Why We Should Reframe Culture as a Design Challenge / Dan Szuc / Episode #239

Service Design Show

What is the thing biggest stopping you from doing meaningful work...

When I listen to the service design professionals around me, it's often not the tools or methods they have access to.

Rather, and you might recognize this, its often the organizational culture that's the biggest roadblock.

Culture isn't the set of company values that are displayed on the wall. If only things were so simple

Culture is materialized by actions. It's made up of the lived experiences of the people doing the work day in and day out.

So, if the existing org culture is a roadblock, how can we change it?

Because as we know, if there is one thing that's great at resisting change, it's culture.

And do we even have a place here as service design professionals. Isn't this the field of expertise of strategy consultants?

Well, our guest, Dan Szuc has been working on this question for the last 20 years.

He's so deep into it that he written two books on this topic Make Meaningful Work and Make Meaningful Culture.

And the good news is that, yes culture is 100% an area where we need to play a role.

We can look at culture as a design material that can be shaped.

In this episode we explore how that works in practice, where you even start and the pitfalls that you should be mindful.

We get into practical techniques like "practice spotting", talk about "moments that matter" and explore the influence of leadership (and lack of it).

This episode is for everyone who want's to contribute to making "shitty" work environments into ones that are better equipped to help you do meaningful work!

Culture often feels like a huge, intangible and sometimes even scary topic to touch.

I hope that this conversation help see that there are small, practical, tangible actions you can do to start shaping a better culture today and the confidence to do so!

Enjoy and keep making a positive impact.

Be well,

--- [ 1. GUIDE ] ---

00:00 Welcome to Episode 239

04:00 Culture at work

04:30 Moving Beyond "Soft Skills"

06:45 Professional Acting to Organizational Culture

10:30 Introducing SPARKLE

13:00 the SPARKLE Acronym

16:00 Small Acts, Big Change

23:30 Power of Practice Spotting

30:30 Why People Hesitate to Change

34:00 Rules vs. Practice

41:00 How to do practice spotting

45:30 Challenge of Engagement

50:30 Introducing New Practices to Your Team

54:30 Small Practice to Organizational Shift

57:00 Best case transformation

1:00:15 What Dan is Working on Next

1:02:30 Resources

1:04:30 Question to ponder

--- [ 2. LINKS ] ---

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielszuc
• MMW LinkedIn Newsletter - https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/make-meaningful-work-7327884648296972288/
• Apogee - https://www.apogeehk.com/
• Make Meaningful Work - https://www.makemeaningfulwork.com/
• MMC Book - https://www.amazon.com/dp/173792823X

--- [ 3. CIRCLE ] ---

Join our private community for in-house service design professionals.

⁠https://servicedesignshow.com/circle

-- [ 4. FIND THE SHOW ON ] ---

• Youtube ~ https://go.servicedesignshow.com/239-youtube
• Spotify ~ https://go.servicedesignshow.com/239-spotify
• Apple ~ https://go.servicedesignshow.com/239-apple
• Snipd ~ https://go.servicedesignshow.com/239-snipd