Clarity.
Clarity of vision, thought, progress, and the goal.
We are often so busy that we miss clarity.
Clarity only comes when we are able to rise above the struggles of the day and see the bigger picture.
Like many, I often get so caught up in accomplishing the tasks of the day that I cannot find clarity. So, when the finish line moves, sometimes I am slow to become aware.
As I encourage myself, I encourage you to make time to find clarity.
I have been thinking about something and wanted to share the idea and get feedback …
With every organization becoming unique, and unlike the others, we will see fewer instances of “pure” frameworks like ITIL, Agile, DevOps, etc.
Every organization will have a different blend of the frameworks. I see it similar to how different chefs, making the same meal and using the same recipe, will have totally different end results.
Just like with restaurants, the uniqueness of the people aspect (both skill and how they do things) combined with the desired outcomes of leadership, create unique outcomes.
In the world of IT, there are other things at work creating uniqueness, like tooling, vendor strategy, cloud infrastructure, etc.
So, if you grant me that this is what is happening, then we should focus on people who can create outcomes.
Thoughts?
Many of us grew up with the fable, the rabbit and the tortoise in some variety.
It’s applicable in today’s world, too.
If you are not making progress, and are standing still, you will be passed by those making progress, however small.
The turtle approach is perfectly fine as small, incremental improvements allow for steady, incremental progress.
The rabbit, who jumps out to an early lead, then stagnates, will lose out because of two reasons:
1. The finish line will move in today’s world.
2. Momentum towards a goal helps culture.
In your ITSM and ITAM programs, you must find ways to understand desired stakeholder outcomes and how to nimbly make progress.
When we seek to measure employee or customer experience, we must do two things:
1. Understand the desired outcomes by ASKING
2. Measuring the progress against the outcomes by ASKING
You will never understand what people want without asking them. For clarity, this is not the same as a survey after the resolution of an Incident or fulfillment of a Request.
If you understand how poorly we measure outcomes throughout the history of service delivery, then you know that we must do better. This includes both WHAT we do and HOW we do it.
Everyone talks about measuring, and its importance.
Few discuss how we can do better.
The answer will be unique to each organization, but we can agree on two things:
1. Measures be tied to desired outcomes
2. The traditional ways of measuring are not tied to desired outcomes
Measures come in three varieties:
a. Performance
b. Health
c. Compliance
So, consider the desired objectives, how you want to measure progress, and how to visually represent the progress.
With so many changes in the way we do everything, literally everything, now is the time to reevaluate how we measure.