The must-read guide: how to lead and deliver successful services, sustainably
All organizations are becoming service organizations. But most weren’t built to deliver services successfully end-to-end, and the human, operational and financial impacts are abundantly clear. In the digital era the stakes are even higher, given how rapidly services change. Yet default working practices (governance, planning, funding, leadership, reporting, programme and team structures) inside large organizations haven't changed. Rather than modernize just one service at a time, it's the underlying organizational conditions that need to be transformed — anything less is futile.
Learn how to change the conditions
The Service Organization is the result of years of research and consulting, as well as dozens of interviews with executives. It explores significant challenges that leaders will recognize, and turns them into solvable puzzles by providing practical advice and tools that reimagine what the organization does from the perspective of its customers — and it organizes the activity needed to deliver the best outcomes.
This book is for everyone involved, from designers to technologists and from operational staff to policymakers and leaders. It includes surprisingly simple and doable, but non-obvious, steps that don’t depend on seniority or pay band and that are typically overlooked by even the most progressive professions, teams and companies.
What People Are Saying
‘In this definitive, practical book, Kate Tarling finally puts to bed the “Is it a product or a service?” debate by proving that all organizations are service organizations. Through her extensive experience and straight-ahead storytelling, she lays out a clear plan for building, maintaining and evolving a service-focused company like no one else can.’
Jeff Gothelf. Author of Lean UX and Sense & Respond
‘To thrive in the internet era, organizations must reorient themselves around the services they provide. Drawing on an unparalleled well of experience, Kate Tarling has written an essential guide for leaders embarking on such a transformation.’
Tom Loosemore. Partner, Public Digital
‘What organizations NEED is exactly what Kate Tarling lays out in this book: a straightforward, implementable guide that is grounded in reality and will actually solve many of an organization’s problems - even ones that are yet to show themselves! Read this book, do what it says, and make your company more likely to succeed now and well into the future.’
Jennifer Rigby. Transformation and Operations Leader, Director at Mozaic Services; and former COO of Lloyd’s
‘This book is SO. DAMN. GOOD. If I could afford it, every single person in the Ontario Public Service would get a copy. Congratulations, Kate Tarling and thank you for writing this much-needed book.’
Hillary Hartley, digital government leader
‘Kate Tarling does something rather special with this book. She moves beyond theory and provides tangible, practical suggestions for how to embed a service culture into organisations who wish to modernise and adopt internet-era ways of working. It’s the kind of book I wish I’d had 10 years ago - when first starting out to help the Home Office become more user-centred. And it’s the kind of book I will still be turning to in 10 years time to help me tackle whatever challenges lie in store for me then.’
Katy Arnold, former Deputy Director of User Centred Design & Strategy at the Home Office
‘If you haven’t got it yet I highly recommend buying a copy of The Service Organisation by Kate Tarling. One of the most pragmatically useful and inspiring books I have read for anyone building services.’
Jeanette Clement, Head of Design at EE
‘While many organizations know the value of seeing their service from
the customer perspective, few have made the leap to organize around
the service experience. This guide shows you how to work outside-in
and inside-out in parallel, how to organize and align teams, and how to
measure service performance to deliver experiences on behalf of people,
operations and organizational goals. This book represents the future of
organizational design.’
Jamin Hegeman, VP, Experience Strategy, Capital One, and vice president of the Service Design Network
‘Perfect opportunity last week on a quiet train to read Kate Tarling’s book ‘The Service Organization’. There's so much in there that works across practices, disciplines, communities and organisations. All of us working to deliver products and services that meet our users needs will find practical, realistic approaches - especially if like me you're supporting an organisation to improve, mature and create the best structure to embed successful service delivery. I completely recommend this, but also make sure you have highlighters and page markers handy - as there's lots to bookmark.’
Chris Back, Head of Digital Delivery, the Digital Foundry, Ministry of Defence
‘I believe this book should be on the desk of every public sector manager involved in or interested in real service design or improvement.’
Ed Curley, Senior Project Manager
Includes dozens of examples from behind the scenes of global companies, the NHS, UK government departments and public services, Citizens Advice, the British Red Cross and many others.
Kate Tarling sets a bold, ambitious and practical agenda for all service organizations.
The Service Organization shows how to reinvent organizations so they rely not just on ‘transforming technology’ but on putting the success of their services at the heart of how they operate.
What the book covers
Foreword
Chapter 1 - Redefine your organization by the services it provides
Make services visible - Distinguish between main and supporting services - Embed the service view of the organization - Start before you have permission
Chapter 2 - Define what’s in a service from the outside in
Draw the stages, not the process - Change the language to ingrain services - Create a consistent framework - Observe what actually happens - Map demand and what’s hard about operating - Say what good looks like
Chapter 3 - Reveal how services perform in the real world
Flip pain points into what we’d see if it worked well - How to avoid optimising what doesn’t need to exist - Define the job of a service - Turn what good looks like into a framework - How to measure and evaluate a service - Influence with data you don’t yet have - Don’t wait to be asked to give a better view
Chapter 4 - Shape work and projects for success
Shape the problems to solve and work to be done - Challenge assumptions that constrain the design - Position the work to improve services - Handling challenge
Chapter 5 - Make policy that delivers better service outcomes
‘Front-load’ the risk in new and changing policy - Navigate shifts in power
Chapter 6 - Set service strategy to drive work
Good service strategy - Strategy is design and design is strategy - Set a delivery approach to optimise confidence - Create a narrative - Bad service strategy - All strategy should move the organization towards better services
Chapter 7 - Position teams around services
The types of teams you need - Learn how to make better services together
Chapter 8 - Create plans that change as you learn more of reality
Create simpler plans - Embed an approach that de-risks service delivery - What to do if a plan is already ‘agreed’ - The problem with target operating models - Iterate towards the capabilities and people needed - Managing improvements to existing services
Chapter 9 - Establish whole service leadership
Whole service leadership - Coordinating work across whole services - Principles of good service leadership - Service leadership as a profession - Anti patterns to watch out for - Enable people to work together across services
Chapter 10 - Steer programmes and portfolios to deliver outcomes
Do what’s important faster - Develop a clear relationship between outcomes and work in progress - Assess and track progress towards goals - State simply what the work is for - Situate work in the context of services - What makes it hard and what to do about it
Chapter 11 - Revolutionise governance for services
Name the issues - Shape the process for work to start, stop or continue - Controls over how new work starts - Challenging how governance works today
Chapter 12 - Win support from people at the top
Start with the important problems - Do the best job at solving them - Ask for endorsement, support, introductions and invitations - Find your audience - Prepare a five-minute version - Join forces with other leaders and influencers - Anticipate challenge and design for it
Chapter 13 - Make better services the organization’s strategy
Embed whole services in strategy, planning and budgets - Follow the money - Structure the organization around services - Position teams and individuals to shape, govern and join-up work - Training and coaching to board members, executives and leaders
The author
Kate Tarling helps large organizations create successful services by transforming the default working practices that get in the way. She does this through a mix of consulting, training and writing, and regularly advises boards, executives and teams, as managing director of a services consultancy she founded in 2012. She previously held senior leadership roles in government and the private sector.
Kate is the author of The Service Organization and has spoken on service organisations, design and leadership at Harvard University, UCL, Google, the Estonian Government, the British Institute for Government, Ravensbourne University London, and the Royal College of Art.
Published by London Publishing Partnership
ISBN 978-1-913019-76-1