|
|
|
Change May Be Your Ace in the Hole
Whether it has been thrust upon you by external market forces or it has simply bubbled up from the internal dynamics of your enterprise, change itself always presents opportunity for improvement. And in a knowledge based economy, change may be the...
How Effective is Your Leadership Style?
How Effective is Your Leadership Style? Motivating employees according to their needs. by Dr. Marilyn Manning Would your staff say that you are easy to work with? Would they call you picky, overly analytical? Do they accuse you of dropping the ball...
Job Search Lessons from The Super Bowl
The Super Bowl is a game but, like sports in general, it offers useful life lessons that we can take with us . . . if we only look below the surface. As I watched the game, I saw a number of things. How many did you see?
1. Winning is a team...
Making the Most of Your Year
Do you find yourself amazed at how quickly the months pass? Do you find yourself in a small panic over all you know you have to do and how little you feel you are actually accomplishing? Join the crowd! We live in a busy world where our time,...
Management Span of Control and The Power of Models
There isn’t a steadfast rule in determining a proper Management to Staff ratio. However, there are some guidelines that can assist in establishing a ratio that allows Upper Management to efficiently assess and evaluate a department, department...
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Choking on ITIL? - A Menu for Success
Choking on ITIL? A Menu for Success ...
Food for thought
"Frankly, I'm desperate - I'm choking" is a phrase I've become familiar with over the years. Faced with a daily diet of conflicting business priorities, resistant staff and increasing pressure to reduce costs, many IT Directors and Service Managers bear a striking resemblance these days to someone asked to suck an elephant up a straw. In an attempt to wet the appetite, an ITIL menu is rolled out. However, grasping at ITIL as a saviour for all ills without comprehensive forethought, analysis and planning is folly.
What's the dish of the day?
Chef's special starter offers how ITIL can enable your organisation to adapt rapidly to changing market conditions and service constraints lightly sautéed on a bed of crisp, green cost savings. The dish of the day tantalises the taste buds with how implementing ITIL can leverage maximum value from your strategic partnerships. For dessert Sir? Madam? Let me tempt you with our double cream, extra thick service continuity `n' high availability gateaux, lightly drizzled with consistency and robustness. "What's the house whine (sic)?" "A devilish, fruity little number preferred by most IT staff; Chateaux IT'IL Never Happen If We Resist Enough; 2002, 2003 or 2004 - a superb year for suppliers".
At worst, ITIL can prove to be an expensive set of processes and procedures nobody in your organisation follows. At best, it formalises common sense; adding value to your daily operations, internal and external relationships and, can fully flex in concert with your Corporate Strategy. But, only if you don't choke to death trying to stuff it all in at one sitting.
ITIL's exquisite beauty lies in its simplicity, flexibility and risk management emphasis. In all its implemented glory with internal processes dovetailing into your 3rd party supplier processes, everyone knows who's doing what and when. Indeed, research carried out on behalf of the ITSMF shows that of those questioned regarding the use and benefits of ITIL, 97% said their organisation had derived benefits; 70% of these describing these benefits as tangible and measurable.
Are you hungry for it?
You wouldn't spend your hard earned cash on a new, expensive car without researching the quality and having a test drive unless you had money to burn. However, it's surprising how organisations will begin implementing ITIL before researching some of the basics and asking a few simple questions such as; will it save us money? Will it add value to our activities or the value chain? Will it enable us to become more agile? Will it improve our customer service and perception?
It can be frustrating being a senior executive, wanting desperately to actually achieve something tangible for the organisation but feeling like a flea in a jar - jumping up and down but just hitting your head on the lid. Having previously witnessed the benefits and opportunities implementing ITIL or some of its components can bring, it's tempting to blindly assume that as it all worked perfectly well before it must work in your current organisation. Think before you jump.
What do you want or need to achieve within the context of your current organisation? What is it you think you'll achieve by implementing ITIL? Generally, the identification of perhaps 2 or 3 high level, key objectives is an excellent start. A maximum of three objectives focuses the mind. Any more than 3 and the bar may appear just too high to hurdle. Objectives could be:-
·Realise savings of at least 10% in next year's budget.
·Demonstrate a tangible improvement in delivery of services to our customers by 20% within one year.
·Pre-empt and mitigate risk thereby improving
systems and infrastructure availability by 30% within one year.
Others may include:
·Improve two-way communications between the IT Department and the business
·Involve key business stakeholders in our decision making processes
·Ensure changes to our infrastructure don't create more problems.
·Improve and leverage maximum value from our 3rd party suppliers
·Create a more agile, process orientated IT Department
·Eliminate our blame culture
·Empower team members to take ownership and responsibility
·Create a culture of continuous improvement
·Create an achievement orientated team
Side salad or seasonal vegetables Sir?
Only the most naive senior executives these days fail to recognise the importance of creating an agile organisation. Able to flex and adapt to changing market conditions, technological innovations, fluctuating market share, profit margin and profitability. It's a tough, increasingly competitive world and if you don't take the initiative you can be sure someone else will. To survive and thrive in today's economy a core capability of successful organisations is agility.
Equally, keeping abreast of the organisations aims and objectives requires an agile IT Department. How agile are you? Do your customers have to wait 6 weeks or more for a new laptop? Do new employees arrive on their first day to find they're going to have to wait 3 days for a logon and email account? Does your overtime budget regularly take a hammering? Do you find yourself continually on the back foot having to explain systems downtime?
In encouraging the development of an agile IT Department one needs to firstly consider the individuals, their levels of change acceptance when implementing ITIL and personal loss which may be the resultant effect of the changes. Otherwise, no matter your expertise and knowledge, or that of your ITIL consultant, Service Manager or Implementation Project Manager, resistance will be high and the probability of success, in terms of gaining performance improvements and cost savings, will be low.
