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.