Stakeholder Leadership (£430 + VAT)

This course is for service designers and change-makers who want to expand their level of influence in organisations and learn how to effectively get buy-in for service design and lead their stakeholders to deliver good services

• Understand how to identify and balance the motivations of your organisation and stakeholders with user needs
• How to build consensus and buy-in for service design at all levels of an organisation
• Navigate power and governance structures
• How to manage difficult relationships and learn when and how to push back
• Create a clear scope for your work and communicate it effectively

1. Understanding organisational structures

• Understand the reasons why organisations struggle to be user focused 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

2. Defining your brief

• Learn how to identify the task 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 criteria for success 
• Learn to prioritise and sign off outcomes at the start of a piece of work
• Create a clear set of prioritised outcomes for your work to agree with your stakeholders 

3. Understanding your stakeholders and what they need

• Understanding the importance of relationships to getting service design to scale in your organisation
• Understand the needs of your stakeholders and how to tailor your work so that they feel confident in what you’re doing
• Learn how to map your stakeholders and use this to shape the direction of your work

4. Learning how decisions get made

• Identify the difficult decisions that might need to be made in your service 
• Understand who can make decisions, and how and when those decisions get made
• Learn about the different decision making models organisations use and how this affects the way you need to work
• Identify the right forums and processes for the types of decisions you need to make in your service 

5. Getting buy-in 

• Understand the tools and techniques that will enable you to get buy-in with your stakeholders in the short, medium, and long term
• Identify the right communication channels and tools to engage your stakeholders
• Learn how to communicate in a language that will resonate with your stakeholders - in money, risk, or outcomes 

6. Keeping buy-in and staying motivated

• Understand and map the dangers to maintaining continued buy-in for you work
• Learn how to create a governance framework that will maintain stakeholder engagement over time
• Create a compelling comms plan and learn how to build ground-up momentum for your work
• Learn to manage and communicate risk, blockers, and barriers to your stakeholders
• Creating 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

7. Looking after yourself

• Understand your role in long term change
• Learn when and how to let go, re-focus your efforts or purpose in difficult situations
• Learn how to personally challenge situations
• Identify where and you can find safety in your work

All classes are delivered live and online in small classes that are a mix of taught tuition, individual exercises, and group discussion

Participants work on a service or case study of their choice so all course takeaways are able to be put into action immediately

Lou Downe is author of the bestselling book about how to design services that work - Good Services.

They founded the discipline of service design in the UK government, where they were national Design Director for 5 years - establishing the Government’s Service Standard and Design System and building a community of over 3,000 designers, user researchers and content designers - one of (if not the) largest design teams in the world.

Lou was nominated as one of the top 50 creative leaders in the UK in 2016 and one of the world's 100 most influential leaders in digital government in 2018 and is a passionate believer in the role of design to create a world which benefits everyone.

This masterclass can be delivered privately for your organisation. Drop us a line here to discuss.

Host or Publisher Good Services