If you only knew the power...

I've gone and done it. I've joined the dark side.

And I couldn't be happier.

This week marks my final week as a pure ITSM practitioner. After 12 years, I'm leaving an organization I love to join one I admire, in a job I can't wait to start doing. I start my new life as an ITSM consultant on February 11. I can't tell you the new company's name, but it rhymes with Nervous Pow.

I anticipate continuing this blog, and continuing to speak for the real world of practitioners. The ITSM community remains far too theoretical, with a lack of clear purpose. We have a lot of great thinkers out there that do excellent and necessary work; AND we need more people willing to share their practical, everyday ideas.

There are several areas where I think we can, and should, be more proactive in helping practitioners navigate the real-world issues they encounter.

• What questions should I start asking, and to whom, to help determine where my company should start our service management initiative?
• Give me some examples of how companies have started their journey, and why they chose that route.
• When all the analysts and consultants talk about "value", what should I be sharing with my IT colleagues and business partners so we understand what that means?
• What does a real service catalog look like? Don't just explain that a catalog should include services "in business terms". That's not helpful. Give actual examples of how companies have defined their services.
• Examples, examples, examples, and more examples. We know that one organization's workflow won't be best for all organizations. But most of us are smart enough to look at a few examples of what others have done, and figure out how to change those examples to best fit our organizations.

We have way too much "Don't give away the milk for free" thinking in ITSM consulting. As in, "Why should I buy the cow when I can get the milk for free?", meaning I shouldn't share details or examples in social forums or blogs, because then no one will want to buy my services. Seriously? Is the extent of your value so shallow that reading 3-4 of your ideas online will tap out your good stuff? Patrick Lencioni's book Getting Naked: A Business Fable About Shedding The ThreeFears That Sabotage Client Loyalty, offers great practical advice. Instead of selling consulting, why not just start consulting to demonstrate why the client can't live without you? Social media outlets let us "just start consulting" to audiences far broader than we could reach on our own.

We're here to enable positive outcomes for businesses. Helping practitioners make their services better is what this is all about. Don't ever lose that perspective.

Source: amazon.com via Dan on Pinterest

Social is changing the game, in more ways than you think

 

Allow me to move off ITSM a bit. Trust me, I'll get back to it.

I am not a social media expert, and I'm skeptical of many self-described experts. I did, however, recently hit a Klout score of 51; so I must be doing something right, at least regarding social influence and reputation (See "The Reputation Economy is Coming - Are You Prepared?" AND) if you believe in Klout's interesting, if flawed, influence algorithm.

What is most interesting about Klout is not the actual score, but the IDEA that the value of your sharing is based on the usefulness of what is shared, and less to do with speed and frequency. Feel free to disagree with how Klout calculates that value. It's much harder to disagree that the value of social sharing is far more based on the perceived quality of the shared content, as opposed to the speed in which you can register a comment, opinion, or decision.

A recent Forbes article on the coming reputation economy makes the following point:

The economy is moving in one direction and one direction only. Take time to invest in your online reputation and you will be more confident, more connected, and more desirable to work with.

But how do you invest in your online reputation? Think about the poeple and organizations you follow online. I'm not just talking about Twitter follows, but that's part of it. Who's posts do you pay the most attention to on Facebook, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and yes, Twitter? We follow people who provide the most value. It could be entertainment value, professional value, home improvement value, etc. We tend to value quantity of posts, artfulness of the presentation, self-promoion, and quick judgements much lower in the social media context, compared to in person interactions.

Your character/reputation/influence is becoming strengthened by the value of the content you create and shepherd. The 20th century "conventional wisdom" rewarded extroverts, to the point where introversion had essentially become a handicap to overcome. The Old Boy network/corporate boardroom ideal that grew from the Harvard Business School's over-reliance on extroversion as an essential trait for success, is starting to die. Most people just haven't noticed it yet.

Think about it. How many folks reading this post are more introverted than extroverted? If you've got a high Klout score, how much of that is based on dominating the social world with quantity over quality? Unless you are a celebrity, no one cares what you have to say if you don't have useful content. No one caring = lower Klout. Limited, thoughtful, useful sharing = higher Klout.

Sounds like an introvert to me.

IT Is No Longer a Corporate Support Service. Are You Ready?

If you are part of a corporate IT group, chances are you are struggling like I am with the concept that IT is a support service. It used to be taken for granted: our role was to be the implementers and fixers of technology. The implications being that things like budgets were looked at from a pure cost-centered approach. Provide the necessary technology at the lowest cost possible ... more akin to maintenance and facilities roles.

But corporate needs are shifting, often faster than corporate assumptions around the role of IT. Do you find yourself in this situation today? Corporate strategies and the objectives intended to carry out those strategies depend on technologies requiring more creativity and variability than ever before. Take social media as an example. As recently as five years ago, corporate on line presence was defined by a corporate controlled web site and corporate email. Some put in tools for real-time chat for sales and customer service; but the environment was still tightly controlled by the company. IT’s role was that of a relatively static entity to roll-out things. Even “dynamic” content was rolled out as a technology tool. Once programming and design were complete, it was essentially up to business users to make it work. IT was just there to fix it when something broke.

Compare that to online presence today. Social media that companies have little, if any, direct control over have dominated. Within a few years, it will saturate every nook and cranny of our corporate world. Traditional corporate content providers, like marketing, sales, and customer service, are ill prepared to handle the barrage of technological challenges in such an environment. If your company is anything like mine, they are now looking to IT to provide ongoing expertise in managing the corporate online identity. They key here is “ongoing”. The challenges of corporate online identity are constant; not needing an annual or quarterly technology refresh, but often requiring a daily, hourly, or even minute-by-minute refresh.

As old attitudes around the role of IT pervade, it’s easy for an IT department to say, “It’s not my problem. Sounds like a marketing problem to me. We can provide some consulting, but not much else.” But the business expects and NEEDS IT to become hands-on in managing online presence and identity.

Are they wrong? What are we prepared to do about it?