Human-Centered Excellence Teams happen to bring powerful outcomes. Collaboration Consistently Triumphs Over Command, in a dynamic AI-powered marketplace. Success hinges on how effectively organizations inspire alignment, ignite collaboration, and empower people to lead with purpose.
The most resilient organizations deliberately choose agility over rigidity, collaboration over command, and empathy over ego. Not surprisingly, the results speak for themselves. According to Deloitte, organizations that embed Human-Centered Design into their Centers of Excellence (CoEs) experience:
✅ 3x higher customer satisfaction
🚀 2x faster innovation cycles
These metrics aren’t just encouraging—they’re decisive. When people feel valued, supported, and connected, performance doesn’t merely improve—it accelerates, it scales, and it lasts.
Nevertheless, despite this clear evidence, too many teams remain stuck—constrained by outdated silos, limited by unclear accountability, and disconnected from the very users they serve. As a result, the gap between intention and impact grows wider, delaying progress and diminishing potential.
Even more concerning, this misalignment does more than slow innovation—it silently weakens trust, dampens creativity, and undermines strategic momentum.
Therefore, the imperative is clear:
👉 Lead with empathy. Align through purpose. Deliver with excellence.
Because when we humanize how we work, we don’t just adapt—we accelerate transformation with clarity, courage, and measurable impact quietly erodes trust, drains morale, and delays transformation.
🔹 The Call to Create: Human-Centered Excellence Teams
That’s precisely why we must do far more than simply reorganize teams or streamline workflows. Instead, we must boldly reimagine how excellence is built, nurtured, and sustained—by anchoring every Center of Excellence in empathy, shared purpose, and measurable outcomes.
Moreover, we must intentionally adopt the proven patterns of high-performing organizations, which consistently show that human-centered design fuels faster decisions, stronger outcomes, and greater innovation resilience.
Because only through humanized engagement can we lead processes that truly inspire, sustain, and scale excellence.
🔍 What High-Performance Organizations Do More (and Less) Of
| More Of | Less Of |
|---|---|
| Shared governance and charters | Top-down-only direction |
| Cross-functional capability sprints | Isolated team efforts |
| Embedded feedback loops | Static yearly reviews |
| Actionable retrospectives | Blame-focused postmortems |
| Use of design systems and reusable assets | Reinventing the wheel each project |
| Empowerment with accountability | Micromanagement or vague delegation |
🛠 How to Model High-Performance CoEs in Your Practice
✅ 1. Codify Purpose Before Process
Begin every CoE with a charter that clearly defines why it exists, not just how it operates. Explicitly embed values like empathy, inclusion, and continuous learning—and ensure they’re reflected in daily decisions.
✅ 2. Make Co-Creation a Habit
Rather than waiting for annual reviews, hold monthly design sessions, client co-creation workshops, and partner feedback loops. Use Miro, Figma, or NowCreate to structure real-time collaboration.
✅ 3. Measure What Matures
Go beyond delivery speed—track capability uplift: design adoption, skill growth, user satisfaction, and reduced journey friction. Shift from vanity metrics to value indicators.
✅ 4. Learn Out Loud, Continuously
Establish a rhythm of retrospectives, showcases, and learning briefs. Publish lessons monthly. Normalize feedback as a permanent, visible part of delivery—not a post-mortem step.
✅ 5. Reward Mindset Shifts
Recognize behavioral change—not just finished work. Celebrate when teams use empathy maps, personas, and journey testing, even before launch. Reinforce the habits that shape high-performing, human-centered teams.
🌍 HDI Use Case: Human-Centered Excellence Teams Outcome-Oriented Framework Transformed an Industry
Long before the term “Center of Excellence” gained traction, Ron Muns launched one in practice. In 1989, from Colorado Springs, he founded HDI (Help Desk Institute)—a bold move that redefined IT support as a professional discipline.
Recognizing early on that fragmented practices stifled progress, Muns brought together experts across industries to co-create a unified, human-centered standard. By 1998, HDI had already formalized global certifications and launched the Support Center Standard—a measurable, people-first framework that countless organizations still follow today.
Because of his vision, HDI didn’t just train professionals—it built a global movement.
👉 That legacy continues to accelerate IT excellence, collaboration, and innovation across every major industry.
As the 2000s unfolded, IT support teams worldwide confronted escalating challenges—fragmented operations, inconsistent practices, and undervalued roles. Simultaneously, industries like healthcare, finance, telecom, education, and government faced increasing pressure to scale service while maintaining quality, trust, and user satisfaction.
In direct response, HDI established a global, cross-industry Center of Excellence (CoE)—unifying practitioners, thought leaders, and business stakeholders from every sector. Collectively, they co-created the HDI Support Center Standard: a human-centered, outcome-driven framework that delivered clarity, consistency, and capability at scale.
