Service Design via a Design Thinker ebook
By · CommentsDesign Thinker, Arne van Oosterom, Partner at DesignThinkers in Amsterdam was my podcast guest recently. This is a transcription of the podcast. Arne is also a lecturer and chairman of the Service Design Network, Netherlands. He works with a broad range of associates around the world, and in a network allowing them to be extremely flexible to the customers’ demands and up to date with the latest design and design thinking methodologies. One of these latest design thinking methodologies is Service Design, and that was the topic of our conversation.
Related Podcast: Service Design through the Eyes of a Design Thinker‘
Related Information:
Service Design through the Eyes of a Design Thinker
Do you co-create value with your Customer?
A Service Design Thinking Primer
What’s New in Business Model Generation?
Lean Sales & Marketing Summit Announced
By · CommentsI am honored to be included on the same agenda with noted author, speaker, and lean pioneer Bill Waddell. On April 17th, Bill will be presenting
Aligning the Entire Organization to Achieve the Sales Strategy. He will show you how to devise a sales and marketing strategy built around creating the most value for your customers; how to set prices strategically, rather than on the basis of standard costs, assuring that prices will not cause you to lose a sale. We will align the entire company around assuring the success of the sales strategy, with a focus on maximizing value for your customers and using lean tools to eliminate everything that is not contributing to the prices you charge. When we are finished you will see a clear and practical path to devising a practical plan to creating and accomplishing a sales and marketing strategy, and succeeding not by becoming the lowest cost and price competitor, but by becoming the highest value source in your markets.
The next day, I will be presenting Using Lean to Create Repeatable and Scalable Sales and Marketing Systems: A Customer Centric Approach Through Lean. The workshop will be two-thirds presentation and one-third interactive exercises. A partial listing of the subject matter:
- Why value can no longer be defined by what the customer will pay for.
- The New Rules of Marketing in a Demand – Driven World
- The Marketing Gateway of EDCA > PDCA > SDCA
- Lean Engagement Team
- Leader Standard Work for Sales and Marketing
- Achieving Mastery
All Participants will receive a Marketing with Lean workbook to include a CD that will contain the four published books in the series; Lean Marketing House, Marketing with PDCA, Marketing with A3s and The Lean Engagement Team.
- Learn how Lean Sales and Marketing is essentially a knowledge transfer system; it’s a training system on how to define knowledge gaps and close them. Not from the perspective of educating the customer but from the perspective of learning from the customer and understanding how your customer uses and benefits from your product or service.
- Learn how to let your customer be the professor, the Sensei, who will take you through their decision making steps and how to improve your reactions to these steps in a systematic way.
- Learn how to apply the Marketing Gateway of EDCA to PDCA to SDCA.
- Learn how Leader Standard Work is the foundation of Lean Sales and Marketing and the fundamental process that replaces the “Silver Bullet” found in most typical marketing jargon.
- Learn how to take responsibility for finding and creating demand.
- Learn what makes Lean Sales and Marketing so incredibly powerful.
Lean Sales and Marketing is built upon the philosophy that there has been a subtle shift to knowledge as the way to engage, develop and retain your customer base. Your Lean Engagement Teams must act as a vehicle to cultivate ideas not only within their four walls but more importantly from their customers and markets. Successful Sales and Marketing departments are no longer just responsible for getting the message out but also for developing strategies to get the customer’s message in. The ability to share and create knowledge with your customer has become the strongest marketing tool possible. Lean Thinking is the fundamental process needed to achieve this but it must be viewed from the demand side of the supply chain. We no longer live in a world of excess demand and supply side thinking is no longer valid. Learn how to change your mindset and bring continuous improvement to your sales and marketing through Lean. Join me in Indianapolis on April 17th to listen to Bill and stay the following day to participate with me on April 18th.
The host of this event is Lean Frontiers. They provide high-quality, laser-focused events aimed at integrating organizational silos in support of the lean enterprise. These focused events provide an ideal venue for like-minded professionals to explore the common issues they face in supporting lean. Upcoming Workshops will held in Fishers, IN (Indianapolis Suburb).
P.S. If you buy the book series before the event and attend, I will refund the purchase. Marketing with Lean Series – 4 Pack.
