Talk
It’s Not Business, It’s Personal: Leadership in Service Design
Navigating relationships is core to service design, especially in leadership. Andy challenges the notion of “it’s not personal, just business,” instead approaching leadership at the human level by understanding the fears and anxieties that create tension and misalignment, and the need for metacommunication for service design to be impactful.
Andy Polaine (he/him)
Dr. Andy Polaine is a design leadership coach, educator, and writer who helps clients build and grow their own design and innovation capability, transform their organisations and themselves. For several years he worked at Fjord where he was global Group Design Director of Client Evolution. He is co-author of the Rosenfeld Media book, Service Design: From Insight to Implementation, now a standard text for Service Design.
Andy has nearly three decades of experience in design and innovation with clients across a range of industries, including financial services, public services, life sciences, telecommunications, automotive, media, design and education. He holds a PhD from the University of Technology, Sydney and teaches on the MA Service Design at the Hochschule Luzern, Switzerland.
He can be found online at polaine.com, as @apolaine on Mastodon, X (Formerly Twitter) as @apolaine. He writes a popular newsletter called Doctor’s Note and hosts the Power of Ten podcast.
Design Leadership Coach & Author