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The itSMF in Belgium organized one of its regular themed sessions for its members. The theme was

the ABC of ICT (Attitude, Behavior, Culture), and I was invited to conduct an ABC workshop.
Paul Wilkinson
Owner / Director
The session for me had three main objectives: Mail LinkedIn-profile
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Wilkinson from from
Paul
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Wilkin
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One was to share insights and experiences into ABC – The NUMBER 1 success or fail factor Paul has been involved in the IT industry for
impacting the successful adoption and deployment of ITSM best practices such as ITIL; more than 25 years and has a broad
background in IT operations, IT management
and product innovation and development. He
the second was to give people a practical instrument (ABC cards) and pragmatic actions that they
was an ITIL V2 author and member of the ITIL
can take-away and apply; V3 advisory group. Facilitated 400+ sims.

the third was to gather feedback for the ITIL practitioner initiative. More information about Paul Wilkinson

70-80% don’t get the value they hoped for from an

ITSM investment”. Related articles

I started the session by announcing that 70% to 80% of ITSM organizations we survey state that they
From Crime Scene Investigation to Continual
do NOT get the HOPED for value from their ITSM/ITIL investment. There was a wide spread service Improvement
recognition in the workshop. I asked how many were ‘doing ITIL’ or were ‘ITIL certified’ – the That’s the way IT works!….from words to deeds
majority of hands went up. However only 2 people (consultant/trainer) were even familiar with the book
ITIL practical exam – problems that need solving
‘Planning to implement IT Service Management’ – a formal OGC publication! Is it any wonder we
Survey: Business Simulation Games NICE-to-
struggle to adopt and apply. have or Need-to-have?

Less than 7% of 10.000 practitioners have SEEN

Planning To Implement IT Service
Management….let alone having READ it!”. Latest comments

This to me is one of the top reasons we keep failing. People do not read the book AND the book isn’t
Hi Paul ...
part of the certification program! This book was partly written to help address ABC issues, it even
Ritesh View comment
states that ‘ …the most common reason for the breakdown of Service management initiatives is

failure to recognize the importance of Organizational culture’. Yet we don’t equip or test people on Nice to see your posting you have good
inforamation about DevOps and i have
skills to deal with this.
some information about DevOps it can
usefull...
As usual in these workshops I asked how many people know the definition of a Service according to DevOps Training In Hyderabad View
ITIL? 2 hands went up from the 17. comment
 VOCR – the new mantra for ITSM”? I plan to conduct a game like this for my
clients. Could you please tell me where to
download this game?
Kavita View comment
A Service is ‘a means of delivering VALUE to Customers by facilitating OUTCOMES they want to

achieve without the ownership of specific COSTS and RISKS’. These are the only 4 words Thanks for sharing.
EVERYBODY needs to be aware of ‘ Value, Outcomes’, ‘Costs’ and ‘Risks’ (VOCR) – but more Sridhar View comment

importantly – in the context of YOUR organization. You should ask yourself ‘Why are we doing
Great post, most informative, didn't realise
ITIL’? Some organizations have a business driver of availability, continuity or compliance – managing devops were into this.
devops online training View comment
RISKS. Some need to focus on costs – doing more with less and see ITIL as a means of achieving

this, some want faster and more reliable deployment of new innovative IT solutions to increase

business value and need effective release deployment. Unfortunately our global survey reveals that

‘ITIL is the objective NOT what it needs to achieve’ and ‘IT has too little understanding of
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business impact and priority’ are STILL top scoring worst practice ABC cards chosen in workshops.
More then 150 partners worldwide
It would appear that that ‘aligning ITSM initiatives with organizational strategy and priorities’ and
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‘linking ITSM to corporate goals and objectives’ are critical capabilities we need to develop.
All

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100% of initiatives meet with resistance. This isn’t
All
necessarily negative. This is simply a risk that
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needs to be managed“.

Another key reason initiatives fail is ‘Resistance’. In our experience 100% of organizations adopting

ITIL meet with resistance. It is a NORMAL part of change, the problem is that most organizations

ignore it and HOPE that it will go away! In my view this is another critical capability that an ITIL

practitioner would need to develop –the ability to ‘identify and manage risk’ in terms of resistance

and ABC.

For this reason we conducted the ABC resistance exercise during this workshop. The purpose being

to identify types of resistance and to explore counter measures for dealing with it.

Delegates were given a set of ABC of ICT cards are tasked with the following action: ‘What types of

resistance do you SEE or expect to SEE when you try and deploy best practices such as ITIL?’

Each person chose 3 cards.

