up with a way to explain design in their own terms. It's interesting because when you say the right language, that is quite an abstract thing. Like, how would you define the right language today? Like, what have you seen is the right language? Yeah, maybe there's no single definition because the right language depends on the person you're talking to, the client you're addressing. So that's exactly why we need to talk to people to interview them, to ask questions, to get to know their language and be able to speak on the same level. And was that also something that you found inside the program, like an exercise tool or framework that helps you to actually do that? Yes, I think the basic questions that you should reach out to the different stakeholders where you try to understand what is valuable to them in their projects, to see what keywords they use when referring to what means progress or success for them. And I've always find that interesting that in a lot of cases these questions are very similar to the ones that we ask our end users, but somehow we don't apply this knowledge and this practice and these tools to the people we're working with. Have you found something similar? Yes, exactly. It's funny because we usually have different methods and tools to follow a design process but we forget that sometimes with these kind of challenges we can also apply our own design skills. So basically interviewing your audience, testing your assumptions, preparing even scripts when starting a new conversation are very helpful. Yeah, we're also working with humans and they aren't that much different than end users. So a lot of our tools and methods definitely do apply over there as well. Have you, I'm curious, have you seen and have you tried it in practice and how did it work? Did you, were you able to see a difference in how people respond to you or something like that? I'm in the process of applying this. I'm starting by talking to people and trying to get the goals that they have in their heads. I'm still midway down so I don't have any concrete results at the moment. Do people open up when you ask them these questions because I can imagine this might be one of the things holding people back like they're not going to share anyway but do people open up? Yeah, yeah, for sure. I do, I can compare the first time I approached trying to talk about the different tools I use in design and even talking about the band diagram where you have like the feasible versus the desirable and the business side of things. But I got the response that I shouldn't try to force my process on others. But once you start asking what they want, what they value, you immediately get different answers and you don't get that pushback. Yeah, and people don't get defensive. People like talking about themselves in general. So that's a good approach. Manuel, I'm also going to ask you this question. If you had to share one tip with the service design community about communicating the benefits of service design, which tip would you give? No, I go back to look in to speak the same languages as the audience you're reaching out. Okay, fair enough. With these things, it's an easy tip, but it's hard to implement. So thank you for that. And let's keep that laser sharp on our minds. Let's write it down somewhere and post it. Thanks, Manuel, for sharing. And I'm going to move on to participant number four if I'm not mistaken. Kiki, also from very close to me, the Netherlands. Kiki, are you there? Yes, hey, Mark. Hey, Kiki, good to see you. You're also in a different context compared to the other three participants. Could you share a little bit about that? Yes, I work as an in-house service designer for the municipality of Amsterdam, so the city, government, local, big, slow-moving, you know, the drill. And before I worked for agency, so I've also seen both sides. And it's a big transition. Interesting. And once again, I do think that people on both sides sort of, at least some aspects of the other side. So the grass is always greener where you give it water. That was the saying, I think. So Kiki, I'm curious to your experience with regards to the challenges and roadblocks when you need to communicate the value of service design. What have you found to be the biggest challenge? Well, I think in a big local government, one of the main challenges is that it's a very big organization and people don't always know what they can use you for, which often results in being part of the conversation too late. So maybe there has even been a big analysis phase, but they didn't know that you could add value in that phase. So often the moment I get involved, there's already a solution on the table that might not actually solve the thing that they originally started with. But yeah, so getting involved too late is I think one of the main struggles that we're dealing with. Yeah, and that sounds like super frustrating to me. Like when you know that you could have added value and maybe shaped sort of the challenge and helped everybody forward and then sort of too late. Like what's the consequence of that? Do you get to start over or do you have to work with the things that are already on the table? Yeah, usually it's the second. So you are trying to reshape it, but it's often too late. There are deadlines, there's new policies coming in, so you need to work with what you have. So what I try to do now based on the course is try to get a little hook in. So for next time, they know that I can also be of value earlier on in the process. Yeah, so yeah, that's what I try to do now. That sounds like magic. Like how do you do? How do you get people to see that you could add value before they actually have a challenge or a question? Because that's what I'm getting from your story. How do you do that? Well, that's something I really learned during this course that when we talk about selling my main association, especially at the beginning of the course was the sleazy car salesman who was trying to push you into doing this whole thing right now. And I learned that selling is actually an ongoing small conversation and small steps towards the right goal is still small steps in the right direction. And I think especially in a big organization like mine, the small steps are super valuable. So next time, they can find me easier or know what I can add to the conversation earlier on. So how is it different than maybe the approach you had, I don't know, six months ago? I think six months ago I was trying to change the organization overnight and now I've realized, okay, I need to take small steps and appreciate the small steps I can take and celebrate the small wins in the process in order to get to the place we want to go. And at the same time, yeah, by proving the work and showing the work, we also, yeah, get more of a name within the organization and get a more important position, create ambassadors who sell basically our work for us. So yeah, that's been very useful so far, I think. The small wins, maybe we need to add an ashtrayx to the program title and it should be selling serves down with confidence and patience. Because that's a really key part, not losing hope and keeping sight of the bigger picture and celebrating the small wins. If you think about small wins, what do you see? Like, could you give an example of a small win that you maybe had in the previous weeks? Say, definitely. Yeah, so for example, one of the things that we, one of the exercises we do during the course is asking someone for feedback after a project. So I've asked one of my colleagues who has actually, I've done a project for him and he's come back to me to ask me to do another project for him. I asked him, what was the added value for you? And that was super valuable for me to learn what his needs are and to understand what I can solve for him, which will help me in understanding how I can solve that for other people as well and understand. Yeah, basically, as Manuel was saying before, use our own surface design skills to understand the issues and the language that the person has in front of you that you're trying to convince to use your set of skills for their benefits. I love this exercise. I call this a debrief in your client. In this specific case, did they describe, did it match your expectation? No, I don't know. Can you share something that they said that surprised you? Yeah, so I helped this person in making a blueprint and sketching out a process, a non-existing process and trying to get everyone around the table and trying to... And what I expected was that the results, the deliverable was going to be the most valuable for this person, but actually what he said was, no, you opened everyone up. And at the beginning of the two-hour session, everyone was really grumpy and they didn't want to say anything. And by the end, everyone was super intrigued and said, oh, we should do this more often. And that was actually the biggest added value for this person. So that was lovely to hear. It's awesome to get these stories just also for your own morale and your confidence. And I don't think a lot of people realize that you can sort of use these quotes as testimonials. Because at the start, it's really hard to quote-on-quote sell the value of helping people to open up. But if it's not you communicating the value, but you can sort of point to, well, my five other clients have said that this is the benefit they get from it, then it's like it's not you trying to convince somebody else. This is just like, this is what we do and this is the value people get out of it. Did you experience something similar? Well, I haven't actually used it yet in that context. Do it. Make it into a testimonial. I have made like a mental note that I should do this debriefing after every project to understand what the needs are and understand how I can facilitate those needs. So hopefully soon I can give you more answers. Yeah, and it's often people, it's hard to define the needs at the start. And sometimes throughout the design process, things come up that you weren't able to articulate at the start. So it's always smart to at the end go over this once again. Like, did we come up with something else that was even more valuable than maybe we anticipated at the start? So yeah. All right, Kiki. Also, if somebody is maybe in a municipality as well, big organization where innovation maybe isn't one of the key core values. Maybe it is, but I don't know. If they are struggling to sell services now, what would you tell them? Yeah, I think it's going to be a bit of a repeat of what I already said, but celebrate the small wins. And if a client comes back or to me, that's already like amazing because I was able to portray what the value was of the work that I did. So yeah, be mindful that the small step in the right direction, even though it's a small step, it's a step. Yeah, so celebrate that. Celebrate the small wins. Yeah, small steps. Definitely reflect on that, cherish them, and then sort of keep moving and grinding forward. Thanks for sharing, Kiki. Really cool. And I'm sure we'll be in touch about your progress. And now I'm moving on and taking the airplane to fly across the North Sea all the way to Birmingham. That's going to be a flight of, I don't know, 90 minutes, maybe even less. Hey, Martin, are you there? Hey, yes, I am. Hey, cool. Hit from London today. London? Well, look at that. That's even shorter. Martin, you'll also have a different background than the previous participants. What do you do? So I've actually recently accepted the job as service design manager at BT before I was service designer. And before that, I worked in-house at a transport authority in the West Midlands. Yeah, so you have quite a lot of experience with big organizations. BT for the people who aren't from the UK is British