The Job You Were Hired for Doesn't Actually Exist / Zac & Jeff / Inside Service Design #15

The job that you've been hired to do probably isn't the job that you've been hired to do. I know that sounds a bit like a riddle, right? But if you've ever worked in house, you know it's just another Monday. Our guests today both have learned this the hard way. One of them published an honest research report on the company internet and got invited for a friendly chat with management. The other redesigned a workshop agenda nobody asked for one month into the job. Both did exactly what they were hired to do. And guess what? That turned out to be the problem. Welcome back to Inside Service Design, the series where we skip the polished case studies and talk about what driving change from the inside actually looks like. Messy, human, and often slightly political. My name is Mark Fontine and for this conversation, we are joined by guests from both sides of the ocean. Zack Hazy started in digital marketing, spent years building websites, and kept running into the same discovery. The website was almost never the real problem. That itch took him all the way to Estonia for a master's in interaction design. And today, he's a senior consumer experience designer at Kaiser Permanente, one of the largest healthcare systems in the United States. The title doesn't say service design anywhere, but the work does. Jeff Hogwarter, a fellow Dutchman, studied interior design, then museum and exhibition design in England and spent 10 years building museums everywhere from China to Kurasau. Then he switched to service design without ever having heard of UX, grew into a lead service design role and stayed for almost 5 years. And by the time that you are hearing this, he has transitioned into a new government job. In this conversation, we end up spending a big chunk of our time talking about job hunting. And honestly, I'm not even mad about it. You'll hear what to do when a job description is so full of buzzwords that you withdraw your own application. Why Jeff practiced his interview answers out loud with an AI coach and how his biggest lesson fits into a single word shorter. Jeff shares the concept of the unofficial map. how to figure out where decisions actually get made before you waste months on something that was already decided in the back room. And Zach asks whether every single service really needs to be delightful. Sometimes the best service is the one that you barely notice. And the light should be dessert, not the main meal. And make sure to stick around for the professional bloopers because we have a lot of them. As always, these conversations started at the dinner table sessions inside the circle, our community for in-house service professionals, a space where currently over 75 members from 20 different countries meet every single month to learn from each other and grow together. We just wrapped up our season on the political organization and our new season, the business logic, is already running. If you want a seat at the table, have a look at show.com/circle. But for now, let's find out what the job really is. Here are Zack and Jeff. Welcome to the show, Jeff. and Zach. >> Hi Mark. >> Hey. Good to have you on. Uh a fellow Dutchman and uh somebody from Baltimore, USA. Always nice to have an international representation here on the show. We're going to talk about in-house inside service design. That's the title of the series that we are been doing for almost a year now. I think uh you've both got some uh opinions about that, some experience related to that. We'll also um dive into some of the uh community sessions that you recently hosted in the circle unpacking the political organization. But before we dive into all of that, we often like to start with how your journey started. So Zach, if I can start in this case with you. um could you give us some background and backdrop of how you got into service design and maybe like if you can share a little bit about how you got into the position you are today so that's a big question but like did you did you study service design do you have a I don't know how did you get here >> yeah so I I didn't start off studying service design I studied uh communication actually in undergrad um and out of university many years ago go. I uh I started off working in a digital marketing agency. Um so I was agency side digital marketing specifically for a number of years and that sort of progressed into me becoming interested in web design and web development um and wanting to sort of be on the on the building end of that work. Um so I did web design and web development for a number of years mostly in a freelance capacity for smaller businesses but uh also worked in a couple of agencies in that role. And what I started like discovering these problems kept cropping up um was that businesses would come to us or come to me and they'd say like, "Zack, we need a new website to to solve business problem X, right? Like for we need more sales and the b the website's the problem or um we're not getting enough um like brand recognition and the website's the problem." And more often than not, as I started to doing a bit of discovery, the website was not the real problem. it was some other business issue further upstream that I wasn't being hired to to to solve at the moment. And if I would try to raise that in a conversation, usually it was politely shut down and just said like, "Hey, like we hired you to build the website, like just go do that thing, right?" And it was around that time where I was having these sort of recurring conversations um that I sort of discovered like design thinking, specifically the design sprint methodology with with the book with Jake Knap came out. Now it's very popular. Uh, and then just like human- centered design as as a more broad discipline. And I got really interested in like this idea of design not only as like an aesthetic way to make things look nice, but an approach to solve problems, right? Like a strategic tool that you could use. Um, so I went down that rabbit hole a little bit and and that sort of introduced me to this master's program in Estonia that I pursued in 2022. So I got my masters in interaction design from the Estonian Academy of Arts. Um and that sort of has led me to where I am at now, which is sort essentially applying service design, human center design, whatever we want to call it, whatever flavor you're into. Um to problems in healthcare. So I work for a large healthare system here in the US. Um and I think Mark, your second part of that question was how am I how did I get that role in system? >> Yeah. Yeah. Was there was there uh a position open for a