I just had a little optimistic outburst, and I almost went and blabbed it on LinkedIn, but decided instead to sleep on it:

If you were to sit down and inventory the pain points of your life, most of them could be traced to bad service design.

I’m not talking only — or even primarily — about your pain as a consumer of services. Even more, I’m talking about the frustrations you experience as a deliverer of services within your own organizations, and to your organizations’ customers.

Whenever an interaction just doesn’t seem worth the effort… whenever you feel coerced into complying with some bullshit policy… whenever you keep on going, from desireless momentum, or fear, or lack of alternatives — try re-seeing that moment as a service design fail. Notice how someone didn’t try to design the system to make things work out for all participants, or worse, designed it to benefit only one party, without consideration of others.

Things can be better than they are. We have methods, tools and praxis to co-design win-wins into our organizations and into our society.

The real question is: Do we actually want change? Are we willing invest effort and risk discomfort to achieve win-wins for everyone? Or are we actually sort of okay with business-as-usual?

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October 4: today I edited this post, de-saccharinated it, and harshened it up. It is getting closer to ready. I’m trying to re-work my work persona, and this is a prototype.