Telecom. So every country has its own equivalent, so you should be able to relate. Now, I'm guessing that there are many challenges, but if you had to pick one, communicating the value of service design internally, what do you run into? Like what are the challenges? I think that size is the single biggest challenge that we have in that our team in digital is so big that we're constantly running into new people. And because of the size of BT, more generally, if you think of all of our services, they're delivered by tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people. So there's so many silos. There must be thousands of silos in the business, and it's trying to get to speak to everybody and also on board them into the world of service design that they probably haven't happened across before. And what does that mean for your work? That there are so many people, so many silos? It means that often when you think the work is done, there's a lot more work to do and communicating to as many people as possible about service design can be really challenging, just because you never really know who's entirely in the service. Something that I particularly found was when I was working with a design lead from a product design background, I hadn't really experienced service design that much, but it just kind of would say, I don't really get value of what service design is. And when you're used to doing a script, like you can kind of wheel out your five examples of how service design will kind of help because they've done bits of service design. They were like, why is that a separate role? So having to go back to the beginning and kind of convince them that it's a good idea and kind of allow you to give them that aha moment that usually comes whilst you're working on a service design project. Yeah, I can't imagine that. One of the things that I see happening is people improvising on the spot. Now, I definitely think that improvisation is a key skill for any service designer, but it helps to have some grounding and some stories that you own and that you sort of can iterate on, improve, test like you're almost doing stand-up comedy, which is also very rehearsed and practiced. Maybe that's, I think throughout the program we talked about this selling service design to stand-up comedy, but that's a different program. Martin, I'm curious, what did you take away from the program? What was your key insight? I think to continually probe the client problem or our internal problems, but with a really open mindset. I think that I learned a lot from the way that I communicate through the program, especially the kind of showing the pitfalls and kind of the traps that you fall into and I recognized a lot of those in terms of when you're in that big organization, you kind of want to be confident and when something's not going your way so much, you do close up a little bit and you end up having a bit of a closed discussion that's not really going anywhere and this kind of helped me to dig away and kind of bring people with you on the journey by really working with them on their story because they want to succeed as much as you do, right? And especially internally, they want a really big success story and if you can help them get there, then that's great. So taking a fresh approach and communicating differently is what I've taken away from this program. And if you had to summarize when you say I communicate differently or I have a different approach to communication right now, like what's the difference? I think the single biggest difference was that I realized that I was passive listening all the time and I think it is because it's learning a lot and kind of having to take it in but at the same time not engaging in that conversation and that's the single biggest change that I've made to how I'm working in the last couple of weeks and I'm starting to notice the difference in terms of the answers that I'm getting back and the relationships that we're building with my work. So I'm curious if you can share something about that, like what is the difference that you're noticing? So you end up picking up on a lot of smaller cues and things that you can go and investigate. So when I was passive listening, I would be kind of trying to multitask at the same time but now I can really kind of hone in and go, oh that's really interesting. Like today we had a chat with some people that work on our interactive store elements and like all the way through I was kind of being able to think about how that impacted digital and how we could improve the relationship there and then kind of interject with, oh and did you know that we can help with this and we've got all of these things that can kind of, you can inject into the new product that we're building and we ended up just like a way forward that was more conversations but a lot more work and a lot more progress and would have been if I'd kind of gone, oh okay, yeah, yeah okay, yeah that's cool that you're doing that, okay. You're not just consuming information, you're sort of now doing research, you're using these conversations to do research. Yeah precisely and not just saying did you know about this but also kind of finishing off with a question so that the conversation is going somewhere rather than just kind of really close kind of yes no questions that don't go as far. In the program we do a little bit of role play and we practice with different scenarios and these open-ended and close-question scenarios were really a big success so I can imagine that those were good practice rounds. Martin also I would love to hear from you if you could share one tip with somebody who is struggling to self-service design what tip would you give them? For the understand your clients needs and what they're trying to get from it so that you can work towards that with them not just to assume what they're trying to get to. Every client's