The things service design professionals have to deal with...

Okay, so your boss tells you drive to a place with “a great view,” hands a full tank of gas, and wished good luck. Oh and by the way, we need to be there in 30-days, no compass, no map.

Now take a guess, how likely is it that after a month you'll have arrived at exactly the location they had in mind. I'd say anything higher than 0 is an optimistic perspective.

This sounds pretty absurd, right? But I'm not making it up.

But how often have you been in that exact situation at work?

The destination is vague, nobody can tell you where you are today, and there’s no way to know if your actions are actually moving you in the right direction.

And the cherry on top is when you're asked for hard evidence that you're getting closer, while someone else gets praised for reporting a higher average speed than last week. Yeah, but dude, are we even moving in the right direction? So painful and frustrating.

If you didn’t know better, you might think this is the plot of a bad comedy. But based on the conversations I'm having, this isn't an exception; it's the daily reality for most of you.

So, what are we going to do about it?

Even though the situation might feel a bit hopeless, the good news is that it’s certainly not.

Last year, I had Stacey Barr on the show to talk about measurement. She’s spent her career becoming an expert in using measures as a truth seeker.

Guess what that conversation became the most-watched episode of the year.

In this episode, Stacey is back to show us how to untangle this mess.

There’s a remarkably simple process, that looks a lot like design, to get from vague goals to meaningful measures, clear targets, and effective actions.

It’s a method that gives you real leverage to achieve the impact you want to make.

So if you want to learn how to put measures in place that are actually meaningful, prove your work is moving the needle, and do it with more confidence, definitely don’t miss this episode.

What's becoming clear to me is that we’re actually really good at this. We thrive in scenarios where things are undefined. We know how to figure stuff out and iterate our way forward. So once you grasp that finding the right measurements is just another design challenge, you might actually start looking forward the process...

Enjoy and keep making a positive impact!

Be well

~ Marc

--- [ 1. GUIDE ] ---

00:00 Welcome to Episode 237

03:45 Measurement's surprising popularity

04:30 Stacey Barr on Service Design

06:00 Breaking down the measurement puzzle

09:00 Measuring for empowerment

10:00 addressing the gap

16:30 Company cultures

22:30 Beyond shipping stuff

23:30 The problem when starting with measures

24:00 What does influence actually mean

27:00 Reverse engineering the goal

29:00 The Net Promoter Score Trap

32:00 Measuring across silos

34:00 Challenge of individual KPIs and quotas

37:00 Strategies for creating paradigm shifts

40:30 Setting meaningful targets

45:45 Challenge of human-related data

52:45 defining and measuring the gap

56:45 Casuality vs correlation

01:1:45 The patience to shift big goals

1:03:45 The PUMP Results Map

1:04:15 Introducing PUMP Light

1:07:00 Where to Sign Up

1:07:45 Discount for the program

1:08:15 Question to ponder

--- [ 2. LINKS ] ---

--- [ 3. PROMO ] ---

Use code SDS10 to get 10% off the PuMP Lite program, running November 11-13 and 25-26, 2025.

--- [ 4. CIRCLE ] ---

Join our private community for in-house service design professionals.

⁠https://servicedesignshow.com/circle

--- [ 5. FIND THE SHOW ON ] ---

Youtube ~ https://go.servicedesignshow.com/237-youtube
Spotify ~ https://go.servicedesignshow.com/237-spotify
Apple ~ https://go.servicedesignshow.com/237-apple
Snipd ~ https://go.servicedesignshow.com/237-snipd

Mark Winder

The AI-powered Podcast Player