The Dunning-Kruger effect

ITIL Samurai found this little gem on the web and, due to the theme of the last blog, feels it is too good to not post. As you read it, think about some of the people you have come across in your IT career in regards to how the services are managed.

ITIL Samurai finds it painfully humorous. But, then again, ITIL Samurai knows everything ;-)

The Dunning-Kruger effect is the phenomenon wherein people who have little knowledge tend to think that they know more than they do, while others who have much more knowledge tend to think that they know less.

Dunning and Kruger were awarded a 2000 Ig Nobel prize for their work.

The phenomenon was demonstrated in a series of experiments performed by Justin Kruger and David Dunning, then both of Cornell University. Their results were published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in December 1999.

Kruger and Dunning noted a number of previous studies which tend to suggest that in skills as diverse as reading comprehension, operating a motor vehicle, and playing chess or tennis, "ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge" (as Charles Darwin put it). They hypothesized that with a typical skill which humans may possess in greater or lesser degree,

1. Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own level of skill.
2. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others.
3. Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy.
4. If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill.

They set out to test these hypotheses on human subjects consisting of Cornell undergraduates who were registered in various psychology courses.

In a series of studies, Kruger and Dunning examined self-assessment of logical reasoning skills, grammatical skills, and humor. After being shown their test scores, the subjects were again asked to estimate their own rank, whereupon the competent group accurately estimated their rank, while the incompetent group still overestimated their own rank. As Dunning and Kruger noted,
“ Across 4 studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability. Although test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd. ”

Meanwhile, people with true knowledge tended to underestimate their competence.

The 4 stages of competence

Are you incompetent? Harsh words I know. But when it comes to the way you are managing your IT services are you incompetent?

Type "define:incompetent" (no quotes) in google and one of the definitions that shows is:

Incompetent
incapable: not meeting requirements

Now stop and think about the delivery of IT services at your organization. Are you meeting your requirements? If so, are your customers and stakeholders happy??? Did you even design your services based on business outcomes or did you go the usual "just throw more boxes at the problem and it'll solve itself" route.

One of the common misconceptions of typical IT thinking is that even if you manage to meet the requirements, everyone will be happy. Just because you deliver something to your customer faster than anyone else means nothing if the customer was verbally abused or treated like an idiot in the delivery of that "something".

Last week, while attending my Toastmasters meeting, I had the pleasure of to our guest speakers he talked about the 4 stages of competence. As he spoke my ITIL brain immediately started to apply what he was saying to my experiences with IT organizations I've come across. As you read these next statements, I want you to think about your IT organization and were they are within the 4 stages.

THE 4 STAGES OF COMPETENCE

Stage 1: Unconscious Incompetence (ITSM??? What ITSM?? What's quality IT services?? ITIL? Is that a new cash register created by Apple???)

The individual neither understands or knows how to do something, nor recognizes the deficit or has a desire to address it.

ITIL Samurai says: This would be most organizations that have no idea what IT Service Management is. Many times organizations at this level spend their lives understaffed and fighting fires. They have high staff turnover and high stress. The focus of the organization is on "keeping the machines running" rather than delivering a quality service

Stage 2: Conscious Incompetence (Look! I have a ITIL Foundation Certification)

Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, he or she does recognize the deficit, without yet addressing it.

ITIL Samurai says: This is what happens after someone in the organization stumbles across an ITIL article on the web or is told by a friend or member of the ITSM community. This is also the level that a Foundation Certification gives you. You know just enough about ITSM to be dangerous. You don't really know how to address the issue of going from where you are to ITSM excellence.

The problem is, many organizations still seem to think that this is all you need and foolishly try to self implement at this stage. Not realizing that the ITIL Foundation certification was only ever created to show that someone has a basic understanding of ITSM principles. IT wouldn't make sense to take take a beginning Algebra class and then try and tackle Calculus! However that is precisely what IT organizations do when they put people through the Foundation program and then attempt to self implement with a minimal level of understanding.

Satge 3: Consciously Competent (The application of a few ITIL processes. e.g. Incident Management, Problem Management, Service Level Management)

The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires a great deal of consciousness or concentration.

ITIL Samurai says: Sadly, this is where people usually just give up! Now that you are running a few of the process and you can actually SEE the unintentional "incompetence" of the past, you now realize that you have a LOT of work to do and initially the same amount of staff to do it with!!!!!! The immediate future looks bleak as, being an IT professional you mistakenly think that you have to fix everything overnight or else it will be your gluteous maximus on a silver platter.

