Big strategic bets scare the crap out of organizations. The impact takes forever to show, and they suck up a ton of resources. No fun.

That’s why many companies love quick wins. They’re like little candies you can see working right away.

When you're building or improving services to be more sustainable, don’t just chase those big, scary bets that take ages to sell internally. Sprinkle on top of them some small quick wins too. They create a sense of progress and give you that sweet feeling of achievement.

People see results, get motivated, and then are more likely to keep pushing on those big strategic bets. (1)

Action question

When it comes to making your services more sustainable, what's the balance you have at the moment between quick wins and big strategic bets? Of which one do you need more?

Footnote

(1) Obviously we shouldn’t get all drunk on quick wins and then forget about the big stuff.

Daniele's notes

• This is the first shitty draft of this principle

• This principle might one day make it in the fifth book in the "Service Design Principles" series that explores how to better serve humans and the planet.

• If you're curious about service design principles, you can get the four previous books in the series, with proofread principles and less grammatical creativity.

• Written with AI help: This principle draft is based on an audio note I took while walking that was transcribed and cleaned using Audiopen. I then reviewed and improved the text by hand.

What I think I want right now and what I'll really need in the future are two very different things.

When I’m hungry and I go buy something to eat, I might end up eating some crappy food. It’s what I want at that moment. But if you ask me, belly full, to make a plan for the week of what I want to eat, it’s gonna look much more healthy.

I think that as service owners, creators and workers we often make the mistake to serve the immediate wants, and not the needs.

It’s something that I’ve been seing when I compare what I see in my RSS reader (1) versus what the Youtube algorithm recommends me. One only shows me what I made the conscious decision to learn about. Not much crap in there. But my Youtube algorithm is basically me just me in a candy store. Lots of fun stuff, but not really fullfiling.

Action question

What are parts of your service where you mostly serve to people immediate wants? How can you find out the deeper future needs that your customers have?

Footnote

(1) A tool that allows me to see content that I decided to subscribe too and nothing else.

Daniele's notes

• This is the first shitty draft of this principle

• This principle might one day make it in the fifth book in the "Service Design Principles" series that explores how to better serve humans and the planet.

• If you're curious about service design principles, you can get the four previous books in the series, with proofread principles and less grammatical creativity.

• Written with AI help This principle draft is based on an audio note I took while walking that was transcribed and cleaned using Audiopen. I then reviewed and improved the text by hand.

When I bought a laptop in Switzerland, I noticed something interesting. Part of the price included a tax for recycling. So, when that laptop eventually dies, I can take it back to any electronics store, and they handle the recycling. No extra charge. Of course, it makes the laptop I buy more expensive at the time I buy it. It includes more of the real cost of the laptop.

Imagine if we did this for services. What if our prices covered all future costs, including environmental and societal costs that would happen in the future? It'd make services more expensive upfront, sure. But it also makes the true cost of the service visible right now.

Take transportation in Europe as an example. The real cost of travel isn’t reflected in ticket prices. Aviation fuel is subsidized by governments, making flights cheaper than trains between big cities. If flight tickets showed the real price, they would be so much more expensive that a good old train ticket.

Action question

Which parts of your service do not reflect the real price and the real cost it has on the world?

Daniele's notes

• This is the first shitty draft of this principle

• This principle might one day make it in the fifth book in the "Service Design Principles" series that explores how to better serve humans and the planet.

• If you're curious about service design principles, you can get the four previous books in the series, with proofread principles and less grammatical creativity.

• Written with AI help: This principle draft is based on an audio note I took while walking that was transcribed and cleaned using Audiopen. I then reviewed and improved the text by hand.

Alright, let's talk about comfort. Five years ago, I went from making 120k a year to about a third or even a fourth of that. Am I less happy? Hell no. Do I still have a beautiful life? Absolutely. This shift happened because of one set of conversations I had over and over again.

When my son was about to be born, like any new dad, I was freaking out. So, I asked dads with older kids what they wished they had done differently. Every single one told me the same thing: I wish I had been more present during the first four years. Those early years when kids don’t have school or friends yet and just want to be with you are really precious. Later on, kids get busy with their own lives.

