My name is Stephanie McKee, and I'm the artistic director of To The Love Productions, and I am really humbled and very proud to sit here as we bring this performance to you today. I'm Javelin Zoller, founding artistic director of Bourbon-Vichrony, and we are here in full circle at the Contemporary Arts Center. In 1989, there was a vision of Bourbon-Vichron being here for long-term residency for three months, and that vision was dreamed up with Urban-Vichrony and the artistic director, the founding artistic director of To The Love Productions, John O'Neill, and his man Jim Carver at Time James Borner, and M.K. Whiteman, who was at the CAC, and they made it happen. So in 1992, Urban-Vichron had scripted a three-month year moving from this idea of outreach to community engagement. And during that time, they forged this partnership that continues today, and I'm really proud to say that I'm continuing a second generation of partnership with Urban-Vichrony. It's going back, and lots of ladies and co, for going back to before and remembering this civil rights movement, and remembering those signs that people held saying, I am a man. It's the same thing with us as we move forward in this Black Lives Matter movement, because what we know is the same song being sung in, that is being sung now, and that is, see me, I am here, I am human, and I am at it, yeah? Thank you, we are so honored to be here with all of you here. And it's good. Ancestor, wreck, bridge, carry us over to multitudes time. You can hear an answer with quick remedy ready before we ask. You who can speak through tons of trees, and fire, and water, earth cannot hold you. We pound the ground, and you appear, or ancient ones. You who can make lightning strike with the flick of a skirt. You who can make tornado turn with the spin and span of hips take us there, to the place of glowing, to the hall that leads to the doorway of you, or holy ones. You are the first light. You who know the potential of possibility, pulsing in the dark, deliver us unto our gifts. You who have sunlight in your fingertips, touch our drums, make us hear the rising, make us move, us steady stump, acquire our voices so majestic, heaven hides us in a tapestry of light, we have stars, blankets of wonder, sky bright eyes, seeing the invisible, visible. You who have returned, you have turned our faces so that we see ourselves, and we found you again, in places we would have never imagined.  Old man, oh, he plays the drums on, he works out at. He says that he loves me, even though it's not his baby. Said he's gonna raise him up like he would his own son. He gave me the serenity that's been worn by his mother. He changed me out dancing head red, sadder than me. Now that I think about you, each time I pass the feeling strange from you, calls are all the keys you used to wear in your day. And I still got that record, little Anthony at the Imperials. Somebody stole my record player. Charlie, I almost went crazy, and Mario got busted. And I moved back to Omaha to live with my folks.  Came back to New Orleans. This time, I think I won't stay here. Now that I think about you, first time since my accident. And I wish I had all the money we used to spend on dough. I'd be a used car, but I wouldn't sell any of them. I'd just drive a different car every day. It's been worn, but God says, Charlie, if you want a little treat, I don't have me no husband. He don't play, no trumpet. And I need, I need, I need to borrow money. Hey, hey, hey, hey. The pay. Here's your lawyer. I'll be holding you for four and three. All right? No, no, don't touch that. And I need, I need, I need to borrow money. Charlie, hey, hey, hey. Here's your lawyer. I'll be holding you for four and three. around times they may come back to be proud of you. They may always be coming to class now, but you may be a trustee. That means I get to move around you here, and get to work. I like your hair, but then you always look so skinny, you look so sharp. I like that. Baby, honey, that's why they made mama's trustee. They don't let them send me anywhere in this jail. It beats to be that damn baby, but all of it is us in town and smoking. Pretty soon, somebody's gonna be fighting. I'm glad you're here. If you don't teach them nothing else, they're gonna have a lot of self-respect.  Some of them are so young that they don't even have a chance to attend class. I haven't had a jail since 1965. I ain't never seen it as bad as this thing. Young women coming and going this day and time, they ain't got no sense of themselves. I got three daughters. I mean, my oldest girl, she was born deaf and dumb, and she leaves in the middle of the jail in her first place. I am a dancer, so I know her from this company, but I took that money. I took that money so I could pay for my daughter's education. The education I can see for me to take care of myself despite my community gap. Now these girls, they need somebody to understand that you ain't got to be in and out of jail to feel important. So they got to find a reason to come here and get rid of these men that's gonna tempt them for a car. I love it cold and more drugs. Look at them, most of them ain't 25 years old yet and have the nerve to be afraid to pick up in here. Like I told you, I got three daughters.  Oh honey, the way they'll least a dope man won't hop, they'll least a baby to the dope man for a rock.  Mommy's gonna be home soon. Mama, what was the son that said I'd like to get out of here?  I'll say your mama's a felon too.  Mama, you know I don't do no dope. So I said, you do dope. And you can kiss this bitch's butt, that's what I said too. And then, and then they, and then they tried to snatch me out of the car. And the next thing I know, Lily was all over him.  Mommy's coming home real soon. Hey, play your little brother, did my job call?  I was gonna lose my job behind this mess. And I wasn't doing nothing.  You got to tell Miss Ryan that I got to reschedule my GED test. Mama listened to me, Britney, don't you cry.  That's a big grandma. I got to reschedule my GED test. And mama, listen to me, I'm a real worried son. He's from the public defender's office. He gonna do one thing for me and something else for them. Mama, but don't, mama please don't start crying. Please don't start crying. Mama, how are you feeling? Listen to me mama, you got to tell that Olsi that she got to go down to social services.  Mama listen, you got to tell that Olsi that she got to go to social services. And she got to tell them people that she gonna take care of my kids while you in the hospital. Mama listen to me, Britney, mommy love you. Love you little brother too, mama. See, I ain't seen no criminal activity, mama. Until so many people decided they gonna take my kids and put them in a foster home. Mommy love you, Britney. Mommy love you, and I love you little brother too. And I love you too, mama, mama don't worry. Listen to me.  I love you, mama. I'm Britney. You're the girl. Bye mama. Bye. Bye. Bye girl talk.  She going to South America with Bob. That's what I say yesterday. Regina, Regina don't be changing it. I was watching that. I was watching it now.  Why can't you have respect for the people of South America? Now all my children is coming on next. And I'm fully into watching it. I need something to calm my nerves at all the excitement we have had around every small thing. Yeah you do. Mama bearer, did that lady really kill a baby? Mama said, I just don't understand it. She gave it a try. Mama bearer, that man of hers. Yeah. They sitting up there getting high on their minds on cocaine. When he decides that he's still waiting for her. Mama bearer, she don't make money. She don't fit with a hundred dollars all the time.  This is what I heard happening.  This is too real. I know this is what happened.  Bitch. Oh baby, we through. You're finished.   A dope fiend.  Because she's through. You're till the curb. They call it all want you.  Now she's the dope fiend. I have to be great at this stuff in house. First place. You mean they was tweeted? They said it all. They sitting up there getting high on cocaine. I want you to love that man. With a hundred dollars.  I'm a house for the devil. Deborah, when you're birthly. She got a degree. They was happy. They was living good.  See, that's all I'm gonna do. They don't mean it.  But I will look down on this. They don't even know what I'm talking about. What do I do? You keep your eyes on me. You keep on looking at me. Yeah, he goes, I don't see some motherfuckers.  In the name of love.  I feel love is a motherfucker. Come on, man. Come on, man. I won't lie to them TV. The fear of y'all.  Who? And what? What do they do to you? To you. She bears my mother's things. My sister's things. My daughter's things. If I could believe statistics, it would be my mother's things. She's our mama. She's your love. My mom's the woman who's going to carry your child. And I am her best teacher. The granddaughter of Flossie. The mother of Sandra Lee. The granddaughter of Chad. And the grand peace of one living thing. My aunt was alive. Everybody, all right? Can you speed away? Yeah. Dream it or what? Dream it or what? We're going to rewind. We're going to go back to Georgia in the 1920s. You see, my family is from Georgia. Georgia is a beautiful state. Beautiful pine trees, peach blossoms. But all my blood is soaked. I feel like I'm over something about Georgia. Well, Tori has it that my grandfather, Thomas Walden, worked on the Southern Pacific Railway. And he was apprehended one night by the paddlers. Now, if you look at those, I'll get yourself to a dictionary. Get me the hard disk here of this plan. Okay? The paddlers. They gave him up because apparently some two young white women had complained that a black man was looking in the window of their farmhouse, their bedroom on this dark lonely road.  