🌟 Unlocking Service Design in 2025 for all: Insights from the Experts!

"[00:00:00] Gerry Scullion: Hey folks, and welcome back to another episode of This is H cd. My name's Gerry Scullion and I'm gonna be your host In this episode, we are delighted to welcome back the one Andone mark stick torn co-author of this is Service Design Thinking, and this is service Design doing and is widely regarded as the pioneer of journey management.

[00:00:19] Gerry Scullion: Now, Mark's not only a great friend, but also an incredible collaborator and supporter of the work that we do here at this is a CD. We dig into why organizations are still struggling with alignment, how visualization can drive change, and why many metrics like NPS might be misleading you. There's three key takeaways though I want to talk about in this episode.

[00:00:43] Gerry Scullion: And number one, alignment is still broken. Most organizations claim to be customer centric, but operate in silos. And we unpack why this happens and how to fix it. And number two, visualization is a powerful tool. Journey maps and other services design tools can really help simplify the [00:01:00] complexity, but only if they include the relevant data for the right people.

[00:01:04] Gerry Scullion: Number three, metrics can mislead NPS and other traditional KPIs. Don't always tell the full story. We discuss better ways to measure impact and drive real meaningful change. Now, if you're in design, product or leadership, this episode is packed with practical insights that you can apply right away in your organization.

[00:01:24] Gerry Scullion: But if you're looking to wanting to embed human-centered design. Or service design your organization. I encourage you to sign up for my free five day email course on kick-starting a human-centered service design approach in your organization. The link is in the description below. This is a great episode.

[00:01:40] Gerry Scullion: Let's jump straight in.

[00:01:51] Gerry Scullion: Mark, delighted as always to welcome you podcast for. Um, [00:02:00] ninth time, I think it is. Um, no, it's great to have you here. So we've been back and forth, um, for the last couple of months, nutting out, uh, a potential topic for another podcast. Uh, this conversation is really about the alignment and the importance that visualization gives to not only designers.

[00:02:22] Gerry Scullion: Or product managers, but also to organizations. Uh, and I'm keen to get your, your thoughts on. Before we do that, mark, I want you to tell us a little bit yourself, where.

[00:02:38] Marc Stickdorn: Well, thanks for having me again. Um, I'm, I'm Mark. I work in the field of service design since 20 years. Published some books and so on. Um, but mainly I help organizations to embed and scale service design in whatever they're doing.

[00:02:53] Gerry Scullion: Yeah.

[00:02:54] Marc Stickdorn: Uh, work across the board. Um. Like both in, in private companies, public [00:03:00] services, governments, um, and I run a software company, the first journey mapping journey management, uh, tool that was out there since 2012.

[00:03:10] Marc Stickdorn: And, um, that's me. I'm living in Austria, in Innsbrook, uh, in the middle of the Alps. I can actually see the ski slope from my office right now, which is, yeah.

[00:03:23] Gerry Scullion: You have the same pattern as we would say, the introduction for 'cause we did a workshop together this morning, and that is exactly what you opened your workshop with.

[00:03:33] Gerry Scullion: I can actually see the, uh, ski slopes in the distance. Well, that's true.

[00:03:38] Marc Stickdorn: And, and it's, it is because it is true and I see it and I honestly, I would be rather out there going skiing now.

[00:03:44] Gerry Scullion: I know. Yeah. I'm gonna start off with why is misalignment. Such an issue in 2025. Still, what? It's still there. Like you'd imagine that if emails weren't getting sent and they were getting [00:04:00] blocked by a firewall, they would do something about it pretty quickly.

[00:04:05] Gerry Scullion: They'd, they'd, they'd do stuff. That same level of disconnect is happening in terms of the knowledge getting through. Why are we still seeing that misalignment and what, what is causing that?

[00:04:18] Marc Stickdorn: I don't think there's one reason for it. Uh, I think there are many reasons and like, let, let's explore a few of them.

[00:04:26] Marc Stickdorn: Okay. Often, I think it has to do with, um, with the sheer overload of information and if, if you have a job, you have a task to fulfill. You constantly filter out what is useful for you, what is what, what does help you with your task, and what is clutter. And, um, and, and we need to get through there. Like it's, that means if we present information, it needs to be relevant to the audience.

[00:04:54] Marc Stickdorn: And if we only speak about what we are doing and not what others [00:05:00] can do with like, what, what, what it enables them to achieve with it. Yeah. I think we have a hard time to break through that barrier and make it relevant for them as well.

