Dead Ends: Austerity II

Hi, welcome to Dead Ends, a monthly podcast about how the world around us is designed and how it got that way, ending mostly in. Isn't that interesting? I, one half of your host, Sarah Diamond.

00:00:19:20 - 00:00:26:17

Lou

And I'm the other half live down and this is the Dead End podcast from the School of Senses, and we hope you enjoy the show.

00:00:26:19 - 00:00:41:18

Sarah

Welcome to the second part of Austerity Service Design. It was such a big topic that we had to break it down into two parts. So whilst the first one was probably a bit grim if you've listen to it, the second part we're hoping, ends on a more hopeful note.

00:00:41:20 - 00:00:58:03

Lou

And if you haven't listened to that episode before, listening to this one, go back in time. Listen to the first episode first, because this won't make any sense unless you already have. This is, I think, one of the most difficult double bones about austerity service design is that it really is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

00:00:58:03 - 00:01:09:24

Sarah

Yeah, it feels like we're just putting a lot of sticky plasters on all the problems that are a result of all the different tactics of austerity. What will be the next Seriti service design brief?

00:01:10:05 - 00:01:15:07

Lou

I mean, I there is absolutely no way that I can answer that question.

00:01:15:09 - 00:01:35:14

Sarah

It kind of feels like the next thing is just like, automate it, stick in a chat. But a that's become the next solution. But technology cost money and everything already feels quite broken. So with companies, both public and private on the brink, will there be anything left for us to design? I might have got a sense that.

00:01:35:15 - 00:01:45:16

Lou

It might do. But you too soon. Too soon. Because I think there's still things to say about this. I mean, of course, if you're listening and you're like, well, that's the end of the story, then you can choose to stop listening.

00:01:45:18 - 00:01:47:01

Sarah

Don't worry. There is hope.

00:01:47:03 - 00:02:09:08

Lou

There is hope coming at the end of this podcast. So conservative policy obviously impacted public services and the public sector, but it really created a mood music for everyone else, in the private sector. And I remember this from, you know, when that was my work, you know, way before I joined the Civil service and on the private sector.

00:02:09:08 - 00:02:31:12

Lou

And it really, really did. it absolutely did. I remember it having an effect, because way back before I joined the government, I was in the private sector, and I saw the sweeping effect that austerity had on private sector companies. And really, this conservative policy created a mood music for everyone else. And actually, there's a lot of really interesting evidence for this.

00:02:31:12 - 00:02:59:01

Lou

Big society was launched. And then about six months later, if you look at Google Trends, what you see is a massive uptick in searches for a very different idea and idea of the sharing economy. And, you know, ultimately, sharing economy was where we go from being a provider of products, expensive things, lots of risk to being a provider of services, which is lower cost and where there is less risk around that particular thing.

00:02:59:03 - 00:03:28:19

Lou

So it's a really great way of saving money, but we never saw it like that. I think at the time, some of us did. but generally as an industry, I think we didn't necessarily see, the sharing economy, as very closely adjacent to big society. But of course, in retrospect, it really was, you know, I experienced the first wave of austerity and big society from the private sector and what that did to my practice as a designer at the time.

00:03:28:21 - 00:03:55:22

Lou

But I'm really interested to hear about your experience because you were in the service design industry way before. I was way back when I was working at museums. You were designing services. so what was it like for you were transitioning from this pre austerity world of service design into kind of that, that more austerity focused work that we now kind of come to recognize is just the way it is.

00:03:55:24 - 00:04:19:06

Sarah

You know, I feel like I call it a sort of zeit geist of a few different movements, both in terms of social innovation, sharing economy approaches or service model innovations. At the same time, there was, a move towards design being applied to goods. I mean, that's not a new thing necessarily at all, but it was growing.

00:04:19:06 - 00:04:41:17

Sarah

It was, again, part of the Zeit Geist. And I was swept up into opportunities like Social Innovation Camp, which looked at ways in which technology could be applied to doing good in the world, building civic infrastructure. You know, my first idea that actually ended up winning the competition the day after I graduated, which is kind of not.

00:04:41:17 - 00:04:43:00

Lou

Stumble, brag.

