The challenge
I was brought into the organisation’s leadership team, were I was accountable for the experience-led digital transformation teams. The Global lead for the practice hired me, and gave me the opportunity to grow the UK business from almost scratch.
My approach
I needed to structure an approach. I spent my first three months listening to workers, learning the ecosystem, and figuring out what change needed to happen. From there, my planning was heavily framed by both the group and the central operating functions.
I defined the practice strategy, aligning with Global, and ensuring we were on track to developing a leading capability in the UK. With clarity in mind, I defined our practice priorities to ensure that as we scaled, everyone would know what was demanded of them.
I was held to growth and margin targets, and had to continually make the case for design alongside my technology-focused colleagues. Ultimately, my plan was successful, and over time, the actions I took resulted in much greater organisational design maturity.
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Problems to solve first:
- Consulting business not selling design
- Convincing designers to join us (helping HR)
- Landing repeatable processes and growing mastery
- Deepening the practice (crits, community)
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Then once we're gaining traction:
- Finding better ways to fit the new cx team into technology world
- Measuring impact to gain budget for growth
- Continuing mentorship and growth
What did good look like?
In the case of this team, operationalising design thinking meant bringing about a series of outcomes. These manifested in a set of culture shifts and established operating standards:
- Senior execs welcomed and supported my practice leadership and growth
- CX and design practitioners were embedded into sales and solution-shaping processes
- Landing a set of practice assets and solutions to increase speed and maintain quality
- Getting the business to a place where CX practitioners would both join us, and grow with us
- Working closely with central ops functions to agree how to deploy practitioners the right way
Some success measures:
The first year was very difficult, with high studio churn the hardest part to cope with. Over time, things got better and by the time I was ready to move on, the team was in flow:-)
- Team recognised as guides by customers in their adoption of digital across the enterprise
- Generated FY2 £2.5M in billings (includes £1.5M offshore billings) £5M in FY3
- Established design consultancy as wedge offer for wider services business
- Supported £10M+ presales activity in FY3
Feedback?
My manager was kind enough to give me some feedback:
“…This was a really challenging role taking a very technology centric culture and instilling a design oriented perspective. Dug did an outstanding job. He built a team from scratch and was clearly seen as a role model and mentor by them. His approach to team building shows empathy and insight. He opened a number of new accounts and developed our credibility with our parents. He also developed a pan-Global network for the UK business in the company context. Perhaps most importantly, despite significant challenges he started the company’s journey to think about problems in a different way…”
Can I help you solve a similar problem? dug@goodlookslikethis.com