Service Design: A New Approach
The exponential growth of Family Offices in the past decade has undoubtedly led to a more professionalised approach. This has opened the door to new opportunities to explore how Family Offices shape the services they offer.
I spoke on a panel hosted by Simple to discuss how Private Clients and Family Offices can leverage Service Design and Design Thinking and how these practices are embedded into our work at Catalyst.
You can read Simple’s full report here.
The importance of design thinking when crafting a Family Office Brand
The collaborative process of creating a family office brand is a unique opportunity to bring everyone together to align values, purpose and ensure a cohesive and compelling vision for the family’s future. This positively impacts succession planning through proactively managing and creating a wealth story and legacy that all family members are excited and motivated by. Indeed, once created, a strong family office brand allows that vision to transcend the family which is critical when attracting top talent, taking an active investment stance and focusing philanthropic efforts.
At Catalyst, there are three core tenets of design thinking that we build into all our Private Client and Family Office brand purpose and wealth story strategies and execution roadmaps:
The first is ensuring a deeply empathetic and human approach that looks to understand and serve the needs of all generations. This allows for a collaborative and open forum where the second aspect can thrive:
An environment where families can co-create their ongoing and future legacy together. A space where everyone has a seat at the table and feels invested and passionate in the outcome.
Lastly, we look to foster an active culture of continual learning and iteration. As new systems, technologies and, indeed, values are implemented, it is vital to maintain flexible thinking and adapt where necessary.
Before moving into the collaborative phase of design thinking, it is vital to understand the needs and perspective of individuals before bringing everyone together: there is no substitute for speaking to people and truly listening. Not only does this ensure everyone feels heard and has a chance to contribute, but it also enrichens the approach through incorporating diverse viewpoints and perspectives. Crucially, individuals feel more invested in the process once they have been listened to which, in turn, enables greater honesty, collaboration and drives the overall success of the project.
Of course, the implementation of any new systems and approaches takes time and rarely is a one-and-done solution. This is especially true when it comes to effective service design. There needs to be commitment across all key stakeholders and discipline to ensure that new processes and ways of working are adhered to especially if they deviate from the status quo. To overcome these challenges, we look to embed an ongoing integrated and collaborative approach that support clients throughout the implementation process and continually evolve our approach to ensure it works alongside existing systems.
In Summary
The very nature of a Family Office is the family dynamics that sit at the heart of the entity; put simply, a human-centric organisation demands a human-centric solution.
The main benefit of design thinking and a human-centred approach is the strength and effectiveness of the outcomes it creates especially in uniting the perspectives and goals across multiple generations to co-create innovative new solutions that ensure the Family Office’s continued wealth and legacy.