00:04:43:02 - 00:04:47:10

Sarah

Humblebrag called my police was a tool.

00:04:47:10 - 00:04:48:00

Lou

To.

00:04:48:00 - 00:05:05:01

Sarah

Openly have feedback about the police on the internet. And again, that was, you know, strangely obvious. But that was quite landmark at the time, given that the police weren't even on Twitter, which is also day to day now, I'm starting to feel very nostalgic about different parts of the internet, but it was a real interesting and exciting time.

00:05:05:01 - 00:05:37:14

Sarah

And you had your great examples of technology and design being used to do good stuff. You know, I remember from Social Innovation Camp, Good Gym, which was founded by Ivor Gormley, and it still runs actually, which is amazing. But at the outset, you know, that was the idea to use technology to get people out and running in groups to do good stuff while the eye on their runs, like help some people move some trees, or we don't move trees but move debris from trees or, to help, I don't know, build a wall like do things like that.

00:05:37:14 - 00:06:02:16

Sarah

And we also started to see at that time as well, like, you know, academics and writers were publishing books like Axel Manzini Design when everybody Designs An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation, and some of John Thacker's documentation from books like In the Bubble, looking at examples of design and design, working on interrelated systems, practice on how we live differently and more sustainably in the future.

00:06:02:16 - 00:06:33:14

Sarah

So some of the work that I was getting even commissioned to do was like, well, what? What do preferable futures look like? How can we use technology for good? And that is so different to the work. As we evolved, probably about 7 to 8 years into the studio, when I was part of it, into much more reductive, reductionist, austerity based design briefs and I really think about moving into the 20 tens and learning more about the evolution of transition design.

00:06:33:14 - 00:07:07:15

Sarah

Joe Wildman put me on to this is a fantastic and designer, and this was a terminology that was developed by people like Professor Terry Irwin, Doctor Cameron, Token Wise, Doctor Gideon Kossoff. And it was this kind of evolving rhetoric on design led societal transition towards more sustainable futures and saying, we should be doing more of this. We should be developing a practice to focus on re conceiving everyday life and societal systems around food, health, transportation policy and energy and really thinking about sustainability.

00:07:07:15 - 00:07:31:04

Sarah

And that was what some of that was, the work I was doing. It was really interesting, it was positive, it was hopeful. And I often think about the words of Professor Terri Irwin in a talk she gave on transition design that we should be turning our imagination as designers and our talents to the longer term future, and that can serve as a compass to guide the current, everyday, short term efforts.

00:07:31:04 - 00:07:58:06

Sarah

And I was so there for that. And that is what I believe we should be doing as designers. But the working conditions became more reductionist. The briefs became more about the short term, some medium term at best, and I really miss that sort of evolving practice space. You know, as a designer, challenging the dominant logic models of how things are delivered.

00:07:58:06 - 00:08:32:01

Sarah

Now, the outcomes that we're trying to get to and really trying to bring in more thinking about planetary boundaries, how we want to live. But austerity hit hard. You know, the company, Snook, that I was running at the time went from briefs that involved thinking about designing preventative services. You know, we worked on a social prescription service, which is about prescribing people, exercise and general activity instead or alongside medicine, and really worked on that, did the research, you know, actually piloted that.

00:08:32:03 - 00:08:51:21

Sarah

And there was investment going into that kind of work because we had a long term point of view. You know, the whole point of doing that kind of work was to reduce the amount of people who were having falls. If we stayed more active, we're more stable. If we fall, then we cost the health service more right in the long term.

00:08:51:21 - 00:09:18:01

Sarah

So that was the sort of work I was getting to do. I was working with city councils on bringing in more sustainable ideas to the services. You know, how do we encourage people to use less plastic? You know, this was the sort of work that we were doing, and all of a sudden it moved to much more shorter term things like make our service more efficient to run, help us reduce the amount of money we spend doing it.

