SEAM#30 - Enterprise Science and Fairy Tales (Benedict Steele & Alberta Soranzo)

Join me, Alberta Soranzo (Lloyds Banking Group) and Benedict Steele (Armakuni) at SEAM#30 where we'll be exploring the realities of transforming enterprise culture in a way you haven't seen before!

Agenda:

18:30 - 19:00 - Networking drinks and pizza
19:00 - 19:40 - Alberta Soranzo

Goldilocks and the Enterprise — Chasing value in complex systems

If transforming culture was as easy as applying a universal formula, updating furniture and deploying coaches throughout organisations, we’d be well underway to have changed the world. And if releasing value was as simple as delivering software in an effective way, the agile community would be out of a job soon.

In this session we’ll explore complexity, systems and services and look at different ways to understand and release value in the environments we operate in.

19:40 - 20:20 - Benedict Steele

How to be an Evil Scientist

Have you ever fancied turning your co-workers into laboratory rats and have them scurry around a maze searching for food whilst you ring a bell and the office cat slavers at the mouth?

No? Okay, well we weren't going to tell you how to do that anyway!

What we will share is how to embed a culture of ongoing experimentation that enables your team to learn and adopt new technologies, techniques, and processes - whilst also achieving current objectives.

No animals were harmed in the creation of this talk.

20:20 - 20:30 - Close & Go to the pub

A bit about Alberta...

A firm believer that there’s always another way to look at a challenge, Alberta Soranzo has been hacking things to make them work better for humans since she was a child. An incorrigible nomad, she’s lived and worked in Italy and California and is now based in London, UK.

As End-to-End (E2E) Service Design and Systems Thinking Director at Lloyds Banking Group, she focuses on the creation and delivery of future-friendly services and customer outcomes that are rooted in systemic understanding and deliver value. She is driven by the opportunity to make a real impact on outcomes for both people and the organization, by looking after the big picture as well as paying attention to the very small things that, she says, ‘matter a lot’.

Unafraid of challenging conventions, Alberta puts people at the heart of her design process and contends that you should always under promise and then over deliver. In her natural habitat, she’s sitting on the floor surrounded by bits of paper and post-its or standing in front of a whiteboard with a handful of markers.

Prior to Lloyds, Alberta was experience design director at digital agencies in London and at UCLA in California. She has a long track record of leading strategic projects for global brands, including Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Center for Disease Control and Prevention, UCLA, HSBC, Deutsche Bank, RBS, BUPA, The Co-operative Group, EDF, Nuffield Health and T.Rowe Price.

When she’s looking to escape the world of design, Alberta plays ice hockey, lifts weights and tries to keep up with the crazy life of her teenage daughters.

A bit about Benedict...

Benedict Steele
Consultant / Engagement Lead - Armakuni

I’m a creative technology leader who balances lived experience with emerging best practice. With over fifteen years experience of working in the public and third sectors, I enjoy helping organisations of all sizes to adopt new methods, techniques, and ways of working.

Prior to joining Armakuni, I led the Digital Engineering and Digital Product Teams at Cancer Research UK. A little bit before that, I co-founded HomeMade Digital, and worked with organisations such as BBC Children In Need, British Red Cross, Royal Children’s Hospital Foundation (Melbourne), Disasters Emergency Committee, and many more.

Twitter: @benedictsteele
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/benedictsteele/