Or Lucid, Miro, or whatever.

Like a G6

I had a meeting this week with some people from a central government organisation. One of the people on the call was introduced as the ‘G6’.

Working in central government I got used to people being introduced by their grade. But after 6 months at NHS England, where it’s not a thing, I find it weird again. I guess it’s just a shorthand for their role – but what do they do?

When I started working at the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy in 2017, I was startled to realise that people with a discipline were the exception. Everyone else is a ‘generalist’.

Once I understood this, other things about the civil service started making a little more sense, or at least I could see the consistency:

  • people without any digital experience becoming product managers overnight
  • outsourcing
  • RAG rating
  • leadership only speaking to leadership, even if the people who understood the detail are sitting right next to them
  • email chains
  • asking a question, being told ‘that’s a great question, let me take that away.’ Waiting 2 weeks for a response, asking a follow-up question and then being told ‘that’s a great question, let me take that away.’
  • digital being in the same silo as HR and facilities
  • assurance

I’m so much happier to be working in a place that makes sense to me. Multidisciplinary teams figuring out problems and making stuff.

End‑to‑end service design

I’ve been speaking to more service designers this week.

It reminded me about a job interview where I was asked to describe an end‑to‑end service I’d designed.

I started by saying they should ask me about a time I’d been involved in delivering an end‑to‑end service. Anyone can design an end‑to‑end service, in the same way anyone can draw a dragon.

I then went on to describe my problem with the idea of end‑to‑end service design. To deliver an end‑to‑end service you need to wield organisational power and to work with each person protecting their individual fiefdom. I’ve seen many service designers feel like they’re not doing a good job because they don’t have anywhere near the influence necessary to make changes to the end‑to‑end.

As a service designer, you get to work on parts of the end‑to‑end. For me, it’s better to think of service design as making the things adjacent to, or outside of, but necessary for the core journey to happen, happen. To design for hand‑offs. And above all to design for failure.

I didn’t get the job.

Links

Some excellent blog posts this week: