Recap: SDTO Book Club Event #2 with Marc Fonteijn
Due to stormy and unpredictable Toronto weather, after a few false starts we ended up running this year’s first Service Design Toronto (SDTO) book club event as online on February 12th!
Our second SDTO event featured guest Marc Fonteijn, of the hugely popular Service Design Show (YouTube channel and podcast). He is also the founding partner of 31Volts, a leading service design agency in the Netherlands.
Marc answered the questions from the attendees in a recorded Q/A earlier to the event, which was shared with the attendees.
During the event, we read chapters from two different books and also had a conversation on few questions shared below.
Book 1: The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action
Chapter 8: Turning Knowledge into Action
Book 2: Meeting Design: For Managers, Makers, and Everyone
Why should you read The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge into Action?
Marc: As service designers, we often work in big organizations where we struggle to get ideas into reality. This book explains why organizations experience the knowledge-doing gap (when organizations “know” that the should do something yet they don’t do it). The book makes the case for how Service Designers can bridge the gap between insights and actions. It’s a cornerstone book that anyone interested in Service Design should read.
How might we help people new to the ‘learn-by-doing’ style of working that is inherent in service design? It’s a difficult transition for people and organizations accustomed to a ‘knowing-before-doing’ style. — Jason King
Marc: Measure what matters, and in ways that connect ‘means’ to ‘ends.’ If we want to gain and sustain momentum, we need to choose metrics that answer two questions:
1) How do we know (and prove) that we’re making real progress?
2) How does this contribute to our organization’s priorities?
How do you help people “get out of their own way”? Often, organizations are fixed in their ways and reluctant to innovate because it means changing “the way it’s always been done”. How can we overcome this?
Marc: As the saying goes, “we expect our colleagues to change instead of changing ourselves”. Perhaps Service Designers need to change by doing two things:
1) Empathize with the feared consequences of ‘failing fast’ or ‘failing forward.’
Someone steeped in a ‘knowing-before-doing’ environment will have real fears of rapid prototyping.
- What happens for them when (not if) one of their prototypes doesn’t go as well as they hoped?
- What consequences do they fear from their leaders and peers?
Once we understand this, we can find ways to encourage a sense of safety for them.
2) Understand how teams are rewarded to get buy-in for new initiatives
To get buy-in for new initiatives in organizations, teams should understand how the other teams measured and rewarded. Without this understanding, you can’t articulate what is in it for them, and without that, the new idea will not gain traction.
Why should you read Meeting Design: For Managers, Makers, and Everyone?
Marc: Service Designers have to create design materials that allow our solutions to get into reality. One of the design materials that we work with are meetings. Meetings are a key element of the organization and mastering meetings is necessary to have organizational impact.
What are the possible ways to design “pre-meetings” before the official meeting?
Marc: Let’s not be naïve, as the adage goes, “the meeting starts before the meeting”. In any organization, there will be “pre-meetings” — these come in many forms, including in the calendar invite framing the purpose of the meeting, the two attendees who always take lunch together, another totally unrelated project that happens to also draw on the same attendee list.
Rather than fight this reality, accept it and work with it. As Service Designers, we have the ability to look at things as a holistic journey.
Understand that there are Three Acts of the meeting, “pre-meeting”, “meeting”, and “post-meeting” and flex your facilitation skills during all Three Acts.
Looking to continue to level-up your Service Design game? Need motivation to dig into the abundant Service Design literature? Look no further than the SDTO book club! Service Design Toronto (SDTO) is a bi-monthly book club event organized in Toronto. The next event is on 20 June, 2019.
Thanks to Jason King and Ken Kongkatong for sharing their takeaways. A big thank you to the volunteers: Elena Glebkovskaya and Ken Kongkatong for crafting this article and a special thanks to Taylor Kim for her editing expertise.
