Senior Manager – Service Design

This role sits within EY Seren’s Service Design team.

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 four.

The work we do is varied. We work across sectors (from government, healthcare to financial services and FMGC) and 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 organization.

This role is open to service design leaders with demonstrable experience and a track record of delivering successful service design projects, leading sizeable teams and building strong client relationships and accounts. You will be recognised within the industry for the high-quality work that you do and bring with you experience in business development and consulting.

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.

Design management

• Create the right conditions for team success by managing client conditions, design space and team capability.
• Identify process, structural and political issues when managing complex problems and find ways to resolve them
• Communicate and monitor service quality. Review project plans and guide other executives in their implementation.
• Leverage diverse ideas and perspectives from across EY and provide relevant insight and industry knowledge to deliver technical excellence
• Identify gaps in the team’s knowledge, initiate strategies to fill them, and keep teams abreast of new service methodologies, tools and technologies, providing suggestions for their application
• Manage multiple view points and ways to express them so that the organization benefits from different insights and ideas
• Develop account plans and coordinate delivery of a range of service offerings, building trust by mobilizing the right resources and ensuring consistent quality
• Take the lead in forecasting budget issues and recommending appropriate responses

• Manage the delivery of high quality design output across multiple design teams.
• Bring diverse and thought-provoking perspectives and EY Seren points of view to explore solutions with clients
• Create the conditions for and facilitate suitable and effective ideation formats

• Develop meaningful partnerships with senior client stakeholders.
• Maintain open and proactive communication. Builds credibility by knowing what’s happening in clients’ businesses and with their competitors
• Effectively navigate ambiguous and complex relationships and contexts with a very good level of emotional intelligence, leveraging differences, asking questions and supporting coaching and feedback

• Define and defend an appropriate design methodology for each unique client and each unique engagement

• Support solutions when challenged and influence senior client team members by establishing credibility related to specialized matters and technical judgment on work in progress

• Demonstrate ability to analyse trends/long-term plans and identify the financial implications of various business strategies
• Identify and evaluate new ideas, technologies or external products to expand EY capabilities
• Build and maintain senior client relationships and leverage relationships to effectively execute work and identify sell-on opportunities
• Identify barriers to change when implementing initiatives and find ways to reduce them
• Be able to work effectively with multiple teams in different contexts and environments
• Leverage influencing skills that address the varied interests and individual style of others, recognizing people have different sources of motivation and ways to achieve success

• Show commitment to developing team members, aligning with their professional development goals, both on project and within capability teams
• Maintain a good balance between personal and professional commitments and personal well-being for self and team members
• Build a team spirit that encourages collaboration and achievement of immediate and long-term goals
• Engage team members through open communication and recognition of achievements and encourage active sharing of ideas and opinions
• Develop an inclusive culture in which timely, authentic feedback and coaching are provided to all colleagues and team members
• Adapt to varied cultural and personal styles to work effectively with others’ differences, concerns and motivations
• Able to design and lead facilitation of complex workshops with the most senior clients

We offer a competitive remuneration package where you’ll be rewarded for your individual and team performance. Our comprehensive Total Rewards package includes support for flexible working and career development, and with FlexEY you can select benefits that suit your needs, covering holidays, health and well-being, insurance, savings and a wide range of discounts, offers and promotions. Plus, we offer:

• Support, coaching and feedback from some of the most engaging colleagues around
• Opportunities to develop new skills and progress your career
• The freedom and flexibility to handle your role in a way that’s right for you