Thursday, October 09, 2008
7 Enablers for ITSM Expanded - Leadership
”Leadership is not something you do to people, it’s something you do with people.” ~Ken Blanchard
Life seems to come at you in a series of waves. At times you feel like you are surfing the crest balanced between the forces of change and the quiet pools of serenity. However, there are other times when you have the impression the wave is breaking over you or that you have been left stranded and forgotten in a stagnant pool. Wherever you find yourself today the good news is that each phase is transitional and that life really is a series of dependent and connected events that bring you to new horizons and views of reality.
My own life is no different than yours and recent changes in leadership scope have broadened my responsibilities at Pink Elephant and I am learning a whole new definition of busy. It is for these reasons my writing as of late has slowed down a tad. However, I have finished writing the research paper that I promised you a few months ago and I will now provide that to you following these series of articles which expands on the initial concept we discussed earlier this spring.
Last time I wrote on the 7 enablers I presented a model of critical success factors needed to be successful on your ITSM journey. These past articles set the stage for this model:
7 Enablers & Constraints of ITSM
ITSM Enablers Getting You To Work On Time
Perspectives From The Pink Perspective Tour
The following list represents these 7 Critical Enablers:
- Leadership: Executive and senior level support and sponsorship
- Resources: Access to necessary project and ongoing process resources (time, people, funding)
- Knowledge: Your level of information, knowledge and skill related to ITSM
- Integrated Tools: Availability of integrated ITSM tools to support process workflow and automation
- Ability to Deploy: The organizational capability to deploy new polices, processes and tools across silos
- Ability to Effect Behavioral Change: Changing organizational behavior/culture and ensuring compliance to new practices over the long term
- ITSM Momentum: Maintaining momentum, priority and funding for the ITSM programs
The basis of this model was substantiated with research we successfully completed with over 300 participants. You can find the research posted on the Pink President blog and it will also be imbedded in the full paper I will share with you following the next series of articles.
My intent with this new series on the topic of the 7 enablers is to provide more detail and context for each one.
The first and arguably the most important enablers is:
Leadership & Vision
Many hundreds of books have been written on the subject of leadership and the role a leader plays in providing the vision, direction and the compass that a project needs to be successful. Without a leader’s blessing, passion and direction, very little is accomplished that has lasting effect. This is true of all major endeavors, and it is certainly true with ITSM projects.
We live in a time when the vision of the IT Executive is changing from one traditionally focused on technology optimization and cost reduction to an evolution towards service delivery and value generation; however, many IT shops still struggle with the value of ITSM principles when they are still firmly entrenched in a purely technology mindset. For an ITSM project to truly succeed, the executive sponsor needs to understand what it means to be a service-focused organization and support the establishment of the processes that make this concept a reality.
However, many organizations are challenged with a CIO and executive IT team that have not bought into the principles of ITSM. This proves to be very challenging when you consider that ITIL is a Service Management framework that has as its primary goal the delivery of services.
“Service Management is a set of specialized organizational capabilities for providing value to customers in the form of services.” Source: ITIL® V3
In my experience very few organizations understand the concept of an IT service and even fewer organize themselves around the delivery of IT services.
To be effective, the leadership of an ITSM program must profoundly understand what an IT service is and wish to establish the disciplines that make the delivery of services possible.
What we often see is that the ITSM program sponsor has agreed in principle that the project represents a set of positive goals and has agreed to fund some initial efforts, but is still largely unconvinced of the exercise’s strategic nature. The green light has been given, they have agreed to stand up at key meetings and say positive things, but little effort is made on ensuring that the remaining six enablers are in place and managed in a proactive manner.
It has been argued that the true skill of a leader is not just the shaping of vision and direction, but also the task of execution. Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan make a very powerful statement in their book, Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done:
“A high proportion of those who actually rise to the top of a business organization have made their mark – their personal brand as high level thinkers. They aren’t interested in “how” of getting things done; that is for somebody else to think about.” Source: Chapter 2 – The Execution Difference
The concept of Execution is a discipline worthy of discussion in and of itself. This is a topic I will be speaking on at our upcoming ITSM Conference in February when I review the principles of Execution in terms of ITSM projects.
Rather that pointing toward the hill and saying “Make It So”, true leaders must take the point and lead the ITSM charge.
Several of you have pointed out in previous comments that without a healthy enabler in Leadership then the rest of the 7 are moot. (Read The Comments)
Troy’s Thoughts What Are Yours?
”It’s hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.” ~Adlai Stevenson
ITIL & Beyond • (0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
