Leading Service Design Spanners, with Mark Howell.

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Mark Howell, has had a rich and varied career.  He's the only person that I know that has a PhD in IVR.

In this episode Mark shares  his approach to service design leadership. He talks about intentionally crating a culture underpinned by rituals, how modelling the positive behaviours and carving out time to do Individual Contributor, hands-on work means that he never loses touch with the changing shape of service design practice.  

He also talks about the "secret work of service designers" - service designers are “spanners”. Mark talks about how we span the gaps to draw on our powers of empathy and orchestration to bring together multifunctional stakeholders to define and deliver services.  This is a high stress task that can lead to burn out if not actively monitored and managed.    

Sources listed in this episode:

Liminal Thinking - Dave Gray (interviewed here)

True Belonging according to Brené Brown 

The other Service Design Podcast that Mark loves: 

The Service Design Show 

The Power of 10 with Andy Polaine.

Finding our Way with Jesse James Garret and Peter Merholtz

Service Design YAP is developed and produced by the Service Design Network UK Chapter.
Its aim is to engage and connect the wider Service Design community.

• Episode Host: Stephen Wood
• Production Assistance: Jean Watanya