Becoming a Service Organisation

Adopting a starfish strategy for service transformation across a complex service ecosystem

One of the standout talks at the Service Design Conference Europe 2026 came from Bruce Prendergast, CDIO Strategy Lead at HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC). For anyone outside the UK, HMRC is the government department responsible for collecting taxes, administering benefits and ensuring the financial systems that keep the country running operate smoothly. It is one of the largest and most complex service organisations in the UK, serving millions of citizens and businesses every day.

Bruce is also the co‑founder of the Service Design Forum alongside AssistKD’s Jonathan Hunsley, and he brought a rare blend of experience to the stage: policing, digital strategy and years spent helping HMRC rethink how it delivers services at national scale.

His central question was deceptively simple: what does it take for a large organisation to behave like a service organisation?

He explained this through a powerful metaphor, contrasting the ‘spider’ and the ‘starfish’ - two very different ways of structuring a business, designing service delivery and empowering the people who make it all work.

Why traditional hierarchies struggle

Bruce began by reflecting on how organisations grow. Many start as small, entrepreneurial teams where decisions are quick and everyone knows the customer. Over time, they become large, layered and hierarchical. That structure brings control, but it also brings distance.

In a spider‑like organisation, everything flows back to the centre. One “heroic” leader or central function holds the web together. It works well in stable environments. But in complex service ecosystems, it slows everything down.

Teams at the edges often see problems first. They hear customer frustrations. They spot new needs emerging. Yet in a spider model, those insights take too long to reach the centre - and even longer to turn into action.

Bruce put it plainly: if we want better services, we need to trust the people closest to the customer.

Thinking in ecosystems, not org charts

A recurring theme across the conference was that services don’t live inside organisational boxes - they live across them. Bruce echoed this strongly.

He encouraged the audience to look beyond traditional structures and see services as ecosystems - interconnected, interdependent and constantly shifting. When you take that view, the limitations of a command‑and‑control approach become obvious.

Empowerment kept coming up as a defining factor in successful organisations. So did trust. And in HMRC’s case, the stakes are high: if customers can navigate services easily, they’re more likely to get things right first time. That benefits everyone.

From spider to starfish

Bruce introduced the idea of the starfish organisation - a model where autonomy sits at the edges, but shared purpose holds everything together.

In nature, a starfish can regenerate because every part carries the same DNA.

In service organisations, that “DNA” is:

a shared understanding of purpose
clear service standards
a common view of value
and enough autonomy for teams to act on what they see

This shift isn’t theoretical. Bruce pointed to digital organisations that have embraced decentralised, outcome‑driven models:

Wikipedia, where distributed contribution outpaced traditional publishing
Spotify, where small autonomous teams deliver quickly because they understand the outcomes they’re working towards

The message was clear: decentralisation, when guided by shared purpose, can unlock speed, learning and better services.

Building a starfish strategy inside HMRC

To help teams adopt a service mindset, HMRC has been using the Service Definition Canvas - a practical tool that helps teams articulate:

who their service beneficiaries are
what value they create
what outcomes matter most
and what high‑level requirements shape delivery

Bruce shared examples of teams who began to see their work differently:

Governance teams recognising they provide a service to the wider organisation
Supplier management teams reframing relationships as partnerships rather than transactions

This shift from purpose to value is at the heart of becoming a service organisation.

The realities: empowerment with boundaries

The audience discussion was lively and honest. Several important points surfaced:

Empowerment needs limits. Without shared constraints, decentralisation can drift into fragmentation.
Security matters. In large public organisations, cyber risk and compliance must remain tightly governed.
Cost and risk need balancing. Starfish models can be more expensive, but they bring teams closer to customers.
Culture and operating models must align. You can’t adopt a service mindset if your operating model pulls in the opposite direction.
Meanwhile, the rise of AI is pulling some organisations back toward centralised control because of unknown risks.

Bruce’s view was pragmatic: a starfish strategy works when autonomy is balanced with shared purpose, shared standards and shared guardrails.