Digitalisation & design thinking effort: This is not a sprint, it is a marathon!
Service Design is still new and exciting, whether we are working with B2C or B2B services. This is both a blessing and a curse, because there’s a lot of opportunities to learn (as well as unlearn). My intention is to help others who are in similar situation to find takeaways and ideas, and also to document my own journey.
Not every industry has been digitally transformed, yet!
The urgency of digitalisation has never been the topic in some industries like oil industry until now. On the top of the public and governmental pressures, with high competition, the entire industry is moving towards carbon neutral and renewables energies faster than ever. (and they should!) They realised a while ago but they have a is giant IT and organisational legacy that makes is very challenging to move.
Current systems, processes are not scalable, they are very old and barely managing matured decreasing market.
Being an in-house designer is a very slow pacing and very rough journey as you can imagine. You need a lot of patience and stability. Your soft-skills play way more important role than working at an agency. In my previous experiences, I worked with the clients that have interest in what I do, clients were really excited about service design thinking and doing. That’s why they hired me!
It is different when you work in an organisation.
I didn’t realise that I have never worked in an environment that service design is not known as a discipline before. Again, this brings a lot of advantages and challenges. This fact puts you in a very different seat than working for clients. At the end of two years, I can see that 70% of my job was soft-training, promoting service design thinking in the wider part of the organisation and navigating corporate politics.
Imagine yourself in the middle of a battlefield where the culture of the organisation is fully against service design, with various stakeholders and internal politics. The only ways to make things happen is by proving that you are valuable, your methods are valuable and probably by fighting for it.
The good thing is that you take over the people that were more than a year in this position. They were doing this job and fighting for design in the organisation and the whole time. From their experience you can learn a lot.
The hardest challenge was to do the work, to show it and prove it. I am excited to share the things that we have done, but it is not easy to convince the management that you are not just a fluff, what you do is really important.
When you design a service, you need to understand the organisation and its structure, politics and goals. You need to know what was the design thinking like in the moment you joined, how and by whom it was applied and how you could use it. To be successful in your work, you need to be able to understand and navigate the context in which you operate.
Navigate the context
You need to know how the organisation works and what the organisation is trying to achieve. Those factors will affect you in many ways. Every organisation is different, differs in size and tends to be different specialised areas, but they are all connected in one way or the other. I always say that it is like a tree that needs nurturing, pruning and keeping it alive.
It is worth doing! As a designer, you will have an opportunity to work on projects that will help the company to move towards doing business in a sustainable way. Projects that help employees to save energy, to use less plastic and to make decisions that are environmentally friendly. Projects that help employees to take good care of their health. It is a huge opportunity to be a part of this change. Change is good.
As a designer, you have an opportunity to develop this thing further, to understand the context fully, to find the right people that can help you to do your work. You will have opportunity to engage with people that you wouldn’t have this opportunity to meet otherwise.
You have an opportunity to be a part of creating the change, not just promoting it.
The impact is huge and even though you will face a lot of challenges, it is worth doing.
end of Part 3/7
This is a series of seven posts on working in service design in an organisation.
I have revised, recollected and reframe my notes into these posts. Each one focusing on different perspectives. I hope you find it interesting. If you like my writing and want to read more from me please say a few words so I can understand where my interests are most appreciated.
Originally published at https://www.giraykirmizi.com on January 17, 2022.
