Course tickets are now available directly via good.services

Leading Stakeholders is a one-day, intensive masterclass in creating effective stakeholder relationships that unlock user-centred design at every level of your organisation. This masterclass will give you the skills and techniques to identify and bring your stakeholders along on the journey of service transformation with you

Who it’s for

This course is for service designers and change-makers who want to expand their level of influence in organisations and learn how to effectively get buy-in for service design and lead their stakeholders to deliver good services

What you’ll learn

Understand how to identify and balance the motivations of your organisation and stakeholders with user needs
How to build consensus and buy-in for service design at all levels of an organisation
Navigate power and governance structures
How to manage difficult relationships and learn when and how to push back
Create a clear scope for your work and communicate it effectively

Course modules

1. Understanding organisational structures

Understand the reasons why organisations struggle to be user focused and identify the blockers and barriers to user-centred design in your organisation
Learn to define ‘services’ and how to mitigate the confusion or conflict of moving to a service-led way of thinking in your organisation
Understand the challenge of helping our organisation to see, understand and deliver services as your users see them

2. Defining your brief

Learn how to identify the task you've been given by your organisation and how this might differ from what’s actually needed
Learn how and when to safely challenge your brief using techniques from hypothesis-driven design to setting criteria for success
Learn to prioritise and sign off outcomes at the start of a piece of work
Create a clear set of prioritised outcomes for your work to agree with your stakeholders

3. Understanding your stakeholders and what they need

Understanding the importance of relationships to getting service design to scale in your organisation
Understand the needs of your stakeholders and how to tailor your work so that they feel confident in what you’re doing
Learn how to map your stakeholders and use this to shape the direction of your work

4. Learning how decisions get made

Identify the difficult decisions that might need to be made in your service
Understand who can make decisions, and how and when those decisions get made
Learn about the different decision making models organisations use and how this affects the way you need to work
Identify the right forums and processes for the types of decisions you need to make in your service

5. Getting buy-in

Understand the tools and techniques that will enable you to get buy-in with your stakeholders in the short, medium, and long term
Identify the right communication channels and tools to engage your stakeholders
Learn how to communicate in a language that will resonate with your stakeholders - in money, risk, or outcomes

6. Keeping buy-in and staying motivated

Understand and map the dangers to maintaining continued buy-in for you work
Learn how to create a governance framework that will maintain stakeholder engagement over time
Create a compelling comms plan and learn how to build ground-up momentum for your work
Learn to manage and communicate risk, blockers, and barriers to your stakeholders
Creating a long term plan for change where buy-in changes or is removed
Techniques to rescue buy-in and manage work where you can't get buy-in

7. Looking after yourself

Understand your role in long term change
Learn when and how to let go, re-focus your efforts or purpose in difficult situations
Learn how to personally challenge situations
Identify where and you can find safety in your work

How it works

All classes are delivered live and online in small classes that are a mix of taught tuition, individual exercises, and group discussion

Participants work on a service or case study of their choice so all course takeaways are able to be put into action immediately

Your trainers

Lou Downe is author of the bestselling book about how to design services that work - Good Services.

They founded the discipline of service design in the UK government, where they were national Design Director for 5 years - establishing the Government’s Service Standard and Design System and building a community of over 3,000 designers, user researchers and content designers - one of (if not the) largest design teams in the world.

Lou was nominated as one of the top 50 creative leaders in the UK in 2016 and one of the world's 100 most influential leaders in digital government in 2018 and is a passionate believer in the role of design to create a world which benefits everyone.

Private courses

This masterclass can be delivered privately for your organisation. Drop us a line here to discuss.

Stakeholder Leadership (£430 + VAT)