How to manage the organisational dark matter / Marzia Arico / Episode #129

Service Design Show

I'm sure you've experienced it... You put your heart and soul into your work, you try to create value through design, you have an optimistic mindset. But whatever you do, you always feel like there's a mysterious organisational force pushing against you. It's the "organisational dark matter" that makes your life as a service designer so much harder. But there's hope. As the design director at Livework tasked with bringing service design to many different organisations, Marzia Arico has experienced her fair share of this dark matter. Her conclusion is that if you want to create impact, you can't just focus on the design work. That's just 10% of your job. You have to learn how to effectively deal with the other 90% as well. And that's what this episode is all about. What I love about the conversation with Marzia is that all her stories are rooted in practical real-life experiences. Stories filled with insights that have the potential to make your life easier and your work more fun. --- [ GUIDE ] -— 00:00 Welcome to episode 129 02:45 Who is Marzia 03:30 60 second rapid fire questions 06:30 dark matter and organisational logic 11:00 finding the right narrative 15:00 lack of one view 19:45 what client does it take 24:45 you move at multiple speeds 27:00 what does progress look like 30:00 making change sustainable 33:30 the operating model for design 38:30 scaling design capability 45:00 advice for smaller teams 50:00 Final thoughts --- [ LINKS ] --- * https://www.linkedin.com/in/marziaarico/ * Reinventing Organizations (book) - https://amzn.to/3AWklNp * Dark matter and trojan horses (book) - https://amzn.to/3i8ohlL * https://www.servicedesignshow.com/campfire/ --- [ HOW TO EXPLAIN SERVICE DESIGN ] --- Learn what it takes to get your clients, colleagues, managers, CEOs and even grandmas as excited about service design as you are. https://servicedesignshow.com/free-course