 In this episode, we'll be talking about how do you embed design in a process-driven organization. We'll talk about creating the right incentives to do design and finally why we need to talk business and do design. Here's the guests for this episode. Let the show begin. So, hi, I'm Victor and this is Service Design Show. Hi, I'm Mark and welcome to the Service Design Show. This show is all about helping you to design services that have a positive impact on people and are good for business. My guest in this episode has a background in computer science and arts philosophy and he's currently the design director at Lennon Airport. His name is Victor Lidoi. In the next 30 minutes or so, Victor and I will be exploring how do you embed design in a strongly process-driven organization. We'll talk about what it means to create the right incentives to do design and finally why we need to talk business and do design. If this is your first time here on this channel, I'd love to have you to subscribe as we bring new videos on service design every week. And don't forget to click that bell icon so you'll be notified when new videos are out. That's all for the introduction and now let's quickly jump into the interview with Victor. Welcome to the show, Victor. Hi, thank you so much for having me. Awesome. I really can't wait to dive into the topics. You've sent me, they're super interesting. I really like to talk to people who are inside companies having to deal with the internal politics, internal challenges. So I'm really looking forward to your insights. But let's start with the question that I asked all my guests in the past two and a half years and that is, do you recall your very first memory of service design? My very first memory with service design itself is like probably three years ago. It's not that much with service design. I had a long background on UX and digital services and these kind of things. It was like a very small project but very meaningful of changing the chocolate in a plane and it was very, very fun to do. All right. How did you get introduced to service design through chocolate on a plane? The idea was with this background on UX, I had worked in the airline for several years then. I had this opportunity to change in a bigger scope. See not just the experience but the complete experience. And the starting point with this project, I thought it would be super, super easy to go and find an iconic replacement of this chocolate. It was not easy at all. All right. So Victor, you sent me three really cool topics that I can't wait to dive into. I've sent you some question starters. We're going to do interview jazz. So are you ready? Totally ready. All right. Let's do this. Let's do this. Topic number one is called really cryptic. It's the guys and girls, of course, before us. And do you have a question starter that goes along with this one? And can you show it to us? Yeah, I'll say it again. There we go. I'm going to go for the girls and the boys before us. Yes. Looking forward to it. Power clients. Yeah. And the question I would make with that would be something like how did they make to, how did they manage to create great services and good services before design thinking appeared that before services practices were placed in a company like mine. Like it's a hundred year old company, which is something that is being played. It's being recognized for good service and good products as well. It's something that is cool to think about what was before you. Because sometimes we, the design team, the struggle to choose between tools and techniques and ways to get solutions and solve problems. But there is this feeling of this is something new. We are working a new path. We are kind of pioneers working in this. But I like to think on who were the guys who were before and how did they manage to solve this complexity. Exactly. Yeah. Because we've been delivering services like for ages, right? This is not something new. Services have been around for ages. Design has been around for quite a long time. Yeah. And your point is how did we do it back then? Exactly. And it's difficult for me to think in a different way to design services than these practices that we use every day. So when I say, okay, how did you? And I've talked with many of these classic people in the organization that they don't work anymore with us. And you try to understand how did they do with the pattern on that. And they were like kind of senior designers. They had the political influence. They had the direct access, the CEO of the company. So they had a seat on the table where the decision was made. And they had this idea of they used or something that we today, we reject that. We say, okay, no, we need to be rigorous. You cannot make this decision so easily. But somehow have a sense of this intuition, this business intuition or this product intuition. And some of them that the rolling, rolling, we call it hand it out rolling. It was the owner of the Brazilian airline that we merged some years ago. To the boarding area and serve himself to the customer, the food and these kind of things. These guys were very close to the customer in a social way. So all of them were friends of their customers. They had the non-rivolous, non-scientific representation of the customer. And with that, they worked. So they created some sort of airlines according to the, who, sorry with my English a little bit. Yeah, you're doing good. Go ahead. Yeah. We created a version of the airline of the service according to who they were. After this, this team of design era passed in the company, we tried to create a design lab. We created like a bubble. We had this, the company of course changed when the size of the airline is so big that you cannot use these techniques to create design. It gets complicated. And then there are too many decisions to have that direct access to the CEO of the company. We changed to, okay, let's create a different way to do that. Let's adopt a little bit of these ideas of new design, listening the customers with a different set of tools and with a different set of skills of the people that we have. And then we adopted this idea of creating a design lab. Yeah, that's pretty popular right now, right? Every company is doing a design lab or startup innovator, accelerator, bootcamps, right? That's something that didn't work for us. Maybe because we implemented it wrongly or maybe because of the people that they were there or different or, but it didn't work because it was not in the center of the conversation. So the idea of isolating one part of the company and trying to accelerate the decisions didn't work for us because we couldn't manage to be in the center and inside and outside at the same time. It's center for the very high level, you know? And we finally managed to try to solve non-central