00:09:18:03 - 00:09:59:20

Sarah

Can we change our staff model from spending an hour as a key worker to 30 minutes? What would that mean? And that was the change in which we saw, and I feel really sad for that, you know? So I feel like I had this little quick of late in my career into, you know, the space to help clients and organizations and people within systems think about the future, about the longer term, creating ideas and bringing form to preferable futures so you could speculate about them and just as Professor Terri Irwin had said in the transition design work that they were pioneering was about using that positive, preferable future building to help us think about what

00:09:59:21 - 00:10:30:06

Sarah

types of services we should be building now. And it was hopeful and it was positive. But for me, with a growing agency, probably around about 20 1415, so the mid kind of 20s, the work started to change. And in some way I had to assimilate and answer those briefs. And then when I got through the door, sort of sneakily try and renegotiate a bit more away from the short termism when it comes to how the funding was going to work in what they wanted us to do.

00:10:30:12 - 00:10:45:13

Sarah

So moving, trying to move them from a fix this, make it more efficient now to actually what might be really helpful for users in a long term lens. I'm really sad that that feels like it's gone.

00:10:45:15 - 00:11:13:17

Lou

Yeah. It felt like the horizon got shorter didn't it. You know, and it's really hard to actually remember that it wasn't always like that. But you know I think back to you know when I joined the service design party, you know a few few years later than you did, you know, the job of, of service design was principally imagining what future services could be, should be, you know, and being able to provide that sense of vision.

00:11:13:17 - 00:11:52:10

Lou

And I'm not saying that that is not happening. Of course, in lots of sectors, in lots of companies are still hugely financially buoyant. That work is still happening, but it is fewer and fewer and far between, I think, now, but it's very difficult to remember that. It didn't always used to be like that. So I think this is a really interesting point to kind of come back to actually what what design methods have we kind of picked up along the way actually, in this period of austerity and what sort of legacies of austerity service design are still lurking, in our language and in our practice.

00:11:52:12 - 00:12:18:18

Lou

I want to just kind of pull out a few of them and, you know, I'd be really interested to, to hear people's thoughts after the show, on what they think and feel about these. But the first one, that I want to talk about here is the sharing economy. Now, the sharing economy might feel like it's a completely other thing to big society, but what the sharing economy shares in common with Big Society is, firstly, timing.

00:12:18:20 - 00:12:48:11

Lou

You know, if you look at Google Trends, about six months after Big Society was announced, suddenly you start seeing this peak of people looking for home, you know, the Uber of something, something or the, you know, kind of Airbnb or something else. And it was a world where suddenly we went from providing objects, physical things, to this world where actually we have an idea to create basically services around those objects.

00:12:48:11 - 00:13:10:08

Lou

So we don't we don't own things anymore as an organization. We simply provide a service for people to access those things. And, you know, it's a great idea. You know, ecologically, we own less things hypothetically. Right. But that hasn't been the case. You know, we seen more cars on the road now than we did before. Some of these ride hailing services, you know, not naming any in particular.

00:13:10:10 - 00:13:41:11

Lou

So that hasn't quite worked out. But what has worked out is essentially less financial responsibility for those services that are providing a service to access those objects, but not actually owning those objects and not actually considering those people as their workers. So two very closely adjacent, ideas, you know, the kind of private sector cousin essentially to, I would say, big society at the next one I think we picked up along the way is nudge, remember, nudge, remember the nudge unit?

00:13:41:11 - 00:13:43:20

Sarah

I remember nudge, nudge. Make sure you pay that bill.

00:13:44:01 - 00:14:05:11

Lou

Exactly. People like you have paid the bill on time. And essentially it is incredibly cheap. You know, you literally just need to make one little change to your bill. And you say to people, you know, other people like you have done this thing, and suddenly everyone pays a bill on time and you make loads of money, right? or you stop losing money, whichever is your, your priority and your focus.

00:14:05:11 - 00:14:25:12

Lou

But again, this is an idea that came out of this period of time where we had less money, less resources. We needed people to do things. And so we resorted kind of to trickery, you know, we resorted essentially to, to sort of trying to pull the wool over people's eyes and, you know, manipulate their behavior. So again, not is good or bad here.

00:14:25:12 - 00:14:30:00

Lou

But, you know, it's interesting that these ideas came up at pretty much the same time. But I think.

00:14:30:00 - 00:14:50:06

Sarah

That one's really interesting actually, because I mean, nudge is not new is it comes out a lot of behavioral design as well. Right. And in within the boundaries of what an organization is trying to achieve within a product or service, you could say, because you're not saying whether it's good or bad, it is a good practice to look at the behavior of people and design ways in which you can influence that right.

00:14:50:08 - 00:15:15:18

Sarah

But I guess the challenge here is, are you asking people to do bad things or are you tricking them into doing things? And I think what is even more interesting around nudge around a time of austerity is that actually the nudge practice was held by the Behavioral Insights team bit, for sure. And they were brought into Cameron's. You know, series of departments, right, that they really worked with closely at government.

00:15:15:18 - 00:15:21:20

Sarah

So nudge was literally held closely in the belly of, of government as the thing that they did.

00:15:21:21 - 00:15:43:08

Lou

Yeah, absolutely. And and I think the problem that I have with nudge is not the fact that, you know, we're paying close attention to people's behaviors in designing, you know, to encourage the right behaviors, like that's entirely the right thing to be doing, assuming, of course, we have good intentions, it's the lack of consent, it's the lack of transparency.

00:15:43:08 - 00:16:01:15

Lou

And to be honest, it's the kind of somewhat patriarchal perspective that comes with it of like, we know best, we're going to just trick you into doing a particular thing, and we're never going to really explain what's going on. But don't ask any questions. Just pay your bill on time. And it doesn't quite sit right with how I feel.

00:16:01:17 - 00:16:21:02

Lou

design should be. But anyway, to each their own. The next one I want to talk about here is, kind of more generalized platform thinking. Now, of course, you know, something, something as a platform, was also an idea that was kind of floating around at the same time as nudge and, you know, kind of sharing economy.

00:16:21:04 - 00:16:51:23

Lou

and there is lots of good to thinking about your organization, your service as a convener, as a platform for communities, individuals to come together and do a particular thing or reach a particular outcome. But it is undeniably cheaper to think about yourself as an organization that facilitates other people to do things than to do them yourself and it very much comes alongside the idea of austerity.

00:16:51:23 - 00:17:11:13

Lou

You know, it's a way of basically enacting austerity without necessarily, cutting back on service provision, because what we're saying is we're we're going to create a space for you to do it yourself. And we're going to facilitate that to happen through technology or through, you know, community services all through a, you know, a space, physical space for you to do it.

00:17:11:13 - 00:17:34:07

Lou

But we're not going to do it ourselves. So, yeah, that's that's definitely an idea that's still lingering, still being talked about. And I think we could probably pay a little bit more close attention to the political origins of that and the effect that that has on individuals. The next thing I want to talk about, though, is API first and specifically API only services.

00:17:34:07 - 00:17:41:21

Sarah

Stop right there. API is an acronym and we know we don't like acronyms. so did you get that sound effect?

00:17:41:23 - 00:17:46:18

Lou

Was the, the it was the acronym a little it's a little rusty D again.

00:17:46:20 - 00:17:48:11

Sarah

no, that was a little high pitched.

00:17:49:16 - 00:17:53:00

Sarah

Well that one. So you have different pitches for different alarms. Yeah.

00:17:53:00 - 00:17:55:14

Lou

It's how long the acronym is. It carries on for as long.

00:17:55:20 - 00:18:00:10

Sarah

So three letters APIs. that's a short one API.

00:18:00:12 - 00:18:01:18

Lou

API server.

00:18:01:24 - 00:18:12:01

Sarah

Okay. Anyway.

00:18:12:02 - 00:18:33:24

Lou

Hi. It's new here. Time for a short ad break. When we're not podcasting, we run the School of Code Services that helps people and organizations learn how to design and deliver great services. We teach courses and service design how to get by and for your work and what makes a good and a bad service. So if you want to know more about that and to sign up to one of our courses, check out Good Services.

00:18:34:01 - 00:18:55:04

Sarah

API stands for Application Programing Interface, and it's basically what we might refer to as a software intermediary that those two applications to talk to each other. So we'll connect up the data in one system with the other and allow that to be used and pulled from and drawn on by different services or systems, for example.

