When I wanted to take better care of my physical health it wasn't easy. There were many little things I had to change to make it a priority. I made time for daily exercises. I subscribed to a fitness program. I talked about it to my friends. I changed my home screen on my phone to see my progress.

The same happens at work or in organizations. If we want to change something, we start by making it a priority. We carve out time for it, set budgets, get trained, and meet people who are better at it than us.

And yes, the same goes for making our services a little bit more lovely for people and the planet(1). We need to make it a priority. We need to set aside time, allocate a budget, and do all the things we do for other priorities to make them real. For some it means adding these ideas in the strategy. For others it means having KPI that are set in the quarterly goals.

Action question

How are priorities set and made tangible in your workplace? How can you use these elements to give more priority to nature and people?

Footnotes

(1) Ness Wright talks about this in her article Principles for Designing Sustainable Services. She covers 8 other inspiring principles.

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.