Don’t digitise the queue. Question why the queue exists.

Many service improvement programmes begin too late in the thinking process.

The existing service is accepted as the starting point.

The organisation then asks:

• How can we make this process faster?
• How can we digitise this form?
• How can we automate this step?
• How can we reduce the cost of this transaction?

These can be useful questions.

But there is a better question to ask first:

If we were designing this service today, would we design it this way?

My recent thinking on service redesign focuses on understanding services end-to-end.

That means considering:

• the outcome the service exists to achieve
• the experience of customers and communities
• the experience of employees delivering the service
• the interaction between people, process, technology and information
• unnecessary hand-offs and approval points
• duplication and failure demand
• opportunities for automation
• activities that no longer need to exist.

The objective should not be to make an outdated service model marginally more efficient.

It should be to design a better service.

Strategy should make choices clearer.

Organisations rarely suffer from a shortage of priorities.

The problem is usually the opposite.

Everything is important.

Every initiative is strategic.

Every stakeholder expectation is included.

Nothing stops.

And then the organisation wonders why implementation is difficult.

My recent work has reinforced my view that strategy should help organisations make choices.

A useful strategy should create clarity about:

• where the organisation is going
• what matters most
• what choices are being made
• what capabilities need to be developed
• where resources will be focused
• what will be done differently
• what will stop.

The real test of a strategy is not the launch event.

It is the first difficult decision that comes afterwards.

Automate deliberately.

AI and automation are creating significant opportunities for organisations.

They are also creating a risk that organisations automate before they think.

A poorly designed process does not become a good process simply because it happens faster.

My work and thinking in this area focus on the relationship between technology, service design and organisational performance.

The questions I believe leaders should be asking include:

• What outcome are we trying to improve?
• Where is unnecessary effort being created?
• Where does human judgement genuinely add value?
• What work can technology perform better?
• What process should be redesigned before it is automated?
• How will roles and accountabilities change?
• What new risks are being introduced?
• And what work should simply stop?

The opportunity created by automation is larger than productivity.

It gives organisations an opportunity to reconsider how work is organised and how services are delivered.