Help first those who you can impact the most

A Service Design principle to help you set the right priority

There is so much we can do to improve a service or an organization. Should we help the sales team or the marketing team internally? Should you focus on helping new customers enter your service more easily? Should you help existing customers get more value in your service?

Daniel Tuitt, a smart service designer from the UK, has simple and powerful advice: “Help first those you can impact the most.”

To find out who these people are, you can use a simple quadrant to help you.

First, list all the people you would love to help. Then draw a horizontal line. On the left place all the people it does take little effort to help. And in the right place, the people would need a lot of effort to help.

Now draw a vertical line. Move the names of the people you can help a lot on the top. And keep the names of the people you work with won’t change their lives at the bottom.

If someone is in the top left, help that person or group first. Then, it will be easy to impact these people significantly. If you have nobody there, focus on the top right. Here select only one group of people. Because it’s going to take a lot of effort to help these people, but the impact could be huge.

Little side notes

This principle is based on a story shared by Daniel Tuitt from which we extracted together several different principles. Thanks Daniel for sharing such an inspiring tip!
This is the first draft of this Service Design Principle.
Once adapted, even more, this principle will be part of the book "Service Design Principles 201-300"
As always feel free to share comments, feedback or personal stories to improve this principle.

4 comments

Daniele Catalanotto

Aug 13, 2022

The second draft of this Service Design Principle

There is much we can do to improve a service or an organization. For example, should you help the sales or marketing teams internally? Should you focus on assisting new customers in entering your service more easily? Should you help existing customers get more value in your service?

Daniel Tuitt (1) has simple and powerful advice: “Help first those you can impact the most.”

To find out who these people are, you can, for example, use a simple matrix using the impact you can have on people versus the effort you need to help them. You can then place the names of the people easily in each one of these quadrants.

So let me ask you:

Who are the people you can help out with little effort but for whom your help could have a significant impact?

Footnotes

(1) Daniel Tuitt is a community member and Service and Business Designer working in the UK who shared a story that inspired this Service Design Principle. Thanks Daniel.
(2) These are people that you can help with little effort for a significant impact.

Daniele's personal notes

This is the second draft of this Service Design Principle.
I was able to reduce the length of this draft by 39.11% compared to the first draft.
I turned the exercise part of the matrix into a simple description and rather focused on adding a question that could help people turn this into something actionable.

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Daniele Catalanotto

Oct 31, 2022

The third draft of this Service Design Principle

We can do a lot to improve a service or an organization. Should you help the sales or marketing teams internally? Should you focus on assisting new customers? Should you help existing customers get more value in your service?

Daniel Tuitt (1) has simple advice: “Help first those you can impact the most.”

To find out who these people are, you can, for example, use a simple matrix using the impact you can have on people versus the effort you need to help them (2). Then focus on the people you can impact the most with the least effort.

So let me ask you:

Who are the people you can help out with little effort but for whom your help could have a significant impact?

Footnotes

(1) Daniel Tuitt is a community member and Service and Business Designer working in the UK

(2) Here a step by step approach to do this. First, list all the people you would love to help. Then draw a horizontal line. On the left place all the people it does take little effort to help. And in the right place, the people would need a lot of effort to help. Now draw a vertical line. Move the names of the people you can help a lot on the top. And keep the names of the people your work won’t help much at the bottom. The people on the top left are those who you should help first. If you have nobody there, focus on the top right. Here select only one group of people. Because it’s going to take a lot of effort to help these people, but the impact could be huge.

Daniele’s notes

This is the third draft of this principle.
I’ve reduced the length of this principle by 24 % compared to the previous draft.