This event will sell out!
My initial interest for this podcast was the perspective of Design from an Architect’s viewpoint. How does it differ from an industrial engineer or even an industrial designer, or other Design fields such as marketing? What makes an architect thought process different? I was surprised not in the answers that I received from my guest, Zachary Evans, an architect and partner at Kelty Tappy Design, Inc. What did surprise me is the lens that they looked at things. In musical terms, they were not the composer of magnificent musical piece but rather the orchestra leader that enable a variety of talents to perform at their best for the audience (the customer).
I might have been just lucky selecting the right architect to interview but I found that the strength of design was in the collaborative ability of the designer. There was no shying away from customer involvement, it was welcomed and actually a sign of failure if it was not solicited. Thinking like an architect has many similarities to SD-Logic (The Service-Dominant Logic of Marketing by Stephen Vargo and Robert Lusch) where the premise that products and services only create the opportunity to provide value. Value is created only when the customer uses the product or service. Enabling the use is the central theme of most architecture and Zach does a good job in relating that concept. 
Download Podcast: Click and choose options: Architect or go to the Business901 iTunes Store.
Zachary Evans is an architect and partner at Kelty Tappy Design, Inc., a Fort Wayne architecture, planning, and urban design firm. A Ball State University graduate (Muncie, Indiana), Zach holds professional architectural registrations in Indiana and Ohio and is certified by the National Council of Architectural Registration Boards (NCARB). He is an active member of the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Fort Wayne Chapter, and currently serves on the City of Fort Wayne (Indiana) Downtown Design Review Committee.
Related Information:
Should your Organization start Thinking like an Architect?
How to Design like an Architect
An Architects view of Prototyping and Modeling
What’s New in Business Model Generation?
Critical and Creative Thinking benefits the Problem Solver
We accept that Architects have an ability to design pleasing structures. I feel another part of their repertoire is equally as important; It is the ability to visualize the change needed between current and the future state and to successfully chart the path for evolving to it. You may believe that these traits are common in organizations through engineering, project management and operations but Architects do it a different way. They do it through the lens of design.
How do Architects think? A study, Thinking like an Architect. by Kyle Gabhart explores the subject of architects and how they view and ultimately solve problems.
The overwhelming indication here is that building-style toys (LEGOs, blocks, Lincoln Logs, etc.) were a favorite toy of those individuals that eventually grew up to become architects. Could it be that the abstract thinking and pattern-recognition that is inherent in building-style toys was already being developed and enhanced at such an early age? The second contender is board games, which has a strong component of rules sets and also pattern-recognition. Here again, the impressionable mind of the future architect may already be creating mental categories, placeholders, and thought patterns for future architecture activities.
LEGOs is not that surprising but another part of the survey listed these results:
- 53.08% of respondents studied / trained with a musical instrument
- 36.97% pursued mathematics studies beyond the basics required by a degree program
- 22.27% engaged in formal singing activities, including music theory and sight-reading
What does that tell us? A background in music may mean a great deal of regimented practice and the ability to take instruction. In combination with LEGOs it shows the ability to build on an existing process and achieve future results. It may also say a lot about teamwork, since many that play music in high school participate in the band.
Architects offer traditional core services but they also balance human, technical and business factors as well, managing these factors to achieve their outcomes. Architects build and coordinate teams from a variety of services. Just doing this within our own organizations seems insurmountable at times. Think about outsourcing your entire business?
Our products/services are increasingly become more strategic. We must enable the use of our product/service to serve clients more effectively and to increase customer engagement. Architects add a great deal of value to this thought process. They have always started with customer engagement in their design practice. Design is not an afterthought, it is the reason for engagement. There is no such thing as features and benefits at this point. That only comes through a definition of the needs of the clients. Interesting?
Tomorrows podcast is with Zachary Evans, an architect and partner at Kelty Tappy Design, Inc., a Fort Wayne architecture, planning, and urban design firm.
Related Information:
Define the Expectation, Delight the Customer
Lean Engagement Team Book Released
How to Design like an Architect
Co-Creation and Open Innovation from HYVEinnovation
An Architects view of Prototyping and Modeling