Coming home from his job as a racer. They took him out. And they tell him that if he fears in his life, he will leave the state of Georgia right there and there. No, he didn't get to say goodbye to his wife and his eight children. So my mother and her family had to do just a trip. That name was gone. Now, it's a beautiful day. It's all about my Aunt Willie May. It was about 15. She's walking through Cardiwood. She's on her way to Ms. Cannon's house. Ms. Cannon, whose family still owns my mother's family in the 20s, the Cannon's plantation. But Aunt Willie is walking through the forest. She's singing. We'll fly flying. We'll find spelling words. They've done gone by. But we're still together. Oh, who's with you inside? Oh, I'll be with you. I'll know you forever. She arrives at Ms. Cannon's house. Good morning, Ms. Cannon. Now, she's better, right? You know, now she's 15. She's got to be happy with her mother. Arnie's on her way. Come on. All right? So, she's getting us up together, right? There's an animal, and there's two bushels of clothes. And she's on flat trees. Come on. And there's Ms. Cannon. Willie May. I'm so disappointed in you. You have got to. Please, the bathroom's give is right. And how am I supposed to have my spring card in here? Yes, ma'am. And you're going to have to do all the windows again. They are just a mess. Yes, ma'am. And then you've got to go in the kitchen, and you've got to clean up mom. Mama doesn't have a break. She knows she always makes a mess. You've got to clean up the kitchen. Then you've got to set mom on the floor. You have to clean her up, too. Ms. Cannon. Ms. Cannon, I've got two bushels of clothes in here. I can't do all this work by myself. I don't feel good. I'm going home. So she goes home.  Yes, she did. And proceeded to give them a wife, the dog, the cat, my mother-in-law, a piece of her mind. And then she says she don't feel good. And she goes home. Well, you and the boys. We decided we're going to have to chastise them down to sit you down with your tongue. Right, boys? Oh, yeah, right. We're going to have to chastise them down to sit you down. You know what she's going to say? We're going to sing out for you. We're going to sing out. No, Mr. Cannon, please. No, Mr. Cannon, please. I mean, Mr. Cannon. No, sir. I mean, please, Mr. Cannon. Willie May. I can't believe she did such a thing. Mr. Cannon. Let me look at you, sir. Let me look at you. Let me look at myself. I wouldn't feel right if I didn't look that bad for talking back to such good white folks here. Please, sir. Just let me look at you. Please, Mr. Cannon. Please, sir. Let me look at you, sir. Please. But me and the boys, we're going to stand right here and watch you with that gown. A baby pun, sir. I want to take that in the house.  It wouldn't be right for some rustic, dusty color gown.  So, I'm going to take that in the house. I'm going to take that in the house. Okay, okay. All right, you can take it in the house. It is lightning. My grandmother takes all of her children into the house, closes all the rooms, and she locks the door, and she orders my aunt.  Wham! Wham! Talking to Mr. Cannon. Like, are you crazy?  Mr. Cannon is good white folks out here. I want to do it more. Please, Mama.   I'm talking to Mr. Cannon. Please, Mama.   Mama, you're killing me.   Mr. Cannon. Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. Ah! With a son, you'll never shine. And I shouldn't go home alone. My daddy, he was a real road man. He was a man from here. Oh, he said it was found under the driver's wheel. Along his body, they never opened back. But despite this datasets, they never open back. I never live there.ени the land worked with my daughter. Some people with my umbilical cord and my daughter brought her to my apartment today. She said, Mom, this girl was giving a hell in the back. She was reminding them of Roddy's, that there was this thing as two. She said, my goodness, how you saying it again? And somebody told her, you're wrong. You're wrong for giving her a lot. God bless her soul. God bless her soul. Before I go, I just wanted to... I worked with women. I worked with women after 30 years. And I just wanted us to... To call her the name of the woman that we have in the back. When we disappeared, as a way to... We didn't even want to close these years, my goodness. My hand really made herself a pleasure. Let me hear you all. Another woman here. Another woman. Another woman. Another woman. Another woman. Another woman. Another woman. Another woman. Another woman. And before I go, I'd like to be shared with you in the feminist prayer. Thank you. A feminist prayer goes like this. Judy Braun wrote this, but we're going to use it tonight. It is... Our mother who art in heaven. Our mother who art in heaven. Sister shall be thy name. Our washing's done. Our washing's done. Our kitchen's clean. Our kitchen's clean. And it is in heaven. Give us this day our disparagements. Give us this day our disparagements. As we forgive those who disparage against us. As we forgive those who disparage against us. As we do not into home economics. As we do not into home economics. But deliver us. But deliver us. Into politics. For there is the money. For there is the money. One thing that I always note is that it's so powerful and magical to me. Is the breathing that happens. And the exchange of breathing that happens. And these kinds of spaces. And so... Would it be possible if we just give a little bit of attention to our breathing? Uh oh. Is it possible? And let's push it out with the audible exhalation. In any way that you like your audible exhalation. Sound good? All right. Here we go. Inhale. Don't be shy. You felt hot. You felt hot. What else? Tension. Steady. Strong. Strong. Release. What else? Gravity. Anything else? Time for the audible exhalation. Vibration. What else? Breathe. Put it out there. Breathe. Breathe. Pleasure. Bonation. Bonation. Yes. What else? Connecting. Anything else? Catharsis. Yeah. So to the center. We talked about gravity. We talked about strength. We talked about lifting. We talked about being sprouted. Let's think about our breathing force. Again. And think about that as being significant. And let's think about it coming from the bottom and then reaching all the way up and out and down. Slightly back down the bottom. Coming up. Coming up. Thinking about that strength, gravity, groundedness. Lift. We're going to go ahead and just push your arms down. You just know this is really good. And notice your body. And let's just take one more inhalation and audible exhalation. And that can be whatever you're feeling right now in your home. And we'll keep breathing together and sharing it together. Thank you. Iyama Jones, Timothy Russell, Latanya Hatterton, Margaret LaBrun Mitchell, Tyisha Miller, Jordan Davis, Shantel Davis, Jonathan Barrow, Katherine Johnston, Darnisha Harris, John Fokker III, Akai Gurley, Jermaine Newman, Charles Amherst, Glenn Ford, Kendra Chapman, Eric German, Fred Gray, Sandra Blaine. Reed! Reed! Reed! Reed! Reed! Reed! Reed! Reed! Reed! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Five, six, seven, eight. for life, though death rests comfortably beside us at night, their mornings are louder. They come to visit the gods at the gate, and they stay until morning, torturing their guilt-bridden insides. The silent cries of the keepers are louder than the boons that come from the guns they use to occupy the space. And we know this place. For we have seen more times than we'd like to imagine, bloated cadavers, flowing through waters of a city gone savage, foraging the land for what can be salvaged, but what can be saved when all is lost? It happened in August, 29 days in. We are now five days out of the only place we lose a car house and home. A few things are certain. One, we have no food. Two, there are more bodies lying at the roadside than habits being distributed, or first aid being administered, or recognition as a citizen, 14th Amendment, and refugee change. We know this place. It's ever changing, yet forever the same.  Or what feast for the beast at their table of shame? With knackens round next to catch the blood that drains from the flesh they chew. Oh, it's held again, and we know this place. I'm all too well. Dang with the smell of death and doom and smothers. It hovers, no growth, no tomb, no pretty. The hoax, and it died too soon. Just junking, just jiving, just living. Oh, we just fools. And we know this place. With debt in all its array and splendor. Golden streets with good intentions. Catch our attention, their gadgets and inventions. Pistachize the food supply. Food like symptoms, diabetic condition, a cancer in the system, health on hold. It's a pistol to the temple.  Tell Robin it's simple. Good works and good deeds is what equals redemption. But tell me, please. Jesus never mentioned how the churchmen get extensions on freedom while children are being traveled from the outer to the streets. Then back to the sanctuaries, always kind of scary handed to know that both the prophet and the priest practice deceit. Then come to the people and claim peace, peace. Then come to the people and claim love, love. And to return, but oh, here we are. Back in the desert, dry mouth and thirsty for waters from heaven. But come, come, children, rally around. And maybe together we can make a sound that'll shake the trees or rattle the pl. It's right now. So light refreshments right over inside the cafe and for a couple of drinks. Maybe even get a chance to talk to some of the dancers. Thank you so much for coming this evening. Woo-hoo!


