80% of Companies believe they deliver a Superior Service, only 8% of Customers agree.
Lean Service Design changes the way you think about business. No longer can companies focus their efforts on 
process improvements. Instead, they must engage the customer in use of their product/service rather than analyzing tasks for improvement. We no longer build and hope that there is a demand. We must create demand through our product/service and Lean Service Design is the enabler of this process. It changes our mindset of thinking about design at the end of the supply chain to make it look good and add a few appealing features (all within budget). Instead, it moves design and the user themselves to co-create or co-produce the desired experience to the beginning of the supply chain.
Dan Jones, chairman of the Lean Enterprise Academy www.leanuk.org in the UK pointed out in a Business901 podcast that:
Sales and marketing traditionally were there to get rid of stuff that was already made a long time ago in a forecast driven, long lead time supply chain. So it was about getting rid of stuff.
We are in an era in which customers are part of the supply chain and we can really have a dialogue with customers not just about what they think they’d like, but what they actually would put their money in.
In many ways, we are getting real use data back from customer as well as preference data. The next step is of course to get plan ahead data with customers. Because customers can and do have some knowledge of what they want in the future. But they have no incentive to share it with us in this adversarial consumption mode.
I think there is a great deal happening at that interface and the web is going to change every customer interface in a very positive way, one that empowers customers rather than empowers the providers.
Lean Solutions: How Companies and Customers Can Create Value and Wealth Togetherwas written several years ago expanding the principles of Lean to consumption. The authors, Womack and Jones detailed a Lean roadmap and ask companies to start providing the goods and services consumers actually want, when and where they wanted them and without burden to the consumer. This book serves as the basis for combining the methodologies of Lean and Service Design. The role of a vendor/supplier relationship is changing. It is not about consumption; it is about participation and value co-creation, a basic principle of SD-Logic (The Service-Dominant Logic of Marketing by Stephen Vargo and Robert Lusch).
Many would argue the Lean is about incremental improvement. It does not allow for breakthrough thinking. I agree that SDCA and PDCA and even the continuous mindset may not deliver breakthrough thinking. However, like most things you start one step at a time. The culture of Innovation starts with a culture of continuous improvement. To start with breakthrough thinking is very difficult and typically not successful. You cannot just turn it on. So starting with PDCA and a continuous improvement is the only successful way, to create this “i (little i) culture.
Download the Lean Service Design PDF
Ramping it up and truly doing breakthrough thinking, the big ‘I” is when you must engage and understand your customer/market extremely well. This could be a description of the culture a Lean company from a Scott Anthony FastCompany Post on innovation:
A classic example of this is how a calligraphy class inspired Apple legend Steve Jobs’s emphasis on typography on early computers. The professors then detail what they call the “Innovator’s DNA,” four time-tested approaches successful innovators follow to gather stimuli that spur these connections:
- Questioning: Asking probing questions that impose or remove constraints. Example: What if we were legally prohibited from selling to our current customer?
- Networking: Interacting with people from different backgrounds who provide access to new ways of thinking.
- Observing: Watching the world around them for surprising stimuli.
- Experimenting: Consciously complicating their lives by trying new things or going to new places.
I like to use the term EDCA learned from Graham Hill to designate the Explore aspect of Lean. I view it as more of Design Type thinking content that allows for that collaborative learning cycle with a customer.
Why Lean? Design and Innovation take place outside the four walls and Lean can be the methodology of choice. It drives both the Little i and the Big I. The first and foremost reason is that it allows the 1st step for innovation. Lean is the primary driver for the little i DNA. As a result, it allows for that culture to spread and create the DNA for the BIG I. Without Lean and the little i, you may never start!
Lean Service Design Workshop
Reason you should do this:
Great Products are nice, But Great Businesses add Services to them. – www.fastcodesign.com
Lean Service Design changes the way you think about business. No longer can companies focus their efforts on process improvements. Instead, they must engage the customer in use of their product/service rather than analyzing tasks for improvement. We no longer build and hope that there is a demand. We must create demand through the services that we offer and Lean Service Design is the enabler of this process. It changes our mindset of thinking about design at the end of the supply chain to make it look good and add a few appealing features.
Instead, it moves Design and the user themselves to co-create or co-produce the desired experience to the beginning of the supply chain.
The umbrella of Lean offers Service Design a method of entry into a well-established market. Lean has been very successful in Services and Design through traditional practices. However, we must move away from these traditions and institute a wider scope of Design to Services. This download contains a 130-page PDF book, workbook with forms, PDFs and training videos.
Table of Contents
- Chapter 1 – Lean (SDCA)
- Chapter 2 – Service (PDCA)
- Chapter 3 – Design (EDCA)
- Chapter 4 – Trilogy