Leading Change and Nudging Employees Towards Digital Transformation by Utilising the Service Design Process

Digital transformation is not just a technological change but a cultural change affecting companies' operations. It requires organisations to rethink their management models and develop employee skills to meet the new demands. The development task of this thesis was a project commissioned by a company operating in the energy sector, wanting to test how leading change and nudging employees towards digital transformation could be done by utilising designerly methods. The development work is based on the key concepts of strategy, strategic foresight, leadership, change models and nudging. The energy company had digitalised numerous business processes, but a systematic approach and tools for leading and measuring digital development needed improving. The identified vital employees driving the company’s digital transformation were the system administrators and software main users responsible for technical development. The aim of the project was to engage the system administrators in transforming their roles into active team players and find new ideas for speeding up the company’s digital transformation. The key objectives were to innovate standard tools and operating models and find ways to evaluate the company’s digital development maturity. A modified Double Diamond service design process was applied in the development project. The insights were gathered by interviewing a pilot group of seven system administrators. During the process, system administrators’ needs were identified and defined, solutions to meet the needs were devised and prototyped, and the requirements were iterated using various collaborative designerly tools. The ideas and insights were further validated with a group of fifty system administrators and compiled into a concept document and development roadmap. As a result, several operating models, such as the digitalisation leadership model, administrator day concept, rules for system descriptions and user guides, and practice for gathering tools and tips to ease the workload of system administrators, were created. A preliminary concept for measuring digital transformation maturity was drawn during the project. Also, several further development streams and innovative ideas, such as better utilisation of robotics and automation, were identified. Utilising design in engaging employees and leading digital transformation of a traditional, engineer-oriented industry proved fruitful. The company could benefit significantly from implementing the ideas and operational models as they promote operational efficiency, transparency and meaningful work aligned with the company strategy. In general, experimenting with human-centric management models and the service design process can be recommended to various companies. By combining different management models and designerly tools, new ways of looking at companies' technology challenges, business development, and digital transformation possibilities can be found