More than just a set of guidelines, the standard became a catalyst for cultural and operational transformation, empowering organizations to:
- 🔄 Align support practices across countries, teams, and technologies
- 🧭 Define career progression from Analyst to Director with role-based clarity
- 📈 Embed continuous learning into team rhythms and development programs
- 🏆 Elevate support operations into recognized strategic business functions
As a result, the HDI framework not only shaped global adoption of ITIL principles and modern onboarding models—it also became the gold standard of support excellence, now embedded in the DNA of thousands of service organizations worldwide.
🌐 A Lasting Legacy of Certification, Adoption, and Global Impact
Even now, the HDI Support Center Standard continues to serve as a living, evolving benchmark—consistently updated to meet shifting industry demands, emerging automation trends, and the rise of AI-powered service delivery. Rather than fading into the background, it has become even more essential in guiding how organizations deliver support with empathy, efficiency, and excellence.
Consequently, the results speak for themselves.
✅ Over 100,000 professionals across more than 50 countries have earned HDI certifications, each applying the principles of human-centered service, scalable performance, and operational maturity.
Moreover, leading global enterprises—including Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, healthcare systems, and financial institutions—have embedded the HDI standard into their service models, onboarding programs, and continuous improvement frameworks.
Not only has this enabled greater consistency and accountability, but it has also fueled:
- ⚙️ Faster resolution times
- 📊 Higher CSAT scores
- 🔁 Lower employee turnover
- 🏆 Proven maturity in support operations
Undeniably, this is far more than a historical milestone.
👉 It is a sustained industry success story—a blueprint for how purpose-driven, human-centered collaboration continues to redefine what operational excellence looks like in every corner of the world.
🧩 Key Components That Continue to Deliver
| Component | Function | Why It Still Matters |
|---|---|---|
| 📘 HDI Support Center Standard | Defined scalable practices for support maturity and performance. | Still the global benchmark for excellence from frontline to leadership. |
| 📚 HDI Certification Paths | Delivered career development from Analyst to Director. | Continues to build capable, confident, people-first professionals. |
| 🎥 HDI YouTube & Learning Hubs | Provided expert content, stories, and frameworks. | Keeps knowledge alive, current, and accessible across industries. |
✅ The Lasting Impact
Ultimately, HDI’s Center of Excellence proved that when you put people first and measure what matters, you don’t just improve support—you elevate the entire organization. That’s why the HDI model didn’t fade—it became the foundation.
💡 Real-World CoE Human-Centered Excellence Teams
| Organization | Focus | Impact | How They Did It |
|---|---|---|---|
| ✅ IBM – Enterprise Design Thinking CoE | Created a company-wide Human-Centered Design (HCD) playbook tied directly to business outcomes. | Reduced product release delays by 33% and improved stakeholder alignment. | Trained 200,000+ staff using reusable design toolkits—workshops, journey maps, and persona templates—all deployed through a centralized CoE hub. |
| ✅ Fidelity Investments – Digital Experience CoE | Unified UX, customer feedback, and agile execution through a centralized, HCD-led CoE. | Boosted mobile app engagement by 40%+ through continuous experience alignment. | Embedded designers within agile squads and implemented design sprints with CoE-led oversight and quarterly “Experience Health” reviews. |
| ✅ Google – UX Community of Practice | Enabled decentralized teams to localize UX standards while centralizing shared learning and design tooling. | Delivered fast, consistent, and accessible user experiences across products. | Maintained open-source UX playbooks, shared design systems, and peer-review culture—facilitated by community-led CoE champions. |
🧠 Final Thoughts: Humanize to Maximize
Launching a CoE is not just about governance—it’s about galvanizing human potential. When Product Owners, Partners, and Clients align through shared intent and human-centered practice, they don’t just solve problems faster—they design better futures.
So, whether you’re just starting your Center of Excellence or trying to revitalize one, make this your guiding principle:
Build with people, for people, and alongside them.
Other Human-Centered Excellence Teams Resources
- 5 Guiding Principles of a Successful Center of Excellence
- Digital Excellence Through Collaboration
- Enhancing End-User Service Experience
- Harnessing AI for Incident Management in ITSM (thinkhdi.com)
- HDI Support Center Standard
- HDI Local Chapters
- HDI-SC-Standard-v-5-0 (3).pdf
- Humanising IT: Human-centred Design for IT Service Management
- Humanizing IT: Empathetic Leadership
- Humanizing IT Leadership
- IBM Cyber Security Center of Excellence (CCoE)
- IBM Generative AI Center of Excellence to Support Clients
- Implementing Service And Support Management Processes: A Practical Guide
- IT Support Certification – Technical Support Representative & Specialist Training
- Ron Muns- Champion IT-Excellence