problems of the airline. So we moved in a place where we could be actionable and this place was not relevant, was not relevant. So the experience we thought the way. So you were by creating like a lab or a bubble, what you gain is probably decision power. You can take action, you have independence, but it's harder for you to work on challenges that are actually relevant to the business or influence the business, yeah. So you create a bubble, you have a budget, you have a resource allocation, so you don't have the power of solving big problems. So you move in a spectrum to try to solve like additional accessory problems, okay? So let's try to focus on, for example, we focus on food, which wasn't very relevant but at the moment was not one of the biggest problems we have or challenges to say in another. So this idea of being in the center or being in the periphery is something that we as a team managed to think a lot. So our challenge is how to be in the middle. If we want to be valuable to the company, if we want to be in the center of this, we need to deliver the value that the business perceived. So we will be the ones putting the customer in the center of this set of decisions. And this was the movement after that, that this is what we try to do and we are managing to do right now. So when you're going back to the center of the operation, maybe that's the best word or the center of the business, putting the customer back in the middle, they did that like in the early days, let's call it that in the good old days. What inspires you or what can we learn from how they approach this and what can we take from that to today? What is your biggest lesson from that age or period or era? Yes, super good. So there's this idea I mentioned before but maybe not in depth but they did the managed decisions with inspiration or with instinct. This idea of we reject this genius design idea but I think we shouldn't reject it that much. So if you want to work with the base, with the speed that the company marks, because it's not often that you are the owner of all the resources of this huge organization, you have a speed that you need to go. If you are two people and you try to apply yourself in committed decision, I need to do these big research and hope we are a multinational company, we are in a club, connected with home markets, we are present in more than 20 countries, 50,000 people, 70 million people move during a year. So it gets hard. So I lost my point. Well, inspiration from them, yeah, what can we learn? So the thing is that you need to go fast and then when you cannot do rewards or as rewards you would like, you need to think this idea of being the service. So I've traveled a lot and this is something that it's maybe not commonly accepted in the design community but you need to do it a little. You need to represent yourself or the company in a set of in a garden of sand that makes sense to the company and to you and to you. All right. So what I'm getting from what you're saying and this has been on the show mentioned a few times and it's really interesting. It's the balance probably between we've had the age of the designer as a rock star, the superstar designer. Now we're moving into the age of the designer as the facilitator of change, right? We're facilitating, we're helping but we're sort of taking ourselves out of the equation so much that, yeah, we lose our personality. We need a method and if it gets only a method then it doesn't work. But then you need too much method to get it to work at the end of the day. And what you're saying is you're finding that if you put, you need to put yourself, your ideas as a designer more forward, be more proactive in that sense. Influence. So you need to be able to fail fast and of course put all the things into place but to be brave is to put these ideas. Okay, maybe this is not the story but let's try. Okay, I'll summarize this and we'll move on to topic number two. But for me the word here is leadership. I don't know if you recognize or share the same word but I think leadership within design is super important also. All right, topic number two. Ready? Ready. All right, this is going exactly as I hoped and this topic is called incentives to design. I'm really getting good at reading these things in flip side. What is your question starter? Okay, I will go with why incentives to design. All right, tell me. The topic, my question would be why should we matter about the incentives that the company has to create good design? The thing here, the point is that how as designers we are perceived inside the organization which by the way, in my organizations we are not many designers. So it's mainly led by process. So it's focused on process and there is strong focus on the front lines. So we deliver a very good service to our customers because the people in the front line have a very strong culture. But people inside the executive positions, they have more process lead. Makes sense. It's like when we have had many design companies to help us to solve problems along the experience, higher scale or lower scale and some of them it has been a success but some of others has been not as successful as we would like. So implementation of the ideas is the hard part. There are many things happening here. When you start to undress these things to deconstruct, okay, what happened here? Why cannot put this idea of transversal themes? We did these scale problems on that. And one of the things that inside of this point is that the incentives that each of the areas have to solve the problems that you are willing to solve. For example, okay, we want to do good to our customers and to our business by reducing the times of checking. You still get a good idea. But reducing times in the checking would make another problem appear. So the people from airports say, okay, man, my approach to the solving this problem of the airport is complete opposite. And then I don't want to put the example there because... But then you have two different positions, two different ways to solve the problem. But one of them has been agreed at the company level as economic incentives behind the themes. And the other one is not. It's something new that appeared there. And so these guys from airport ask you, so why do you want to change that? Maybe we can do more analysis. And maybe when then smoker mirrors appear. So how to do that? Then with me talking about that, it was like, let's work or let's at least start talking about having short walks. So maybe your goal is to have some sort of technology in your airport or some sort of efficiency in your in your points or SLAs, short SLAs, or maybe the point is you want to get to the people to the plane path because then there is another thing that we care about that. Or maybe what's your surface incentives that what are