Leading Complex Transformation
Reshaping an End-to-End Servicing Experience
Strategic Challenge: Transforming Wealth Management Service Delivery
Project Role: Lead Researcher & Designer, Facilitator
Strategic Challenge Statement
While the firm was investing heavily in AI and digital capabilities, our service ecosystem had become like a complex recipe where ingredients had been added reactively over years with multiple service centers operating with different mini-strategies, band-aid compliance solutions, and disconnected systems that forced both clients and advisors to repeat their stories with every interaction. This fragmented approach was not only costing the firm millions annually, but more critically, it was creating regulatory risk, service professional attrition (lasting only 2 years), and threatening client retention in an industry where trust and relationship continuity are paramount.
Business Context & Stakes
Service Ecosystem Crisis
The wealth management firm operated multiple specialized service centers:
Client Service Center: Direct client support and issue resolution
Advisor Service Center: Supporting financial advisors with operational needs
Digital Communications Hub: Managing digital client interactions
Segmented Service Teams: Specialized support for new client onboarding and affluent client segments
While this specialization made sense individually, it had created a fragmented experience where 15 different user types navigated multiple core systems with numerous applications, resulting in service professionals managing overcrowded dual-monitor setups and clients facing inconsistent, repetitive interactions.
Business Impact
Cost Center Perception: Service centers were viewed as pure cost centers rather than strategic relationship-building touch-points, missing opportunities to drive client satisfaction and advisor productivity.
Operational Inefficiency: Disconnected systems led to:
Extended call times due to information gathering redundancy
Clients and advisors repeating problems across multiple touchpoints
Service professionals spending more time on system navigation than relationship building
Human Capital Crisis:
Service professional tenure averaged only 2 years maximum due to stress and lack of career progression
Low advisor satisfaction impacting their ability to serve clients effectively
Reactive "everything is on fire" culture preventing strategic thinking
Revenue & Compliance Risk:
Variable customer satisfaction threatening client retention in a relationship-driven industry
Regulatory compliance managed through reactive band-aid solutions rather than systematic approach
Fraud detection relying on service professionals to catch rather than systems to flag, creating liability exposure
The AI Paradox
The firm was rapidly launching AI initiatives, but the service teams were too overwhelmed by daily operational fires to effectively adopt or train on new capabilities. The highly politicized landscape around AI implementation further complicated rollout, while the fragmented systems architecture made integration nearly impossible.
Factors to Consider
Organizational Complexity
Geographic & Cultural Fragmentation: Multiple service centers across different locations had developed their own mini-strategies and routing guidelines, creating inconsistent experiences and making standardization challenging.
Legacy Decision Architecture: Years of reactive solutions had created what felt like separating ingredients from soup—trying to understand how many "teaspoons of salt" (quick fixes) had been added without documentation or strategic rationale.
Cultural Resistance: The most challenging aspect was overcoming "that's just how things are" mentality from stakeholders who had become attached to familiar processes, even dysfunctional ones, without compelling business rationale for maintaining status quo.
Technical Complexity
System Integration Nightmare: Two core systems housing numerous applications, with service professionals cramming multiple tools across dual monitors because the primary CRM couldn't adequately support relationship and case management needs.
Data Fragmentation: Client and advisor information scattered across systems, making it impossible to create unified views or personalized experiences.
Compliance Constraints: Highly regulated environment requiring solutions that met strict financial services compliance standards while improving efficiency.
The Transformation Imperative
What Was at Stake
Without intervention, the firm faced:
Continued operational cost increases, estimated at $3M annually in inefficiencies
Accelerating service professional turnover, requiring constant recruitment and training investment
Client attrition in an industry where relationship continuity directly impacts revenue retention
Competitive disadvantage as other firms invested in cohesive service experiences
Regulatory compliance issues escalating beyond band-aid fixes to potential systematic failures
Failed AI investment ROI due to inability to effectively implement new capabilities
Strategic Opportunity
The transformation represented an opportunity to:
Reposition service centers from cost centers to strategic relationship-building assets
Create competitive differentiation through superior service experience
Build systematic compliance capabilities that reduced risk while improving efficiency
Enable effective AI adoption through coherent system architecture and process design
Establish career progression pathways that improved retention and service quality
Generate measurable ROI through reduced operational costs and improved client/advisor satisfaction
My Approach: An Integrated Framework
Business Constraint
We had 4 months to demonstrate transformation value before budget priorities locked in by end of August - a hard deadline that required strategic orchestration across multiple work-streams while maintaining daily operational delivery.
This was a business-critical window where the service design work needed to prove its strategic value to secure continued investment and organizational support for broader transformation.
Leadership Challenge
Rather than managing a single service design project, I was simultaneously:
Leading transformation across servicing leaders, service teams, product, data, tech, and design
Maintaining stakeholder buy-in across diverse organizational priorities and political dynamics
Delivering tactical design work that demonstrated immediate value while building toward strategic outcomes
Adapting methodology based on what the organization could absorb without losing momentum
Building coalition support for continued transformation investment beyond the 4-month window
Framework Design
Strategic Integration from Day One: Rather than sequential phases, I designed an integrated approach where vision work, research, and solution development happened simultaneously. This meant that insights from stakeholder interviews immediately informed our leadership conversations, which then shaped what we prototyped the following week.
Cross-Functional Orchestration: My framework coordinated transformation across all functional areas—servicing leaders, service teams, product, data, tech, and design—ensuring alignment and shared ownership of outcomes throughout the process.
Adaptive Execution While Maintaining Progress: I built in adaptive capacity to respond to changing organizational priorities, stakeholder availability, and political dynamics that required tactical adjustments, while maintaining consistent delivery of tactical design work that demonstrated tangible progress.
Process Innovation & Adaptability
Strategic Framework
To address the transformation challenge, I developed a comprehensive approach that included:
3-Vision with Prototype as a rallying point for organizational alignment
Current vs Future State Strategy with roadmapping designed backwards from the future-state vision
Laddered Alignment connecting features → product initiatives → service strategies → firm priorities
Temporal Value Delivery showing progression from 1-month wins to 3-year transformation
AI Integration Strategy evolving from reactive → responsive → proactive service delivery
Expert Facilitation
The Challenge: I went into a 2-day co-design session with servicing, product, data, and design teams with a hypothesis about starting with "log a call" based on industry standards, but my real-time facilitation skills uncovered something much more strategic.
Real-Time Insights: During the first day, three critical discoveries emerged:
Service professionals were using 75% of screen space for "checkbox" tools vs. 25% for the actual CRM
They needed performance insights relative to peers but had to cobble this together across fragmented tools
The key to shifting from reactive to responsive wasn't starting with logging a call—it was providing AI-powered insights before the call begins
The 15-Minute Break Decision: Recognizing these insights required a fundamental workflow change, I called a strategic pause, synthesized what we'd learned, and completely pivoted the session to design a new "start of day" experience that consolidated capabilities and provided proactive insights.
The Breakthrough: This pivot created a new workflow (Dashboard → Client → Log Interaction) that provided the groundwork to solve definition debates that had lasted months. Issues like defining "resolved" cases—something teams had argued about for months—were solved in one hour because of the clarity this new user flow provided.
Broader Impact: This workshop became the foundation for a three-workshop transformation series that aligned combative product teams, shifted the entire organization from feature-focused to strategy-aligned work, and created clear implementation roadmaps with measurable success metrics.
Navigating Complexity
Cultural Resistance & Change Mangement
The Challenge: The most significant obstacle wasn't technical complexity—it was cultural inertia. Teams had developed deep attachment to familiar processes with responses like "that's just how things are" without compelling business rationale for maintaining the status quo.
My Approach: I used stakeholder research, user research, and co-design workshops to simultaneously pivot and get active buy-in. Every time stakeholders wanted to revert to old thinking, I would work with my design team to deliver quick tactical solutions that met immediate needs while continuing our larger strategic vision work.
Maintaining Momentum: I established clear definitions upfront that this was a vision meant to evolve, not be perfect. I consistently showed how we planned to deliver value through features and improvements across multiple timeframes—1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 1 year—all laddering up to the 3-year strategic vision.
Leadership Under Pressure
The Situation: Even before we lost 2 designers mid-project, I recognized that our team was aligned to feature launches rather than strategic initiatives. I made the decision and secured leadership buy-in to pivot toward supporting initiatives rather than individual features.
Strategic Response: When we actually lost the two designers, the team was already aligned to this higher-impact approach. By the end of our workshop series, we had fewer resources but were able to better prioritize and support the most impactful and relevant projects.
Stakeholder Management: I maintained continuous education with stakeholders on our strategic definitions and approach, while ensuring quick delivery of tactical solutions that kept them engaged with the broader transformation work.
Business Impact & Organizational Transformation
Immediate Business Outcomes
Budget Success: Successfully secured continued investment beyond the August deadline by demonstrating tangible transformation value within the 4-month window.
Organizational Alignment: Achieved alignment across previously combative teams, shifting the entire organization from feature-focused to strategy-aligned work with clear connections between daily work and firm-wide priorities.
Process Innovation: Solved long-standing organizational debates (like the 2-year case management definition challenge) through systematic service design thinking and expert facilitation.
Sustainable Organizational Change
Strategic Capability Building: Established a framework that positioned service centers as strategic relationship-building assets rather than cost centers, with clear career progression pathways that improved retention and service quality.
AI Integration Readiness: Created systematic compliance capabilities and coherent system architecture that enabled effective AI adoption, addressing the firm's strategic technology investment priorities.
Cultural Transformation: Shifted organizational culture from reactive crisis management to strategic thinking, with teams now able to think proactively about service delivery improvements.
Transformation Legacy
Methodology Impact: The integrated transformation framework I developed became a model for subsequent complex initiatives, demonstrating how service design thinking can drive business-critical organizational change.
Stakeholder Perspective Shift: Leadership and cross-functional teams now view service design as essential strategic capability rather than tactical design support, fundamentally changing how transformation initiatives are approached.
Measurable ROI: Generated measurable return on investment through reduced operational costs, improved client and advisor satisfaction scores, and enhanced regulatory compliance capabilities that reduced organizational risk.
Why This Required Service Design Leadership
This wasn't simply a technology problem or process improvement initiative—it required systematic service design thinking to:
Systems Thinking: Mapping complex stakeholder relationships across user types and multiple touchpoints
Strategic Business Acumen: Understanding budget cycles, organizational politics, and regulatory constraints
Expert Facilitation: Real-time synthesis of complex insights with ability to pivot major strategic direction mid-workshop
Change Management: Creating sustainable organizational transformation while maintaining daily operations
Technical Integration: Designing for current operational constraints while enabling future AI capability integration
The successful outcome demonstrates the strategic value that service design leadership brings to complex, business-critical transformation challenges in highly regulated industries.