Competency Model for Service Designers
Competency Model for Service Designers
What it takes to grow into a service design leader.
What are the competencies needed by service designers at different levels of seniority? What does it take to progress into a design leader? What are the soft and hard skills to focus on?
I’m often asked these types of questions by design practitioners who want to progress in their careers into leadership positions and by design leaders and/or design ops who are in the process of establishing or scaling a strategic design team.
A competency model is a framework to define a job's skill and knowledge requirements. It highlights key elements the role encompasses and the skills and behaviours needed to showcase for succeeding in the role. A competency model generally dives into determined categories and specific skills associated with those; it also clarifies ways to measure success. In the context of this blog, I’ll keep my description simpler and at a higher level to offer a state of the land with the most crucial aspects. Happy to engage in a conversation on the details if anyone is interested!
Service Design Director / Head of Service Design
The Role:
Growing relationships with key stakeholders. In the case of consulting, this includes clients. In the case of in-house leaders, it encompasses senior leaders who can offer designers the ground to experiment and generate value in practice.
Providing a vision for design and a strategy. This encompasses short-term prioritisation mechanisms, meaning how the team can select the work to focus on right now and the long-term goals the team is after. The ability to bridge the long and short term and explain how what the team is doing today adds to the long-term journey is key.
Leading teams to deliver high-quality work and actively managing key people.
Measuring the value delivered by service design to the business. This includes defining the best ways to do so.
Driving the development of the core design offer to the business and the definition of the best operating model within the context.
Contributing to the overall business strategy and improvement.
The Skills:
The first and foremost is business acumen. After all, a design leader is a business leader who takes care of positioning design strategically to allow the business to achieve its goals and strategy. The second skill is organisational acumen, the ability to connect with the organisational context and deeply understand its dynamics and unwritten rules. Finally, leadership skills, as the ability to put the ego aside and create the best possible environment for the team to succeed.
Lead Service Designer
The Role:
Initiating and managing stakeholder engagements of various natures, from providing visibility to specific project outcomes to involving them in critical aspects of projects and programmes.
Developing a service design practice and community.
Manage, motivate and develop people.
Active involvement in projects and programs to guide the team in delivering quality work within agreed timelines.
The Skills:
Dealing with ambiguity and, at the same time, translating the direction in ways that the team can operationalise. Experimentation, showing in practice the importance of prototyping and iterating. People skills. A lead is the first point of contact for the team, so the role requires empathy and an approach that is open to listening and being of service.
Senior Service Designer
The Role:
Leading mid-sized projects while managing a small team of more junior service designers.
Growing existing relationships with clients or key stakeholders.
Developing more junior staff.
Contributing to the improvement of the service design practice.
The Skills:
The ability to work autonomously but to flag when support is needed from more experienced colleagues. Great attention to detail and holistic perspective on the project process, outputs and outcomes. Ownership of the work.
Service Designer (e.g. Mid, Junior)
The Role:
Taking responsibility for delivering parts of projects.
Managing and executing the delivery of smaller projects.
Actively engaging in internal improvements.
Contributing to the development of the design offer.
Support project teams in delivering medium to large-sized projects.
The Skills:
Proactivity in suggesting the best approach to a given task. The ability to work independently as well as part of a larger team. Clear communication skills to update others effectively on the work developed. Attention to detail and being very organised!
What are your thoughts? Do you recognise yourself on this list? What would you add emerging from your experience? I’d love to read your thoughts in the comments.
Next Webinar
In August, we will host the third community webinar. These are the last few days to influence the topic you’d like us to cover in this community gathering. Below is a list of the topics the community has repeatedly mentioned. Feel free to vote for your favourite! And if you are a paying subscriber, please share your thoughts and join the discussion in this other blog post.
I love this! Below is how I would go about it.
Dear Executive Leader,
How marvellous that you are supporting the development of design capabilities in our organisation. Below, I’d like to outline what it takes to make this effort a success and how you can help us in the process.
- Design is a creative discipline, but it is fact-based. We need to anchor our solutions in research. Our team is not omniscient; every solution needs to be grounded in qualitative or quantitative research to ensure we build something relevant and not just the result of one person’s fantasy. You need to be patient and allow time for that.
- Your role is to clarify our strategic direction as a business and create the guardrails within which the design team can create. Be clear on what the strategy is and be available for feedback.
- Design is not a vertical discipline or a silo; it needs to collaborate with other functions to ensure what we create is desirable, viable, and feasible. Advocate for this team so that others will give them time to join parts of the process. Legitimise their presence in this organisation.
- Design allows us to de-risk the development and launch of new solutions. It does this by testing and iterating before building a final product or service. It cannot be waterfall. Do not expect to gate development. We iterate, and as we do so, we learn more about the problem and the solution.
- Finally, whatever we do, if done well, will transform the way this organisation builds and delivers value to customers. Change is often painful, and we need to be ready to question what we know to be true with an open mind and with the belief that we are all here to make this organisation better.
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Thanks Marzia... this is very helpful, and timely.
I'm wondering, do you have any thoughts about leadership competencies in an organisation that is building a design capability. I'm talking specifically about executives and other senior leaders that want to embrace design. However, are not design professionals and won't be 'on the tools' or leading the work like a Head of Design.
An example I currently use of a competency for my executive team, is what leadership behaviours they need to be aware of that can negatively impact design projects before they have a chance to succeed.
For example, where senior leaders do not allow for, or value the discovery process by insisting on solutions before the problem is fully articulated/appreciated or jumping to/insisting on the solution that they personally have in mind.