your depth incentives. So understanding that what we are trying to do is like, let's mix the incentives on here. So what if the people on the onboard, the guys that manage the things on the plane and how fast you can, how do you say that? Take off. Take off. Sorry. How fast can you take off? Have the same incentive that the people who are boarding the plane and how exactly the people were in the checking area. So having a design team inside of this conversation or representing not only the processes inside the organization, but the customer PPI outside makes a lot of sense. Yeah. And this is also something I think that is really common for organizations that are built around really structured processes. And that is that each department, each, each, yeah, each department, each silo is managed in their own using the own KPIs. There aren't shared. There isn't a shared KPI, right? That's the difficult part. And so the question is that comes to my mind, have you found a way to actually get beyond this? Because I understand when you're a three month target, your quarterly targets are the things that determine your bonuses, that determine your accreditation, stuff like that. How do you get people to move beyond their own quarterly KPIs? The first step was to set a big, too big probably, but a KPI, which was MPS. All right. Yeah. Yeah. In industry to put that into place. But then the second thing was to have the customer feedback data. So we hired a tool, it's called Medalia. It's super good. It's something that allows us to send the service to our customers in real time. So now we have the ability to say, okay, man, maybe your KPI efficiency, second, it's super cool. But at the same time, I look at the perception of the customer and then something happens here. Then this is a starting point because you need to have a structure of governance that goes along that and, and there's a point. And another part that you want to take and to put it into your innovation process. So the way that you design. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now go ahead because you have to do something with that customer feedback. Yeah. Exactly. So you, once you have that, now we have a, we have a small pilot, not that small, but we are doing with that. But now we are trying to put it in the higher process. So, so how to put customer feedback in a structure way, in a scale, in this, in this huge operational point. But it's one way to go. But the other goal is to help to legitimate the design process to say, okay, it's more valuable. If we, the more results that we have will be more valuable to the designs that we make later. So we're trying to put money behind that. And it's a view of say, let's translate how, how much impact will have our process in general abstractly, not in a concrete project or to the company. We're trying to move the way that we are. So that's like, if you manage to crack that, actually quantifying the added value of the design process for the business, that's, yeah, how, how far, sorry. That they are different tracks. So we are receiving the customer feedback. We are working in, in putting this, all the time this idea of money behind the phone. And there is a third one, which is the design teams talking about having a common language with the operational and process or the rest of the company. Within the KPI. So when we redesigned, for example, we redesigned business class, we did a work on that. All the design principles that we use, we translated it to APIs. So we call the target experience indicators and we say, okay, a continuous improvement. When I'm talking about this big conceptual sentence, what I mean is that this KPI should go down, go up, these other ones should go down. Then you put a common language inside the process that makes easier the flow and to give them a way to see, to say, okay, this guy will, will create a panel and we'll put a semi, semi call, like a red light on near to my KPI. So maybe if I don't follow this, this guy and this KPI will be red, someone will say something to me. So I have an incentive to go and follow this point. So having this common language allows you to talk the same, the same thing across things on the different levels of the earth. That's really, that's really interesting. Yeah, that's really, have you, have you found that any of these three works better? Are you getting better results or is it just all three are super relevant, but just use them in different scenarios? So they are different scales. If you're, when we talk about monetizing the process, you're talking about the director's sweet level. So you're talking with, in that point, but the process you face on doing a project, a concrete project that has a concrete impact on the customer, it's something that is in the people that they're working on that working on the systems on the. So with these people, you say, okay, let's, let's put the KPI as a common language. Let's do it together, co-create, but they not always have the time and not always have the buy-in through the process. So let's put this kind of practices here. And then you hope that all the, I think we're sitting on that. And then medallion, like a kind of a mid-level because it works for the people down and it's been a very, very good experience. And what will the people have because we can see the impact on the business and we can translate to the KPI. Does it make sense? Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And I think it's really important. Also, I'm really curious what the viewers and the listeners of the show think of actually creating common ground and common KPIs. What are your approaches to that? So leave a comment down below, guys. Really interesting. We can talk all day about KPIs, but the next topic, I think also links to this. So let's just move into that one. I'll see where this leads us, right? We were talking about business and money already. So let's continue it in this topic, which is called talk business and do design. Again, the question for you if you have a question starter. Okay. I like this one. I like this one already. How can we? How can we do that? Yeah, that's the thing. My question is why should we do this? Why should we talk design? Why should we talk business and do design? Why shouldn't we talk design? I think it depends on the organization. So it depends on who positions are you in the organization or your methods inside of it and the history that they have. And as well, it matters the point of your organization. Who are you and why are you there and what's your position? How do you compete in the market? So if I'm, for example, in my industry, we have Friar, you are from Europe, you know that. Friar is positioned as a locals company and we are positioned as a full service career, additional career which is moving and but at the end of