You suddenly forget that ITSM is all about business and IT alignment and out of fear you don't even bother to talk to the business about priorities and whether what you found out is even critical or important to the business. In your haste you forget that ITSM is about progress not perfection and through the power of meaningful metrics (% reduction in overall incidents, % of services that have service level agreements against them, % of services supported by underpinning contracts and operational level agreement), you can prioritize and whittle down the issues until they are non-existent.

Stage 4: Unconscious Competence (aka "ITSM Nirvana", Living, breathing, eating quality service)

The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it becomes "second nature" and can be performed easily (often without concentrating too deeply). He or she can also teach it to others.

ITIL Samurai says: This is the end result of one who lives the disciplines of ITSM. Pure "ITSM Zen". The last part being the most important "He or she can also teach it to others". When new staff come on, the "old staff" an educate the newbies in the quality culture of the organization. They can teach them how this organizations main foucus is building value in the services provided by enabling the business to achieve its business objectives better, stronger, faster than they did before. Every single IT service is there for a purpose and that purpose is clear and transparent. E-mail allows the business to achieve these specific outcomes. The LAN? That allows the business to achieve these outcomes. These servers over here are part of our CRM solution which allows the business to do X. To ensure we can do X, we regularly monitor, analyze and tune our systems to ensure we minimize "surprises. When we find ways to improve, we send it on through to the Change process to get it implemented and more importanly to ensure that it will not cause an adverse effect on our business outcomes. Oh! And this is the coffee machine young Padawan. Use it wisely for the force of caffeine is a powerful one and must be used sparingly.

The 4 stages of competence are a natural progression that everyone goes through for virtually anything you've ever tried to learn. When I was child, I was unconsciously incompetent about cooking food. When I became an adult, I quickly learned the joys of being unconsciously competent; having the ability to make something grand out of a few seemingly meager ingredients in the fridge on a whim.

So when you look at your IT organization today, ask yourself what phase they are in. More importantly, ask yourself "In what ways can we make ourselves unconsciously competent"?

What is ITIL?: An economic analogy

It is no secret that ITIL can be and is a tough sell. Especially to those that have never heard of it. Even tougher still, is explaining it to people who "know" what it is but have been spun around by the vendor spin machine so much that they often don't even know why they bothered in the first place.

One of the biggest issues is it is not easy to explain in one sentence. Most people's attention "IT attention span" only lasts about 40 seconds. I ran into the same problem when I was in the software space. There is no quick way to explain "Field force automation". It's a marketing term and you have to assume the person you are speaking to knows what the heck "Field force" is.

Most think it's what keeps the Starship Enterprise from being hit by Klingon weapons systems.

The same goes for my passion for ITIL. I love the framework and all that it offers but I can't deny the frustration of trying to explain it sometimes

"It is a best-practice framework for IT Service Management"

The next thing you usually see in the eyes of the person you are speaking to is


After their brain reboots the next question is usually: "So what hardware/software does that run on?"

The reality of the situation is that ITIL is a concept. The best thing about it is that it doesn't run on any hardware or software. As one of my favourite bloggers the IT Skeptic once said

"You can do ITIL on post-it notes"

To explain ITIL to the uninformed without "GPFing" them I have developed a few analogies that sum up the concept of ITIL and give people something to relate it to. One is what I call the "Capitalism analogy" which is designed for those who are more politically/intellectually inclined.

It goes something like this:

Intellectual partygoer: So what do you do?

ITIL Samurai (smiling): I'm an IT Service Management consultant

Intellectual partygoer: What's IT Service Management?

ITIL Samurai: It's a system for ensuring quality IT services

Intellectual partygoer: So, it's hardware? Software?

ITIL Samurai: (Still smiling) Neither actually...........

Intellectual partygoer: (now with raised eyebrow confused look on face)

ITIL Samurai: The best way to describe it is like this......(dramatic pause).....do you mind if I use an analogy?

Intellectual partygoer: Sure! (confusion eyebrow still present)

ITIL Samurai: Your familiar with the idea of Capitalism correct?

Intellectual partygoer: You bet your bippy! I just make 4 million dollars last week with my Enron shares!

ITIL Samurai: Great! You see ITSM is like Capitalism. It's a concept. In order to have capitalism there are certain key things you need to have in place to say a country has "embraced capitalism". Market economy, private ownership, corporations to trade capital goods, stuff like that.

Intellectual partygoer: Yes. That's right.

ITIL Samurai: Well In order to get the best out of your IT organization, by “embracing ITSM” there are certain things you need to have in place to "manage" your IT "services". Capacity Management, Availability Management, Problem Management, Change Management etc. Now those things I just mentioned are come from a methodology called ITIL. ITIL is the method or way in which I help people get to that lofty concept of ITSM and perfectly managed services.

So in the Capitalism analogy, you would drop me into third world countries and I would help them achieve capitalism by assisting them in setting up those things that are needed to achieve that. You can't go from third world to free market in a day! The beauty of what I do is that it is not hardware or software specific so after I understand a bit about my customers needs and culture, my customers can pick what hardware or software works best for their business instead of trying to force fit a solution into it! ITIL is concerned about the method. The hardware and software is just a tool to assist!

Intellectual partygoer: Ooooooh! I see. So each one of those managment thingies you just spoke of are ways to get to ITSM.

ITIL Samurai: Exactly!!!!

Intellectual partygoer: So who “makes” this ITIL stuff?

ITIL Samurai: Well that’s what’s so cool about it. ITIL stands for “Information Technology Infrastructure Library” In essence it is a set of books that were created by major and minor players in the IT industry. So it’s a variable cornucopia of “good-practice” based on the real world experiences of the greater geek community!

Intellectual partygoer: Variable cornucopia?


ITIL Samurai: Does anyone know how to reboot this guy??????

So there you have it!

Next time you are trying to explain what ITSM is.....don't! Help bridge the gap of understanding by relating what ITIL is to something everyone "understands but doesn't REALLY know". See? This stuff CAN be fun!

The 2nd Law of ITIL Bushido: Courage

Courage: the ability to confront fear, pain, risk/danger, uncertainty, or intimidation. Moral courage is the courage to act rightly in the face of popular opposition, shame, scandal, or discouragement.


ITIL Samurai are a courageous lot. They should be. For once the virtues of the ITIL framework have been implemented properly they know that there isn't much that they can't handle. They have the vision of foresight. Well set thresholds and alarms, monitoring, modeling, application sizing, demand management, outcome based Service Level Agreements and a battery of other tools given by the framework allow ITIL Samurai to not only predict and adapt to the future but they know that they are creating the future. This makes them courageous and fearless when making predictions and overcoming obstacles.

ITIL Samurai do not fear "negative metrics" and boldy present the "ugly side" of IT. They have the courage to not get involved in "blame game" politics for they know that at the end of the day, the customer doesn't care who's fault it was they want a solution not your petty, finger pointing groveling. ITIL Samurai always learn from these issues and look to ensure that they never happen again.

ITIL Samurai are not swayed by "vendor rhetoric" and understand that there is no such thing as an "ITIL Compliant" ANYTHING. They know that ITIL Certifies PEOPLE not Software or businesses. As such, when looking into buying a new tool to aid in the harmony of the infrastructure, they have enough moral courage to focus on the true needs of their business and weigh the software against thier own strict criteria to make sure it is a good fit before making a foolhardy decision that would disrupt the harmony of the organization.

ITIL Samurai laugh (HA!) at words like "discouragement" for they know that absorbing challenges and issues into the framework will allow them to seek more permanent holistic solutions. As such they see every issue that comes their way as an opportunity to shine and improve.

Example:
Capacity Management Goal: Ensure cost-justifiable IT capacity in all areas of IT always exists and is matched to the current and future agreed needs of the business

Through the constant constant monitoring and analysis of
Business Capacity
(e.g. How many more employees will we take on when we buy this smaller company?),
Service Capacity
(e.g. How many transactions per second does service X put through the LAN at peak times. How many people does it take to support this service?)
Component Capacity
(e,g, What is the % of CPU used per transaction type)

ITIL Samurai have foresight of vision when helping to meet the constant shifts of the business. This gives them tremendous courage in the face of adversity to tackle any challenges that come their way.

Other processes that build courage through better understanding:

Service Level Management
Availability Management
IT Service Continuity Management
Supplier Management
Financial Management

ITIL Samurai are courageous because they understand what it takes to deliver what their stakeholders want. If the stakeholders change direction, the ITIL Samurai does too making it seem effortless and painless.

The courage of ITIL Samurai is infectious. Not only to the members of IT but to the business as all throughout the organization the words "can we" are changed to "how will we".