Based on that advice, I decided to cut down on work hours to be more present for my little one. Obviously, this meant cutting my salary drastically. This forced me to rethink everyday comforts. Guess what? Today, I still live comfortably.

This experience taught me that things we think are absolutely necessary can become forgettable once we live without them for long enough (1).

Plus, there are often great alternatives to the comforts we’re used to. We can definitely live with less, even if it feels uncomfortable at first. The human mind is amazing at adapting to new normals—good or bad.

Action question

What elements of your work, life or service, could try to remove for just a few weeks to see if you could live without it?

Footnotes

(1) That’s also why at the moment I’m doing a bit of challenge where I try to reduce drastically my smartphone usage.

Daniele's notes

• This is the first shitty draft of this principle

• This principle might one day make it in the fifth book in the "Service Design Principles" series that explores how to better serve humans and the planet.

• If you're curious about service design principles, you can get the four previous books in the series, with proofread principles and less grammatical creativity.

• Written with AI help: This principle draft is based on an audio note I took while walking that was transcribed and cleaned using Audiopen. I then reviewed and improved the text by hand.

The lovely people at Project Drawdown have a big idea. They say that every job can be a climate job. For many roles they have created a list of what employees can do to better serve the planet. That includes roles like Asset Management, Engineering, Finance, etc. (1)

Imagine if you would adapt this to your organization and the job titles and reality of your organization. Imagine if for every job description and contract within your organization you would have also a bit of climate job description and contract. With tasks to do and expectations.

Action question

How could you translate the idea of “every job is a climate job” within your team or organization?

Footnotes

(1) I learned about this idea of Climate Jobs in a blog post from the Service Design Agency livework called How to act on sustainability: bringing design and innovation together.

Daniele's notes

• This is the first shitty draft of this principle

• This principle might one day make it in the fifth book in the "Service Design Principles" series that explores how to better serve humans and the planet.

• If you're curious about service design principles, you can get the four previous books in the series, with proofread principles and less grammatical creativity.

Imagine this. A 16-year-old kid is walking down the street, barefoot. Behind him, an older guy is running and shouting. “Son, wait!”. The teenager stops, and the older guy catches up with a pair of shoes in his hands. He kneels and puts the shoes on the kid.

Seeing this, you might think the teenager has some back pain or disability. Or you might just find it strange as hell because having a dad help a 16 year old put his shoes is really weird.

Sometimes, as service creators and staff members, we're just like that dad. We're over-helping, limiting people from learning or realizing their own strength.

And yeah, it feels good to be helpful. But are we really helpful (1)?

We sometimes over-support our staff, clients or patients. We make them think they can't handle things themselves. They start believing they have to wait for someone else to fix problems or to allow them to do so.

Action question

Where in your service or work relationships might you be the over-helping hand? How can you check if that's really the case?

Footnote

(1) Just to be clear, I'm not saying we should cancel all customer service jobs so users can do all the work themselves with crappy all self-services experiences. I’d like us to reflect on when our help to users, patients, staff members is too much, like being a helicopter parent.

Daniele's notes

• This is the first shitty draft of this principle

• This principle might one day make it in the fifth book in the "Service Design Principles" series that explores how to better serve humans and the planet.

• If you're curious about service design principles, you can get the four previous books in the series, with proofread principles and less grammatical creativity.

• Written with AI help: This principle draft is based on an audio note I took while walking that was transcribed and cleaned using Audiopen. I then reviewed and improved the text by hand.

Sometimes as service creators, service owners or workers we believe that our work is really necessary. If we would stop it, people would get mad, and things would go to shit.

The interesting thing, is that it’s both true and false.

Yes on a short term, we can get pretty pissed when a service stops. But it’s interesting to see how in the end people either find alternatives, or just live without it.

I think this reminder helps us when we are about to let a part of a service die (1), because it’s just using too many resources. We should think about the long term impact of the decision of stopping something. And not just the immediate frustration it will create.

Action question

In the long term, how hard would it be for people to live without your service? Is your service a necessity or a lovely luxury (2)?

Footnote

(1) See principle Let Things Die for more details about why it can make sense to let services die.