[00:05:09] Gerry Scullion: So you mentioned there about people who've got a job to do and they almost put the blinkers on, we need to get this task done.

[00:05:15] Gerry Scullion: And it's, that's what they're ultimately paid for. In some, some instances, I need to get this job done. This other job, when they move the blinkers seems to be maybe somebody else's job. Like I don't have capacity to focus on the blinker vision. Um, how can we shift that perception of, this is my job, but.

[00:05:38] Gerry Scullion: Also that way as well looking, looking left and right. You know, capacity always enters the conversation. Like, we don't have capacity to do this. We need to stop everything and then, you know, refocus our efforts on going left and right. How do you, how do you approach this? How are organizations approaching this?

[00:05:57] Marc Stickdorn: Yeah, well, the, the easy [00:06:00] answer is like the top down answer, right? And say like, well, this is also your task and you should be, uh, paying attention to it, and so on. But I think to get really into it in a, like, like to, to really convince folks in it, we need to speak their language. We need to care about.

[00:06:17] Marc Stickdorn: Wherever they need to move the needle. Like what do they care about? What are KPIs they care about? What is, what is actually the, the jobs to be done for them and how do they measure success? How do they define success? And if we are able to transfer whatever we are doing into this language, then people start to listen.

[00:06:38] Gerry Scullion: So top down is one way. Um, but if your leadership don't really. Have the, how should I say it, the nice way of saying it. They don't have the ability, um, either personally or professionally. They don't have the time as well to get down and look within the trenches of what's [00:07:00] happening. What about the other way of looking, like looking from the, I hate saying the bottom up.

[00:07:10] Gerry Scullion: Is that something like, well, what can they be doing to start the process sort of top down is one way, but it also has to come from the other way as well.

[00:07:17] Marc Stickdorn: Yeah. Well be mindful of the language you're using and talk less about how you do things and more what you can achieve with it or what it enables others, uh, to do.

[00:07:30] Marc Stickdorn: So if they care about certain metrics, think about how can you help them to achieve their goals. And if you, if you just include that into your language, or if we talk, talk about specific tools, like a, like a journey map, place an anchor for it so they realize this is relevant to me. I can, I can use this to also, um, find myself in there and, and be aligned with it because.

[00:07:57] Marc Stickdorn: Very often if you present a journey map to a team and, and, [00:08:00] and they say, this is nice, but that's not useful for me. It basically means it doesn't contain relevant information for me and to make a journey map or any other tool that we use in design Relevant

[00:08:11] Gerry Scullion: object. Yeah.

[00:08:11] Marc Stickdorn: Relevant across teams. To really use it as a boundary object.

[00:08:14] Marc Stickdorn: It needs to include relevant information for them.

[00:08:19] Gerry Scullion: Let's talk about what happens when you're misaligned. So from our experience, we've both got quite a lot of experience in, in this world, but that misalignment, like for a lot, as long as I've been working, it's still happening. Like it's still kind of like one that we're, we're going back and saying we need to improve alignment.

[00:08:38] Gerry Scullion: What value does.

[00:08:46] Gerry Scullion: To the design team, the development team, and the broader business when alignment has been hit, how do you know alignment has been fully hit?[00:09:00]

[00:09:01] Marc Stickdorn: I, well, there, there are loads of maturity bottles out there. Right. And I, I haven't seen one that really works across all the organization. Yeah. Because it's, it's so different from organization to organization. Within each organization you have different departments within, within each department you have different teams and so on.

[00:09:17] Marc Stickdorn: Yeah. So I think it's impossible to say, like, how, how, like what are the signals for hitting that across an organizing.

[00:09:29] Marc Stickdorn: Um, but design teams are often a hub in the organization. They often need to translate between different, uh, different teams. They need to take requirements and translate that. Yeah. Um, so that others can actually understand what this means. Um, and then again, translate that into, uh, into things that are, that are actionable.

[00:09:52] Marc Stickdorn: So if we hit alignment, that means. We actually make sure that the, the problems, we identify the unmet [00:10:00] needs, we identify, we have a common understanding of what these are and how we tackle it and whatever we do, actually, we work towards the common goal of solving these. And if we look into organization mo, most organizations say they're customer centric, but they're actually silo centric.

[00:10:17] Marc Stickdorn: They're. Their own, like however they define success. And for me that is a signal of misalignment. If a team is focusing on whatever they define as success, and it is actually misalignment between the teams, that means they're not running in the same direction, they're actually running in slightly different direction.