service design professional or was there a different label? >> Yeah, so that's a really good good question. So my current title as it is is not doesn't have service design in it. So it's I'm I'm currently a senior consumer experience designer or CX designer on the consumer experience architecture team within the larger enterprise consumer and patient experience department at this healthcare system. So, in no way is that sort of tied directly to service design, but the day-to-day work that I do and that my team do is is very much aligned with how we would all define service design. It's it looks just like what service designers are are are doing in other organizations. The way that I got this role was was quite random. I I reached out to someone on LinkedIn who was doing interesting work in healthcare and and I was interested in connecting with this person and learning a bit more about them. We had a nice conversation um and she suggested, hey, like I know this team um at Kaiser Permanente, which is the healthcare system I work for, is is hiring designers. You might want to look into it. And at first I read the job description and I was like, this is not for me at all. >> But I thought, why not, right? Like I'll apply and see what happens. And you know, long story short, here I am working in that position. So >> what what made you doubt the uh position? What did you read? the [sighs] So, the job description was just um mostly buzzwords if I'm being honest. And to be like totally transparent, I applied, I submitted the application, and a few days later, I just felt like this wasn't going to be the right fit. And I didn't want to waste my time or the hiring manager's time. So, I did a follow-up email and I said, "Hey, like look, I I want to I want to essentially resend my application." And they were like, "No, no, no, hold on. Like, let's just get on a quick phone call. I can walk you through what this role might look like. Uh, and that was just I'm so grateful for that conversation because it was like a human like I spoke to who is now my manager. And she was like, I'll admit this job description isn't the greatest. I didn't write it. It was written by HR. Here's what this job really looks like. I think you'd be a good fit, but if you don't want to move forward, it's up to you, but like I this is what it is, right? And that was super helpful for me to understand, okay, this is actually the type of work I want to be doing. it's just sort of presented to me in a way that isn't very attractive which could be a lesson for other service designers too looking for work is that like if you can connect with a human being at some point do that wow yeah this makes me wonder we've indexed over six and a half thousand job descriptions over the last five years on service design jobs how many of them actually live up to the the to the description yeah it would be >> it's a great question >> yeah I wouldn't uh feel that percentage is quite high That's that's Thank you for sharing that. I hope this is sort of an inspirational and motivational u uh story for everybody looking for a job like just get through the job position like read post the uh the listing and just get to talk to a human. Maybe we'll do a whole episode on that later. Um okay, super interesting. Thanks, Zach. I'll pause here for a second and sort of hand over the mic to Jeff. Um, did you also study communication or did you go to Estonia? Where did your journey start, Jeff? >> No, I didn't go to Estonia. I went to England which is uh not as far as would have been for you Zach but uh um [clears throat] no I I I started out uh my my design career in interior design uh interior design school and uh afterwards I um went to England and studied museum and exhibition design and I had a a master's degree in MA master of arts degree in exhibition design and and that's that's how I got started. started there from schooling on. Anyway, uh afterwards I I moved back to the Netherlands and I uh you know it was the financial crisis so it was a little bit of a tough uh tough time to find a job but I was lucky enough to get like an internship uh at a exhibition design company and I I worked there on and off for a few years and eventually landed a uh uh a a a full-time position there and I worked there for about 10 years uh working all over the over the world. Uh I went to China, Kurasau for like all all all places where where museums are and I worked with local teams to to set up uh museums and design uh mostly science and and and and culture museums which was a very very very nice job to be honest. But uh at one point I was got a bit tired of it because it was very repetitive. Uh but we were doing these um studies into like the user and uh doing workshops with our clients and uh my wife at the time uh no my girlfriend at the time still uh she's my wife now she was like oh you need to apply for this job here and uh then I worked uh and I did it and I got a service design job uh which I I had never heard of. UX was a completely new thing to me at the time. Uh I I I just didn't know it was a thing. So I just went and gone and did it. And uh after two years I moved on to the current role I have. Uh I'm I'm a lead service designer currently. Um and uh I have a little bit of news just resigned from that position and accepted a uh a new job somewhere else. I think when this comes out would have probably already started there. >> I think so. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. [laughter] So Jeff Yeah. This was Thank you for sort of giving this uh um uh layup for me because I wanted to dive into it. What's your experience with the um it's not the job market but applying for service design roles like can you say something about the the actual job listings versus the process versus how did you experience that? Honestly, very tough. It was very tough. I've been um looking uh for almost 3/4ers of a year uh before something really landed. Um but I was looking for something more more specific like um um which which has like societal value is like most humanentric. There were like jobs in like banks and and and things in the finance where I'm currently at and I wasn't as interested in that. I I actually really wanted a job in the government. So I was looking into specific roles there. Um, and I did eventually land a role in government, but it was it was tough. Um, because even though uh I think I'm pretty experienced, um, the the the the feedback that I got most of the times is like, oh, there's there's like 30 people who are more experienced than you are. I was like, "Oh, that's that's surprising to be honest because you know within the Netherlands, I didn't really expect that many many service designers to be looking for a job at the same time and also to have more experience than I have. I've got like just just short of 20 years of experience, you know, like that's that's tough. How how can I beat that? That's just I can't." And and >> and for Yeah. So, how did you eventually uh manage to get this role? How did you get through all the 30 compet competitors? >> Yeah. So, I was I was talking to uh a person last week was because uh I went to a first meetup last week of my new position and he was like um uh I had to review those 30 positions and uh he was like, "Oh, the the the things that like really stood out is like the words that you were used uh in on the CV and the and the application letter because you know at at one point you just start scanning these things for like the right words. Um, and uh, you know, the right words, the right vibe, the just just just the click, let's say. >> Um, >> yeah, that makes it so hard because it's almost like black magic, right? How do you >> It is. Yeah. >> Yeah. It's so >> yeah, it's really tough to be honest because because because I I I think uh eventually I I was also looking at okay maybe I should you know dim down my expectations of like like going for a senior function and maybe go for like a media function or something and also I um uh I got into like the last one to a few times but uh I'm not a very salesy person [snorts] and it always came down to like you know selling your story and I really practiced that kind of the selling of the story in the last last interview um um whatever uh and and I I think that they did as well. So the you know this the selling the story the the the more practiced um >> so what does that mean if somebody would approach you now for advice somebody's looking for a job and they said Jeff you know what's the golden tip you can give me >> practice yeah practice what uh I literally used AI to pose me questions and I responded to AI uh vocally uh like with the microphone phone tool and they gave me tips and I responded again. I just literally practiced with AI and that was very helpful. >> So what was the biggest lesson? What was your biggest gap blind spot? >> Uh shorter, less theoretical, less method methodological uh shorter salesy pitch it you know 60 seconds you know this is what I did. This is how I reached it. That was the eventual goal. Uh, just shorter. >> Shorter. Maybe that's going to be the title for Okay, we're done with this episode. That was it. [laughter] Uh, okay. Uh, I I want to pose this one to uh, Zack to you as well. I didn't expect that this would turn out to be a job hunting uh, episode, but like uh, do you have any like key lessons or things you wish you would have known applying for a job or if somebody's looking for a role and would ask you for advice? like what's the what's the one thing you'd tell them? >> Um, going back to something Jeff said, um, don't wait till you need the job, especially if you're looking for something specific, right? So, in my case, if I wanted to continue working in healthcare and I was looking for a new job, I'd start, you know, at least one year before I was seriously going to to maybe um make that change. um if for no other reason than just to sort of keep my eye out on these opportunities that pop up because service design jobs, especially here in the states where service designer is the job title specifically, are not common. And then even less common are those job titles in a very specific vertical that you're looking for, whether it be government or healthcare. So like that job might come around once a year and so you might miss it, right? if you don't have some type of job alert set up or you're just not like in the practice of sort of casually reviewing. So, I would say like that's one thing. I love the idea Jeff gave of of using AI as like a a coach um and going back and forth. I never thought of doing that. I think that's brilliant and I will be doing that if if I find myself in in the job market again. The only other thing that I'll say is, you know, I spent quite a bit of time doing the normal application process, which is essentially open applying to any opening that I saw on LinkedIn or any other job listing website, right? Like, you know, tailoring my resume to the point that I could and submitting it into what felt like a black hole of like no human ever looking at this CV, resume, what have you. And so what I started doing was if there was a job that I really felt passionate about or or felt that I was a good fit, I would apply through the the recommended channel, then I'd also always try to find a human connected either like the manager of that team or the hiring manager and send them a nice sort of like non intense note, right, on LinkedIn just to say like, "Hey, here's who I am. I applied, but I want to introduce myself, right?" Sometimes that worked, sometimes it got ignored. But either way, I feel like there needs to there needs to be some type of human connection at this point if you're really looking for something. Um, just because otherwise, yeah, your your resume is getting thrown into that pile of 30, 40, 100 other people who are getting scanned by an AI as the first pass most likely, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. Uh, yeah. good takeaways and good things to remind ourselves of to look for positions when you're not in a dire need and the positions might not be like listed on the service design and also maybe the positions that you're looking for aren't online at all like they might come from the people who you know and who you uh follow. Yeah. Uh okay. So here are some good tips if you're looking for a new position. Um let's wrap up this section because I think this is an interesting uh bridge to uh our next chapter in this uh episode and that is about the conversations that you hosted in our circle community. For anyone who's listening for the first time to this podcast, uh there is a community called the circle which is specifically for in-house service design professionals whether they go by the title or not. Uh that's what we've been doing for the last 5 years. Right now we're with about 75ish members from 20 different countries and every month we host uh which we call dinner table conversations where we explore a topic and Jeff and Zach hosted both one of these dinner tables. Um let's dive into what they were. They were in the season of which we called the political organization spicy juicy uh topic. Um Jeff, you titled your session the unofficial map. Sounds mysterious. What is the unofficial map and why did you go for that topic? >> Yeah, it's a bit of a a bit of a selfish one for this one