Okay so why did we deal with aviation in the EU ETS? And I think that it is good to remind ourselves that the EU has a fairly well established climate change policy and the well established climate change policy is having a target. In fact we already agreed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with on average 20 per cent by 2020 measured on 1990 levels and we would go deeper down to minus 85 per cent by 2050. So that's clearly a downward trend and we have as tools already in place the European emissions trading scheme you know that is a kind of system where allowances are given or bought by companies to cope or to offset their emissions and if they have a surplus of these allowances they can sell them to someone else. So there is a market of these allowances and we have of course also targets for all installations falling out of the European emissions trading scheme. The emissions trading scheme covers roughly half of the emissions of Europe let's say all power stations and all industrial facilities. What falls out are households transport etc for which we have specific legislation and so we come to aviation because we are regulating our cars for example and we have very demanding legislation that has been picked up very well by the car manufacturers and so on transport we see all the time growing trends and so the question was what is going to happen in aviation and when we take the analysis that was done by IKO the International Civil Aviation Organization they expect by 2050 a growth in aviation emissions from on average between 300 and 700 per cent. So instead of going down with 85 per cent we just go up with 500 to 300 to 700 per cent which is quite an important phenomenon and so the question that is put to the legislator is how can we have good air traffic activity without having the disadvantage of these growing emissions and so we were in the EU looking at the series of measures we can have modernization ATM modernization as it is called the single European sky we can have all kinds of initiatives as as César which are technical measures we want to put in place research and development we can have new standards for aircraft and CO2 standards per aircraft and we apply all these measures and on top of that we have market-based measures because we are fully convinced and that was shown by our analysis if we only are going to go for technical measures we are not going to get there on top of that we have to incentivize businesses and on the market-based measures that is inclusion into the European emissions trading system we were going around and we asked to manufacturers of engines and of aircraft what they would do and to our surprise they said they had lots of technological devices already on the table but there was no incentive to to buy them and so market-based measures could create that incentive and so that was what we were doing but of course we have in Europe a very strong tradition of multilateralism and we would not go out without having talked and talked through the international implications and so we had a full debate in the international civil aviation organization that supported an instrument like emissions trading but said in 2004 that such an instrument like emissions trading would not be developed by the IKO itself but would have to be incorporated into the emission trading scheme that different parties may have so that was a little bit our surprise I have to say in 2004 but we got that out of the assembly and so we were developing our legislation while strongly communicating to the rest of the world and to IKO that we were in favor of global solution we took note of the fact that the assembly said emissions trading can be done provided you are incorporating that into national or regional schemes and that is exactly what we did so other reasons why we went to emissions trading is that of course it has to be very much in line with our international commitments but we have very well known economic benefits coming from emissions trading least cost solutions is not the most it's not the least attractive one of these so you can easily reach a given objective at the least cost you leave it to the economic operator to sort out how the emission reductions is going to be sorted out some air companies are going to rely on biofuels or others may buy modern aircraft or some others may want to renovate their aircraft or may discourage their passengers to take a lot of weighty and bulky stuff with them so we leave that to the airline operators themselves as we do for ETS covered installations in general remarkably was that we went through a quite comprehensive debate with the industry and in 2006 Ayata the International Osset Association of Airlines said that ETS is probably the least cost the most effective way to reduce aviation's climate impacts in Europe so we were preparing that legislation quite quite extensively and so let's look so we did we included the aviation into the EU ETS and so we have that legislation now in place it was proposed in 2006 and it is enforced since 2009 according to European procedures we went through co-decision and the measure was adopted with unanimity in the council and with an overwhelming majority in the European Parliament so the EU member states have to adopt implementing laws and they all did and the emissions monitoring and the reporting started in 2010 and so all was going smooth and well until end of last year when the real deadline came in sight namely that as of 30th of April 2013 allowances must be surrendered as of the 1st of January 2012 and so we got a little bit of a surprise reaction because that was for ourselves strictly speaking legislation done years ago and really an implementing mood so we are as of today a year before April 2013 and the question is where we are as of today what are the costs of the travel that that is caused through the inclusion and EU ETS well you know that the prices on the carbon market are today relatively low some would like to have them higher but that's now besides the point we have relatively low prices and we made all kinds of estimates about what the cost impact per ticket would be and the cost impact is variable between 2 and 12 euros per passenger for a transatlantic flight so I think that's very moderate if you see what a flight costs transatlantic and so this is a modest increase and I think that everybody would agree that the inclusion into ETS is quite cheap quite cost effective and it is to remind you putting a cap on the allowances it is not putting directly attacks forward because that cost related to the allowances could be covered by airline operators in the way they would like to have it so if we compare that to for example passenger fees that a number of European and non-European states are currently implementing I think that the costs are way beyond what the EU ETS may imply so I think we can agree that the impact the economic impact is relatively limited and the impacts on airlines are equally limited now there has been a number of questions even on whether we may not see for airlines exactly the same as we saw with power generators in the first phase of the EU ETS that is that a considerable amount of allowances was given for free and for the airline business that's 85 percent of their average emissions and so they have only to top up the last bit of their allowances to the extent they do not succeed in bringing down their emissions but nevertheless they can calculate true the value of the allowances into the market price and so there has been and there is still a debate about with full profits even an American study done by MIT is saying that perhaps this could even be a case where airlines may make a net revenue we refrain of going into that debate I'm just trying to highlight that the impact the economic impact on airlines is modest and is fully recognized throughout what are the main benefits well we reckon that there will be significant emission savings we reckon that there will be an increased demand for biofuels because the EU ETS is clearly going to act as an incentive and we reckon that we are also going to see an increase in the demand for credits on the carbon market created through the UN system and that are the credits from clean tech projects that are done through the ECDM the clean development mechanism so we can easily assume that quite a considerable amount of the expenses made by airline companies is going to flow back through companies so where is then the real problem and you wonder what the real problem is and one of the problems that I think also the chair was mentioning is the problem of extraterritoriality is the measure extraterritorial in that sense that it it covers things that Europe should not cover extraterritoriality comes from the fact that all aircraft in Europe landing and departing have to pay for their allowances over the whole stretch from the last port they were departing from and the next port they are flying to so that is clearly also outside Europe and hence the extraterritoriality that was taken as a kind of criticism now US airlines went to the court to a London court that transferred the case to the European Court of Justice which is the highest court in Europe and the European Court of Justice ruled that the measure is not extraterritorial because legally speaking it is only the landing and the departing act that triggers the obligation to cover for the for the emissions cost and so that question of extraterritoriality according to our highest court should be out of the question and should be done with however we hear that for example the United States or for example China and India say we do not believe your court and that is where we have a real problem we tell them you know we have the rule of law then then when you have a dispute you go to court as the American Airlines did and the court rules and then you have to to implement what the court is saying so the court was quite clear that extraterritorial the extraterritoriality is not happening and so we are proceeding with the with the implementation of the system so apart from that we have seen quite a number of activities most important to mention are the meetings in Delhi and Moscow that took place end of last year and beginning of this year that are easily dubbed in the international press the coalition of the unwilling because they were not willing to consider inclusion into the ETS scheme and they were making noises about retaliation