[00:10:36] Marc Stickdorn: That makes it really hard to focus on the customer because we focus too much on.

[00:10:46] Gerry Scullion: Typically that misalignment. I'm gonna keep on, I'm stuck on this at the moment. You have to help me get off this square. I'm stuck in a kind of like a, a portal of misalignment. Um, who's looking after that? Like whose [00:11:00] role is it to make sure that the teams are aligned? Because I think. And my understanding of Agile and Scrum and all of those different methodologies was to try and help that align what's happening.

[00:11:09] Gerry Scullion: Making sure that the teams, but it almost felt like they were being forced to align. It was like, this is the way it is and you know, it's, it's, it's on the backlog, it's in Jira, we need to do it. And then it forces this kind of like reactionary, well.

[00:11:28] Gerry Scullion: That forced alignment, um, piece. I'd love to get your thoughts on it versus that meaningful alignment piece. And also the fact that it is still there, the fact that it is still, it's 2025 this year. I dunno if you know that folks, it's another piece of information that's free. The fact that it's still there, the misalignment piece.

[00:11:47] Gerry Scullion: Um, is there any one role in the organization that, in your experience, who's looking after try and what are.[00:12:00]

[00:12:01] Marc Stickdorn: I don't know if that's a specific role for me. For me, it's actually one of the core tasks of leadership, isn't it?

[00:12:06] Gerry Scullion: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[00:12:07] Marc Stickdorn: Makes or it should be, but yes, often it's not. 'cause often we play power games there.

[00:12:12] Gerry Scullion: Who's gonna drink the lattes if they're doing that? The what? Who's gonna drink? The lattes of leadership are looking after the misalignment.

[00:12:20] Gerry Scullion: Sorry.

[00:12:25] Marc Stickdorn: I'm not sure if that is a role. Um, 'cause in, in the end, if we, if we are, if we are all focused on the same goals, if we're running in the same direction Yeah. Um, that, that means we. Need to get rid of those. How do we measure success within each department? So one of the key things I see in organization is to have cross silo KPIs.

[00:12:49] Marc Stickdorn: So KPIs that are used across different teams to ensure that we measure success based on the same KPIs. Okay. And as long as we don't have that, [00:13:00] it will be really difficult to introduce that

[00:13:03] Gerry Scullion: metrics and visualization. I.

[00:13:09] Gerry Scullion: I'm, I'm a huge believer in the power that a lot of the toolkit from service design can give us as change makers, whatever you want to call us as practitioners. Um, walk me through why you feel visualization as a communication tool is so effective.

[00:13:32] Marc Stickdorn: It has power to simplify. Often rather complex reality like.

[00:13:41] Marc Stickdorn: Maps and, and, and where do we use maps? Uh, like where they, where they come from. Geography. Like, we use it for navigation. Right? And we, we often didn't know, like, like if we go centuries back, the, the explorers at that time they didn't know how the whole world looks like or [00:14:00] function, but the new part of it, and they mapped it so others could follow their traits and um, and, and, and they used it to share this information.

[00:14:09] Marc Stickdorn: So I think from, this is one of the, the core things in organizations, why we use mass. Because why they, they work so easily. Because they're easy to grasp. Yeah. Easily understandable. But they can be enriched with specific data that is relevant to a specific audience. So we have a simple tool connecting specific audiences with each other, allowing them to bring in very specific knowledge.

[00:14:35] Marc Stickdorn: So on a map and geography, even though we agree on. On common structures of, um, of how a map works, you can add loads of different data to it for different use cases. Driving your car looks different. To navigate, uh, your boat on the ocean or for farmers to, um, to put like, like the, the, the seed in the [00:15:00] ground or if you, if if you're minor and you, you want to dig out stuff, like we all use maps, but we fill it up with different specific data.

[00:15:09] Marc Stickdorn: I think that is the power of it. We have a very simple common understanding and we can enrich it with very specific data.

[00:15:18] Gerry Scullion: Yeah. I, I love that When we talk about frameworks and service architecture, so I refer to it and you, you refer to it as journey management. When we talk about this stuff to organizations, what are the common pushbacks about why it won't be adopted?

[00:15:37] Gerry Scullion: I'd love to get your thoughts on.

[00:15:43] Marc Stickdorn: Well, they need to see the value of it. And, and if you, if you just hear about like how to set it up and so on, or they see like, oh, it, it takes actually work to set this up. Yeah. And they hear benefits and, and they see use cases from other companies, but it doesn't [00:16:00] really resonate with them as long as they don't see it work within their own organization.