The 1st Law of ITIL Samurai: Rectitude

The word Samurai, loosely translated means "to serve". Thus, ITIL Samurai live to serve the businesses in which they work for by ensuring the IT services create the business outcomes their masters desire. True ITIL Samurai understand that IT is a tool that helps to enable the outcomes required by the business.

Today, ITIL Samurai wishes to introduce you to the first law of the Bushido Code of ITIL Samurai:

Rectitude: Rightness of principle or practice; exact conformity to truth, or to the rules prescribed for, moral conduct either by divine or human laws; uprightness of mind; uprightness; integrity; honesty; justice.

ITIL Samurai are bound to the divine guidance of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library. We believe in the knowledge of our elders and use the information held within the tomes to guide us in our daily IT lives. We understand that by following the ideas and rules held within, we will be able to make more informed decisions and better separate the "needs" from the "wants". We have an insatiable appetite for the way things get done and are constantly striving to do it better.

Process is paramount.

When the business comes up with a new direction or when issues happen the first thing we think about is "How do we fit this into our processes?".

True ITIL Samurai understand that the "IT" in ITIL is just a descriptor. The framework can be used for any service anywhere. ITIL Samurai see processes everywhere they go and can mold and shape the framework to everyday life adventures like picking up the dry cleaning, dining at a restaurant, renting a video, taking the train to work, or even going to a drive through.

ITIL Samurai believe that everything you do in life revolves around a process. All you have to do is look. You'll find it.

ITIL Samurai live to provide integrity, honesty, and stability in all that they do and ITIL is our source for guidance on how to create this perfect world. ITIL Samurai understand that no person or method is perfect but we constantly strive to be the impossible; never becoming complacent nor arrogant.

Our loyalty is with the business, not with the technology (or vendors) as we understand that we've never seen a server or vendor's signature on our paycheck. Nor has a piece of hardware ever created a business plan or a business strategy for the future growth of the business.

We are focused on business outcomes first.

From understanding these we can more holistically design and maintain the right technology to enable what our masters, "the business" desire.

An analogy:
Information Technology is just that. Technology that transfers information from one person to the next. In the days of feudal Japan "I.T." was rice paper and a brush. The rice paper was the "technology" that held the "information". The paint brush was the "technology" that allowed one person to communicate the "information" to other feudal lords. Writing on rice paper was much more economical (and better on the back) than writing on stone tablets. And don't even get the ITIL Samurai started with trying to walk the big heavy things between the clans. Once rice paper was implemented, we never looked back.

But, just having the brushes and paper was not enough. Many other issues came along such as:

Where are we going to store all this paper? How do we ensure that secret papers are kept safe and away from other non-important papers? Once we have locked them away, how do we ensure that only authorized people can access these papers? How do we know who is authorized in the first place? This is where IT Service Managment comes into play but that's another blog for another time.

ITIL Samurai understand that having a thorough knowledge of hardware and software means nothing if you cannot manage it properly. You can have all of the rice paper and brushes you want but if none in your kingdom know how to use it or the method in which to store and communicate the information wisely, your empire will crumble to those who do understand these principles.

Welcome! Says the ITIL Samurai

Welcome framework warriors to what will become one of the greatest free resources of real-world IT Service Management framework information on the web. This blog is dedicated to spreading the diciplines of IT frameworks to the masses. It is the solemn belief of the ITIL Samurai that knowledge is power and that we can do more good together than we can individually.

When I entered the IT Service Management space some years ago I was frustrated by the lack of real world information found on the web and within the tomes of the 5 volume code of conduct known as ITIL.

Before my transformation into the dicipline of IT frameworks I was a lost soul like many of you. I believed with all my heart that IT was the solution to all problems. That if and only if an organization could find the right hardware and software, thier problems would go away. Oh how silly I was during my geek apprentice days!

Since my enlightenment, I have discovered that just because you have the most expensive car on the track, and possibly the best driver, that doesn't automatically meant you are going to win a race. If your driver is crap.....so's your car. If your pit crew is inadequate.....so's your car. Being the best in IT is so much MORE than having the newest, fastest and best hardware and software "solution". Anyone who's ever tried to implement any pricey CRM solution can tell you that. If the end-users (the driver) don't know how to use it or WHY they need to use it, you've just wasted lots of time, money and.....your job.

If you've made it this far without clicking over to Youtube..... ITIL Samurai would like to say "welcome". Stick around for some insights, clandestine interviews and real world experiences and "plain Japane....er....English" explanations of the dicipline of IT frameworks.
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