because they disliked the measure and the that was the negative part of the story the positive part of the story was that they were all speaking in favor of renewing the debate in the IKO context the international civil aviation organization so and we are have always been in favor of such a debate so I think that these meetings were partly bad news and partly good news and the bad news I think that the retaliation measures were listed up with a lot of maze and mites so far no country underline no country has gone for retaliation measures but there is a lot of talk about that in the international press we in the European Commission are following in that very very keenly up we talk to all parties in the world and all relevant countries and so far retaliation confirmed by the Chinese not later than last week where the Chinese have been saying we are not interfering with the commercial decisions that our companies are making and that was referring to the so-called retaliation that could take place for aircraft that was bought with airbus now we have no other choice I think that we have to make sure that the the the law is being respected because that's the duty at least that the commission has on its shoulders once legislation has been adopted the legislation must be implemented but you remind you remember yourself that I was indicating that April 2013 is the first date of surrendering of allowances and so we are supporting very much a continued discussion in the context of IKO and we have a strong belief that between now and April 2013 we have a full year to hammer out the questions that need to be hammered out so we have an open agenda if it is the issue extra territoriality is the issue related to the revenues raised whatever the issue is we are open for a discussion in IKO but we make clear to all our international partners that we have legislation and that we just cannot put our legislation on hold legislation has gone through the normal policy cycle and and has been brought up to the highest court and the court has said there is no problem so unless there is a new fact either a legal fact or a political fact we have no argument in our hands not to implement the legislation but our legislation has two pieces of flexibility given for the commission to operate and the first is that in the event of an international agreement the directive states that we are open to amend the scheme so if we would hope for a moment that we have a window of opportunity of one year for having accelerated discussions in the IKO we are prepared given the outcome of that discussion to amend our legislation in the light of an international agreement and the other element that is foreseen in the legislation through cometology for those who are familiar with our Euro jargon that is that we are covering incoming flights and departing flights and of course if we have an international agreement where everybody takes care of the departing flights there is no longer a need also to cover incoming flights because every departing flight is somewhere somehow an incoming flight so our legislation foresees that through a relatively simple procedure we can drop incoming flights in case we would have an international agreement where all departing flights are taken care of so where are we now as of today as we speak the IKO's president has announced that he is accelerating the activities in the context of IKO and there was an IKO council not more than 10 days ago that adopted a work program on market-based measures in fact on four different options for a market-based measure to be developed ultimately and also the development of a framework within which market-based measures could be developed so what is good to see is that the message has been taken up through multiple pressure our pressure pressure by the Chinese the Indians pressure by the United States and that IKO is now taking on the work and that work is going on at a much more accelerated speed compared to anything we have been seeing so we hope that IKO is going to deliver and that we will have a kind of global arrangements by say the end of the year because we would need the beginning of next year to adapt our legislation and we are fully supportive of that of that meeting of that process we will see a number of meetings because this meeting series that started in Delhi and then took place in Moscow is going to be continued next meeting is going to take place as it seems in Saudi Arabia but we hope that these meetings are going to bring us forward in terms of a constructive a positive agenda because if the process is only about the merits and the demerits of ETS we are not going to advance very much we need a kind of multilateral measure that is going to address the issue so that would be my introduction and I'm open for all possible questions that you may have thank you very much


In this episode, you'll learn about the seven roles of service design. You'll learn how service design drives and facilitates change and why employee experience is the new breaking ground for service design. Here's a guest for this episode. Let the show begin. Hi, I'm Robert Baud. This is the Service Design Show, Episode 99. Hi, I'm Mark and welcome to the Service Design Show. This show is all about helping you to design organizations that put people at the heart of their business. The guest in this episode is a sweet who now lives in Chicago and he works at the Fjord office there where he champions design thinking and service design. He's also the person who built the service design program at the Savannah College of Art and Design. His name is Robert Baud. As you'll learn in this episode, it's quite a funny story how Robert and I actually met. If you've been listening to the most recent episodes, you'll probably know what I mean, but stick around, we'll explain that in this episode. It's fair to call Robert a service design veteran. He's been in the field for many years. He's seen the field evolve and that's why I'm so excited to have him here on the episode because he understands and can very clearly articulate what value service design brings to the table and brings to organizations. He also has a very clear vision about where the field is heading to. This episode is full of interesting insights about our field and I learned a lot from speaking with Robert and I hope you'll do too. If you're new to this channel, we're at episode 99. We've been doing this for almost four years. If you haven't subscribed yet, click that subscribe button and that bell icon because we bring a new video about service design at least once a week. That's all for the intro and now let's quickly jump into the interview with Robert. Wow. Welcome to the show, Robert. Thank you, Mark. How are you? I'm good. It's a weird time. It's quarantine time but the sun is out. Yeah. So how about you? Yeah. We're holding up here. It's my fourth week working remotely. So trying to keep my heads down, keeping busy, trying to actually be more mindful on what I do. So I'm using some online services to increase my mindfulness, gives my anxiety levels lower to be honest in a good way. Care to share which one? I'm using Headspace. Headspace, right? Yeah. So you can imagine breathing exercises and tons of other physical activities you can do just to reduce your anxiety levels and be more productive and with more mindful of what you do. So you've got to help me personally. I haven't tried Headspace yet. I'm using the Waking Up app by Sam Harris. Also recommended. Excellent. That's the difference. By the way, I'm having a adorable French bulldog called Sky because I take her on long walks every day and that's a great way, by the way, just to get some fresh air and calm yourself down a bit. Walking, being outside, we're lucky that we're still allowed to do. So I guess there are regions in the world where people aren't allowed to do that anymore. That's true. That's true. That's a different start of the show. But let's give people a little bit of context how we actually met because it was coincidence. Who knows? I don't know. We had a guest on the show, Lincoln Nager. And in that episode, it was like two or three episodes ago. He said, you know what? You might want to invite one of my former professors, Robert Bauer. And then literally two days later, I was in Cologne. So were you, and I was having lunch at a conference. And I met a random guy during lunch over coffee. And that random guy turned out to be you. That was me, yeah. No, it was funny, actually. It was great pumping into you at the Future Services Science Summit. It was a really good day, by the way. But I met all these fantastic people, including you, of course, Mark. Yeah. So it was serendipitous, I suppose, to meet up that way. It was, yeah. I did check out Lincoln's podcast, by the way. I thought it was great. I loved the format of the show. And I thought Lincoln came across really well and had a really interesting topic. And did a very nice shout-out to SCAD and to me personally, as being one of his professors. So it was really a great time. If the people are interested in the episode with Lincoln, if you're listening to the video, then it will pop up somewhere over here. And if not, if you're listening to the podcast, it will be down in the show notes. Robert, before we forget, I can imagine that there are some people out there who don't know who you are. Could you give a very brief introduction? Sure. So I'm a senior service sign director at Fjord. Fjord is part of a center in directive. Fjord is nowadays one of the largest, perhaps the largest design firm in the world with 33 studios on all five continents. Personally, I'm based in Chicago, but I work across the US and also have global clients. So basically, on every single day, I'm directing multiple projects, multiple teams, providing oversight, providing direction, focus, making sure we have quality and everything we do from start to finish. And the things you're going to say today