Manager Service Design

The opportunity

We’re one of the biggest and most mature Service Design functions in the world, the elder statesperson of Service Design if you will. We’ve been around for 17 years and been part of EY for the last five.

The work we do is big. Big in scale, big in ambition, big in impact – and big projects get taken seriously. We don’t create outputs for the sake of it. We don’t create work that sits in drawers, never to be revisited. We create work that is driven to implementation.

The work we do is varied. We work across sectors (from government, healthcare, financial services and fast moving consumer goods) to tackle a huge variety of problems in a huge variety of ways. One week you could be interviewing customers in their homes to understand how they make sense of their money, the next month you could be leading a workshop in Whitehall to articulate how a government department can embed innovation in their organisation.

We take our practitioners seriously and you will be given the freedom and support to develop your craft, your thinking, your work and your career in a way that suits you and delivers for the practice and your clients.

Responsibilities, Qualifications, Certifications – External

The role

We are looking for a Lead Service Designer to join the Service Design Practice at EY Seren.

This role is open to those with significant experience of working as a service designer, managing other people and delivering to client or in-house briefs. You will have a strong portfolio of projects that you have delivered and can demonstrate how you have led service design teams either in-house or within a consulting role.

There are a couple of things that we ask of everybody.

• You will be endlessly inquisitive, and ruthlessly user focused and able to use a combination of logic, empathy, rigour and storytelling to articulate a customer or business problem before working creatively and technically to articulate a service that solves it.
• You will be a natural collaborator. Ideas breed ideas, and so we work multi disciplinary teams and embed clients in our process. We work in the open, we share our thinking early and we build on each other’s contribution.
• You will be visual. We work generatively. We create things to move clarify thinking, align understanding and move towards a solution that works.
• You will be iterative. No-one gets it right first time. We don’t expect to.
• You will be ambitious yet realistic in your solutions. Our work sits in the sweet spot between desirable, viable, feasible and allowable. Getting it there is a big part of what we do.
• You will be a doer AND a thinker, and know when to switch from one to the other and how to create time and space for both.
• You will navigate complexity. People, organisations, technology, policies, regulations. Designing services puts you at the centre of complexity. We need to make sense of it all quickly, and flex and adapt to move through it effectively.
• You’ll be fascinated by service in all it’s forms with a desire to deliver great solutions in the teams we put together for clients, to help them improve existing services, invent new ones, and ultimately grow businesses.
• You will be competent in service design methods, and know how to shepherd clients through a service design process, creating good work and advocates for EY Seren as you go.
• You will be a self starter and have an explorative mindset, creating new perspectives and identifying the spaces you can be impactful for both EY Seren and it’s clients.

Your key responsibilities

• Demonstrate and promote commitment within project teams, Service Design Practice and EY Seren as a whole to enhance our brand with our teams, clients and other stakeholders
• Promote legitimate client needs while protecting the public interest and meeting our responsibilities to all stakeholders
• Consider input from all appropriate sources before forming conclusions and encourage colleagues to do the same
• Take responsibility for managing risk at the engagement level while still focusing on high quality service
• Take responsibility for training others in, and reviewing their management of, risk, independence, objectivity
• Serve the needs of stakeholders by acting with a global mindset and creating consistency and technical excellence
• Leverage diverse ideas and perspective to provide technical excellence
• Coach team members and colleagues in the best use of EY Seren methodologies and tools to maximize personal impact and minimize costs
• Deliver an exceptional service experience across engagements: develop an account management mindset, understand our clients’ sectors and business agenda and anticipate their needs, proposing preferred solutions and anticipating potential barriers, and follow up on client satisfaction
• Maintain open and proactive communication; build credibility based on an understanding of client challenges related to technical matters
• Assemble the right team with the guidance of the Senior Manager and Director to achieve business goals by creating the right mix of skills to work together effectively
• Resolve competing priorities and resource allocation issues, building collaboration across organizational boundaries
• Establish and deliver a compelling narrative across multiple communication points
• Create the conditions for and facilitate suitable and effective ideation formats
• Ensure self and team are clear about performance standards/expectations. Encourage others in the team to collaborate and communicate openly and honestly
• Encourage colleagues to take action following feedback and offer support through questioning, listening and summarising
• Provide constructive feedback tailored to each person’s style and environment
• Develop relationships that can benefit EY and clients and beyond the workplace to enhance our presence and impact in the community

Skills and attributes

• Be able to manage team and project resources and budgets effectively
• Find ways to improve coordination of work in progress, and utilization of staff within and across teams, and exercise leadership in a collaborative way
• Be able to think creatively to develop ideas to expand current offerings, including other service line solutions, and initiate discussions with clients
• Show empathy with clients by understanding client challenges, business issues, market & competitor trends
• Enable the development of a positive team environment, balancing individual initiative with team collaboration, and with EY priorities; encourage people to speak up and express differing views
• Find ways to improve the balance between personal and professional commitments and develop greater personal well-being for self and team members

To qualify for the role you must

• Identify and share trends, topics and resources that will increase the relevance and value of our service delivery, and seize opportunities to grow knowledge (e.g., networks, face-to-face events)
• Take a systematic approach to making decisions, considering all relevant data
• Integrate data, and apply judgment in forming practical insights, addressing potential issues, leveraging opportunities and analyses that enable decision making by critical stakeholders
• Have a sharing attitude to share technical, sector and market knowledge to inform client thinking
• Adopt appropriate coaching techniques to meet the various needs of team members and recommend development activities tailored to each team member’s needs and learning style
• Be accessible and supportive to others, building emotional intelligence and trust while focusing on results and outcomes, recognizing differences in style and background
• Drive personal development of self and others by fulfilling recommended experiences and learning curricula, and leveraging coaching and feedback on a regular basis
• Have the ability to design and lead facilitation of workshops
• Be able to build positive relationships with clients with integrity and authenticity; understanding client’s perspective and organisational culture
• Build networks across EY and start creating an external network to support our markets agenda and reputation and encourage cross-selling.
• Enable the business development process by gathering appropriate resources, gaining access to key contacts, supervising proposal-writing and driving progress to completion
• Considered a direct point of contact for client and team; speak to client on a regular basis about current trends and is beginning to own and grow the client relationship