The Service Council's Blog

Wrapping up my analysis of the 2015 symposium (Part 1: here), Day three began with a keynote delivered by Joe Brown, Senior Design Lead at Ideo. His topic was “Designing New Service Opportunities”. Joe introduced us to the seven rules of brainstorming. These certainly are helpful for creating some structure in the brainstorming process. There were a series of statements throughout his discussion that have merit. They are as follows: find the right problem to solve, test ideas in minutes not months, 70% of all change efforts fail, the biggest roadblocks to change are behavioral, don’t get ready- get started, when initiating change take baby steps and make the changes temporary until proven.

The fourth of four symposiums I have attended was kicked off by John Carroll at noon on Tuesday, March 10th. No complaint on the weather or the venue in San Diego they were both beautiful. Ron Kaufman was introduced as the MC for the three days. Ron performed an admirable job of learning the background of each of the speakers he introduced which enabled the attendees to better know each presenter. Our first keynote, Erica Javellana of Zappos!, discussed the creative beginnings of Zappos! by their founder Tony Hsieh. Tony was looking for a certain type of shoe to purchase and when he couldn’t find them, decided to start a company and make them. Erica went on to discuss the ten core values that the employees created which shaped their culture and a set of values that they could then use to hire and fire. The processes, values and culture that Zappos! has put in place give us a solid look at what we will be experiencing with upcoming generations entering the workforce. Following Erica’s talk there were several captivating panel discussions to choose from and enjoy. Karl Hohmann of ServicePower and I chaired a breakout session discussing Hybrid Workforce Strategies to accommodate Third Parties and Contingent Labor. We enjoyed interacting with twenty attendees, 10 having had previous experience with third parties. The discussion was lively and could have gone much longer with good discussion on the pluses and minuses of these topics.