are solely your own opinion, not per se. Yes, I do need to put in that disclaimer, right? But today, on this show, the contents reflect my own views, and that does not necessarily reflect the views of my employer center. You put that disclaimer in whenever I'm on social media. So there we go. We have it on tape. We have it on record. So I'm following corporate policy. That's all good, I suppose. All good. All good. We should. We don't want to get you in trouble. No, exactly. Oh, we're going to talk about, well, partially the future of service design. So I'm really excited about that. And we're going to do that based on, oh, no. I'm off my rhythm here. Of course, I should start with the question, Robert, your service design evangelist, a pioneer, a veteran of service design. What was the first time that you got in touch with service design? I almost forgot to switch to this side. Yeah. Thank you for asking that. I actually remember it very vividly, funny enough. I moved to London around 2004, 2005, and I bumped into these two amazing guys that had founded Engine. Engine is one of those two pioneering service design firms in the world. And back in the day, it was live work, and Engine really sort of leading the way. And these two guys, Joe Heathby and Oliver King, very inspirational guys. I worked with them on a couple of internal projects. And since then, I've already looked back. To me, service design was that real exciting blend between business and creativity. And I changed my wicked ways of working. I became much more human centered, much more collaborative, and so on and so on, putting much more prototype in my way of working and so on. So that was great. I used to run a brand and design firm in Stockholm with two partners. So while I had a lot of consulting experience at that point, I was so inspired by how Joe and Oliver were working. Yeah, I guess we have a lot to thank to the early day pioneers, mainly from the UK, but also from Scandinavia. Yeah, definitely. Scandinavia was definitely up there, I feel. And of course, Netherlands as well, by the way. Yes. OK, let's jump into the topics for this episode. Are you ready? I'm ready. Let's go. We're going to start off with topic number one, and it's going to be about seven roles. Yes, seven roles of service design. So my question would be, who are, or let's put it this way, who is the service designer? Something I have to explain almost on a daily basis, not actually only to clients, but also to my central colleagues and counterparts on products. So that's why over time, I have come up with these seven roles to explain the breadth and depth of what we do in complex projects. OK, really curious to hear about them. Yeah, and you will see up on the screen here an overview of the seven roles. But let's start from the left, talk about the Emphasizer, which really someone who explores untaxed complex problems. Someone who uses different research methods, both qualitative and quantitative, to understand people, markets, industries, organizations. So this is something much more than just that demographic research. OK. The second one is SenseMaker. For the people who are listening right now, you'll be able to download this sheet with the overview in the show notes. Again, if you're watching it, you're seeing it here. But yeah, OK, Emphasizer and the SenseMaker. SenseMaker. So SenseMaker is simply someone who can uncover those deep insights and patterns and themes and so on across all research sources and methods and also frame or reframe, hypothesis, problems, opportunities, and so on. So really important role. The next role, if you go from the right, is the creator. So someone who systematically generates ideas, create concepts to both change behavior, but also get the job done. So coming up with new products, services, experiences, and so on. And then the maker is someone who simply conducts experiments, builds, prototypes, launches, pilots, and so on. And then we have the navigator. Someone who sets the overall direction where the company is going, the client is going. Someone who creates strategic platforms, creates implementation, roadmaps, and things like that. And then the servant leader, which is one of my personal favorites. I like to believe I'm one of those. Personally, it may say so. Someone who can empower people from behind. Someone who equips really people, teams, and someone with the right skillsets, the right mindsets to do amazing work. And that can also be, by the way, also on the client side. So someone also embeds design thinking, and you intend to design on the client side. And then in the middle, we have the storyteller. So someone who can simply craft, dramatize, and tell amazing stories, whether it's about research findings or this new prototype you've built and tested or about this new amazing business model you've created for your clients, whatever it might be. So seven roles. It seems like a lot for a service designer. Yeah, that's why I like to say that no one really it can excel in all seven roles. For me, also it's a life-learning path your own could become really good at these seven roles. I have relative strengths weaknesses. So I think this is more capturing what a good service design team could be able to cover. So one way you can use these roles as to assess your capabilities as a team, both individually, but also as a team. So where are your relative weaknesses and strengths? And do you need help externally to fill in some of your capability gaps? So should we be talking about a person as a service designer? Is that still a valid thing? Or should we shift our conversation towards service design as a field, service design as a team? What is your take on that? Now, I think that's a good, very good question. I think it depends also what you're trying to tackle here. If you're trying to unpack and solve for complex problems and also you're operating not just in a complex problem space, but also in a complex solution space. Then I think you do need a team of these roles to be able to do that properly. So yes, in that sense, I don't think a service designer can take on all these seven roles. I think based on my experience, we're going to start a signers for a good 15 years now. There are some people like to specialize in one or two of these roles. Some people are pretty good generalists, but still we really haven't met to date in a way someone who really excels in all the seven roles. I think that may be almost impossible. So what would you say to somebody who's struggling a bit with their identity and trying to figure out, am I a service designer? Or at which point is it fair for somebody to say that they are a service designer if they don't embrace or maybe not embrace and compass all these seven roles? What would you say to that? I think that's a great question. And I would say that the first thing, rather than thinking capabilities, is actually thinking about your mindset. Do you have the right mindset to become a service designer? And that goes beyond just being human centered, because I would argue that most designers nowadays are human centered, something unique for service designers alone. But the mindset really of being passionate about services, understanding that we do live in a service and experience economy, you need to be passionate about different type of services, understanding how services can be co-produced and co-delivered over time in different ways, understanding different business models and so on, understanding different type of customer experiences you can stage around these services. So I think you need a passion for services and understanding how services simply work. Then there's another part as well, Mark, is also as a service designer, it's not just looking how the customer is doing or how the customer is interacting with employees, but also looking internally, how do you empower employees to serve and support customers? Sure, yeah. That means you need to have an interest in things like processes, systems, you know, things like that. That's a really, really good and clear, and consistent, not a definition, but explanation. I think being passionate about services is what defines a service designer and you can be a designer without actually being interested in services, which isn't a good or a bad thing, it's just understanding your position in the entire design space, right? It's totally okay. It's totally okay. I just wanna say also, there's some rigor behind these seven roles. I won't go through it now in this particular show, but there are three capabilities underpinning each role, clearly defined, each capability, in order to deliver on it, you need to carry out a series of interconnected activities and of course, you're also using methods and tools. So there is some rigor behind these seven roles, but for this particular show, I'm just giving it a review. So if you wanna learn more about them, just reach out to me. Yeah, that's good. Seven roles, and I think it's a good moment to transition into topic number two because there's, next to a passion for services, there's something else that ties in these seven roles. And that is, I think, the topic of change. Yeah, change is my new paper topic today. And that is also linked to my question here, or your question here. What if service designers got involved in service and change processes? Aren't we already? Are roles of service design in change? Aren't we already involved in change? Well, we are, because we're involved typically in innovation projects, right? Trying to come up with new services, new products, new experiences on behalf of our clients. So yes, we are, and of course, innovation requires change, right? Or innovation drives change at the very least, and change requires innovation. So yes, one way they are very intertwined, but specifically though, I don't always see service designers involved in change processes. Typically, service designers debuts before large-scale implementation. Right