Service Transformation Leaders & Employees - Design vs Reality

Most service failures in HR are not failures of intent. The team cared. The investment was real. The launch was celebrated. And six months later, the employees who were supposed to benefit describe an experience that feels nothing like what was designed. The gap is not between caring and not caring. It is between what leaders believe they built and what employees actually navigate every day. And the distance between those two things is almost always larger than anyone expected. What closes it is not better technology or bigger budgets. It is the discipline of designing with employees rather than for them. Of sitting in the room with the people who use the system and letting their reality land before the design decisions are made. I am building this argument into my upcoming book and I want to hear from the people who have felt this gap from both sides. If you have led a service transformation, when did you first realize the experience employees were having was different from the one you intended to create? What changed your understanding? And if you are an employee who has navigated a service that felt designed for the organization rather than for you, what did that experience tell you? Both perspectives belong in this conversation.