[00:16:05] Marc Stickdorn: Once they see it working and they see the benefits of it, um, they, they buy into it. First, we need to make sure that they actually understand that this can work within their own organization. We need to tweak and adapt it, um, from organization to organization. 'cause everyone works slightly different.

[00:16:26] Gerry Scullion: So when you think about the, the pushback that time to invest into us is kind of like the same reason why they don't look at the task when it's their focus.

[00:16:39] Gerry Scullion: Their head, head is down. Is there a case there for taking a step back and allowing people the time to breathe and respond to catch up, um, and, and take some time to really plan for the future? Or is this something that you can see that has been incrementally added over time, project by project and chipped away, [00:17:00] like kind of by a thousand cuts?

[00:17:01] Gerry Scullion: So to

[00:17:04] Marc Stickdorn: I. Resonates better in an organization is a, is a slower, more sustainable approach to bring it in. Um, so start with a small team and then let it grow project by project and increase, um, the, the amount of people who are involved in it. 'cause the, the other way is to really start big and say, okay, we need loads of maps and it only works at scale.

[00:17:27] Marc Stickdorn: And yes, there are benefits of scaling it and having it on, on, on a large scale. But there's also danger of it. 'cause if you, if you go too big in the beginning. Um, you might have not the capacity in your organization to act on the decision that you're taking. Yeah. So if you have loads and loads of pain points and loads of loads of opportunities in it, you decide, okay, this is what we're gonna tackle, and the organization is not there yet to actually tackle it, and you tackle just a fraction of it.

[00:17:56] Marc Stickdorn: After a year or so, people might get frustrated and say, look, we [00:18:00] reported this. And, and, and it actually becomes a reporting tool for them. When I say we, we place pain point by pain point here, need by need. Um, but nobody acts on it, so why should I keep on doing it? Yeah. And I think that is a danger we need to avoid.

[00:18:13] Marc Stickdorn: So if we go too big, uh, without having the capabilities and the capacity to follow up on decision that we take,

[00:18:21] Gerry Scullion: yeah,

[00:18:22] Marc Stickdorn: it's doomed to fail.

[00:18:24] Gerry Scullion: So how can we enable that? How can we make that easier for. Does this require, from your perspective, the buy-in and the training of executives to become more proficient in the language of customer experience, whatever you wanna call it, design thinking is that.

[00:18:47] Gerry Scullion: Again, are we falling into the trap of siloed thinking, of trying to get them to think like us rather than us think like them?

[00:18:53] Marc Stickdorn: Yeah. But I would, I would turn it around. I, I think designers need to speak more business. Yeah. [00:19:00] And, and we need to speak the universal language that people care about in an organization.

[00:19:05] Marc Stickdorn: So if we, if we're able to translate our work, so translate from a journey, map into a portfolio and, and, and offer information. In a, in a way that is easily understandable, again, by the audience. And if it's about decision makers, probably they're more familiar with like portfolio management than with customer experience and journey maps.

[00:19:26] Marc Stickdorn: Yeah. So instead of trying to teach them how we think about customer experience, how our tools work, maybe we need to turn it around and rather use their language and their tools and again, make sure that we include data that they care about. So talk about things like costs and risk and revenue and customer lifetime value and stuff like that.

[00:19:48] Gerry Scullion: You're, you're building these segues almost flawlessly for me and I love that. So you mentioned there about metrics and you know, making sure that the data that's in there makes sense in your [00:20:00] experience. If I was to give you a magic wand, um, and there was one type of data that you see is being overused within journey maps or even just generally within organizations.

[00:20:15] Gerry Scullion: You could eradicate it and put more meaningful metrics in there, what would

[00:20:21] Marc Stickdorn: it be? Oh gosh. Um, you, you want me to say NPS, right? No. Oh.

[00:20:26] Gerry Scullion: Well, uh, really, that's, that's very contentious. Why does NPS in your perspective, get such a bad rap? Uh, well, it,

[00:20:39] Marc Stickdorn: oh gosh, I didn't know how that ended. Oh gosh.

[00:20:41] Gerry Scullion: Side side swipe.

[00:20:42] Gerry Scullion: That was a, that was a kidney punch. That's all good. That's

[00:20:46] Marc Stickdorn: good. Um, well, there, there's several issues about it. Um, apart from the academic discussion around NPS that's lacking validity in actually not meshing what it's supposed to measure. Mm-hmm. Um, it, it is on the one hand, a [00:21:00] lagging. Um, um, uh, metric so you only see afterwards, right?

[00:21:04] Marc Stickdorn: Um, and people like also this question like, would you recommend, uh, ma many, it, it doesn't apply to many services. I would never recommend this. Like, I don't know, my, my electricity provider or like, like why would I recommend this to a friend? Like, I, I don't go to them and say, Hey, this is a really great water supply.

[00:21:26] Marc Stickdorn: No, I don't, I don't care about that. It's a bit odd. Um, but apart from that, like what I, what I like about it is, uh, the qualitative part of it. So if people answer and part of all the, the criticism, um, about this, which, which I share. If it's used well, it still can help you, particularly with this qualitative question, like the why question, although there are better ways how to get to this data apart from that, but that can be really, really useful to go through the qualitative part and understand like why we see certain effects.[00:22:00]

[00:22:01] Marc Stickdorn: I a lot of, I think if you look at journey maps and, and stuff we see out there, it's often focusing more on the quantitative bit and care about like, how can we increase our NPS, because that's what my bonus depends on, and less about going into the qualitative bits of data there. And, and do you know how to get, like I give you an expert tip here, how to increase NPS by five points immediately kind in nine and 10.

[00:22:30] Marc Stickdorn: That's a problem about this stuff. Like we, we try to hack the system. We try to impact the score and not what it is supposed to measure. That's what I, what I don't like about that stuff.

[00:22:40] Gerry Scullion: What do you say to designers or anyone in the, in the space of innovation, I guess, who are around NPS and they might be in an organization where they're.

[00:22:51] Gerry Scullion: Pretty relatively low design, mature, if you'd say. And they know that NPS is in there and they're going for it. They're trying to get rid of it in the organization. They're [00:23:00] trying to say like, oh, you know, this is not doing us any good, versus having conversations about alignment, which would give you the better bang for buck.

[00:23:11] Marc Stickdorn: I wouldn't try to get rid of it. Um, I would try to triangulate it and maybe put other. Factors on the same level of it. Yeah. Um, and, and, and through that it might be invaluable component. So think of it, and like in management we talk about, um, the, the balanced scorecard approach where you, where you map around six aspects, um, around a certain topic.

[00:23:37] Marc Stickdorn: So. Often these are metrics, but I would also include qualitative factors. Things like what do people complain about mostly last month, uh, what are the contact reasons, um, from your contact center, uh, what are pain points they're having? But then also quantity factors like customer lifetime value and um, and, and yes, you can also then put net promoter, score C or what have you.[00:24:00]

[00:24:04] Gerry Scullion: What about volume of calls and volume of inquiries and volume of emails and traffic to a destination and so forth in terms of those metrics? Like what, what does that give us

[00:24:20] Marc Stickdorn: as designs? Yes. Well, if you wanna decrease the, the volume of calls take off your phone number of your website, right? Oh,

[00:24:27] Gerry Scullion: you're taking my, you're, you're nicking my bloody case studies here.

[00:24:34] Marc Stickdorn: Sorry, but yes, that's, that's a problem. If it's just, just about volume, like volume of emails, whatever, you can always hack the system, right? Yeah. Um, and it doesn't really tell you why people are contacting you and, and, and is it for them a workaround because they can't achieve what they actually try to achieve through the channels they want use?

[00:24:57] Marc Stickdorn: Or is it because we force them [00:25:00] into a certain channel? It, it's just lucky the context.

[00:25:03] Gerry Scullion: Okay. Here's a more of a an anecdotal slash agony and scenario. Okay. When you've got executives over here Okay. Who may with the very best intention, any of the executives that I've been lucky enough to get to work with, they always have the best intention.

[00:25:24] Gerry Scullion: Picking on anyone here. Any, any group. Okay. But if you're an executive and they're over here and you've got frontline teams over here delivering the service, okay. And they see two different versions of reality, okay? How do you navigate that, that disconnect? How do you bring them closer?

[00:25:45] Marc Stickdorn: How to create alignment back to that.

[00:25:47] Marc Stickdorn: Yes.

[00:25:47] Gerry Scullion: Yeah.

[00:25:48] Marc Stickdorn: Um, well, tools are always one way, but I think like they need to tap into the reality. Uh, so service safaris is, uh, is a great way to do it. Like, um, if you're an exec [00:26:00] work for, and if it's just an hour work is front end staff, uh, become a customer of their own, the services and the products you're offering.

[00:26:08] Marc Stickdorn: Like I, I work with so many executives who. Never use their own services, uh, car companies where they never brought their own car to a service. Uh, travel companies, airlines where they don't book a ticket through their own website because they don't need to do this. Um, but doing this both from a customer perspective and an employee perspective, so do kind of an internship.

[00:26:31] Marc Stickdorn: I always talk about this stupid TV show, undercover bots, right? We, we don't do the fake mustache and stuff. The core idea is really work frontline and understand the reality of the decisions we often take rather than abstract data and see how these really play out if you are working there on frontline.

[00:26:55] Gerry Scullion: Yeah, I love it. Um, in your turn from your, from your perspective. [00:27:00] You can get them to do these certain activities if they're like, no, that's, that's your role. Is there anything you've seen in terms of a stepping stone that might trigger those conversations that could bring them a little bit closer rather than, 'cause what we're trying to do there is talk about push and pull.

[00:27:19] Gerry Scullion: I'd love to get your thoughts. Some sort of, um, I guess more framework thinking around what does. Trying to get them down. Like one of the things that I love to do is, is get things on the wall and get things up on the wall so when they're passing by and they can actually see the work that's going on and, and gotta get their interest a little bit more and try and grab five minutes.

[00:27:43] Gerry Scullion: It's much harder to do this though when things are in mural or mural or any of these tools. What have you seen? And this a.

[00:27:56] Gerry Scullion: In absence, if you're distributed and you're across the world and [00:28:00] stuff and you're trying to evoke a change, or somebody is in New York or Sydney or wherever, it's, what advice do you give to them in that instance where you're kind of like being somewhat discriminated against geographically because you don't get the opportunity for that five minute water cooler opportunity.

[00:28:18] Marc Stickdorn: I, I agree that like pen and paper is the best thing and, and have a printed, let's say journey map on the wall is, uh, is still one of the Yeah. The greatest way to literally walk people through it. Um, if you can't do it, yes. Use digital tools to do it. It's not the same though. Um, but. Depends also how you, how you use the tools.

[00:28:41] Marc Stickdorn: Um, like you can, you can talk through tools, you can pull in, uh, proper customer data. You can get quotes in from customers. You can, uh, let customers talk through their experience. So there, there are different ways how to get them closer to, um, to the actual experience. People, people have. [00:29:00] What, what I see very powerful is also if you let different groups create, uh, artifacts independently of each other.

[00:29:07] Marc Stickdorn: So let, uh, exec, uh, if, if you grab, if you are able to grab them for 15 minutes, let them do a very quick journey about themself based on their own experience. Let them add the three core pain points about that certain experience you look at. Yeah. Um, and then reflect with, uh, against. A proper research based journey map and see if they are aligned.

[00:29:33] Marc Stickdorn: Um, or if there's a big mismatch. And, and if there is a mismatch, then you have a, a nice trigger point for further conversation. Like, how can we close this gap? How can we reach alignment there? Yeah. How we can we bring this data that we are having, that we're collecting all the time? Into a format. Format that you can use it in your work and leading to better decisions?

[00:29:55] Gerry Scullion: Yeah, more accountability and more visibility and more action based. [00:30:00] Um, which brings us on to, obviously the last couple of years you've been primarily focused on journey management, though kind of framework on. Talk me through, this is an opportunity for you to step up and bang your chest a little bit.

[00:30:15] Gerry Scullion: I'm obviously a power user of Smartly, and I've been on the journey with you for a very long time. I don't know how many years, probably 10 or 11 years. Um, where are you seeing this going? Like, you know, 'cause service, design, journey management. Is this just another terminology that you're seeing enter the conversation and adding more complexity to already crowded conversations and leadership minds?

[00:30:41] Marc Stickdorn: Well, for me it's a, it's a natural development and um, and it just helps to manage those design at scale. Like when we. When we launched the, the second version of Map Play, that was in 2016, we included the first elements of journey management with like the [00:31:00] ability to link life data into it and the ability to link to Jira tickets.

[00:31:04] Marc Stickdorn: So on the one hand, it becomes a dashboard. So you see what is going on in the organization, um, how are we performing? On the other hand, you see, what are we doing, what are we planning to do, and what is the process of, uh, progress of it? We didn't see like, like huge adoption at that time. And, um, and, and it needed a few more years, well, a little bit too early, I think.

[00:31:28] Marc Stickdorn: Um, and in the last two years, this is really accelerating and it's, it's fantastic to see. Um, so what we see now is that, that it really becomes something that many larger organization and also increasingly smaller organizations, uh, start to use. I, I hate, I don't like the term. Um, but they use it as a management approach.