00:18:55:08 - 00:19:30:05

Lou

Yeah. And you know, a lot of examples of API services or API services are really great, right? So, you know, Xero or QuickBooks, which are two, you know, kind of software options you can use to do your accounting, increasingly link directly to HMRC services so that your taxes done automatically. And there are loads of other really great examples of where, you know, us making bits of our service available to other organizations, either in the public or private sector, means that those services are much more flexible.

00:19:30:05 - 00:19:52:06

Lou

They can be used in different ways by our users. The problem comes when we decide to make our service API only, because that essentially is us saying, okay, the only way you can access this service now is through a third party provider, and particularly if this is a public service, what we're doing is we are privatizing that service.

00:19:52:08 - 00:20:16:15

Lou

You know, we're providing the infrastructure for that thing. We're still doing that thing internally, but you have to use it via another company. And that company can charge, they can make the service inaccessible. They can do kind of what they like. really, you know, is this privatization? Yes. Is it right? Maybe. Who knows? It's not for me to say, but it certainly is cheaper than providing a service ourselves.

00:20:16:17 - 00:20:42:22

Lou

so again, you know what? On the surface seems like a political, you know, kind of technology focused solution actually really does have its roots in making our services cheaper very often. So it's really important that we watch out for these things, in our practice. And like I said, they may be right things to do, but we should be aware of potentially those hidden motivations that sit behind those things.

00:20:42:24 - 00:21:04:11

Lou

And I think what's really interesting is if you look at all of these different things, whether it's the sharing economy, API only services nudge, you know, whatever that thing is. But we're looking at what we see is a pattern here that we as organizations, whether we're public or private sector, providing less stuff. We have less responsibility, we have less cost.

00:21:04:11 - 00:21:23:00

Lou

There's less risk for us and all at the expense of our users having more cost, more risk, and essentially more burden to do than those things themselves. So again, that may or may not be the right thing to do, but there is a real pattern that we should be aware of with these different methods.

00:21:23:06 - 00:21:43:10

Sarah

Yeah. And let's be real, I think we don't want to say that everyone is doing this, but from the training that we do, the school, the services and the coaching that we do, we feel like we're hearing a lot of people being forced to do these types of things or adopt some of the austerity measures that we talked about before, having to design in and around them.

00:21:43:12 - 00:22:03:23

Sarah

And there's some organizations that are not doing this, and there's a lot of work out there that is really squarely about the long term future. But more and more, what we're hearing from the industry is that we're incredibly under pressure to save money, prove a value, do short term work, and make the case for our existence. These are all hallmarks of austerity service design.

00:22:03:23 - 00:22:29:22

Lou

Yeah. And this is why we've really focused a couple of courses, specifically here at the school, on this particular scenario that people find might find themselves in, you know, leading stakeholders and writing business cases. explicitly, because we often, as designers or people in service delivery find ourselves in a situation where we're having to make a business case or engage with large numbers of stakeholders who, you know, might be pulling in different directions.

00:22:29:22 - 00:22:53:11

Lou

And, you know, ultimately, as we say, designing services is 10% design and 90% creating the conditions for that design to happen. But I think there's a real problem with austerity design in the we have not necessarily acknowledged that this is the case. You know, that actually this is the work of service design and delivery, that 90% of creating conditions for that stuff to happen.

00:22:53:11 - 00:23:24:01

Lou

And there's a real disconnect actually between what we think and want service design and delivery to be and what it is in reality. And we're sort of told that it's all going to be journey maps and new products and research and ideation. And in reality, a lot of the work is cost reduction and redesign and these big behemoth like services that we need to, you know, cost and and risk to, you know, there is, like I said, that increasing disconnect between what we're told service design and delivery should be and what we find it to be in reality.

00:23:24:03 - 00:23:45:22

Lou

And I think certainly what I see as a result of this, probably one of the most detrimental results of this actually, is the the impact that it's having on the mental health of people who are doing this sort of work. You know, I see a lot of people blaming themselves for not getting more work done. and not necessarily acknowledging that the environment around them is incredibly difficult.

00:23:45:22 - 00:24:06:00

Lou

And so I just want to say to anyone who is feeling like this now who's listening to this, you know, you are enough, you are doing enough, and you know, it's not you. This is really, really hard work. And it's, you know, been hard for a really long time. so. Yeah. Sarah, where do we go from here?