Heartburn
Be objective in assessing how much change the individuals within your team and organisation can tolerate. Research carried out by Buchanan, Claydon and Doyle (1999) found that over 60% of managers said people in their business were suffering from change fatigue. In a second study (2000) it was found that just under half of respondents claimed that the pace of change was causing middle management burnout as with each change, people have to spend time:
-learning new tasks,
-implementing new systems and procedures
-developing new knowledge
-using new skills and behaviours and,
-all the above under severe time pressure due to having the `day job' to
do as well.
The cheque please!
If you've already tried to implement ITIL and failed then you need a rescuer and a rescue plan. You need an expert with experience of success and failure. Simply sending a team member on a course in the hope they'll come back with sufficient knowledge and experience to face up to the task is unrealistic - Jenson Button didn't learn how to race just by reading the Highway Code and passing his driving test. Visit http://www.itilhelp.com Free Downloads section to access the Knowledge Box and Summary Menu for Success - these will help you assess your own or your change agent's level of experience and reflection and guide your implementation strategy.
©www.itilhelp.com, 2004. All rights reserved
About the Author
The de facto site for all things ITIL. ITIl Free downloads, Jobs, Newsletter, Links. Free T-Shirt Competition. Come and see why on average 2000 unique visitors come in search of ITIL knowledge and resources.
|
|
|
|
|
| Strategic Planning (in nonprofit or for-profit organizations) |
| Adapted from the Field Guide to Nonprofit Strategic Planning and Facilitation. ... First, a Point About For-Profit and Nonprofit Strategic Planning ... |
| www.managementhelp.org |
|
| Basic Description of Strategic Planning (including key terms to know) |
| Adapted from the Field Guide to Nonprofit Strategic Planning and Facilitation. ... Strategic planning often includes use of several key terms. ... |
| www.managementhelp.org |
|
| Strategic Planning, Strategic Plan, Business Strategy, Strategic ... |
| Strategic planning advice with free strategic planner & sample strategic plan covering mission statement, SWOT analysis with business plan software for cash ... |
| www.planware.org |
|
| Strategic Planning |
| FAQs regarding strategic planning - geared primarily toward non-profit organizations but with enough detail and general information to provide useful ... |
| www.allianceonline.org |
|
| Frequently Asked Questions |
| Strategic Planning · Fundraising · Financial Management · Risk Management · Credit Card Acceptance. The FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) listed on this ... |
| www.allianceonline.org |
|
| Strategic planning - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia |
| Strategic planning involves defining objectives and developing ... Strategic planning uses "the big picture" to pursue large scale, long term objectives. ... |
| en.wikipedia.org |
|
| 08/26/96 STRATEGIC PLANNING |
| You guessed it: strategic planning. Suddenly, the idea of rising above the ... But if strategic planning is back with a vengeance, it's also back with a ... |
| www.businessweek.com |
|
| Dr. Strategy - Dr. Pete Johnson, Keynote Speaker, Marketing ... |
| StrategicPlanning.com “Turning Change Into A Competitive Advantage”. Dr. Pete's Preview Video Click Here. Take-Away Value Sample Program Handouts ... |
| strategicplanning.com |
|
| Strategic Planning Society: Strategy Development and Implementation |
| Strategic Planning Society: Strategy Development and Implementation. |
| www.sps.org.uk |
|
| Guide 7 |
| Strategic Planning in Smaller Nonprofit Organizations ... In short, as a result of a strategic planning process, an organization will have a clearer idea of ... |
| www.wmich.edu |
|
| STRATEGIC PLANNING MANUAL |
| File Format: PDF/Adobe Acrobat - View as HTML |
| Your browser may not have a PDF reader available. Google recommends visiting our text version of this document. |
|
| BPubs.com: Strategic Planning & Business Planning Articles |
| Business Publications related to Corporate Strategic Planning. |
| www.bpubs.com |
|
| Strategic Planning Tools |
| Strategic Planning is a method for positioning an organization to take ... A strategic planning process incorporates an in-depth planning model that takes ... |
| www.nsba.org |
|
| Center for Simplified Strategic Planning, Inc. |
| The Center for Simplified Strategic Planning offers training, seminars, consulting, speakers, workshops, a book and a newsletter on strategic management for ... |
| www.cssp.com |
|
| LEADERSHIP: Strategic Planning and Strategic Management |
| Introduction: Is strategic planning really worth it? ... The purpose of strategic planning is to encourage thinking about your organization's "big ... |
| vskn.ca |
|
| The CEO Refresher Archives - Strategic Planning |
| When done right, the integrated strategic planning process can take a ... Strategic Planning and Project Management: The Key to Successful Implementation ... |
| www.refresher.com |
|
| HEFCE : Publications : 2000 : 00/24 - Strategic planning in higher ... |
| This guide reviews good practice in strategic planning in higher education (HE). It originated in a consultation exercise which we held in 1998 to review ... |
| www.hefce.ac.uk |
|
| The Association for Strategic Planning |
| The Association for Strategic Planning (ASP), is a non-profit professional society whose mission is to enable people and organizations to succeed through ... |
| www.strategyplus.org |
|
| Amazon.com: Strategic Planning for Nonprofit Organizations: A ... |
| Amazon.com: Strategic Planning for Nonprofit Organizations: A Practical Guide and Workbook: Books: Michael Allison,Jude Kaye by Michael Allison,Jude Kaye. |
| www.amazon.com |
|
| Amazon.com: Simplified Strategic Planning: A No-Nonsense Guide for ... |
| Amazon.com: Simplified Strategic Planning: A No-Nonsense Guide for Busy People Who Want Results Fast!: Books: Robert W. Bradford,Robert W. Bradford,J. Peter ... |
| www.amazon.com |
|
|