The Service Organization: How to Deliver and Lead Successful Services, Sustainably

All organizations are becoming service organizations. But most weren’t built to deliver services successfully end-to-end, and the human, operational and financial impacts are abundantly clear. In the digital era the stakes are even higher, given how rapidly services change. Yet default working practices (governance, planning, funding, leadership, reporting, programme and team structures) inside large organizations haven’t changed. Rather than modernize just one service at a time, it’s the underlying organizational conditions that need to be transformed - anything less is futile. The Service Organization is the result of years of research and consulting, as well as dozens of interviews with executives. It explores significant challenges that leaders will recognize, and turns them into solvable puzzles by providing practical advice and tools that reimagine what the organization does from the perspective of its customers - and it organizes the activity needed to deliver the best outcomes. This book is for everyone involved, from designers to technologists and from operational staff to policymakers and leaders. It includes surprisingly simple and doable, but non-obvious, steps that don’t depend on seniority or pay band and that are typically overlooked by even the most progressive professions, teams and companies. Kate Tarling sets a bold, ambitious and practical agenda for all service organizations. Her book is full of behind-the-scenes examples from the global companies, public sector bodies and non-profits that are now delivering and leading successful services. It shows how to reinvent organizations so they rely not just on ’transforming technology’ but on putting the success of their services at the heart of how they operate.

Kate Tarling helps large organizations create successful services by transforming the default working practices that get in the way. She does this through a mix of consulting, training and writing, and regularly advises boards, executives and teams, as managing director of a services consultancy she founded in 2012. She previously held senior leadership roles in government and the private sector. Kate has spoken on service organizations, design and leadership at Harvard University, Google, the Estonian Government, the British Institute for Government, Ravensbourne University London and the Royal College of Art.