Clarity.
Clarity of vision, thought, progress, and the goal.
We are often so busy that we miss clarity.
Clarity only comes when we are able to rise above the struggles of the day and see the bigger picture.
Like many, I often get so caught up in accomplishing the tasks of the day that I cannot find clarity. So, when the finish line moves, sometimes I am slow to become aware.
As I encourage myself, I encourage you to make time to find clarity.
I have been thinking about something and wanted to share the idea and get feedback …
With every organization becoming unique, and unlike the others, we will see fewer instances of “pure” frameworks like ITIL, Agile, DevOps, etc.
Every organization will have a different blend of the frameworks. I see it similar to how different chefs, making the same meal and using the same recipe, will have totally different end results.
Just like with restaurants, the uniqueness of the people aspect (both skill and how they do things) combined with the desired outcomes of leadership, create unique outcomes.
In the world of IT, there are other things at work creating uniqueness, like tooling, vendor strategy, cloud infrastructure, etc.
So, if you grant me that this is what is happening, then we should focus on people who can create outcomes.
Thoughts?
Many of us grew up with the fable, the rabbit and the tortoise in some variety.
It’s applicable in today’s world, too.
If you are not making progress, and are standing still, you will be passed by those making progress, however small.
The turtle approach is perfectly fine as small, incremental improvements allow for steady, incremental progress.
The rabbit, who jumps out to an early lead, then stagnates, will lose out because of two reasons:
1. The finish line will move in today’s world.
2. Momentum towards a goal helps culture.
In your ITSM and ITAM programs, you must find ways to understand desired stakeholder outcomes and how to nimbly make progress.
When we seek to measure employee or customer experience, we must do two things:
1. Understand the desired outcomes by ASKING
2. Measuring the progress against the outcomes by ASKING
You will never understand what people want without asking them. For clarity, this is not the same as a survey after the resolution of an Incident or fulfillment of a Request.
If you understand how poorly we measure outcomes throughout the history of service delivery, then you know that we must do better. This includes both WHAT we do and HOW we do it.
Everyone talks about measuring, and its importance.
Few discuss how we can do better.
The answer will be unique to each organization, but we can agree on two things:
1. Measures be tied to desired outcomes
2. The traditional ways of measuring are not tied to desired outcomes
Measures come in three varieties:
a. Performance
b. Health
c. Compliance
So, consider the desired objectives, how you want to measure progress, and how to visually represent the progress.
With so many changes in the way we do everything, literally everything, now is the time to reevaluate how we measure.
Every organization is looking to increase speed.
Change has caused us to be more nimble and reduce cycle times.
Speed, speed, speed.
In the book, “ITIL4: The New Frontier”, I discuss this topic.
The greater the speed, the greater the need for governance.
Yes, governance is a “bad” word for many organizations because it represents bureaucracy.
These two words are related only like the words cookies and weight gain. Weight gain occurs for me when I eat too many cookies ????. And, I love cookies.
One easy-to-remember way of knowing whether your organization is operating under governance or bureaucracy is to ask 2 questions:
1. Are these policies and controls easily tied back to the organization’s mission, vision, goals, and objectives? Basically, are we doing things the way we have always done them or are they there to help us accomplish what we are trying to accomplish?
2. Is there a less-burdensome way to accomplish what we are trying to accomplish?
Governance is required for speed. In fact, governance supplies the guard rails for speed.
I may be a dreamer but I am excited about the future of AI and ML within Service Management and Asset Management.
Here are two examples:
1. Help ensure Knowledge articles are current by evaluating the quality and currency of the topics most searched. Add in the ability to survey (and analyze the results of) searchers. The next step may be to – using AI – transfer “knowledge” from the project/product update documentation.
2. Now, Discovery can search for all software and hardware on the network and compare to Asset register/database. But, imagine the ability to match user patterns to licensing and hardware needs. Then, taking it a step further, the AI knows by support tickets how to incorporate into future licensing (trends, etc) and even hardware refresh cycles.
These are not that far off from current capabilities.
The way we have always done things is not the way we will do them in the future.
Change is coming. Even if you think of the disruption from AI, ML, RPA, etc, it will change how we do Service Management, Asset Management, and Business Continuity.
We must start looking at how we do things through fresh eyes.
Innovation will drive a demand to do things differently and better.
How we do Change, for example, will be different. The same goes for Problem, Incident, and Configuration.
What will not change is the need to deliver optimal outcomes for stakeholders.
Disruption is coming. No, not from the much-discussed avenues.
Most of the time, disruption comes from outside of the traditional industry.
For example, Elon Musk disrupted the auto industry as an outsider. This is the norm. Think of Apple introducing the iPhone in 2009. The first smartphone was not from the traditional phone manufacturers of the time.
Outsiders have two advantages:
1. They do not have legacy systems and processes weighing them down.
2. They are able to see an opportunity and attack it.
Disruption is coming to how we think about Service Management and Asset Management.
Consider how we have fallen into the same trap as the auto and phone manufacturers above.
I have a few ideas I will share in the coming weeks, but I would like everyone to look at how we do things through the eyes of a disruptive outsider.
In the ITIL4 Driving Stakeholder Value book, the Customer Journey is discussed.
ITIL4 has the journey:
explore -> engage -> offer -> agree -> onboard -> co-create -> value realization
The last three are where, in my opinion, most organizations struggle.
They know how to market/sell, have high-level demos, and send out/respond to RFPs, but ….
co-creating value in an ever-changing world is tough. Measuring the value realized is even more difficult.
Do you agree or disagree?