The 3rd Law of ITIL Bushido: Benevolence

Benevolence:True goodness of the mind and spirit, the unbiased kindness to do good.

This is what ITIL is supposed to be about. Doing good for the business and doing good for the IT department. Each and every process can be used for good and for evil. Part of achieving ITIL benevolence is to always make negatives positive.

ITIL Samurai understand that not everything has to be profitable to make the business as a whole a success. Some times, from a "silo only view" IT departments can take a "loss" that ends up being beneficial to the entire organization. The key is to understand how this "plausible loss" helps the organization as a whole. If you are not benevolent in the way you think and only look at things with a finite view, you may miss some of the opportunities and wins this "loss" may provide.

Here's a clear example from Dr. W. Edwards Deming's book "The New Economics"

Another example in which one component operated at a loss for the good of the whole company, including the component that took the loss, comes from an observation that I made while doing some work years ago for the Detroit News. The food department of the Detroit News intentionally served food in the cafeteria so good and so cheap that employees ate their lunches in the company's cafeteria, attracted by quality and price. Employees thus spent far less time at lunch on the home ground and more time on the job, than if they had gone out of the building for lunch. As I understood it, the food department lost an average of .60 per lunch, but the company as a whole came out ahead, not merely because employees spent more time on the job, but also for their appreciation of good management.

By focusing on the whole of the business instead of the silo view of the cafeteria the Detroit News was able to increase productivity and morale of the employees while taking a "loss". Sure, they may have "lost" .60 on average on every meal but in total view of the business the benevolence of subsidizing the meals did more good for the organization than harm.

Likewise, as practitioner of the ITIL discipline you will find that you will have more success when keeping a benevolent attitude. Remember, ITIL is not about catching people and departments out and blaming them. It is about understanding what each person and department has to do in order to achieve the objective of the business as a whole.

Reality TV and ITSM???

I was going to predicate this blog entry with "You must know that ITIL Samurai HATES reality television" but the reality is, recently I've been hooked by a couple of shows that have me addicted. I'd love to go into the whole back story but we don't have time for that here.

One of the aforementioned shows appeals to me because in it I see huge amounts of process goodness in it. The name of the show is called "The Chopping Block" As it turns out the show is going to be re-done in the USA so many of you will be seeing it soon. If you can't wait for that you can watch old episodes at the above link.

ITIL Samurai look at the world with "process eyes". We undertand that a service, is a service is a service. The funny thing about ITIL is that it really has nothing to do with IT when you stop and think about it.

Whether it be IT, a retail store or a restaurant, they are all fundamentally doing the same thing. Providing you with a service. As ITIL defines a service they are all "facilitating outcomes you want to achieve without taking on the associated costs and risks."

Think about it for a second.

When you go to a restaurant you want food. Good quality food (most times). You will pay a certain price for a certain level of quality. Your "business outcome" is the finished product of the food. You don't want to take on the "associated costs and risks" of having to source fresh ingredients, hire and train the staff to take your order, hire the right chef and cooks for the kitchen, figure out what to put on the menu nor worry about how the order you give will be transmitted back to the kitchen. You just want to eat. For a certain cost within a certain time frame with a certain level of quality.

One of the competing restaurants last night had great wait staff but a not so good kitchen. The other had a fantastic chef but not great wait staff. Neither had a clue on the PROCESSES they needed to deliver a quality service to their customer. They all mistakenly think that it's just the food and the look of the place that gets the job done.

The PERFECT example last night was the eatery that had a chef that actually won chef of the year a few years back. One of the major problems they had was incompetent wait staff. His food was great but by the time it got to the customers, it was cold or worse yet, the wrong order entirely!

The show does a great job providing feedback by way of the food critic and one of Australia's number one chef's. The food critic always begins saying that all good restaurants have 3 basic things: Great food, great atmosphere and great service. The biggest thing missing in the show for me is that no one is there to help them manage all the processes needed to deliver these three "basic" things.

HOW do you get great food, great atmosphere and great service? Through definable, measurable processes. Many times after the 48 hours of renovations and changes to the menu the eateries still fail miserably in the service department. They have better food, better atmosphere but they still end up bumbling around come opening night because no one has bothered to show them how all the pieces fit together.

In one episode they had everything in order. The place looked great, the food was fantastic and then....the order machine broke down. The wait staff had to take orders by hand because the order tickets wouldn't print out in the kitchen. Guess what? Everything fell apart because the were not prepared for such a disaster. They didn't have a process for handling that situation. The wait staff, in a panic scribbled orders on paper. The kitchen couldn't read the orders. People started leaving the place because they would wait for an hour and not get served.

All because a single IT service provision failed and no one including the owners knew how to deliver their objectives without it. The one person who knew how to fix it was late for the new opening night. Again, they didn't really have a grip on the basic things you need to do in order to service your customers. They all relied on a tool to do it for them.

This illustrates the perfect scenario for the statement "process is paramount". In the absence of your IT tool, how do you continue to reach acceptable business outcomes? The tool is only there to make things faster and easier. You had business processes in place long before you bought that newfangled tool. Or in this case....maybe you didn't.

ITIL v3 predicates everything based off of delivering service value. Focusing on the outcomes your customers want to achieve. Whether they are internal or external it doesn't matter. Like the restaurants in the show The Chopping Block, many IT professionals wrongly believe that all they have to do is make sure they keep the machines running and everything will be okay. They have zero focus on business outcomes. They forget that it is the customers that keep them employed. Not focusing on business outcomes and therefore customer needs, they are in effect slowly putting themselves out of a job.

The world of IT is becoming more and more commoditized. Just like the food industry your internal and external customers have a choice. There are entire "emerging markets" out there ready and willing to take your job from you. So ask yourself. Why shouldn't your company outsource the whole IT department? What advantages do you provide? Do help the organization achieve the objectives it wants in its market space?

Why should your customers buy services from you?

They DO have a choice. What makes you different? What makes your customers stop and dine at your restaurant? In effect the food is just a product of several services. You have a "food preparation service" a "food delivery service" etc.

It's HOW you manage those services that makes the difference because in reality, just like a restaurant, you are all doing the same thing.

So what makes you better?