On Tuesday I had the pleasure of teaching my \u2018Introduction to Service Design\u2019 course to a group of people from a range of different organisations, including, I\u2019m pleased to add, several people from my own organisation, Cardiff University.<\/p>\n
Service Design is an improvement methodology that is currently quite trendy and to someone who learnt their craft in the \u2018LEAN<\/strong> Enterprise Research Centre\u2019, it can feel quite tense when a new improvement methodology arrives in town. \u2018What are this lot all about then?\u2019 \u2018Will they be able to deliver what \u2018we\u2019 can deliver?\u2019 \u2018Heaven forbid, might they ultimately \u2018win\u2019?!<\/p>\n The privilege of being an academic in a University is that it\u2019s literally your job to investigate new ideas within your subject area of specialism and to think intensely about them. This is something that we were all actively encouraged to do within the Lean Enterprise Research Centre thanks to the inspirational educational leadership of John Bicheno, a globally renowned lean expert but someone who was exceptionally open to new ideas.\u00a0 He actively encouraged exciting new thinkers to come and speak to our MSc Lean Operations students and we were privileged to learn from people like John Seddon and Steven Spear about their approach to improvement and organisational change.\u00a0 John Bicheno rightly believes that improvement and learning go hand in hand \u2013 that if you stopped learning, you stopped thinking, you stopped seeking to understand – ergo your ability to be a true improvement specialist would be massively in doubt.<\/p>\n So when I started to hear bubbles and tiny murmurs about \u2018Service Design\u2019 as a \u2018thing\u2019, I tried to be less \u2018pistols at dawn\u2019 and more \u2018oo what\u2019s this all about then?!\u2019\u00a0 It is really important for me to think about improvement as an evolution of ideas and that each wave of improvement understanding, whether it be quality management, lean, in all of its various forms, six sigma, the theory of constraints, or agile, adds something very important to our understanding of the best way to make work, work<\/em><\/strong>. Indeed, I believe that each new wave emerges, almost deliberately, to counteract the lack of focus, or thought, about a certain important aspect of change that the preceding wave has overlooked or forgotten.<\/p>\n And reader, I really liked what I found. Service Design is deeply focused on customers and not just what they \u2018value\u2019, it asks you to get inside the customer\u2019s soul, what they are thinking and feeling and how their service experience can be completely tailored to these requirements.\u00a0\u00a0 This massively appeals to my penchant for intense emotional experiences and my flair for drama.<\/p>\n