different. Yeah and fully understanding that might be the ambition if you ever get there that might be a different thing but having that ambition that yeah that's the that's good ambition to have. Also Martin thanks for sharing this is going to be super helpful and yeah good to hear that you're making progress as well. Well I think the next participant is maybe even within the same block as you are. Let's see Lynn where are you right now? Hi Mark, well I'm in London and happy. I'm curious if you could also share what is your role these days? Sure so I'm a services line manager in Carfetch which is an e-commerce luxury fashion marketplace so I've actually worked in the capacity of a research manager prior within Carfetch but certainly just recently started transitioning to services line and sort of finding you know establishing this practice more so across the business so it's just the beginning. Cool welcome on this journey and it's going to be a long one as we've heard. Now that also makes me wonder like if you're just quote unquote starting out of course you have an entire career already but starting out in services line why did you feel that a program like selling services with confidence would be something that would help you that would benefit you? Well that's a great question. I initially wanted to learn more about how I can be receptive to the different stakeholders that are around our business function that I'm in which I sit in the consumer product business function so obviously working with marketing or let's say B2B functions across the business strategy I think it was really just to help me sort of make a case for what we can do beyond just the short term and so I wanted to make sure I can resonate with those stakeholders through this course that hopefully will give me the tools to speak business language in the context of design which is the blind spot for them. Was it like a pre-emptive move that you thought well this is something I'm probably going to run into or did you already had some experience with maybe conversations that didn't go as you planned? I'm pretty sure I knew that this is going to be a challenge in selling it just because I think the company itself is quite tech driven to begin with so there's a lot of reactive sort of initiative prioritizations across the business so a lot of times we felt we were sort of in the dark about well why are we actually doing this? What is the value? Yes we see the business value but what's the actual customer value and coming from a consulting career in the past like that was sort of drilled into me to at least ask those questions and understand the problem from that angle so I kind of knew this is something that was missing especially when you're looking at a lot of different stakeholder presentations and business cases there's never a customer case or there's never a customer angle that's sort of human so I think that element of the story felt is something that could potentially be addressed via service design and taking our stakeholders along that path so yeah I did expect it I didn't expect it to be this difficult but you know I think we're starting to you know shape some good relationships in that direction Yeah it's not bad that these are challenging and tough conversations right it's part of it and what's interesting about your context is that you're like you said in a product driven, deck driven environment and more and more service design professionals are in those environments which is on one side it's great because we're getting to sort of infiltrate and evangelize this practice within those environments as well but often you are up against an army of engineers and you have to sort of keep your ground and yeah confidence helps with that also I'm curious to hear from you if you look back at the last six weeks of the program you did a lot of things put in a lot of work but if you had to pick one thing that you took away or that you'll remember as a key lesson what would that be? I think for me because I'm trying to make sure design as a mindset service design as a mindset is embedded in our stakeholders approach or at least have them open to it I think for me is really trying to help reframe things that are very specific and zooming out I think that was a really nice takeaway zooming out to the problem area and identifying a problem worth solving for and I think some of the things that were mentioned prior around how do you bring business goals and customer value closer together like how do you correlate the relationship between those not only stronger but earlier on in the story earlier on in your dialogue with the stakeholder I think will really help at least become a starting point but also a reference point later on when the work has already begun and I think it's really strong to have that as a backbone so I think that's my main takeaway so far which you know hopefully I'll continue to practice and exercise because every case is a bit different but I think for me at this point that was a strong takeaway and this is similar to what Kiki also mentioned like getting into the conversation in the earlier stages where you're able to sort of put this into practice that you have some is there something that gives you a glimmer of hope that this is actually possible yeah I mean I think there's so many different projects going on at Farfetch and the quite lofty projects around you know themes as you may know like sustainability being a big thing in fashion or even loyalty but I think I have seen it as in within sustainability we've got these lofty 2030 business goals and it seems great and it's out there but how do you drill it back down to the customer experience and it sometimes that's sort of a void around what the customer proposition is in terms of how we actually might get there from 2023 to 2026 all the way to 2030 and so I think I've been able to sort of use the