or wrong, but that's what typically has happened in our industry for many, many years. So in order to get more involved in implementation in large-scale change, we need to think, what are we good at already? Hence my seven roles. How can we bring those superpowers into change processes? So we can empower people and leaders to not only embrace change, but also drive change. So if we're already part of a change process, whether we are conscious of it or not, what would be, yeah, what can we do to take that to the next stage? Because we're already doing research, we're already doing ideation, we're making prototypes and you say, okay, we did about that. The moment we try to scale up and implement, I really recognize that. So what's the next frontier for us? How do we take this to the next level? Yeah, so that's a great question, of course. The question I was asking was, is that right to unpack that really? So what's the best way of figuring out the role we can play, the roles we can play in change processes? Because typically you have other type of consultants involved there. You have like organizational consultants or management consultants, but not always designers and particularly not service designers. So I'm trying to figure out the role we could play. And one way I felt we need to understand change, what is change? And also the fact that organizations can drive change in different ways. And that's why I came up with this very simple two by two matrix to simply unpack different ways organizations might drive change. Because if you understand that, then you can try to figure out what role can we play or roles can we play? Let's give it a go. What kind of change are we not out there? Is arena a good word for that? Yeah, arena is a good word. So I have a simple two by two matrix which is flashed up on a screen now. And basically there are four types of change. You keep it for simple. This is my way of synthesizing tons of change models and change framework out there, right? So this is a simplification, but powerful, nevertheless. So four fundamentally different ways to drive change. And the first one is called directed change. Simply this top down way of driving change, typically led by leaders or experts. And typically this type of change is supported by this compelling North Star. And basically what you're doing is what the leaders are trying to do is to force employees to take action. So you do it through different types of top-down interventions. You can either force people to take action to adapt to this change and help try to change or you encourage them to do it in different ways. Encourage. So very much a top-down way of driving change. Resistance is typically high, right? Because people have not been involved in this. And the leader may not be right as well. As you can imagine, it will get quite a few skeptics and even rebels, right? A real big change as well. So it's really interesting. And it's quite a common way, by the way, of driving change. I've been working in the US now for a good seven, eight years and I feel most change I've seen upfront is really this type of change, this directed change coming from the top. Sure. So it's interesting to see what type of role we can play, but I'm coming back to that just in a minute. And then the next one is guided change, which is more of a bottom-up approach. So you will still have some kind of north star, overarching north star, but the change is driven by employees, not by the leaders. That's a big difference. So basically the overall direction is really decided by employees. So they're analyzing their own work environment, analyzing what's working, not working. You're using expert facilitators who drive this. They're experts in experiential learning and action research and things like that. And then, so they're simply unpacking the problems, everyday problems that work and also solving for them as well. So much more of a bottom-up approach. Okay. So that's the second one. The third one is self-directed or organic change. Basically is that the leaders provide no direction whatsoever. And the leader's role is rather just to encourage people and teams to bump into each other, so to speak, to interact with each other, to play with each other. And let's see what happens. So you have to take a step back and you're just encouraging really, just encouraging really employees to collaborate.  Really interesting. Increasing serendepity. Yeah, serendepity. You just, as a leader, you're simply encouraging these interactions to happen. Okay. And then according to some people, this is the best way for organizations really to survive and thrive in turbulent environments. Okay. So this is based on chaos theory and complexity theory. This is viewing the organization as an adaptive complex organism of sorts. Interesting. Yeah. I have personally not been involved in that type of change. I haven't seen it upfront for real, but I know organizations do change in this way. Have you been involved in that? Have you seen that kind of change? I don't think, to be honest, but that's a hypothesis. I think these kinds of organizations wouldn't need a lot of service designers, probably. Ah, yeah, to that point though, I have actually tried to figure out what role could it play in that. So I'm going back to that for a moment. It's a good point though. Good point. Let's finish the fourth one, because I'm getting curious. And the fourth one, which I call it, Darwinian change. So there might be a North Star sort of guiding innovation and change efforts within organization, hopefully. But the leaders don't really know how to get there. So they want to become this, but don't know how to get there. So this is about encouraging really independent or semi-independent units around the organization to compete for attention, battle for resources, they fight for the best, or they come up with ideas and then they battle for these ideas, right? So it's really survival of the fittest, hence the name Darwinian change. And you know, they could be done in different ways. You can imagine, you're like Skunkworks, innovation sandboxes, you know, and lots of other ways as well, to drive innovation in that kind of competitive way. So this is a very competitive environment. Also super interesting, I've seen this happen for real. So this is really interesting, right? That it's not sort of just one head sort of corporate R&D department or innovation department doing this, but the innovation is happening in pockets all over the organization and they're really battling it out. So survival of the fittest, let the best ideas win and bad ideas within quotation marks fall off the radar. Okay. So let's see if I remembered correctly. Directed, guided, organic, and Darwinian, right? Yeah. Yes, fine. Good memory. Good. So before I talk about the roles of services I'm here, which I'm just gonna practice my storytelling skills here at HomeMine, and I have come up with four metaphors just to bring these four types of change to life. Cool. And then I will quickly move on and promise and talk about the roles we can play. Yeah. So for directed change, the metaphor is like winning hearts and minds and occupied territories. For guided change, it's like wandering into the unknown with sharp buzz by your side. So you are guided, we don't really know where you're headed. Self-directed change is like jazz improv or improvisation, which to be really improvised on stage, you have years of practice, but it's also about, which really allows you to be spontaneous in the moment, which I really like, by the way, that balance, right? You can't just improvise on stage. It's based on years and years of practice. And then there'll be any changes like battle royale, which is this 2000 Japanese dystopian thriller. I love that movie, right? But a more recent metaphor would be Hunger Games, for example, where people are simply battling, right? Then let the best man or woman for that matter win. Do you want to say something? Because I have a question around this, but...  Well, my question would be, do you see a natural tendency or preference within Serb designers towards one of these change arenas? Well, I don't think that much choice. That's the thing is that Serb designers are never dictating the change approach, right? That is just from the top. So either you direct it or you let go of it. So they need to simply... Well, anyway, they simply need to understand how do leaders want to drive change here and then adapt accordingly. Okay, yeah, so let me... Good point. Let me rephrase my question. Do we feel more comfortable in one of these areas? Well, we are Serb designers, right? And as human-centered designers, we are trained to be collaborative facilitators, right? We're experts in co-creation. So co-creation can occur in all four types of change. I would argue that indirect change is top-down imposed by the leaders. Co-creation does happen, I've done it myself several times. But it's more of a symbolic gesture doing it because maybe involving like 40 people or 50 people or 100 people, something like that. But it's still quite symbolic. If you're working for an organization with over 200,000 employees across the world, it's quite a symbolic gesture, right? Doing co-creation with the few selected people. So, but this guided change or self-directed change was much more bottom-up. Yes, it's all about co-creation really. The question is though, in that guided change, right? When it's about analyzing your own work life, maybe you could argue that cert signers do play a role, but I would argue they are also expert facilitation needed, experts in things like action research, experiential learning and so on. I'm not saying cert signers cannot learn that, but they are expert facilitators. So I would say working side by side with them to drive systemic system-wide co-creation with an organization. If people are intrigued by this and want to learn more, I guess you also have some material around