[00:31:53] Marc Stickdorn: I would never use like, and, and call it management approach when I talk about this, uh, with a company, because then people are [00:32:00] immediately afraid by just the label of it. Right? Yeah. So I often also don't call it journey management just because of the term management. Yeah. I often call it. Journey ops or journey map operations or information system or service architecture.

[00:32:14] Marc Stickdorn: Yeah, like, uh, what whatever label resonates in the organization. Make the hurdle as as easy as possible. What really brings is, again, alignment, but also, um, it helps you to manage, um, the, and, and help you with. The prioritization process of what is our next pro uh, project. So if we look at service design in organization, start with a small team and a small team, it's easy to pick the next project.

[00:32:43] Marc Stickdorn: Yeah. Um, but if you have more designers, more people working in service design, because they're not only designers, right. How do you prioritize, how do you scale this up? And for that, we need an information system that creates alignment for me. That is what we do. [00:33:00]

[00:33:01] Gerry Scullion: You've obviously done a lot of talks, sales talks, interviews with people about this, this topic and journey management in its, uh, I kind of in, in a 50 word or less scenario.

[00:33:16] Gerry Scullion: Um, we talk about these different zoom levels and where these experiences happen for people who are like, what, what is this like, you know, is it just stitched journey maps that are together? What are your, what's your take?

[00:33:30] Marc Stickdorn: For me, it's really operationalizing journey maps. So understanding that journey map is, um, is a living object.

[00:33:37] Marc Stickdorn: You used to constantly monitor and prioritize, um, with the idea to improve the experience, both the experience for customers and employees. And you need to do this across different levels. So you need to do it on a, on a very detailed map for a small team that is focusing on a specific aspect. Um, but often what they do is they, they have too little.[00:34:00]

[00:34:00] Marc Stickdorn: Um, budget to tackle everything that, uh, like all the pain points, all the needs, and so that they see. So the ability to have different zoom levels and connect these zoom levels with hierarchy and decision making levels in the organization is really what makes, uh, what makes a difference. Because then teams can, um, escalate pain points they saw in the next higher level map where then someone can look at that with more decision making power and.

[00:34:29] Marc Stickdorn: For me, the, the hierarchy of maps, however you called it, again, different names for this, and connecting it with decision making is really what makes a difference there because it becomes an, an ongoing approach that you use. I like to call it information system or management approach. If that doesn't. Um, hurt any feelings or, or creates any fear in the organization of someone will take away my power.

[00:34:54] Gerry Scullion: Yeah, no, no, it's, it's really good. Without sounding like I'm too much of a, a salesperson [00:35:00] on behalf of you. Like, I've used it, you know, so many times over the years and never once have I regretted it in terms of what it gives me and the flexibility that, that this tool gives me out of the box. Okay. Nearly all my clients, and I say nearly all because I'm working with one at the moment and I know it's just gonna, it's gonna work.

[00:35:20] Gerry Scullion: Otherwise, I would've said, all my clients, um, have really taken to this and they're able to really collaborate and they're able to see the, the opportunities for. Potential innovation in the future. I wanna end the conversation Mark, in talking about something that you mentioned there about the portfolio aspect of it when you're mapping your experiences out and it's like one thing to map your own personal experience, but hopefully people listening will know you have to go and do research, you have to validate this, have.

[00:35:56] Gerry Scullion: Talk to me about the opportunities that are, uh, that, that are, that are [00:36:00] discovered when you're researching and how this intersects and weaves into a portfolio management or an opportunity matrix of sorts, and how that dovetails nicely into, say, the agile framework of being able to quantify the impact in the RO of any of these initiatives.

[00:36:18] Marc Stickdorn: Yes. If you, again, if you, if you think of the reality of, uh, tools that are people, that people are using, if you work in design, customer experience, journey map is a, is a natural tool we are using. If you are in middle or higher management, maybe not, maybe you're more comfortable with, um, with portfolios because that's what you use to, um, to prioritize and for, for decision making.

[00:36:45] Marc Stickdorn: You, we need to translate again, our data from a journey map. Think of, um, you have a journey map, you have a lane full of, uh, of opportunities, and you rate each opportunities based on certain factors. Be like, what is the potential impact on the [00:37:00] user? What is the feasibility or, or cost to bring this to market and so on.