which you always advise us to do, right? But uh [clears throat] yeah, I was looking uh because I've just uh accepted a new job like okay polit politics is is is as far as I understand it you know the decision making and there's a lot of times the thing that we as service designers struggle with is you know getting the right decision out there or a decision being made without uh us being involved or the the customer being uh involved in in the decision at all. So um I I was looking at like okay so when I start a new job how can I preempt the decision by you know making sure that I know what the political landscape is. How can I influence the the decisions before they are made? How do I know who the people are who actually make the decision unofficially? Uh because that that's that's where the name comes from, right? There's the the official process, the official uh way uh like say like gate stages, whatever, right? Uh and there's like the the the unofficial uh bros meet at a bar, you know, just broing out. uh [laughter] um you know how how do you know that before before the decision is being made so you're not wasting your time and effort uh in in in in in mapping something out while the decision is already made in back rooms that's that's kind of looking at >> yeah yeah I I guess everybody who's listening right now feels this where we sort of have the u orc chart and we have the HR model of how things flow through the organization what the official processes are. Uh and then there's reality where like you say everything is messy and it's about who knows who and when is the next promotion and uh what the stakes are, when the deadlines are uh that really influence how decisions are made and it often doesn't have to do anything with for example the quality of your work or the talent that you bring but like there are other power dynamics involved. Okay. So super interesting. I'll get back to you in a second to sort of uh hear what some key takeaways were from uh that session. Zack, you also had a very provocative uh [snorts] um session. Uh it was about the politics of the light. Uh we all love the light, don't we? I >> I mean I love it personally. Yes. I would like more of it in my life. >> So what was the session about? Well, I I was arguing that while I think all of us would want more delight in our life, that doesn't necessarily mean that maybe every experience that we as designers are working to strive towards should be centered around this idea of delight. Um, so this sort of conversation again, same same idea as Jeeoff, I took this on selfishly because ever since working in healthcare over the last fiveish years, this has been something that's been in the back of my mind is that there seems to be a disconnect between the reality that patients face when they engage with healthcare services and the context in which they're doing so and the aspirations of leaders in healthcare to sort of make healthcare a delightful experience. I I I I posed questions to the group around, you know, what does it mean to design for undesirable experiences such as going to the doctor or, I don't know, paying taxes or um I use the the the example of the DMV, which folks in the United States know that this is just like a um a very famous painful experience that everyone has to do and and hates doing, right? Um, and and maybe these experiences shouldn't have ever meant to be delightful in the first place. It's the wrong metric to use, right? Um, and and maybe we wanted to design for something less, I don't know, aspirational when we're designing in those contexts. But what does that look like when you have to have those conversations internally? And that's not a popular thing to say, especially to your boss or your boss's boss to say like, "Hey, people don't want this thing that we offer really if they had a choice." And so how do we design with that context in mind versus trying to you know mirror what Disney is able to deliver or Starbucks or Apple or something like that. >> Yeah. Yeah. If I remember correctly there was recently a book published around Disney and healthcare that made some waves. Uh yeah >> we love Disney and healthcare for for some reason that I'm not totally sure of. >> Yeah. But you're right. It's um um there are services where the best service is the one that you wouldn't actually want to use, right? Uh it's a service that gets out of the way and it's transparent and it's like totally unremarkable and just gets the job done in a very quick, efficient, and sort of un unintrusive way. Um, but you don't score points internally most often by uh saying that you're going to remove things and that you're going to simplify things. Um, that's not what gets you a promotion. So, um, how did the group respond to to this uh, provocation? Um I I appreciated that there was some push back from from from some of the designers in the discussion um who who were sort of sort of took issue with this idea that like why why can't we why shouldn't we try to make any experience even the painful ones delightful which on the one hand like I I see where they're coming from. Um and I don't necessarily disagree that in an ideal world like everything would be delightful right even the painful experiences. Um, but on on the other side of that, I think something that I really anchored to was this theme of of what what are we masking when we design for delight, right? And I really liked that framing of of the approach. Um because you know I I feel like we can sort of gloss over a lot of uncomfortable things that maybe our our user base are facing and and difficult things for us as designers to design for if we just say well we'll just make it more delightful. We'll just remove friction or we'll just I don't know put some little whimsy in the app and and that will make them feel a lot better about I don't know having to file an insurance claim for the car accident they were just in or something like that. And you know, I don't know if it always works that way. >> Mhm. Yeah. Do you have any examples or stories where you've seen this happen where sort of people are I like the word mask actually like trying to hide and behind trying to hide behind the light as uh yeah no trying to hide behind light any any stories that come up? So I will say more broadly in healthcare specifically I feel that this rush to sort of cram AI into every service that we offer is almost masking some of the real fundamental issues that faces healthcare in the United States which is access right it's it can be upwards of three four five weeks to get an appointment with your primary care doctor in the United that's a very difficult problem to solve. Um, and so instead of sort of tackling that and facing that and acknowledging that, we're sort of saying, well, you could just like talk to an AI to sort of triage some of your problems and maybe maybe that like takes care of it. And I I I feel like while we should be pursuing ways to sort of incorporate AI into care processes, I don't necessarily know that that should distract us from solving more more of those those thorny those wicked problems, right? That aren't as sexy to fix, but are fundamentally part of like why people are engaged with us in the first place. >> Mhm. Yeah. Uh good point. There are some uh good conversations recently on the service design show related to this topic uh as well. Um, I'll need to look up some of the episodes and put them in the show notes. Okay. Um, again, I'll I'll get back to you in a second, uh, Zach for sort of the key takeaways. But Jeff, I we left off, uh, looking into the unofficial map, how decisions actually get made. Um, what did you learn? What was your takeaway? Because you said, uh, this is a topic that I picked quite selfishly, which you absolutely should. So, what did you take away? >> Ooh. Uh [laughter] I think I think this this is a bit twofold. Uh um yes you can influence decisions and uh you need to have the relationships and and the people to do it which has been like a recurring theme right relationships people it's always the thing that comes up. Um but on the other hand there was uh a a something that stood out to me is it's also also one of the reasons why I made the decision to to to you know resign my current position and look for another job is you know uh do you just accept a decision and and not die on that hill and because uh sometimes decisions are above your pay Great. And you know, uh, should you even care enough or even bother to fight it? Because, you know, the the the the, you know, the the the the the the romantic story is like, oh, you should keep fighting, right? Keep pushing with with the with the right data, with the decision, uh, with with everything that you've gathered in your research. But you know if the CEO makes a decision based on what they know uh who are you to to to to fight that almost right uh and uh it's like do you accept and move on and and go and do another thing even though that can be very disheartening um uh or or um one of one of the reasons why I quit my job is like like that happened a too many times and I just chose to uh move on to another uh another environment and it's like >> so so Jeff can I ask a personal question and feel free to sort of skip it if uh if you don't want to get into it but at which point did you know that like all right this this isn't going to work I need to look beyond this >> right yeah um I think you know I've I've been in in this uh position for almost 5 years and we started out with almost nothing. So, I've been building up and building up uh for about four years until I hit this this this moment of like, okay, maybe this is not going anywhere. Um and and I think that was driven by my own ambition and the ambition of the people around me uh of getting getting stuff done and getting stuff set up. And also at one point we got the right tools and we got the right methodologies with those tools and it allowed us to do stuff. But uh I think at one point I just hit a wall and um I was like I I think I also listened to one of your podcast >> and [laughter] yeah >> sure blame you. >> Well I wouldn't blame you but I definitely tipped the scales a little. Um uh it was uh it was there was a point made of uh this person used a sort of um a decision matrix of like four points of like uh can you use the right methodology? Are you embedded in the team? Uh can you uh actually link your efforts to company goals? Do you feel right about it? Uh I don't recall who this person was but it was quite um profound I must say. And I was looking at those metrics for myself and I was like, "Oh, those score really low." And is this then enough for me to decide, all right, Elmo, let's uh let's move on. All right. Uh let's let's find another Maybe this isn't the right environment for me to practice service design. >> Oh, not not anymore. Maybe, right? Because you evolve, the company evolves, right? Yeah. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I've learned a lot. I I can't deny that. It's like this position has allowed me to uh develop my my service design skills tremendously. This is like quite quite quite quite something. Uh but I think yeah at one point you just need to decide. >> Yeah. And moving into a new position and like this is looking into the glass ball into the future. Do you think you'll be better equipped now to sort of recognize a signal sooner? >> I hope so. I'm not sure. >> Okay. what what what signals will you be looking at maybe more often or quicker? I think I think one thing that that stood out to me um is me misunderstanding uh the or not misunderstanding maybe um the company has a vision let's say uh a northstar which I got hired on and uh well one of the things is that to become very humanentric I totally went for that you know with my lead and um from from from my experience and my in [clears throat] agency you just you just go for it and you produce the stuff and I think 2 years in I started to realize all right that might be the vision but that's not where we're currently at and the stuff that I've been producing is not um is not the stuff that people actually want. So, I was just getting into action without understanding the actual goals of the company. Uh, and and I'd been uh reading the first 90 days um by Michael Wat Watkins. Uh and and and one of the points that he makes in the beginning is right you need to understand the culture, the the the the politics. You need to understand the real metrics that people want to make. you need to understand the real decisions that need to be made. And I think in the beginning of of my current position, I just went for it. I I didn't I didn't go I didn't understand I didn't talk to the stakeholders. So, I just went >> and maybe um because when you share this uh and the 90 days, great book, by the way. Uh also try to link it in the show notes, but uh maybe this is an experience that you sort of have to go through at least once to understand what what you're missing because it's it feels so hard to explain when you say you need to understand the culture and the real magic. Like roll up your sleeves and just get the work done and people like build it and they will come. Like that's the attitude, right? Um but often Yeah. That's that's the trap. >> Yeah. And I think I think this is also always one of the questions, right, with uh uh the difference between agency and and in-house. Uh my experience from from agency roles is uh you get hired to do the job and people want you to do the job. uh so you do the job [laughter] and and and uh the biggest difference for me uh is that I've from that experience been very output driven. You make the thing and over the over the years uh I've realized that the thing is not what we are about in house and that's that's a reality check that is very very tough. If you've like done 15 years of output driven work making the shift to almost you know it's not about the output it's about you know the weekly nudging and it's about the influences about the levers that's that's a really big big shift and I still struggle with that that's that's very difficult >> yeah it almost feels quite unfair to get design professionals in this position where because design inherently feels like it's it's about creating. We should have we should have recruited psychologists and change managers and anthropologists uh into these positions. Okay, Jeff. Uh sorry. Yeah, thanks for that Jeeoff. I wanted to say Zach, any any comments before we uh sort of look into the highlights of your uh dinner table? Any comments on what Jeff's just shared? No, I was just resonating so much with my my same feelings around, you know, sort of coming into this in-house work with a naive sense that um yeah, I was hired to do this job and and I was sold this vision and let's just push for it, right? with without sort of understanding all of those underlying um internal dynamics and and and relationships and and context and you know stated goals versus like um I don't know tacit goals that you don't know until you sort of like talk to the right people. Um, and just thinking, you know, like I guess I don't know what the what the right term is, but like political navigation is absolutely like a fundamental skill that needs to be part of the in-house designer toolbox. Now, um, whether fairly or unfairly, Mark, like you brought up the point, I agree it's not necessarily what we learn in, you know, if you go to design school, they don't teach you how to sort of navigate internal politics as part of the curriculum. But if you're going to work inhouse and you want to really be impactful, I think that's something that you have to try to learn as quickly as possible. And it's not easy. >> It's super hard. >> Yeah. you almost like I said you need to be a u I said anthropologist but uh the there's a different word that I'm looking for but like an organizational anthropologist a detective like when when you read about stated goals or stated agendas or stated deadlines you sort of should take note of them and then always assume that there [laughter] there are a lot of unstated goals and uh things that you haven't discovered yet because when you said this Zack. I was like, when you get hired into this position, how can you know? Like, you're assuming that people aren't lying to you, right? They're they're they're not trying to fool you or to sort of deceive you. Like, it it's often very hard for them to even express these these hidden dynamics. So, like it's it's hard to blame anyone in this situation, but >> Yeah. Yeah. Does that make sense, Jack? >> It makes sense to me. Yeah. >> Yeah. Okay, cool. Okay. So uh wrapping up this uh unofficial map uh thing, let's uh also wrap up the uh politics of delight. Anything that you took away or the key thing that you took away from your session in Zach? >> Sure. Yeah. So, so beside this this sort of idea of um using delight to mask maybe more fundamental issues, I would say a couple of like really nice framings that I appreciated that the group came back with was, you know, this friction between improving the good parts of your service or your product or what have you versus reducing the bad. Um, and sort of like what does that look like? what are the politics wrapped up in in uh indexing on one one end of that spectrum or the other. I really liked sort of that. Um, and then this idea of like using delight as dessert instead of the main meal I thought was really a fun way to look at it. And and it sort of anchored back to something that I'm feeling is like look, we can we can we can pursue delight as a design goal once we've sort of um made sure we have the fundamentals of whatever our service is down, right? And so if you're thinking about, I don't know, again, healthcare, right? are you delivering um good health care outcomes and and delivering accessible healthcare to people, right? Like that's like healthcare 101. If you're if you're not doing that, that's where you should be focusing. Once you can do that with consistency and and value um and quality, okay, then let's sprinkle on some delight as a dessert. >> Yeah. Yeah. And I guess it it also matters a lot the industry that you're in. Like I can I can imagine again if you're Disney, sure the roller coaster needs to needs to work like you need to get the hygiene factors in order. Uh but the light might like the light will be a different shader, a bigger differentiator there than it is at the DMV, right? Is you don't have to design for the light to to gain a competitive advantage, right? >> Or in your taxes. Yeah. >> Um cool. definitely a topic that's uh worth exploring further and I'm sure that we'll continue doing that in uh in in the community. Um again, if you're listening to this and you're like, "Geez, that sounds super interesting, fascinating. I want to talk more about the political organization." Too bad uh you're too late. We're wrapped up that season. The next season that we're going into is also an interesting one. It's called the Business Logic. So, I think we'll also have some interesting conversations there. Um, check out the show notes for more info about the circle community and there you'll need uh hopefully Zach and Jeff as well. Um, all right, moving into the third section of our conversation here. This is usually the section where I sort of try to do some midbusting around service design. A few random questions and I usually like to end on a positive note and maybe we'll do that. I want to try something else and um and that is sort of uh look and listen to your bloopers. So if I ask you Jeff like um when I ask you [clears throat] what's the time that you felt you really messed up like that you that you made a mistake that you're like oh jeez I wish I wouldn't have gone through that experience. Is there anything that comes up and let's keep it work related to that. [laughter] Oh. Uh. Oh, I was going to go now. Um. Ooh. Bloopers. Oh. Um. Well, may maybe one that that stays uh that keep that sorry words. [laughter] uh one to come one that comes to mind is that I had written this report uh about um and then the first two years of this job I did this like this explorative research a lot of interviews um [snorts] uh just finding out how people interact with and you know perceive the service and I basically come up with oh it's all >> [laughter] >> um which is very much for my own perspective and I wrote this this report and kind of almost scathing uh sections in it and I just put it on on on the internal um how how do you call it like the port internet visuals? Yeah, [laughter] very visual, very front to center. And uh yeah, uh I got a few messages. I was like, "Okay, uh that's that's you should really do that." And yeah, I got uh I got um Oh, and you say you get called on the mat. [laughter] >> Yeah. Got called into the office. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. Uh um god uh yeah not to rewrite a couple of these things right it's like okay a little bit more nuance is is appreciated [laughter] >> that that's that's also part of the politics and the diplomacy I guess right what can you state and what um what will sort of offend uh people around you you don't want to go out well maybe you do in some cases but usually you don't want to go out making enemies >> no and I was very used to you know writing just very honest reports from my agent Sounds pretty Dutch. Yeah. [laughter] >> Yeah. Yeah. Uh, no, it wasn't that appreciated. >> Uh, [clears throat] how did you change your approach based on that experience? >> Well, what one big change is to stop writing reports because they weren't moving the metrics anyway. Um, and also, you know, first uh first talk to the stakeholders. I didn't even know stakeholders was a thing at that time at that time. Um, so first, you know, go to the stage gates and not, you know, post stuff very publicly. You know, what's the point? Uh, >> h well sometimes I can imagine that this uh this might be a strategy in your toolbox if you want to shake things up and at least provoke and get a reaction. Um, [snorts] yeah, but that I would use that quite sparely uh and know what you're doing. Okay. Interesting. Thanks. Thanks for sharing that, Zach. You had a moment to think about your uh sort of painful experience. Uh like out of all the things you could have picked, which one did you go with? >> Yeah, I mean the the one that's coming to mind is one where I really wish I would have had Jeff's session and an unofficial map to navigate. Um because um I was fairly new in a in a role. um I want to say you know no more than a month maybe and I was on a project and there was discussions of of uh organizing a workshop and I just felt like that we were missing it wasn't organized in a way that I I thought we could we we could be doing it and and we were missing some parts and so I thought well okay this is my opportunity to sort of show that I'm uh like a go-getter and I can like get work done and so I took it upon myself to sort of re redesigned the agenda of what I thought this workshop should be and should include. Um, and I spent like a good, you know, a half day on this thing and I submitted it and, you know, an hour later my manager asks to talk to me and, you know, it wasn't a I I didn't get called to the mat as they say, but [laughter] it was um it was a suggestion that next time I have those thoughts to maybe go to my manager instead of presenting them back to the team because there was [snorts] all of these underlying political um sort of pseudometrics, all of these things we've been talking about, Jeeoff, that your it sounds like your session was was anchored on that I had no idea about because I was only a month in, right? And I'm just thinking like, well, this doesn't feel right. I got hired to do this job. I'm going to do it right. Like, I'm going to take action. I want to be seen as this person that brings value and does the work. And yeah, it was a it was a very quick lesson for me to learn to sort of take a step back, try to evaluate why are we approaching it this way? These are also very smart people. There's probably reasons why it's being done this way, right? And so to try to understand that before you sort of put something on the company internet or send a reply all to everyone with a brand new agenda that they didn't ask for. [laughter] >> Oh, sounds so classic. And I I think all of us have gone through something like that. And again, this is with you're doing this with all the best intentions and sort of striving for the best quality, best outcomes. Uh, and like you said, like you're doing just the work that you've been hired for, but sometimes uh there's a reason why person A makes the agenda and not person B, right? And >> yeah, [clears throat] >> like >> it feels like uh we should um we should get a few books to read when we get into a new role or some kind of manual. uh because the job that you've been hired to do probably isn't the job that you've been hired to do, which sounds quite cryptic, but uh that's the that's the sense that I'm getting from all these conversations with folks like you. Yeah. Um cool. Thanks. Um we still have time to end on a positive note and I I definitely want to do that. So, um Zach, I'll continue with you and then Jeff will have some time and breathing space to think. Um, one of the uh questions I often ask is how do you know that you're actually making progress? So, on a Friday afternoon, how do you know that this was a good week? >> It's a really good question. Not every Friday feels that way, Mark. Um, I think some of the signals that I've been looking at recently actually are are there people who we haven't interacted with as a as a either like a a design team or a broader experience department who are actively seeking us out and asking us to sort of come into their work. Um, and the more often that happens to me, those are signals that okay, like the people we have been partnering with are talking about us in a way that is in inviting others to come and join the party. Um, so we're getting sort of that word of mouth marketing internally. I look at that as like a metric of like, okay, we're doing we're doing something right. Cuz if you weren't, they'd be like, hey, don't work with those guys. They're a pain in the butt. It takes too long. They don't get the job done. Whatever, right? Um, so that's one metric. Um, another one would just be like are you finishing projects? I think in service design, especially in-house service design, that's for me at least like the holy grail of like a a project completed. Sometimes it just like goes off into pilot land and I never see it again. Um but yeah I I look at like you know are there people who are want actively seeking us out as collaborators and