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ITIL4 discusses “Iterate with Feedback”. It is so important that it is an ITIL4 Guiding Principle.

I think how simple the concept is and how rarely it is applied in personal lives and work environments.

The first step must be a willingness to improve. The next includes surrounding yourself with people who will give you valuable feedback. Lastly, you must decide whether you should incorporate said feedback.

I see this played out in organizations, too. They will not come out and say “we have always done it this way” but actions speak louder than words.

I saw this recently as a tool implementer said they have a standard way of implementing the tool and they are not incorporating client feedback.

Once again, this speaks volumes.

If your organization needs to ensure the ITSM or ITAM toolset is implemented to be successful, contact me for an initial discussion.

I talk often about the CMDB.

The reason: if you can’t get the CMDB right, it’s tough to do Service Management well.

Consider the following reasons:
1. Your CMDB will establish scope for your configuration items (CIs) and their attributes. This establishes the scope for what is a Change or Incident, and other processes/practices.

2. The relationships in the CMDB are leveraged to make decisions in the other processes and practices. How to assess the risk of a Change is a good example. Imagine how a good CMDB enables those outcomes versus a bad one.

3. The governance and accuracy of the CMDB determines how well the other processes/practices can be governed. Consider how difficult it would be to resolve Incidents on things in your environment that are not in the CMDB.

4. There are many more, but I will end with this one. When we want to calculate service uptime, costing, or performance (SLA), you must have a quality CMDB first.

Invest in the CMDB first and foremost. It drives quality elsewhere.

Understand the consumers of your services.

I know some who invest in chat bots and not knowledge management and others the exact opposite.

Align your resources with what the consumers use and want.

Everyone would agree that this is good practice.

However, I come back to a Henry Ford quote (paraphrase):

“If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me faster horses.”

Sometimes, when looking at the metrics, we see patterns and trends and think there’s an obvious path, but innovation disrupts everything.

There are things coming that will disrupt our current plans.

Be iterative. Be flexible.

See the disruption as opportunity.

We get what we incentivize.

In business, I found this to be true.

As a father of teenagers, this was confirmed.

We worry so much about penalizing poor behavior and work output that we forget how to incentivize.

We need to celebrate successes, however small.

The goal must be on growth in a safe place.

We grow much easier in positive environments.

I remember starting at a large firm, trying to get up to speed.

I ask for metrics and measures to help me understand current state.

I was directed to a peer (same title, “Director”) who was in charge of IT analytics.

I go ask my boss about him and the analytics group. The boss used a lot of (not nice) words to say two things:

1. The analytics were all “in the weeds” and unhelpful for enterprise decision-making.

2. The analytics were focused on what was easy to measure with the BI tool, not what was needed.

So, I go talk to the peer. We didn’t get very far because “that’s the way we always have done it “.

A question for you: how would you proceed from here?

This actual scenario plays out every day across the globe ????.

How can we improve? I think the answer – like with most areas – requires outside->in thinking.