[00:37:05] Marc Stickdorn: You that, uh, as a portfolio, you then can talk about things like risk, for example, which, which. Of these opportunities are more risky, which of these are less risky? And then you can start managing it like you would manage a stock portfolio where we know we never would put all acts in one basket. We will not put all our money onto that one really risky, uh, stock out there.

[00:37:30] Marc Stickdorn: But we try to diversify. We take a few less risky investment. Yeah. We take maybe one or two risky. There are some decision making approaches where they take this element out of it, where basically there's an algorithm telling you what to do. And I'm not gonna mention anything specific, but I think in, in product management and, and decision making, you know which tools, I mean like you, you have different categories you rate on things and then.

[00:37:59] Marc Stickdorn: [00:38:00] The algorithm tells you these are your top five things to do, and I think there's more to it because yeah, we also need to align our, our opportunities with the vision of the company. Where do we want to go? Where do we wanna be? What is right now the. The most important aspect for decision making is it, is it maybe the impact on costs?

[00:38:20] Marc Stickdorn: Is it, um, to care about one particular group, uh, of customers and using a portfolio is a really simple way. That allows you to bring in different, um, different dimensions and speak the language of the management. Yeah. Um, and, and less of design.

[00:38:38] Gerry Scullion: It is a dovetail of sorts into that world. Like, you know, it's, it's been the disconnect for, for quite some time because.

[00:38:46] Gerry Scullion: We would always, I used to call it the Oliver Twist scenario, where you'd go and you'd, um, you know, you'd come up with some ideas and you might have found some pieces from research and you'd be so excited about it and you'd put them on the plate and then you'd go up to the leadership and go, [00:39:00] please, please, sir, will you, can I have some more?

[00:39:03] Gerry Scullion: And they'd say, no. You know, like, this isn't, this doesn't, doesn't fit with our strategy at the moment. You have to put it back to the, you know, Q4 or something and we'll come back and readdress it. And then you're like, you go into that perpetual cycle of, you know, when, when is my moment. And most designers will probably resonate with that piece.

[00:39:20] Gerry Scullion: And since this shift has happened over the last maybe four or five years in particular, starting up a groundswell, that conversation is less frequent. It's obviously still there, but working, speaking this way. You're able to elevate yourself into those conversations much, much more. Mark, I know we've, we've taken up, uh, quite a lot of your time.

[00:39:43] Gerry Scullion: We did some prep for this as well. If people wanna reach out and engage and learn more about you and what you're doing and the tool, what's the best way for people to reach out and, and learn and get their hands dirty, so to speak?

[00:39:58] Marc Stickdorn: I'm active on LinkedIn. You can [00:40:00] always, uh, connect me, uh, on LinkedIn and, and, and I post occasionally there.

[00:40:04] Marc Stickdorn: Um, I do podcasts with, uh, Jerry sometimes, so follow that as well. Uh, but then basically it's, it's, it's our website. Um, it's uh, snappy.com. Um, happy to get in touch and yeah. And happy to talk you through different possibilities. Yeah.

[00:40:22] Gerry Scullion: Brilliant. There's a bunch of episodes for anyone who's just tuning in.

[00:40:26] Gerry Scullion: We did a LinkedIn Live here. If you're listening to it on the podcast, meet members from our community as well in the chat. Um, listening in as we, as we're doing this, which is an exclusive thing just for the community members on this is hcd, you are interested in that, go to this iscd com and.

[00:40:49] Gerry Scullion: Folks, again, if you wanna listen to more about Mark, I know he is got such a really, uh, beautiful accent and a beautiful voice. You can go to this iscd com slash episodes. I think it's, [00:41:00] and you can filter and you'll see lots of conversations. But Mark what we talk more about this topic in particular, but also around embedding service, design thinking and doing into.

[00:41:12] Gerry Scullion: Mark, you know it and I know it. I wrap every episode up by thanking their guests for their vulnerability, their, um, persistence and allowing me to ask questions. This isn't scripted. We don't have anything. We did a bit of prep up front in terms of like, you know, ask what Mark had for his lunch. Was he fed?

[00:41:28] Gerry Scullion: Does he have a drink? Doess as much prep as we do on this is HCD. It is an unscripted podcast. If you are listening and you're still here. Please do like and subscribe. If you're on YouTube, uh, follow us on LinkedIn. And also if you are on Apple Podcasts too, it'll be fantastic. It helps other subscribers and other listeners tune into the content and I really, really appreciate it.

[00:41:52] Gerry Scullion: Thanks so much, mark.

[00:41:54] Marc Stickdorn: Thanks for having me [00:42:00] again.