Bridging the Gap Between Intent and Excecution by Richard Newland

Here is a closer look to one of the keynote speeches in the Service Design Global Conference. Richard Newland’s speech “Bridging the gap between intent and execution, by creating brilliant customer experiences” was inspiring, fresh and funny at the same time. Richard has a natural ability to give interesting talks and really simplify things, so that even someone who is not familiar with the topic knows what he is talking about. In my opinion he was the best speaker of the conference’s final day.

Richard talking about quality of life

Richard Newland is a practical man. He has worked more than 25 years in multiple companies and in different fields of businesses from retail to digital payments sector. He mainly develops strategies and communication plans that reflects company’s ideas and insights into its target market. His goal is to have more customer centric companies and great services for customers. One of his best skills is the ability to explain theories and strategies easily and simply.

Richard had many good points in his speech. I picked the main points here:

·         How to make sure your killer idea gets executed

·         Choosing the right partners internally and externally

·         Use common sense and logic in customer services

You might have superb ideas how to change and improve a customer service, but how to make sure your idea gets executed. Richard Newland believes that a great and simple brief is the key in this matter. It’s not enough to be right, you have to sell your idea to the people you work with. The brief should be detailed enough where everyone knows their role to make the idea successful.

The second main point that Richard talked about was, how to choose the right partners to work with you. One good criterion to select a partner in addition to basic criteria CV, body of work, how they work with other is also the chemistry between you two. By selecting the right partners Richard meant both internal and external partners.

Lastly he talked about using logic and common sense to design customer friendly services. This basically means that you should focus on the things that are important. Ultimately this is what service design is all about, finding the right problem. Picture below represents this idea pretty well.

Combine these ideas and as a result, you should have great customer services and experiences.

More material and thoughts about Richard’s speech:

http://conferences.service-design-network.org/sdgc14/richard-newland-bridging-gap-intent-execution-sdgc14/

Here are Jeff Howard’s thoughts about Richard’s keynote speech:

https://designforservice.wordpress.com/2014/10/08/richard-newland-on-the-gap-between-intent-and-execution/

What can I personally get from Richard’s ideas? How can I apply them into practice?

I think all of the things that Richard Newland talked about are going to help me in the future. I totally relate to the importance of a good brief. Many times in project work I have had good ideas that I couldn’t put into simple words and form an understandable brief. That means that my killer ideas have gone to waste. Same thing have happened to project team members as well. It is frustrating and I’m happy to work on my briefing skills in order to get my ideas into execution.

Usually in school or work life projects you can’t really choose with whom you work with. Although sometimes you can and then you should be able evaluate your potential partners. Choosing the right one is crucial for the end result. In those cases Richard’s tips about forming partnerships can come in handy.

Richard’s last advice that you should use common sense and logic is a good thing to remember regardless of what you do for a living. Sometimes it’s good to take a step back and look at the big picture. Ask yourself what am I doing and what for. When you use common sense and logic you usually make things a lot simpler, which is good.

Below you can see Richard’s own thoughts about the things he talked in the conference.