this. Yes, I've written an article recently that called, Cert Sign to the Rescue, The Critical Role, Cert Signers Can Play Organizational Change. So a great issue, by the way, because the whole issue is about change, about change management. And there's some really interesting articles in there. I happen to be also the guest editor of this particular issue. So I can definitely vouch for the quality, I must say, some great articles there. So I do recommend you check it out. And I just want to, until that note, if we can move on, just wanted to quickly talk about how Cert Sign can play a role in these four different types of change. Yeah, okay. That's okay, Mark. We're going to do an extended version of this episode. So let's go for it. Yeah, let's go for it, Mark. I'm going to talk to you. Let's go, let's do it, Mark. So direct to change, right? The role of Cert Sign really is about helping leaders make the case for change. That's what we do. And I do it all the time on my projects. So you can do that through buying, coming up with those compelling North stars that people can rally around, but coming up with these stories, right? That people can get inspired by by creating service concepts. So future services, future products and so on. And also helping create the value cases and business cases, among many other things. So we do play a big role there, right? But that said, we're not really telling the leaders what change is. That's been dictated to us, but it can help the leaders bring it to life. Yeah, and that's what you mentioned with winning hearts and minds. Yes, yes. Okay, yeah. And you will have to realize as a Cert Signer that you have a hostile audience. Doesn't matter how much cooperation you do, right? Resistance will be high. It's interesting. We need to come up with ways to, to mitigate those barriers down, right, to, you know. Anyway, guided change is more about bottom-up innovation, right? And I mentioned this before that, of course, it played a big role by co-creating, right? But by encouraging co-creation across organization. So, you know, systemic, systematic co-creation, organization-wide. At a scale that we're probably not used to. So imagine doing this bottom-up organization with 100,000 employees, 200,000 employees. This is a scale we're not used to. But if you want to do it properly, that's what it takes. This is not symbolic co-creation. This is genuine co-creation, true bottom-up. This is like crowdsourcing almost like internally, right? In the best possible sense of the word. But then the self-directed change is organic thing. I think the best thing we can do really is actually get out of the way, let people get on with it. But we can help leaders create the conditions for change and creativity and co-creation. We can create how-to guidance. We can set up the rules of engagement, right? So how people can collaborate better together, things like that. So we can create the conditions to make it happen, but then actually get out of the way. So there's a role we can play, not super active, but more creating the conditions. And then there will be a change. This is like viewing innovation as a game, innovation-wide game, really, of innovation. So imagine that we can help design the rules for this. We can set the tone for it. We can create innovation playbooks. We can help leaders determine how do you measure performance, how do you assess which ideas are better than other ideas, and so on. So we can help leaders in that sense to drive innovation in this decentralized way. What I like about the point that you're making here is that you sort of have deconstructed service design into, like we said, the different roles, the different capabilities and skills, and have put it into different change arenas and use those different skills in different ways. And the reason why I like that is it gets away from the too simplistic notion of service design being about creating journey maps and using that. It's not a caveat, but the only catch here is that all this change is related to some kind of a service organization which is basically every organization these days, right? Yeah, there might be that caveat, so to speak, but that said, if you listen to Vorgul and Lush and so on, and other thinkers, other academics, all organizations are service organizations. This doesn't matter if you, I guess Vorgul actually, my most recent project was this global, international automaker, right? In theory, they're making cars. No, no. No, they're service organizations, especially moving into the future, that's all about mobility, right? Which is, of course, a gigantic service. And so they're changing their mindset as well internally. Just an interesting side note, but basically, we believe in the likes of Vorgul and Lush, all companies are service companies. I fully agree. And we've got one more topic that I'd love to cover with you in this episode. So let's do it because it's a natural transition as people will experience, because this is about employee experience. Yes, so let's see if I can find a good question here. So let's put simply put this one, why employee experience? This is a new arena really for service design. It's not really new because, as I said before, in the beginning, we do look at what it takes internally, right, to stay fed an amazing experience. So it's not new, but it's been focused, a renewed focus on employee experience. We have, of course, a bit historically, always been very good at understanding the entrant employee, sorry, the entrant customer experience, trying to say. So this is just sort of redirect that focus to the employees, based, of course, on the premise that how can we empower employees with better data, better insights, better tools, better services, better platforms, so they can do their job properly. So they can serve and support customers so much better than today. What is driving this focus towards employee experience? I think there are several drivers. I think one big driver would be the need for organization, the perceived need for organizations to be much more agile. I'm not talking about those, you know, scrum and software development, but more the need for organizations to be fast, nimble, adaptable, flexible. And that means, among many other things, means restructuring rights internally. It's about much more of a team-based collaborative model. It's about pushing down decision-making down to lowest level possible. So in other words, it's all about empowering employees and teams, and that fits very nicely to, that means, in other words, a leader's field is the time to rethink of the employee experience. That's one reason, but lots of other reasons. Another reason, just among many, is of course the need to attract and retain talent today. Who knows, this might change now after this pandemic. But that said, at least up to now, it's been a real battle for talents. And when companies are moving much more into service mindset, which is typically empowered by technology and so on, they're competing for the same talent. They're competing for this talent with Silicon Valley companies and so on. So they need to simply rethink the employee experience. How do we attract and retain talent? One more question that just popped up in my mind is, I think a lot of service designers deeply want to create a better employee experience and to involve employees. In the projects that I've been involved with, there usually wasn't a lot of, there weren't a lot of resources to actually do that. It was a lot focused on the customer experience because that's where the robber meets the road or something like that. So who would be the clients that actually are interested in improving the employee experience? And yeah, that's, yeah. That's a great question. Yeah, I think it's, you know, service line firms have traditionally worked a lot with CMOs. Maybe also CIOs and CTOs and the like. Nowadays, of course, you do find CXOs and CBOs, you know, whatever. But I would argue that if you really want to work with employee experiences, you need to build strong relationships with CHRO. So basically working with the HR function internally. Those are typically, those are in charge, so to speak, of talent management, employee experience and so on. They're pretty old fashioned though, generally speaking, right? While some parts of organization has typically jumped on the bandwagon, the design thinking, human center design bandwagon, HR is probably one of the last corporate functions to do that, think that way. So it's a bit of a challenge for service signers, but very interesting type of challenges. How can you make HRs a function or more agile? How can you help HRs a function be much more human centered and employee centric in the ways of thinking and doing? How can a, what's the role of HR to really empower employees? And so on and so on. So it's really an important challenge. Yeah, it's basically seeing HR as an internal service or a set of internal services, right? Yeah, totally. So a sudden HR becomes a service provider rather than just thinking, not just, but just thinking talent pools, you know, policies, procedures and things like that, right?  