The motivation is rarely the problem. Teams care deeply, leaders want to create impact, and staff work incredibly hard to support the people who rely on them. The challenge is often something much simpler and much harder at the same time. Many organisations are trying to improve services without fully understanding what is actually happening inside them.
Service improvement frequently starts with introducing new processes, adopting new technology, or restructuring teams. While these changes can be valuable, they often address symptoms rather than root causes. When organisations do not have a clear view of how services are experienced by staff and service users, improvement efforts risk being built on assumptions rather than insight.
This is where the 3-Lens Service Reality Check provides a practical and accessible starting point. It is a lightweight research approach designed to help smaller organisations uncover strengths, friction points, and hidden challenges in the services they provide. Rather than requiring large budgets or specialist research teams, it focuses on capturing three essential perspectives that exist within every service.
Why three lenses matter
Every service operates across multiple realities. There is the operational reality experienced by staff delivering the service, the organisational narrative that shapes how leaders and teams believe the service works, and the lived experience of the people receiving support. When these perspectives align, services tend to feel smoother, more efficient, and more impactful. When they do not, confusion, inefficiency, and frustration often appear.
The 3-Lens Service Reality Check helps organisations bring these perspectives together through three simple but powerful activities.
The Diary Lens: Understanding daily service reality
The first lens focuses on the lived experience of the teams delivering the service. Frontline staff and operational colleagues often hold the richest and most honest insight into how services actually function. They see where processes support people effectively and where they create unnecessary complexity. They witness the emotional highs and lows of service delivery and understand the practical barriers that rarely appear in reports or dashboards.
The Diary Lens invites a small group of team members to keep a simple service journal over a short period of time, typically around one month. Each day, participants record brief reflections about their work. This might include something that worked well, something that felt frustrating, or something that surprised them.
Over time, these small observations reveal patterns that are difficult to spot through traditional reporting. They highlight recurring operational challenges, emotional pressure points, and opportunities for improvement that directly affect both staff wellbeing and service quality. The goal is not detailed documentation; it's an honest, consistent reflection that captures the reality of delivering the service.
The Reflection Lens: Exploring organisational beliefs
The second lens looks at how teams and stakeholders perceive the service. Organisations often hold strong assumptions about what is working well and what needs to improve. These assumptions shape decision-making, influence priorities, and guide investment. However, they are rarely gathered in a structured or shared way across teams.
The Reflection Lens uses short interviews or group discussions to create space for staff to step back from day-to-day delivery and reflect on the service as a whole. These conversations explore strengths, cultural challenges, process barriers, communication gaps, and technology limitations.
By speaking with people across different roles and levels of responsibility, organisations can uncover differences in perspective that may otherwise remain hidden. Frontline staff may highlight operational friction, while managers may focus on structural or strategic challenges. Bringing these viewpoints together helps create a clearer and more balanced understanding of how the service operates internally.
The Experience Lens: Listening to service users
The third lens centres on the experiences of the people who use the service. Organisations naturally design services around internal processes, compliance requirements, and operational constraints. While these factors are essential, they do not always reflect how services feel to the people receiving support.
The Experience Lens captures simple, real-time feedback from service users through three short questions asked after they interact with the service. These questions explore what worked well, what felt confusing or difficult, and what users would change if they could.
This approach is intentionally quick and accessible. Feedback can be collected through QR codes, short digital surveys, follow-up messages, or face-to-face prompts. Over time, responses reveal emotional signals, accessibility challenges, and moments of friction that organisations may not otherwise recognise. Most importantly, it ensures service improvement is grounded in real human experience.
Turning insight into improvement
Individually, each lens provides valuable insight. Together, they create a more complete and honest picture of how a service functions. When organisations combine daily team reflections, structured internal conversations, and direct service user feedback, they gain a level of clarity that is difficult to achieve through traditional performance metrics alone.
The 3-Lens Service Reality Check is not designed to replace large-scale research or transformation programmes. Instead, it acts as an accessible starting point that helps organisations identify quick wins, highlight deeper structural challenges, and prioritise improvement efforts based on real evidence.
For charities and service-led organisations working with limited resources, this approach provides a practical way to move beyond assumptions and towards understanding. Often, meaningful service improvement does not begin with radical redesign. It begins with seeing the service clearly for the first time.
To get access to the framework, simply visit our Substack here