the day, we all compete for the same cash. We all struggling from the same market. So as you understand, where are you and the culture and the shape and the drivers of your company, then you can decide which strategy to use. For us, coming from this genius design approach, genius which we're not designers, but genius on the place, trying to move with this design lab that move out from the central space in addition to many other things, drove us to this approach. So if we want to have a seat on the table, we need to be able to take care of the problems that the company does. So we need to include the customer problems inside this table and in a way that they and we can agree or they can work with that and manage more and shape the problem in a way that it's good for the company. So what you're basically saying is you have to talk business to get them to understand, to get so that you get a seat at the table. Yeah, exactly. So in my case, so I'm sure that there are many other companies that they don't need to use this kind of a strategy like complicated thing because finally you are trying to translate. There is this idea of I'm working something with them telling something different or I'm shaping it in a way that but I think that is very good for you because for me, because when you put yourself in the approach of the company and say, okay, I don't care about your method, if you want to create a persona or a scenario, you don't care about that, just give me the solution to the problem. It forces you to say, okay, I just did my practice, I just did my beliefs. So now you're challenging me in a way that maybe you don't agree with something that I am, it's an action for me, something that I fully believe, never question. So that creates a, because we are together on that, so we are a company, it's not the designers and the rest of the company or the team and the rest of the company. It's something that you need to take this style of somehow. And our approach here was to move, okay, let's forget about this and let's put the, when the seat on the table, we need to care about the things that they care about with the language. And it's almost the designers. And I think I talked about this with Mauro Puccini, who's the Chief Designer Officer at PepsiCo, that we as designers should be responsible for profit and loss, right? And that should be part of our job. If we want to be taken seriously, if we want to impact the company, then we should take responsibility for, for instance, how profitable a certain department or processes or services, right? You cannot be responsible there. So if you're, you can imagine and you can picture a great service, but it's too expensive for you. Because all this work will not, and when you put this tip on your head and say, okay, I need to design from restriction, I need to design from, from a very holistic point of view, then you're, you're entering same funny with the people of sales. And then you're in the same funny. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why, why is this so hard? Why does it seem so hard for a lot of designers to close this gap? I think that we have like, but there are many kinds of designers as well. But the point of talking about me, you want to create something good, you want to do a good for society and you have the idea of what my friends are traveling there, my family is traveling with this company. Why is the airline company cannot be human, cannot be good? And at the same time, our practices are very human. So we talk to people and we go and really send an interview time and time and we try to synthesize human feelings and design from the feeling. So it's, it's our professional deformation somehow. And it doesn't need to be castrated, but it needs to be like a compliment. It can be done if it matches with the company and it matches with the cost and with the organizational structure. It's feasible, it's rentable. It's something that you can profit off and put all these things on the table, then a better design. It's really interesting. What I like about this topic is maybe it comes down to we have a lot of empathy for customers, for people, for, yeah, for customers. If we had a little bit more empathy for our colleagues, for the people who are not designers within the company, I think we would get much more done and we would be much more impactful probably. Yeah, no problem. Yeah, it's at the end of the day, we are people, people together doing, doing messy, messy governance and stuff. But then the point finally is my, my company is a process driven company. So I go to this train or because trying to create a bubble with my predecessor the guys before me, it didn't work. So now we are putting ourselves in the standards. And this is the cost. It has a cost that we are willing to pay and say, okay, maybe we are, we will not be the more rigorous designers. Maybe we will not be the more, we will use the tools and the things properly. But at the end of the day, we will think of the customer, which is the thing that matters. And we will gain this legacy, legacy, legacy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, as a company, because that helps to shape the decision that we will make. Victor, as always, heading towards the end of the interview, I give people, my guests, the opportunity to challenge us, to ask us a question, maybe there's something on your mind you would like us to help you think about, do you have something, do you have a question for us? Yeah, yeah, I think I have many questions for you. But probably I was thinking on this. Probably it would be, what would you do if you were me and you were trying to do this design, sorry, to embed design in a process-driven organization, but without designers. So the culture of design is very, very few, very, very inexistent. How would you do that? But with culture, with processes, or maybe a top-down approach, maybe try to show value first, and how or maybe you have done that before and you can give me some advice. Cool. Great question. So how do we embed design in a process-driven company that doesn't have a strong heritage in design? Right? Exactly. Cool. Leave a comment down below. I'm really interested to see what people have to say. Victor, that was all we had the time for. So I really want to thank you for sharing the stories from what Steve Fordigal said. It's the war stories. Thank you for sharing your war stories. And I really appreciate that you're open enough to share what you're going through and help us to inspire us on this journey. Yeah, thank you so much for having me and for listening. All right. Thanks, Victor. So what is your tip for embedding design in a process-driven organization? I'd love to hear your thoughts and ideas, so don't forget to leave a comment. 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