This is so much beyond that, right? It's really as I've mentioned before, but how do you empower employees? And do you have an example of how you actually do that? How do you, maybe a project that you worked on? Sure. So I've worked, I've been involved quite recently with three really good projects, just an overview and then I can take one of them and just quickly show you how you did it. One was for global leader in retail and wholesale pharmacy. It was, they were in a midst of going agile as an organization, want to be much more customer obsessed their words and much more innovative. So basically our role as a service line team was to help HR figure out what type of services could they offer and deliver internally to make employees more agile, more innovative, more customer obsessed. And we also took it to the next level, not just employees at large, but also how can they help innovation teams become more agile, you know, innovation, focused and customer obsessed. So it's really interesting, we come up with like 30 service as a fully fledged service concepts. This is a big, big shift in their mindset. Also become this internal service provider. Another project was for healthcare, one of the largest healthcare providers in the US, which I can mention which one, but this is all highly confidential. And they were battling with, just like many other healthcare providers for that matter, but battling with things like, you know, people, clinicians feel stressed, demotivated, disengaged at work and so on, but don't feel they have access to the right tools and data to serve patients. Quite a big problem, in other words, which means that quite high turnover and help industry and even burnouts and so on, which is terrible. So we reframed that project quite quickly and talked about how to bring joy back into care and also help clinicians and care teams operate top of the license. So while there was a productivity element to it, how can we empower teams, care teams to be more productive, right? And spend more time on value added activities and actually help patients get better rather than spending on admin and other things. A big, big part of it was really how do we increase employee engagement? How do you increase workplace happiness? How to get people more engaged? So we came up with 25 comprehensive services. Half of them were really about workplace happiness and engagement. Another half were more about team productivity, turning teams into high-performing teams. And the third one was, for that multinational automaker I mentioned, how can, what's the role of HR? How can HR resolve pain points in the end-to-end employee experience? How can they elevate moments that matter? And how can they help make organizations become more agile over time? Once again, we came up with a number of service concepts to help them do it. All based, of course, all three projects, all based on doing research, just like in any other customer experience project, but the research is more directed internally. So you're talking with different types of employees in different parts of the organization. And it's a project that's global, like I talked about the automaker, and you're doing this across the world as well. I can't imagine that you took a lot of learnings out of these projects, employee experience. For the sake of time, if you, are there one or two maybe key, learnings that you'd like to highlight? Sure. So first of all, when you work on employee experience projects, you need to understand the overarching organizational quest. What do they want to achieve? Is it about productivity, right? They've been in those projects as well. They simply need to cut costs. They need to adapt appropriately, right? And it's all about how you make employees more productive and more high-performing. But more often than not, nowadays I feel organizational quest is not really about productivity. It's actually about being more agile, as I mentioned before. And that's super, super interesting for social science to be involved in this type of project. Another one, of course, not a takeaway is that change is typically top-down, at least in the US, or these global organizations with American headquarters. It's not just top-down, but it's also very US-centric. So while organization is typically very global, it's still very much a US-centric mindset, which we need, of course, to fight against, so to speak, or, you know. So try to make sure we are including people from all over the world, not just, you can't just come up with solutions in the US and impose them on the rest of the world. That's a very US-centric mindset. Another thing, FL, is striking that balance between thinking big, thinking holistically, but also zooming in on what matters and one way to make sure you're focusing on the right things is identifying those moments that matter in the end-to-end employee experience. So typically you go all the way from hire to retire, keep it simple, but that's a pretty long journey that can stand over several years. So identifying really moments that matter in that end-to-end employee experience and using that to prioritize your research and design efforts. Another one I would say is, and that's a really cool thing why we should get so involved in change, is that we're literally empowering employees. To come up with the right solutions, we're empowering employees with much better data, much better insights, much more appropriate tools, the right services, the right systems and so on. So we're driving change by empowering employees. Compare that to other type of consultants like organizational consultants or change experts that typically recommend things like more training or more internal comms. And I would argue that's fine, but not enough. We're literally empowering employees. Big difference, we're not just informing them or communicating with them, we're actually empowering them. So that's really the power we bring to the table being a service designer in change processes. And then another final one that I think is so interesting while what makes employee experience projects so challenging but also so interesting is the fact that we have to deal with tensions and paradoxes all the time. As I mentioned before, like one tension between global versus local or US-centric mindset versus a global mindset. Tension between focusing on the now and focusing on the far, focusing on the future. Another tension could be between standardized solutions, your streamlining things versus personalizing solutions for individual employees or inclusion, exclusion and so on and so on. It's really interesting. And if it's something we recommend by the way that just try to highlight these tensions in your research and make them visible to your clients part of the way of driving change. I think you mentioned in our chats before this call is that you see employee experience as a new frontier for service design. Yes, it is at this scale. Yes, it's always been involved before, right? Especially around the new type of service or a new type of digital product but this is at a scale I haven't done before. I must say that's one of the advantages of me joining Fjord that you can teach an old dog new tricks. So for me, this was actually opening up a new world for me doing at this scale. That said, of course other design firms are also doing this but they're sometimes calling it organizational design which is interesting. It's not always calling it service design but organizational design. Just be a bit cautious of that because it implies that only strategists can do it which is totally not the right way to do it, right? You still need a really well-balanced service design team with all the different roles we've talked about before to really carry out these change. So be important partner in these change processes. You can't just put a bunch of strategy consultants and think that they can do as well as a really well balanced fully-fledged service design team. That's a really nice plea for our field. Robert, we've discussed a lot and you've shared a lot and there is much more in the show notes if people wanna dig in but I can also imagine that you'll have a question that's on your mind that you'd like to challenge us with. Yes, I would love to get in touch with the broader service design committee around the world. And I would love their help to based on where you sit in the world, the type of projects you're working on, what is the role of service design and change? So I'll be really eager to collect those stories from around the world. How service design is actually empowering people and teams and leaders and so on to drive change. And if you read my article, it is the first hypothesis. It's the first version of my thinking. I would love to pressure test my thinking with these real-life examples to see if I can involve my thinking, I could even better and sharper over time. Just like any design process. So I found my article, but it is the first hypothesis and really want people to pressure test it and come up with their own examples and help me just make this model much better. Yeah, so it's again, it's really interesting. This helps to articulate and understand where we are, which role we play and then seeing if we actually have real-life examples in cases that span beyond your own experience. So please leave a comment down below. If people want to continue this conversation outside of this episode, what's the best way to get in touch with you? I think the easiest way is LinkedIn. Hook me up on LinkedIn, I'm really happy to strike up dialogues with people around this. Cool. We'll make sure to include all the relevant links. Like I said, this was an extended episode and I hope it was worth it for the people listening. Thanks so much for sharing, Robert. It was really interesting to get a peek inside what's going on in your head at this moment. Yeah, I just wanted to say also, thank you to you, Mark, right? I think you're doing such a great job. I love this format. You're really spreading the gospel as a person around the world. That's fantastic. So I do appreciate that. It's all for the community. It is indeed. Thanks. So what's your biggest takeaway from this interview with Robert? Leave a comment down below. Let me know and let's continue the conversation over there. If you enjoyed this episode, there's one thing you can do. Please grab the link and share it with somebody who might find this interesting as well because that way you'll help to grow the service design show community. And that helps me to invite more interesting guests like Robert here on the show for you. If you wanna continue and get inspired about service design, check out this episode because we're going to continue over there. Thanks for watching and I'll see you over here.