00:24:06:02 - 00:24:27:00

Sarah

Leave me to answer that question. Well, I made a joke the other day. The Rachel Caldicott and a. Rachel is a prolific technology strategist and researcher who has done all sorts of brilliant stewarding and shepherding of messages that are important about the future of the internet and how we run stuff digitally. And she now runs care for industries in promising trouble.

00:24:27:02 - 00:24:48:18

Sarah

But aside from my illustrious introduction to who she is, I also described her the other day as the Queen of Mic Drop and put it on a T-shirt. One liners. When it comes to explaining common sense stuff about doing technology right. And there was something that she said in this event that was called townhall 2030, that was run by Public Digital and the Future Governance Forum recently.

00:24:48:20 - 00:25:18:17

Sarah

And she said, what we need to do when we're thinking about the future of our services is we've got to keep the lights on whilst rewiring the house. Not really sat with me, something to grasp and to hold onto, and it reminded me a lot of some work that I did with this incredible CEO of a local authority region that I got to work with, who was being asked about 6 or 7 years ago when these cuts were taking place, to cut about 4 million pounds out of her homelessness budget.

00:25:18:19 - 00:25:44:08

Sarah

Now, just as a bit of context, that's about 60 to 70% of a budget. And she was absolutely devastated. I mean, can you imagine? She's literally got police being cold to people living on the streets who have multiple and complex needs. This is happening several times a day already, and she needs to cut more. So she's already got challenges and she's being asked to cut more anyway, instead of just making the cuts and saying, okay, well, we just got to cut some services.

00:25:44:08 - 00:26:06:16

Sarah

She took it as an opportunity to take a new look, a refreshed look at what kinds of services they might want to procure in the future to better support the needs of people who are either homeless or, at this point of time in their lives, don't have a steady place to live or a roof over their head. What we did before was bring together different providers is do a bit of research.

00:26:06:16 - 00:26:30:01

Sarah

Bring in some experts as well on what people need and where they may be falling short with the existing offer and working together with those providers and with her staff, we were able to help produce a new strategy for the procurement of services, a new ask to what a better system of support might look like for people who are finding themselves in those situations.

00:26:30:01 - 00:27:01:17

Sarah

And I'm not saying that this would necessarily 100%, you know, solve homelessness or improve, those services in the area. But it was about stitching them to better together in a different way. And that approach of saying, okay, well, still going to keep these services running, but I'm going to think a little bit about rewiring the house, rethinking the procurement of what we're putting out there, and also asking our providers to rethink the services that they're offering in a better way, I thought was really brave.

00:27:01:17 - 00:27:21:02

Sarah

And I think that's a really great example of what we mean by keeping the lights on whilst rewiring the house. So this stuff is is hard. It means that we need to work clearly on one hand, keeping services running and doing what they need to do as best we can, even if it requires some sticky tape. Whilst we make the space to do the rewiring.

00:27:21:04 - 00:27:46:09

Sarah

The other side is about envisioning new ways of delivering the vital things that we need in life, and really rethinking how our services might work in service of that. And one of the bits of advice that I always give to people that I'm working with, and I try to use it for myself as well, is to find a way to ground yourself in which part of that reimagining you are doing that rewiring, or are you just keeping the lights on?

00:27:46:09 - 00:28:13:16

Sarah

And I think it's really difficult to do both. You can't do both. You've got to know where you are. And I always refer back to this model from the Pecan Institute that Cassie Robinson introduced me to, called the Bacana, to the model, and it's a kind of description of how we move from the dominant system, which is the system we are in now, to an emergent system of up a variable future and the transition that we need to do that.

00:28:13:16 - 00:28:39:07

Sarah

And I always say to designers, I'm working with and for myself, am I working in the dominant system to keep the lights on, or am I moving in to the emergent system and reimagining ways of doing things in the future, and helping make a transition towards that? Which role am I playing in this system, and you know, I, I really like the work of the Bikaner Institute for helping us think about this word emergence.

00:28:39:07 - 00:29:06:09

Sarah

There's a fantastic, publication that was put together, which was written by Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Freese, called How Does Change Happen in Living Systems? And they talk a lot about this idea of emergence to take social innovation to scale. And they wrote, and I quote, emergence violates so many of our Western assumptions of how change happens, that it often takes quite a while to understand it.

