Delivering service quality at scale
One of the challenges we all face is scarce resources. Not having enough time, tools, money, or team members to deliver can be an everyday experience. This scarcity can be overwhelming to those involved in situations where demand exceeds the available supply of a product or service. But could it be that we are looking at our problem in the wrong way?
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
One of the challenges we all face is scarce resources. Not having enough time, tools, money, or team members to deliver can be an everyday experience. This scarcity can be overwhelming to those involved in situations where demand exceeds the available supply of a product or service. But could it be that we are looking at our problem in the wrong way?
In a recent post by Seth Godin - Mouth to mouth resuscitation, he points out the value of this lifesaving intervention. But it does not scale. You cannot perform Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) on more than one person at a time. Yes, you could scale it by training more people, but it is still a service delivered singularly, one at a time.
"It might be the best way to save someone in distress. But it doesn’t scale. You can only offer this sort of lifesaving intervention to one person at a time." — Seth Godin
This analogy has a direct relation to the concept of communications, design, and creative work. As we produce art that's on-brand and relevant to the world we are experiencing, how do you deliver bespoke art at scale?
So far in my career, I've built, managed, and lead the introduction of multiple platforms and technologies. These platforms have supported marketing, content, brand, design, video, and training. In speaking with my team leaders over the last few weeks, I've asked them to to to consider how they could deliver double the amount of work they produce now using tools, technology, and automation?
Seth's post has prompted me to think about this from the root cause. To continue his analogy, if we deliver CPR and do it well, we cannot scale CPR. But is CPR what is required? How else can we provide services around brand and design, content, media, events, video, animation, and web?
This awareness causes me to rethink how else we could solve the problem and produce the same quality results? The service must still restore and maintain the health of the patient.
What service can we deliver of the same quality or better - using technology and automation? One of the questions I'll also be taking a deeper look at is how we could use training to enable the user to self-serve and deflect the need for the service entirely?
Think beyond the pixel
This is part three in my series of articles building on the Adobe 99U profile piece on Katie Dill, the Vice President of Design at Lyft. Katie has made a sizeable team of more than 100 designers at Lyft. In the 99U article, they cover what she regards as eight important parts of scaling a design team.
Introduction
This is part three in my series of articles building on the Adobe 99U profile piece on Katie Dill, the Vice President of Design at Lyft. Katie has made a sizeable team of more than 100 designers at Lyft. In the 99U article, they cover what she regards as eight important parts of scaling a design team.
I will post my article on each of the eight points over the coming days. I hope you stick around for all eight as there is much valuable information and benefit. So, let’s continue with the third of Katie’s topics on scaling your team, that of ensuring your team can think beyond the pixel.
3. Look for designers who ‘think beyond the pixel.’
It’s easy for design leaders at tech companies to get swept up in the online experience, but the offline experience is just as important. “Yes, a lot of our work is related to those pixels, but as a customer, your experience of us isn’t just in the app – it’s on a street corner, it’s sitting in the back of a car, it’s riding a bike, it’s talking to someone who moments ago was a stranger,” says Dill. That’s why she looks for designers who pay attention to more than what is on the screen. “Do they think beyond the pixel? Do they think about every moment of the journey and all of the different modalities of that interaction — from a billboard to an app, to a seat cushion, to the person-to-person interaction? That’s what we want.”
I think that there is much complexity hidden in the simple statement of being able to ‘think beyond the pixel’. You cannot be a successful designer if you are not able to think beyond the screen for the projects and art that you’re creating.
What is the message you are trying to convey and to whom are you trying to communicate it? Flight information in airports is shown on large banks of monitors where 95% of the data displayed is useless to everyone who looks at it? Many of those looking at the arrival and departure boards may also be tired, stressed, dealing with early starts or late finishes, or flying with small children or other family members with a world of their own emotions and events. How do you ensure that the customer receives useful information?
Here is a very, VERY, small selection of examples that go beyond the screen that you need to think about how it will impact and interact with the art you are producing.
Are there any trends in your industry, or society in general such as #MeToo, for marketing and communication material? Should you be following these trends, or not? Whatever your choice you need to know why you made that choice.
For projects with physical material as a finished installation, such as for signage and exhibitions, can you visit the location of where the art will be? Alternatively, can you see photos from different angles and times of day? Can you see floorplans of venues? Do these floorplans show who your fellow exhibitors are, and who will be nearby? Where will your work sit and how will the environment around your art impact it or interact with it? Is the impact or interaction good, or bad? Is it something you can leverage and use to your advantage or an unresolved exposure?
For digital art, will it work in all screen sizes, devices, and orientations? Will the audience be able to see your work and interact with it as you intend?
Are you the final decision maker on the presentation of your work? I once met a team of animators at one of the Creative Mornings breakfasts in London. When the group introduced themselves to me, I knew of their latest work. It was great in many respects, but I challenged them over an element of child safety that I felt it had introduced.
The unfortunate team all dropped their heads in frustration. I was not the first to raise this issue. The BBC had shown their series out of order which had caused many issues around child safety as an unintended consequence.
It’s often good to look at things in isolation, or even backwards, from the end to the start, to identify any problems that you can resolve up front.
For presentations and pitches do you know what equipment will be used to present your work? I was once involved with a large Tier 1 corporate pitch where there was a fault with the projection equipment that was to be used by the proposal teams at the customer venue. This fault was only identified during the rehearsal by one of the companies presenting. We were prepared for this and won the work.