asking us to be part of work or seeking our expert opinion on something before it moves forward when they don't have to. Right. I think that that for me is a is a good indicator of success. >> Yeah. Yeah. Sounds and I've heard this more often that uh you're looking for referrals like if you'd be a business you want your customers to be referring you to become ambassadors of the work you're doing. uh and that is a great metric of success. If that's happening, then like you're doing something right. Uh whether you call that service design or they call it service design doesn't really matter. You're giving them results that that they were looking for. Um and you should like you should reflect every Friday on what a win looks like because I think uh there is always something you've always made progress even if it doesn't uh look or feel that way. Uh Jeff, what about you? like when you reflect on Friday days. >> Yeah, I [clears throat] always find this a bit of a tricky question because you know uh as I said you know the whole output driven thing kind of messes that up but um I think I think I' I've been thinking about this question a bit in the last few months and I think for me right now it comes down to job satisfaction. you know, do I feel satisfied with the work that I've done? Am I happy about uh about spending the time uh right you know um and and if if that is uh whatever it you know whatever artifact made or whatever people that I talk to whatever influence that I if I feel satisfied about that at the end of the week I think I think that's a for me that's doing it you know um have >> have you ever um and try to unpack that and sort of peel the onion because satisfaction like I think it's great to to sort of rate your job satisfaction at the end of the week on a score of 1 to 10 and then give it a I don't know an eight but like internally your gut feeling is basing that on something. >> Yeah. Uh I think beforehand it was always like uh did I move the needle or was did I get something done? Uh I think it's less and less that and it's more you know uh did I enjoy the conversations? Uh did I have a good team meet? Uh did I produce smiles in meetings? I like joking around, you know. um uh you know those kind of things. It's much more human I think than than than the job description actually says. >> I wish we had more OKRs with goals like that. Uh that would make work so much more fun and enjoyable and probably so much more productive as well, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. One very final question to wrap up with and that is we like to end with a better question than we started with. So, Zach, if you'd be in my spot and you could ask our fellow service design professionals a question, what would you ask them? How do you continue to stay curious and motivated as an in-house designer over the years when you're starting to see the same types of problems crop up that you've been asked to fix or work on in maybe different ways, different flavors, but essentially the same business problem and it hasn't been addressed or resolved for whatever reason. How do you maintain that sort of sanity around continuing to chip away at that and be curious to know how other people deal with that? Yeah, so do I. We spent a whole season, three months on the resilient self. Uh it feels like it has some connection to that as well, but yeah, would love to hear that as well. Um Jeff, what about you? What would you ask our fellow service professionals? >> Yeah, I first wanted to ask um uh how do you know when it's enough and you need to move on? uh which uh but I'm I'm also thinking you know my my session was really around how do you know the politics and like how can you self how can you give yourself a crash course in the politics of the organization before taking action >> it feels like something we should uh put out there into the world as a circle like a crash course and navigating the organizational polics as a service design prefer politics as a service design professional. Yeah. How do you navigate that? What is the what does a crash course look like? [snorts] That would be such a like [clears throat] Okay, sort of reframing or adding to your question, Jeff, and I want to see some comments here. If you could add a a chapter or a paragraph to the crash course the of navigating internal politics, what would you add? Super interesting, right? Let's see if we can co-create this together. Um, awesome. Thank you, Jeff. Uh, thanks, Zach, for uh, in your case getting up early in the morning, uh, doing this call with us. Uh, Jeff, good luck with the new position. Would love to hear how that is evolving in a few months. >> Uh, awesome. If you're still with us, listen to this whole conversation, make sure to check out the show notes. Uh, and well, once again, thanks, Zach. Thanks, Jeff. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Mark. >> I keep coming back to that line from the start of the episode. The job that you've been hired to do probably isn't the job that you've been hired to do. It sounds cynical until you hear how both of our guests proved it. As we've heard, Jeff wrote a research report, published it on the internet, and learned that honesty without nuance can land like an attack. Zach redesigned a workshop with the best intentions and learned that smart people usually have reasons for doing the things the way they do. Neither of those mistakes was about our craft. They were about skipping the step where you figure out how the place actually works before you try to change it. The other thing I can't shake is Zach's question from his dinner table session. What are we masking when we design for the light? When it can take 5 weeks to get an appointment with your doctor, a bit of whimsy in the app is not going to fix that. Fundamentals first, delight as a dessert. And maybe that's true for our own work as well. When I asked Jeff how he measures a good week, he didn't mention a single deliverable. It was whether he enjoyed the conversations and produced some smiles in meetings. That might be the most honest job description for in-house work I've ever heard. If you want to have conversations like these with peers who actually get it, I invite you to join us in the Circle community. [music] It is the closest thing I know to a shortcut for learning everything that isn't in [music] job descriptions or in service design courses for that matter. Have a look at serviceeshow.com/circle [music] for more details on how you can become a member and that link is also in our show notes. My name is Mark Fontine and thanks [music] for listening to the service design show. Keep it shorter and I'll get you in the next