“Doing differently to enable growth” isn’t a slogan for me. It’s the thread I keep pulling on, project after project.
Here is what I mean.
Three conversations that should be one
Most organisations treat these as separate conversations, often with different people in the room:
• Service design. What do we deliver to clients, and how do they experience it?
• Operating model. How does the organisation run to deliver it? Who decides, how does work flow, who does what?
• Unit economics. What does each unit of that service cost, and what does it earn?
Each conversation makes sense alone. The trouble starts when they never meet. The service is designed without checking what it costs to deliver. The operating model is built around the org chart, not the services.
The numbers are reviewed after the fact, when it’s too late to change the design.
One line of sight
The real unlock is connecting them into one line of sight.
It runs like this. Start with the value the client receives. Follow it back through the front stage and back stage services that create it. Check the operating model supports those services, and doesn’t get in their way. Then put numbers on it: what it costs, what it earns, and where the blockages and loops are draining value.
When you can trace that line from the client to the numbers, decisions get easier. You can see what to scale, what to fix and what to stop.
From clarity to growth
Growth doesn’t come from working harder inside the same design. It comes from doing something differently, and knowing which difference matters most.
Clarity gives you that. When service design, operating model and unit economics tell one story, you can see where growth is being held back, and where an investment will pay off. Then technology, automation and AI can support the change, instead of driving it blind.
Try this
Pick one service. Ask three questions:
1. What value does the client actually get from it?
2. Does our operating model help us deliver that, or slow us down?
3. Do we know what it costs and what it earns?
If you can’t answer all three with confidence, you’ve found your thread to pull on. A good place to start is drawing your service design on paper. I wrote about how in [Draw Your Service Design].
What’s next
This is the work I keep coming back to, and the work I’m looking for next. If that’s a conversation worth having, let’s talk.
I’ve also cleared out the historical blogs from my website. I’m refreshing some of them and writing new ones.
I haven’t written my newsletters for a while. They’re starting up again soon. Subscribe to the newsletter to receive the next series, full of richness via LinkedIn.
Ferne Eliz King helps organisations connect service design, operating model and unit economics into one clear line, and turn that clarity into growth.
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