Even further, regarding presentations, do you know the room size, the screen size, the audience size? Will it be a darkened room or will the lights be switched on? Will you have access to the internet over their network or will you be relying on a mobile device and signal. What’s the smallest font size you should use? What colours project well and which don’t? Will the audience be seated or standing? Do you know of any colour blindness in any of the key decision makers?
For branding - how will this be applied in the real world. Is the brand image impacted if the customer fails to dedicate the budget to office refurbishment and signage?
Conclusion
The issues above are only the very tip of the iceberg of the problems that you may encounter with work relating to branding, design, graphics, and creative work. Your team must be able to consider the real world application of their work and the impact that external factors can have. You can’t always resolve for these external factors, but being aware of the issues positions you and the customer for how to respond and manage for them. Of course, there are also times where you can leverage these factors for even better results.
I’ll address the next element of building a great team, that of transforming your mission into values that can drive the business, in the following article.
I’m currently based in both London and Berlin and on the lookout for new opportunities. Please (get in touch using the Contact page) if you’d like to discuss more.
Get the best result by engaging with your brand and design team
Introduction
Adobe 99U have just posted a profile piece on Katie Dill, the Vice President of Design at Lyft. Katie has built a sizeable team of more than 100 designers at Lyft. In the 99U article, they cover what she regards as eight important parts of scaling a design team.Scaling a design team can deliver important benefits and results for a business. There is a lot of useful information that I'd like to discuss and address based on my experience of growing brand, design, and creative services teams to support the enterprise. My creative services function at KPMG consisted of 100 creative staff in the UK and India, and while at Goldman Sachs, where I started my career in design, I was part of a group of more than 250 creatives based in London.I will post my article on each of the eight points over the coming days. I hope you stick around for all eight as there is a lot of valuable information to benefit from. So, let's get started with the first of Katie's topics scaling your team, that of engagement between your creative services team and the business.
1. Get designers involved from the ground up.
"Lyft’s design team used to operate as a centralized design agency, coming up with solutions when approached by product teams. Today, the team is integrated in every step of the product development process, which Dill says has led to more creative, customer-driven results. “It’s a great example of how design is a part of the product development process at all stages, and how design is partnering with product management, engineering, and data science to determine the right thing to do for our consumers and our drivers,” she says."
Katie is right that design should be part of the product development process at all stages. Often organisations who are just starting out with a new focus or investment in a design and creative services function start by providing solutions to the business based solely as a response to individual requests received.
Getting started
This can be the most labour intensive stage of building a creative services function - both for the business and your team. To support this, and to minimise the cost in all terms, it's critical that your creative teams are enabled to do their job well by being knowledgeable about their craft, equipped with the rights tools, and know the brand.As a team lead or manager you need to enable your team in these areas, assign the right team members for each task, trust your team, and conduct lessons learned processes after each project. This will help share the experience and knowledge gained amongst your group. It will also support you in not having to go back to the same team members again and again.
Complexity
Often situations like this are also coupled with a new brand or an existing brand that has never been well supported or had much attention paid to it by the business. This may mean that you are extremely limited with your resources. In my experience, this complexity is best managed by being clear about a staged introduction of the brand, and the elements that are vital to be delivered correctly from day one. For example, this may be agreeing that the new logo, colour palette and typography are applied in all customer-facing media first. It may also mean identifying elements of your communications approach to prioritising. In my experience, there have been times where events and digital were prioritised over print and product. It's all about how you can deliver the best result with the resources available.You can then work to quickly follow this up with templates and desktop tools and resources for users. This will enable you to be consistent across the business with the focused approach and the components that you provide. It can also help to reduce any 'buyers remorse' for the company concerning the extent of work required to deliver design and the brand well.
Relationships
Each of the scenarios above can cause friction and frustration when trying to scale your creative services team, both for the team of creatives as well as the internal customer who have not previously had any constraints applied to them concerning brand or design.By engaging the creative services team with the business at the early stages of projects you benefit from developing relationships with operational teams and your team members. This allows the ability to demonstrate the benefit that the creative services team can bring to the business, the product, sales, marketing, and other related operational and customer-facing teams.
Knowledge
Another meaningful way that getting creative team members involved early is the increased exposure of the creative team to the business and what it is that the company does.This should inform the perspective of your team as to what problems the business and your product or service is actually solving for customers - because it's not always what you're told it is!This information and knowledge enable designers to shape their work in ways that have a more natural and automatic fit for the business, customers, and the market.
Productivity
Early engagement also improves productivity for both your team and the business. Your operational teams don't waste time going down paths that brand and compliance need to pull them back from, and time and effort are not spent on work product that needs to be discarded. Also, nobody's ego gets damaged or put out of place. Early engagement with design and brand supports productive working relationships.
Conclusion
Engage your design, brand, and creative teams early on. We want to produce a positive, professional, and impactful result for you and the business. Furthermore, use platforms and automation to leverage your work. I have deployed more than a dozen platforms and automation tools in my career in creative services. Each of these added systemic leverage and scale to the business to increase quality and reduce costs.I'll address the next element of building a great team, developing a good mix, in the following article.I'm currently based in both London and Berlin and on the lookout for new opportunities. Please get in touch using the Contact page if you'd like to discuss more.