(2) I’m not saying here that we should live in a world where we have only necessities, lovely pleasures and luxuries have their place. But I think it’s good to be honest about the type of service we’re offering. A little pleasure that takes huge resources is maybe a problem.

Daniele's notes

• This is the first shitty draft of this principle

• This principle might one day make it in the fifth book in the "Service Design Principles" series that explores how to better serve humans and the planet.

• If you're curious about service design principles, you can get the four previous books in the series, with proofread principles and less grammatical creativity.

When you work in a big organization, it's always funny to see how much energy is spent starting new things versus ending things. But services and communities have a life cycle. They live for a while, then they degrade. When you're part of a business or community, and you see something failing, there's often a wish to save it, to bring new life into it.

But here's the thing: some things are really meant to die. Take Christian communities, for example. A good friend of mine, who’s a church nerd, told me that research seems to show that most die after 70 years. It's part of their life cycle.

We waste so many resources—human time, money—trying to keep dying services alive. Sometimes it's better to just let them go. And maybe throw a party for that end (1).

Not everything should be saved.

Action question

Which parts of your service or organization do you feel are dying? Which of these dying parts would it make more sense to let actually die?

Footnotes

(1) This principle builds well on another one: celebrate the end of things.

Daniele's notes

• This is the first shitty draft of this principle

• This principle might one day make it in the fifth book in the "Service Design Principles" series that explores how to better serve humans and the planet.

• If you're curious about service design principles, you can get the four previous books in the series, with proofread principles and less grammatical creativity.

• Written with AI help: This principle draft is based on an audio note I took while walking that was transcribed and cleaned using Audiopen. I then reviewed and improved the text by hand.

Hope rocks (1). It makes us more motivated to act! One of the ways I try to build my hope muscle every day is to review all the good things that are happening in my life.

And because I’m a nerd, I have a kind of database with a journal of all the lovely tiny achievements and things that happened in my life. Each day, I open that database (2) and it shows lovely things from my life that happened yesterday, a week ago, a year ago, and so on.

It’s pretty nice because it shows me how fucking blessed I am. And it shows me also how things have changed! (3).

In my tiny newsletter, I end each edition with 3 positive news from elsewhere. That’s another way to remind to build my hope muscle, and hopefully to help others do so.

Action question

What would be a simple enough system to keep track of the nice things that happen in your life or your company that can help you build your own hope muscle? Where and with who could you share more positive things, to build the hope muscle of others?

Footnotes

(1) That’s something I already shared in another principle called “Rebuild Your Hope By Seeing All What Has Changed”

(2) For the nerds, it’s a set of Notion databases.

(3) For example, one of the big wins of my life when my child was very young was that we could play the same game for 15 seconds! That was a huge thing for me back then!

Daniele's notes

• This is the first shitty draft of this principle

• This principle might one day make it in the fifth book in the "Service Design Principles" series that explores how to better serve humans and the planet.

• If you're curious about service design principles, you can get the four previous books in the series, with proofread principles and less grammatical creativity.

Just putting a bit of money to help other causes is smart. (1) One of the ways I’ve found pretty interesting is the idea of Micro Loans. Instead of just giving money to charity. You give a loan to someone who then pays you back. And then you give another loan. And so one.

There is a service that helps to do that, it’s called Kiva. There I’ve put 148.69$. And it created already 395$ of loans. That’s what they call the Kiva effect (2).

Because when people repay, I can make another loan. There I can support people who are transitioning to sustainable energy sources, working on second hand shops, and a lot of cool things.

Action question

How could you create within your service your own Kiva effect? What would be a reasonable amount that you could as a team, individual or company put on the side for micro loans?

Footnotes

(1) I’ve mentioned in other principles nice ways of doing this. In this book I’ve shared this idea: “Put 5% of your time to serve others”. In the previous book I shared another one: “Invest 1% to do good”

(2) .It’s pretty nice, especially when you’re not a rich dude, and you still want to use some of the money you have to do some good.

Daniele's notes

• This is the first shitty draft of this principle

• This principle might one day make it in the fifth book in the "Service Design Principles" series that explores how to better serve humans and the planet.

• If you're curious about service design principles, you can get the four previous books in the series, with proofread principles and less grammatical creativity.