The Service Organization: How to Deliver and Lead Successful Services, Sustainably

by Kate Tarling

in some books, the advice can feel like your house is on fire while someone shows you a house that isn’t on fire and tells you to make yours more like that.

Rather than power and ownership, this model entails guardianship: a culture of individuals who care about the whole and not just their own part, who place value on working together and who are open to learning from one another.

The more that influence and power is shared between people, users, groups and communities, the harder it is to balance trade-offs and make hard decisions for which there will never be consensus.

there are always useful questions to ask. What do we need to learn and get evidence about that would help steer us one way or another? Does a course of action go against important principles, morals, ethics or standards? How flexible and reversible is the commitment or course of action if we’re wrong? What are the true constraints on what is possible in this situation? How can we undertake testing – in reality, with very small numbers – to learn what it takes to reduce risks?

For strategy to be effective, it needs clarity of vision that’s ambitious enough to set future direction but practical enough to guide what teams actually do.

Strategy is useful when it has an opinion.

Service teams deliver valuable changes for users, operations and organization outcomes. Some organizations will call these product, delivery or digital teams.

Depth teams research and resolve complex issues and topics or undertake specialist analysis or development on behalf of other teams.

Common-capability teams develop and iterate supporting capabilities: the internal products, tools or processes that services need, as well as ways to make the other teams faster, safer or better.

Enabling teams do everything else that’s needed to support, assist, defend and unblock all the other teams and individual disciplines.

Coordinating teams help direct, connect and communicate when there is a lot of activity across a service or multiple services. They develop strategy, figure out delivery approaches in a complex landscape, or coordinate a response when significant events take place. They can also be involved in assessing and constructively challenging work.

Operational teams deliver, operate and improve services and important capabilities on an ongoing basis. This includes user-facing frontline and behind-the-scenes activity, customer support and contact handling, and other specialized teams involved in service provision.

Service teams shouldn’t be restricted to using technology, design, process, data or infrastructure as the only means to achieve changes, but should look at all aspects that realistically play a role.