Learn how to create effective relationships that enable good service design and delivery to happen in spite of organisational siloes or uneven power dynamics

The course

Leading Stakeholders is a live 1 day course on how to negotiate change in complex, siloed environments by building relationships that enable good service design and delivery to happen.

Note on the use of the word ‘stakeholder’: We recognise there is an important critique of the word stakeholder in relation to involving people in research and design, and that the word can perpetuate inequitable power dynamics. Whilst it is an extremely imperfect word, we have chosen to continue to use it until we can find a suitable alternative. During the course, we address the origin of this word and the ethics and power dynamics that come with its use. For further reading, Reimagining the language of engagement in a post-stakeholder world provides an insight into this important ongoing research.

What you’ll learn

Understand how to identify and balance the motivations of your organisation and stakeholders with user needs

Identify and bring your partners and interest holders involved in your service on the journey of service re-design and/or transformation with you
Gain the skills you need to create effective relationships in challenging environments and influence decisions
Navigate power and governance structures

How to build consensus and buy-in for user-centred and service design at all levels of an organisation from frontline to executive teams

Understand where and how decisions get made and how to influence them
How to manage difficult relationships and learn when and how to push back
Create a clear scope for your work and communicate it effectively

Who this course is for

This course is for service designers and change-makers who want to expand their level of influence in and around organisations, learning how to effectively influence decision makers and build relationships that enable good services to happen and user-centred design to take centre stage.

This course is suitable for:

User centred practitioners / advocates who are experienced in applying the tools of service design but want to build skills in expanding their influence
Anyone doing service design on their own, or in a complex or difficult environment who is looking to scale their influence beyond themselves or a small team
Anyone looking for ways to help their organisation think more expansively about designing services and widen their remit
Consultants and leaders looking for ways to expand their brief and bring decision makers on the journey to improve services

Your trainer

Lou Downe is the author of Good Services, the bestselling book on how to design services that work and the founding director of the School of Good Services. They are the former Director of Design for the UK Government where they founded the discipline of service design, growing a 2000 strong team of designers into one of the largest, and most influential design teams in the UK - winning a Designs of the Year award and a D&AD lifetime achievement award.

Course content

Understand the reasons why organisations struggle to focus on user needs and identify the blockers and barriers to user-centred design in your organisation
Learn to define ‘services’ and how to mitigate the confusion or conflict of moving to a service-led way of thinking in your organisation
Understand the challenge of helping our organisation to see, understand and deliver services as your users see them
Learn how to identify the brief you've been given by your organisation and how this might differ from what’s actually needed
Learn how and when to safely challenge your brief using techniques from hypothesis-driven design to setting success criteria
Understanding the importance of relationships in scaling your influence within your organisation
Learn how to map who has influence, authority and is impacted by your work
Define who your stakeholders are, their needs and how to tailor your work and communication so that they feel confident in what you’re doing
Learn about the different decision making models organisations use and how this affects the way you might need to work
Identify the right forums and processes for the types of decisions you might need to make in your service
Identify difficult decisions that might need to be made in your service
Understand who makes decisions, and how and when those decisions get made
Understand the tools and techniques that will enable you to get buy-in with decision makers and power holders in the short, medium, and long term
Develop techniques to help your organisation focus on user needs, become more service-orientated and invest in service design from building staff movements to directly engaging decision holders
Identify suitable communication channels and tools to engage decision makers
Learn how to communicate in a language that will resonate with your decision makers - in money, risk, or outcomes
Create a compelling communications plan and learn how to build ground-up momentum for your work
Understand and map the challenges to maintaining continued buy-in for your work
Learn how to create a governance framework that will maintain engagement over time with decision makers, key relationships and clients
Learn to manage and communicate risk, blockers, and barriers to your decision or power holders
Create a long term plan for change where buy-in changes or is removed
Techniques to rescue buy-in and manage work where you can't get buy-in
Understand the aspects of your work that will require long long term change and Identify where and how you can find safety and support in this work
Learn when and how to let go and re-focus your efforts in difficult situations

How it works

All classes are delivered live and online in small interactive classes. Course participants have the opportunity to work on a service or case study of their own so learnings can be put into action immediately

This course is 8 hours in total and each module is made up a mixture of teaching from your trainer, individual work and group discussions

There are are regular breaks throughout the day and lunch is a 30 minute break in the middle of the day

Our course takes place on Zoom in English with live captioning enabled with Zoom’s speech to text auto-translation in the full range of languages supported by Zoom

The slides are available in advance for pre-reading

Courses are not recorded as we want to ensure people feel comfortable to share their case studies in the joint sessions. We do not allow AI meeting note takers as we we wish to protect the privacy of information shared by course participants

What you get

A one day live course with Lou Downe, author of Good Services, including access to a members area including the tutorial slides and course worksheet. Alongside this you will get: