How To Create A Sense of Urgency

Sometimes IT managers fail to get ITIL implementation off to a successful start, or keep it going, because
they haven’t lit the needed fire for sufficient momentum. In successful change efforts, the first step is
making sure that enough people act with sufficient urgency – with the type of behavior that energizes, and
that beams a sense of “let’s go”.

Sean’s Story: A Case Study

Sean, a senior IT manager, felt that he had been fighting an up-hill battle for over two years. Every time
he brought up the concepts of Service Management and ITIL he would be shut down by his CIO and
other managers with the annoying mantra of “What’s the ROI?”

ITIL and IT Service Management just made sense to Sean, but his executive team and colleagues just
didn’t get it. He had tried many different ways to get others to see the benefits. Sean had given many
presentations, written many memos and business cases, but still failed to gain buy-in. Sean couldn’t
understand it - what was the matter with all of them? Couldn’t they see how implementing ITIL would
solve so many of the problems they were experiencing? But that’s not the way others saw it. According
to everyone else, they didn’t need ITIL - nothing was broken. Sean didn’t agree; there was plenty that
could be improved and as far as he was concerned, they were all living in a dream world. Sean grew
increasingly frustrated with their complacency. However, his desperate situation was about to change by
two events.

The first important event was that Sean had decided to attend night school and so he enrolled in an MBA
program at his local university. This was something he had wanted to do for some time. He had a
degree in Computer Sciences but was seeking to gain a more in-depth understanding of business. In one
of his new MBA courses – Organizational Behavior – he studied Organizational Change, and one of the
course textbooks was Leading Change, written by Professor John Kotter from Harvard. After reading it,
Sean could understand why this book has been constantly rated as one of the best business books
written of all time. And, both the book and course taught him that he’d been taking the wrong approach
back at work to try to implement change.

At the same time that Sean was studying Organizational Behavior, there was an internal audit conducted
of his IT division. During this audit, which included the assessment of IT financial practices, the black box
had been opened and it was not pretty. Due to the reactive, and silo based mentality his organization
seemed to thrive on, the internal auditors had un-earthed a lot of information that put the senior IT
management team, including the CIO, in some pretty hot water. Sean was not surprised – he already
knew there were many practices that needed to be improved. The auditor’s report outlined many out-of-
order conditions, including:

• The company had been paying lease costs for years for literally hundreds of assets that could not be
accounted for
• Each major organizational silo had its own set of applications and tools that were completely
redundant to each other; each requiring expensive support and maintenance contracts
• IT finance had no way of articulating how IT costs were applied to services and usage so costing and
chargeback models had no baring on reality
• Reactive management resulted in poor if any planning being done around areas such as capacity,
availability and IT service continuity causing crisis buying on a regular basis at more than the going
rate
• Lack of any formal process and automation around contract management meant that contracts and
agreements continued to expire without being noticed causing unforeseen and expensive
charges realized on a consistent basis

© Pink Elephant, 2005. All rights reserved. Page 1 of 4

Learn more about ITIL by visiting: www.pinkelephant.com.

ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark and a Registered Community Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce, and is
Registered in the US Patent and Trademark Office.
As a result of the findings of the audit, the CIO was given a formal written warning and told very clearly
that IT had to be fixed – or else!

Sean knew how to fix IT, and this time he knew how to sell his ideas. He understood where he had gone
wrong before. He’d focused too much on communicating the benefits of ITIL but had assumed that
everyone would just “get it”. He had not done enough to link back benefits to specific problems that his
organization had been experiencing. Because of the MBA course and book that he’d read, he now
understood about the important first step in implementation change – eliminating complacency by
creating a sense of urgency. Sean knew the time was ripe to prepare a new business case to show how
applying ITIL’s best practice framework could address IT’s (and his CIO’s) dire situation.

Best Practices For Leading Change

John Kotter, professor at Harvard Business School, focuses on how to lead major transformations in his
two highly acclaimed books, Leading Change and The Heart Of Change. Kotter’s teachings have been
featured in previous PinkLinks. Like Sean in the case study above, understanding this change model will
help IT managers at all levels of the organization master the successful implementation of ITIL best
practices.

Summary Of Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model

Leading Change: Eight Steps Core Challenge Desired Behaviour

1. Establish a sense of urgency
2. Create a guiding coalition
3. Develop a vision and
strategy
4. Communicate the change
vision (And, communicate it
over and over again)
5. Empower broad-based
action
6. Create short-term wins
Get people “out of the bunker”
and ready to move.
Get the right people in place
with the trust, emotional
commitment and teamwork to
guide the difficult change
process.
Get the guiding team to create
the right vision and strategies
to guide action in all of the
remaining stages of change.
This requires moving beyond
number crunching to address
the creative and emotional
components of vision.
Get as many people as
possible acting to make the
vision a reality.
Remove key obstacles that
stop people from acting on the
vision.
Produce enough short-term
(quick) wins fast enough to
energize the change helpers,
enlighten the pessimists,
defuse the cynics and build
momentum for the effort.
People start telling each other,
"Let's go, we need to change
things!"
A group powerful enough to guide
large change, influence others to
accept change, and one that works
well together.
The guiding team develops the
right vision and strategy for the
change effort.
People begin to buy into the
change and this shows in their
behaviour.
More people feel able to act, and
do act, on the vision.
Momentum builds as people try to
fulfil the vision, while fewer and
fewer resist change.

© Pink Elephant, 2005. All rights reserved. Page 2 of 4

Learn more about ITIL by visiting: www.pinkelephant.com.

ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark and a Registered Community Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce, and is
Registered in the US Patent and Trademark Office.
7. Consolidate gains and
produce more change
8. Anchor new approaches in
the culture
Continue with wave after wave
of change, not stopping until
the vision is a reality - no
matter how big the obstacles.
Create a supporting structure
that provides roots for the new
ways of operating.
People remain energized and
motivated to push change forward
until the vision is fulfilled – fully
realized.
New and winning behaviour
continues despite the pull of
tradition, turnover of change
leaders, etc.

The Problem Of Complacency

According to Kotter, one of the main factors that stops change and prevents people from taking action is
complacency – people get too comfortable with the way things are done and don’t see, or feel, the need
to change. Why do people become complacent to the point where they don’t know or see that there are
problems that require action? Here are some key reasons:

• There’s often too much “happy talk” from the CIO and senior management. These senior managers
are misguided into thinking that what employees don’t know won’t hurt them, or the organization.
Don’t just communicate good news to IT employees. When there is no open and frank discussion
about what is not working well there is usually an absence of a major and visible problem or crisis that
can help to create a sense of urgency
• There may be low overall performance standards in place and when the bar is not raised very high,
people are lulled into a false sense of success. If people have been told that they’re doing a good
job, why do things have to change?
• Measurement systems may be focusing on the wrong metrics and people are fooled into thinking that
levels of service delivered by IT are very good when in fact the opposite may be true
• There may be a lack of sufficient performance feedback from external sources, and as a result IT
managers and employees are not aware of how suppliers, customers, and users actually view IT’s
performance and results
• IT may be operating in silos with organization structures that focus employees on narrow functional
goals – no one is looking at the bigger picture (end to end processes), instead the focus in just on one
piece of a whole
• During change initiatives, IT managers can sometimes underestimate the power of human capacity
for denial. In fact, it’s human nature that some people can stay in a denial mindset for a long time,
turning a blind eye to problems
• Sometimes there is a “kill the messenger” or low confrontational culture and people who do realize
that there are problems are too afraid to speak out

How To Create A Sense Of Urgency

How do you change what can sometimes be years of ingrained habits and attitudes? To spur people on
and to remove complacency, here are some suggestions for how to motivate action:

• Don’t just tell people about the need to change. Whenever possible, show others the need to change
with a compelling argument - something that they can actually see, touch or feel
• Show others valid and dramatic evidence from outside IT, or outside the organization, that
demonstrates very clearly that change is needed – or else
• Don’t underestimate complacency; Look for it and look for ways to reduce it
• Send more information about customer satisfaction and financial performance to more employees.
The better informed all employees are about what is not working well, the quick they’ll “get it” – the
reasons for change
© Pink Elephant, 2005. All rights reserved. Page 3 of 4
Learn more about ITIL by visiting: www.pinkelephant.com.

ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark and a Registered Community Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce, and is
Registered in the US Patent and Trademark Office.
• Start tracking, measuring and reporting more meaningful performance indicators
• Use consultants to force more relevant and frank discussion into management meetings
• Put more candid information about company and divisional problems in newsletters, speeches and
presentations
• Have more people interact more regularly with unhappy customers, suppliers and stakeholders
• Communicate failures and root causes, not just successes
• Offer success stories of other organizations who have made real sustainable progress

Remember, don’t write a memo to get people going - light a fire! Too often leaders launch their change
initiatives by calling a meeting, circulating a consultant's report, giving a presentation or writing an email,
then expect people to rally to the cause. It doesn't happen that way. To succeed, you must raise feelings
of urgency so that people start telling each other “let’s go, we must do something”.

Want To Learn More?

1. Read the following two books by John Kotter: Leading Change, and The Heart Of Change. Both of
these books are readily available anywhere business books are sold.

2. Attend Pink Elephant’s ITIL Implementation Road Map at one of the locations below. This unique
two-track workshop features a major session about how to apply all eight steps of Kotter’s change
model with many examples related to ITIL implementations.

• Vancouver, March 2 – 4, 2005

• Dallas, April 13 – 15, 2005

The ITIL Implementation Road Map is being presented in numerous locations throughout 2005. To
view the detailed agenda, and for a listing of all dates and locations, click here:
http://www.pinkelephant.com/pinkevents.asp?confid=rm5&id=pl48n1

© Pink Elephant, 2005. All rights reserved. Page 4 of 4

Learn more about ITIL by visiting: www.pinkelephant.com.

ITIL® is a Registered Trade Mark and a Registered Community Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce, and is
Registered in the US Patent and Trademark Office.