Thursday, May 17, 2012
Talking with Jerry York of UTHSCSA about the ITSM Extreme Makeover
Recently we took the opportunity to talk to Jerry York, the VP and CIO of the University of Texas Health Sciences Center in San Antonio. The Health Sciences Center were the organization chosen for the ITSM Extreme Makeover. I’m assuming that most listeners to this interview will be familiar with the ITSM Extreme Makeover. Briefly, it was a collaboration between Pink Elephant, Hornbill, GamingWorks, LCS, HDI & TSO to do an extreme makeover in a very short period of time to help an organization improve their service management.
Embarrassingly, I never quite got to interview Jerry throughout the process, even though he was the guy on top of the whole thing, answerable for the results. Recently I moved to rectify this oversight, since by the time you read this Jerry will have retired (said I wistfully). Fortunately Jerry will still be part of our community now and then, nevertheless it was high time I interviewed him for this blog.
So here is a conversation with Jerry about the experience of ITSM Extreme Makeover, with some great insights into what it took and what the effects were.
Interview With Jerry York, UTHSC by Pink Elephant Inc.
Monday, May 07, 2012
ITSM Leadership
Pink President, David Ratcliffe, called it out earlier this year: we in ITSM are not doing enough to deal with the risks and opportunities that the changing IT landscape presents. It is time for more ITSM people to step up and take a leadership role. There is too much laissez-faire abdication of control of IT. We can’t sit back and watch BYOD, social media, the Cloud and so on change our organisation’s IT. We must do more to play a part in steering the organization, helping manage the risks and exploit the opportunities:
These services are out there in the ether, on the Web. Being dreamt up by innovators who don’t work for us and who sometimes don’t even know where they’re headed! These new services are being tried out by everyone – often without a goal in mind. They’re just experimenting. Much falls by the wayside, but some of it sticks.
The other key point David makes is that people from all levels of IT can help lead:
Don’t confuse authority with leadership, or leadership with management. Anyone can lead, you don’t need approval, or a title. Good leadership is about influencing and helping others to achieve a common goal. A vision can come from anywhere, but a good leader communicates and reinforces the vision; and helps others to act in accordance with it.
So Pink Elephant are doing some interesting stuff to address this need for more ITSM leadership, with the ITSM Leadership Forum. It is an event, in Scottsdale in August, and equally it is a community discussion, right now, online. The event and the discussions intersect on the session descriptions . Read that sessions page: it is structured as a set of key questions for ITSM leadership. It will get you thinking and hopefully joining in the forum!
I reckon Pink have really spotted a need here and done a nice job of addressing it.