00:29:06:11 - 00:29:44:14

Sarah

In nature, change never happens as a result of top down preconceived strategic plans, or from the mandate of any single individual or boss. Change begins as local actions spring up simultaneously in many different areas. And I hold on to that quote so dearly because I think it's immensely helpful for anyone who is working in designing services or designing them by the delivery or managing the delivery of those services, because design for me has always been about shaping what we deliver and developing materials to communicate that, particularly for the more intangible things like services.

00:29:44:16 - 00:30:06:07

Sarah

This is the preferable future of how we think this thing could work and meet the needs of people that we want to design with and for. And if we can share more of that emergent work, we can bring form to it and build, as Margaret Wheatley and Deborah Friis point out, network those ideas. I think that networking and connection is our best friend.

00:30:06:09 - 00:30:14:24

Sarah

To start a movement again of how we can move from a story to service design into the types of services we think need to exist in the future.

00:30:15:03 - 00:30:40:21

Lou

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a really beautiful way of describing it, that networking action. And it's quite closely adjacent to the idea of rewiring, isn't it? You know, networking and a wiring in a house. But I think with both of those, those metaphors, it's really important to acknowledge that they both require effort. If you want to rewire a house or if you want to create a network of people, all of those things take time.

00:30:40:21 - 00:31:11:12

Lou

They take effort to do. And, you know, it's also important, given the context of all of what we were talking about before, around being tired and overworked and not paid enough. You know, that that you don't try and overstretch yourself to do that type of work as well. And you look after yourself first and foremost. I think that's what's hopefully come through really loud and clear in this episode is the importance of, you know, ourselves and whatever role we're taking in advocating for service design and looking after our own mental health.

00:31:11:12 - 00:31:42:12

Lou

But I think the thing I would kind of maybe leave as a thought here, and I don't know if we've got to a dead end yet. Quite. But is that it's very difficult to think strategically if we are in the the midst of a panic. And I think what's really important about what you've described there about that, the kind of model of, you know, the emergent system and the existing system is that to some extent we kind of separate out that future thinking and we make space for it consciously as an organization.

00:31:42:12 - 00:32:03:02

Lou

And with ourselves. And that requires us actually, as an organization to de-escalate what feels like sometimes a ever increasing imminent panic of not enough money, not enough time, you know, too much to do and to create space for that strategic thinking. so I think that's really, really important. And I think maybe, I don't know if we reached a dead end.

00:32:03:08 - 00:32:06:11

Sarah

I'm hoping we've reached the hopeful end.

00:32:06:11 - 00:32:10:17

Lou

Yeah. I feel like this is a bit my. Is this an open end? Well, I mean, I think it's.

00:32:10:17 - 00:32:15:04

Sarah

Still a dead end because we just have to wait and see.

00:32:15:04 - 00:32:35:11

Lou

Yes. And, yeah, as with all of the other previous episodes, we're really interested and would love to know your thoughts on this and your experience. change doesn't happen in a vacuum as we've talked about. So, yeah, do let us know, what you think of this episode, if it's sparked any thoughts, any, interesting ideas and,

00:32:35:13 - 00:32:37:08

Lou

Yeah. See you next time.

00:32:37:10 - 00:33:00:09

Sarah

See you next time. If you want to keep up with other news and podcasts on Google services, you can go to our website, Good services with their podcast is linked on there. You can also search for our podcast on Spotify and on Apple Podcasts. And we are living there. We have also left Twitter, so if you want to keep in touch with us, we are on LinkedIn and blue Sky.

00:33:00:09 - 00:33:11:20

Sarah

We are at Schoolofgood on Blue Sky. So yeah, feel free to reach out top to us and share your joy.

00:33:11:22 - 00:33:32:01

Sarah

podcastdeadends

Sarah Drummond http://sarah-drummond.com/

Dead Ends: Austerity II

In our fifth episode of Dead Ends we've broken out into a two parter. In part two of episode five, we talk austerity, sharing economy, hope and designing for emergent futures.

Dead Ends: Luxury

Dead Ends: Austerity I