This article is based on a keynote talk given by Jonathan Hunsley at the co-located IRM Business and Enterprise Architecture, Business Change and Transformation and Service Design Conferences, held in June 2025. 

Start with ‘why?’

Why should we seek to understand change and how to improve the effectiveness of change delivery? Regardless of your background, you are likely to be aware of change programmes, either within your organisation or in the public domain, that have not gone to plan. It’s likely these initiatives were abandoned altogether or failed to deliver the expected benefits. This results in time and resources being wasted, often at a considerable cost to the organisations involved. In some instances, failed change programmes can result in even more catastrophic results, as evidenced by the Horizon IT Post Office scandal. 

Failed projects or programmes should be of concern to everyone working in digital change professions. When we see failures happening time and again, this can become an accepted norm. We become accustomed to projects being abandoned or failing to achieve the desired outcomes, and vast amounts of money being wasted. We stop viewing these situations as undesirable and accept them as our standard baseline. Ecologists have described this as ‘shifting baseline syndrome’, characterised by ‘a gradual change in the accepted norms for the condition of the natural environment due to a lack of experience, memory and/or knowledge of its past condition’.

The impact of decades of failed change initiatives and service failures should matter to everyone. The monthly costs of employee time spent dealing with problems, complaints and service failures is £7.3 billion, according to the Institute of Customer Service ‘UK Customer Satisfaction Index’ report from January 2025 (based upon 250 organisations). This means that service failures cost in the region of £87.6 billion annually, in the UK alone.

The problems with service and customer satisfaction can be improved by understanding the need to co-create value with customers and the benefits that can accrue from an outcome focus.

How is value co-creation achieved?

The value co-creation process, shown in Figure 1, highlights the need for collaboration and consists of three core elements.

Figure 1. Value co-creation process (Paul and Cadle, 2020)

Collaboration within a team can only happen when there is shared and aligned purpose and goal/s, psychological safety, trust, shared language, continuous learning, and clear roles and responsibilities. Imagine a high performing sports team - without all these key elements of collaboration, they would not be able to perform cohesively and successfully. 

The Change Paradigm

The Change Paradigm model, shown in Figure 2, requires some key definitions.

• A service: the process of using one’s resources to create value with and for the benefit of another actor.
• Value: the utility, experience and beneficial outcomes offered by a product or service and determined by the customer.
• Goods Dominant Logic (G-DL): posits that thinking, behaviour and actions revolve around goods, with the value of a product or service being achieved at the point of exchange or delivery to a customer.
• Service Dominant Logic (S-DL): focuses on the co-creation of value where customers engage with service providers and the delivered goods or services. Customers determine whether value has been realised or not.
• Dogmatism: applying rules, principles or standards mechanistically without considering the context and any need to vary their application.
• Pragmatism: applying rules, principles and standards in a practical way that considers the individual context.

Figure 2. Change Paradigm Model

Individuals with a Perfection focus insist on the rigorous implementation of the principles of Service Dominant logic. Sometimes people with this paradigm can provide useful knowledge and insight. However, they may be sidelined as the pace of change is too great for them to keep up.

Individuals with a Method focus are focused on the detailed implementation of a method, template or other standard. Sometimes people with this paradigm are uncertain about achieving stated goals and believe that these can only be achieved through a strict adherence to a method or approach. Unfortunately, a methods focus can result in the adoption of a limited view, wasted organisational resources and a failure to achieve desired outcomes. 

Individuals with an Output focus are concerned with the development and delivery of defined products or services. Sometimes people with this paradigm fail to take a holistic view, rarely considering the impact on the customer experience or the long-term health of the organisation. 

Individuals with an Outcome focus are concerned to fulfil the stated value propositions and to achieve the desired business benefits. People with this paradigm understand the importance of value co-creation and continuous improvement. They learn from feedback and apply service design in a holistic and beneficial way.

Closing Questions

Having been introduced to the new Change paradigm model it is recommended that you consider how it relates to your work and that of your colleagues. What paradigm do you observe or apply? Does it align with the paradigm of your wider team and organisation? Are differences in paradigm a barrier to collaboration? 

And in a wider context, what paradigm is influencing the strategy for change in your organisation? Is this paradigm helping with the achievement of successful strategic or tactical change outcomes? Does the paradigm help with the long-term development of capabilities? 

Jonathan Hunsley is the service development director for Assist Knowledge Development Ltd. Jonathan is a Chartered IT Professional, and the lead assessor for the BCS Advanced International Diploma in Business Analysis. He holds an MBA and the Expert Business Analysis Award. Jonathan is the lead author of Business Architecture: A Comprehensive Guide (BCS, 2025) and has contributed to a variety of publications such as Business Analysis (Paul and Cadle, 2020) and Business Analysis Techniques (Cadle et al., 2021). He is a regular contributor to the BA Brew podcast, co-founded the SD Forum, a networking forum for service designers, and was the chief architect of the A4Q Certified Service Designer award.