How to fix broken systems - Kate Tarling (CEO, The Service Group)

March 18, 2026

40 min episode · 2 min read

Kate Tarling

Episode

40 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Leadership

AI-Generated Summary

Published Mar 19, 2026

Key Takeaways

✓Status quo risk: Treating the current operating model as the "safe, neutral option" is the primary mistake large organizations make. The status quo carries real, measurable costs — duplication, slow decisions, invisible risk — and any transformation business case must start by quantifying what inaction is already costing, not just what change might risk.
✓Start with one vertical service: Rather than attempting organization-wide transformation, identify one end-to-end service that cuts across technology, operations, compliance, and legal functions. Map what good looks like for that service, align cross-functional teams around shared outcomes, and extract lessons before scaling the approach across the broader organization.
✓Portfolio remapping over new budget: Roughly 80% of transformation work involves redirecting existing investment, not securing new budget. Map all current projects against actual services in plain English, then sort into three buckets — strong fit, needs investigation, and candidate for stopping — to surface duplication and misalignment that no single leader currently has visibility over.
✓Triage function for incoming requests: When business or external requests flood in, establish a formal triage process requiring requesters to describe the problem and desired outcome before work is initiated. Staff it with people who know team capacity and strategic priorities, enabling informed trade-off conversations rather than reactive feature accumulation. NHS Head of Product James Higgott documents a working example.
✓Define services as verbs, not org charts: List what the organization does for customers using action-based language — claiming, getting support, renewing — rather than mapping to internal directorates. Attach measurable outcomes to each service. This outside-in framing gives every team, regardless of function, a shared reference point for steering decisions and evaluating whether current work is on target.

What It Covers

Kate Tarling, CEO of The Service Group and author of *The Service Organisation*, explains how large organizations can fix broken service delivery systems by reorienting around customer outcomes, restructuring investment portfolios, and building cross-functional leadership — without requiring a full organizational overhaul before seeing results.

Key Questions Answered

•Status quo risk: Treating the current operating model as the "safe, neutral option" is the primary mistake large organizations make. The status quo carries real, measurable costs — duplication, slow decisions, invisible risk — and any transformation business case must start by quantifying what inaction is already costing, not just what change might risk.
•Start with one vertical service: Rather than attempting organization-wide transformation, identify one end-to-end service that cuts across technology, operations, compliance, and legal functions. Map what good looks like for that service, align cross-functional teams around shared outcomes, and extract lessons before scaling the approach across the broader organization.
•Portfolio remapping over new budget: Roughly 80% of transformation work involves redirecting existing investment, not securing new budget. Map all current projects against actual services in plain English, then sort into three buckets — strong fit, needs investigation, and candidate for stopping — to surface duplication and misalignment that no single leader currently has visibility over.
•Triage function for incoming requests: When business or external requests flood in, establish a formal triage process requiring requesters to describe the problem and desired outcome before work is initiated. Staff it with people who know team capacity and strategic priorities, enabling informed trade-off conversations rather than reactive feature accumulation. NHS Head of Product James Higgott documents a working example.
•Define services as verbs, not org charts: List what the organization does for customers using action-based language — claiming, getting support, renewing — rather than mapping to internal directorates. Attach measurable outcomes to each service. This outside-in framing gives every team, regardless of function, a shared reference point for steering decisions and evaluating whether current work is on target.

Notable Moment

Tarling notes that organizations often enthusiastically commit to becoming customer-centered or product-led — right up until it requires relinquishing budget control or sharing power across directorates. This gap between stated ambition and actual behavioral change is, she argues, one of the most consistent failure patterns she encounters across large institutions.

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