techniques that were discussed in this program to again go back to what are the things that are the actual moments of experience that has a an implication to the business goals like how do we make those the relationships visible and evident in the storytelling so I think I've seen more of that come through in my recent conversations with our sustainability product team and we're hoping to draft a you know a sort of execution strategy to get to that lofty 2030 goal but I think it's a really good you know light at the end of the tunnel here where I'm seeing it sort of you know open people's minds up a little bit about the the outcomes yeah and that's that's also I'm going to refer back to Kiki like those are the small wings like if you can open the minds up and it it's a process it's a journey it's going to take time have patience or if you don't have patience move to a different organization probably which which is going to have its own struggles by the way so yeah also a question to you Lynn maybe no let me rephrase it just like this like the tip the ultimate or single tip you wish you maybe would have gotten before the program about communicating the benefits of service design oh man there's so many to refer back to um I think for me it's just getting people excited about the vision and the outcome and then working together to create missions that are worth you know going towards together and and bringing that momentum toward that vision together so I mean it's quite like a lofty easy thing to say but I think at least that structure for me is if you don't have a vision it's really hard to gain momentum even from the beginning so I think I think kind of going back to something I think you said in some of the course instructions around you know it's an art and a science and an emotion plays a role in it after all we are people and complex problems involves people and so I think that emotional element is quite key all right that's a that's good tip and it's like with all these things it's communicating the benefits selling it building the confidence it's a lived experience and you have to practice it then you sort of have to make mistakes and then that's the way you learn and yeah with all these things it takes it takes time and practice art and science like you said thanks for sharing Lynn and I think we are ready to move on to the last but definitely not least participant in this episode and that is Joe Joe are you there yes I'm here hi Mark hey Joe good to see you also the question to start with could you give us a brief introduction about who you are and what you do these days yeah sure and so I run a small service design agency in Cardiff in Wales I work mostly with public sector organizations and third sector I started off doing consultancy but I've more lately moved into doing a lot more kind of capability and skills building with people and so learning and development programs yeah yeah that sounds cool and it's interesting again a different profile in this in a small community now if you do training and you're doing consulting like what were some of the challenges you experienced with regards to communicating the benefits of service design I suppose I could kind of put that into two camps if you like so the initial thing that made me want to look at doing this was I was being asked by participants on our long six month program how do we influence others in our organization and you know I have my views on that but I thought this course might help kind of build my toolkit to help share with them some some tips and methods that they could use and I've certainly gone away with a few ideas on how I can communicate that to and help build their toolkit in turn but also I'd had a few kind of consultancy project things that I put in and they didn't turn into work so I was like what can I do about this and how can I learn some better techniques to kind of bring people on the journey with me rather than kind of throwing the thing over the wall and hoping for the best that's an interesting strategy I've tried that a lot but it didn't work for me either so that's maybe also one of the reasons why I started researching how to actually do this kind of work so a two-folded question approach really interesting to hear which things you're going to communicate to your students and participants but we'll do that maybe in a later conversation for now I would like to focus on what did you take away from the last six weeks because like you said it's a lot but if you had to pick a thing well I think the big kind of overall takeaway is rather than kind of telling people stuff is ask them loads of questions so that's the kind of big overall takeaway is really listen to understand so that you can kind of walk in their shoes and as I'm saying that out loud it's a bit like you know eating our own dog food people say don't they you know this is what we're teaching people to do all the time but actually you know sometimes it's worth holding a mirror up and going hang on we should take some of our own medicine here so yeah asking lots of questions open questions to really understand you know what their challenges are and how you can add real value I think one of the other things is to not just think of service design activity as a cost and to think of the the long-term value that this can be this can provide and the knock on from that is thinking about how we measure the the outcomes from the work we do which needs to be thought about upfront when you when we do the projects themselves so yeah once I start thinking about these things it all kind of connects with growth it's it's interesting to sort of focus on the thing where you mentioned looking at service design not as a cost because I don't recall who said it in this conversation but service design becomes like the last thing that you sort of invest in when there is money left maybe or there's time left how