Serving those who work for you

When I moved to my current home five years ago this week, my wife and I had a small one year old, I had a flu and we had no time to reasonably pack things very well. We also had known that moving is always more expensive than we normally planned for, so we had to find someway the movers could be almost on auto-pilot. Intro: Service design!

We ordered a rainbow assortment of masking tape to color code the boxes of where we wanted them in the new house, not what was in the box itself -but where it was supposed to go. See, we didn’t care what was in it, we just cared that unpacking needed to be easier and we didn’t need to move boxes after the movers had left, we needed just to unpack.

So instead of having to direct the movers, we showed them the color code, posted signs up with the codes at the entryway and the stairway, then color marked each room..and let them just play a game of color matching!

As I do more design leadership work, I remember this lesson: People I serve as a leader, just want to know the rules and the direction through the mazes for problems they face. They don’t want to have to question every “box” they lift or every “turn” they make. They need their path smooth and sensible.

Originally published at https://www.vanshea.com on September 11, 2023.