do you frame it these days if it's not a cost how do you talk about it and investment and you know what what value does this bring in the the medium to longer term and kind of don't just think about short-termism you know this is about providing long-term value and like I said at the beginning a lot of my clients are public sector organizations so I'm thinking not just about I suppose the bottom line it's quite easy to measure success perhaps or probably not easy but it's easier to measure if the work you do impacts on the bottom line but thinking a bit more creatively perhaps about how this work can kind of I think the phrase you use is stop the leaking bucket you know increase compliance for example in public sector services and help organizations achieve their kind of strategic outcomes or priorities like how can we map what we're doing to achieving those goals yeah and this is one of the big struggles where for that service design often is something that pays off on a long medium to long term and people you have to find the right clients you have to find the right challenges they often don't present themselves right away you have to look for them search for them try to connect yourself your skills your toolkit with those bigger challenges but yeah that there's there is a way to do that yeah definitely yeah now is there is there something you you learned that you were able to apply and now if you look back my question is maybe has your approach changed yes I'm much more thoughtful about conversations and I probably will plan conversations ahead like thinking okay what's the goal here you know what are some of the things I need to find out from from this conversation rather than just picking up the phone and launching it yeah yeah and that's the inter again that's a sort of it's good to reiterate that because if we are go and do our job and do research we prepare we we are really particular about preparing and thinking about stuff and making tools and making sure that we get the information and data we want and somehow when it comes to talking with stakeholders or clients we sort of wing it often and have hope and as our best strategy well that doesn't have to be the case we can there are so many things we can do to make sure that the conversation is more productive more fruitful even if you get to a no right that's also one of the things we talked about in in the program getting to an hour is also a result well yeah and understanding why you know if someone says no it's not just that's not just the end of the conversation really understanding and digging under the note and to find out why and you know being prepared to walk away but actually understanding understanding why they're there and then might mean that you can actually take a few baby steps towards turning that into a yes ultimately in the longer run it's a no for this specific challenge maybe but it might be it might open up a door to a different challenge like there are so yeah there are so many opportunities and again if you approach this as a journey rather than a transaction then it's just it's just another moment in this in this journey so Joe if we have to summarize and recap and you have the opportunity to give the final tip in this episode what would you say to somebody who's also maybe struggling to sell services I think I'm really understanding the language of leaders and the finance people and speaking their language enough you know you're not going to become an accountant tonight but speaking their language enough but yeah you can you can connect with each other and that is something you can just learn like learning the vocabulary and you don't have to like you said become an accountant but at least understand some of the terms that you are able to ask better questions more grounded questions I think that's very easy and very smart strategy sometimes I compare this to like if you travel to a distant country one of the ways to get the best tips for where you should be dining is to learn a few local words just greeting somebody in their local language is going to give you so much more empathy and probably a lot more better food dining tips and it's the same goes with the clients we work for like if we learn the language and drop in a few words then that's going to create trust that's going to create empathy and make our life easier and more fun that's my summary of what you just said yeah I really hope that you enjoyed this episode and learned something new how to communicate the benefits of your work in a professional context is something that we need to keep addressing in our community therefore I'm really grateful that these seven professionals were willing to come on the show and share the journey with us if you sometimes also feel stuck and frustrated because you can't seem to get the people around you to buy into the value of your work and you see that this is preventing you from working on more meaningful and rewarding challenges well then developing the skills to sell surf design with confidence might just be the right step in your career as I shared at the start of the episode the third and final cohort of the program is scheduled for October that could be a few months away depending on when you're listening to this episode but there's already a waiting list that you can join getting your name on that waiting list increases your chance of securing a spot in the program as there is a limited number of seats available for all the details and instructions on how to join the waiting list head over to servicedesignshow.com slash confidence so that's servicedesignshow.com slash confidence and you'll also be able to find this link in the show notes of this episode my name is Mark Fontijn and I want to thank you for being part of this community keep making a positive impact and I'll get you very soon in a brand new episode of the service design show see you then