These were the top 5 cards chosen:

No management commitment

Throwing solutions over the wall and hoping that people will follow them

A Tool solves all problems – A Fool with a Tool is still a Fool

ITIL is the objective…not what it should achieve – No understanding of business impact &

priority

Plan, Do, Stop….No real continual improvement culture’

There is a wide gap between what managers see

as desired behavior and what other stakeholders
expect“.

The ‘No management commitment’ card is consistently a global top card in the ABC workshops.

Managers are frustrated when they see this, insisting that they ARE committed, however when I ask

them which ‘desired behavior’ demonstrates this, there is a wide gap between what managers see as
desired behavior and what other stakeholders expect to see that demonstrates this commitment.

The teams were asked to choose their TOP card. ‘Which card is the probable cause of other

cards?’ The higher up the cause and effect chain the greater the downstream impact of the card. For

this card they were then asked to write down ‘What ‘desired behavior’ do you expect key

stakeholders to display to remove these types of resistance?’ We first explored ‘the key

stakeholders’ Because of time constraints in the workshop we decided upon the following ‘

CIO/Management team(MT)’, ‘Line manager’, ‘Process manager’, ‘ Employee’ (process operative

e.g. help desk employee, second line specialist).

The picture above shows the matrix made by the team. The top chosen cards are the rows and the

key stakeholders are the columns.

The teams, representing different stakeholders discussed and explored and defined behavior they

expected to see.

What were the results and findings? I cannot go into all the results without writing a book! but will give

some examples that the teams discussed relating to ‘No Management commitment’ as this was a

card all the teams identified. Desired behaviors included:

CIO/MT: ‘ Walking-the-talk’ – such as ‘confronting line managers’ who fail to allocate resources

to the processes or who deliberately circumvent agreed ways of working, ‘recognizing and

rewarding’ ITSM successes, continually communicating the purpose and goals of the initiative

in meetings AND actions and decisions.

CIO/MT/Line managers: ‘ensuring VOCR goals are clearly communicated and EMBEDDED in

decision making, prioritization and escalation mechanisms’.

Process managers: to demonstrate ‘wins’ with process metrics, metrics that demonstrate

business value – metrics that MATTER; identify and target on pain areas that senior managers

need to address. Demonstrate how ITSM can solve these pain points.

Employees: Use the CSI register to record examples of non-compliance to processes and the

impact caused.
 Was the exercise useful? One manager said to me afterwards

‘This has really helped me put into perspective the ‘resistance’ we

see and can clearly expect. We are just starting our ITSM Journey. I

will use the actions captured in my own plans and will use the cards

with groups of stakeholders’.

Other conclusions related to top scoring cards:

Throwing solutions over the wall and hoping that people will follow them. Shows how we

need to adopt different types of approaches for engaging people throughout the initiative.

A Tool solves all problems – A Fool with a Tool is still a Fool . The ITSM journey plan isn’t

just about selecting the right tool, or designing processes. It is about integrating people,

process, product and partner capabilities.

ITIL is the objective…not what it should achieve – No understanding of business impact

& priority. ITIL must be aligned with business priorities and business goals. It is all about

VOCR. ITIL metrics should not be too internally focused on efficiency and effectiveness but also

on business value and impact.

Plan, Do, Stop….No real continual improvement culture. ITIL isn’t an implementation or

installation project. It needs to create a culture of CSI.

The delegates all thought the ITIL practitioner program was a valuable initiative but felt that it must

help them deal with the types of discoveries they made today. One delegate was already familiar with

using the cards stating ‘we use the cards to engage with the various stakeholders to capture a

broad assessment of current resistance and to agree individual, team, management and

organizational actions for creating awareness, establishing a sense of urgency, identifying

risks, and agreeing countermeasures aimed at creating buy-in and overcoming resistance’.

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2 comments

Chris Chafunya commented on July 30, 2015 om 3:32 pm

I have been ITIL Service Manager from V2 and an ITIL Expert with v3, but this

ABC concept is a game changer and has opened my eyes on how to address

the VOCR in the context of the customer. Great stuff

Reply
You are here: Home » Blog » ABC – Still the number 1 success or fail factor for practitioners
 ABC – Still the number 1 success or fail factor for practitioners
Ritesh commented
Published on Tuesday 19 May 2015on
byMarch 22, 2017 om
Paul Wilkinson 2:58with
in Blog pm 2 comments

Hi Paul

It was nice meeting you at BCS London workshop and thankyou very much for

the cards pack it is really useful, I am currently working has Product Support

manager for Medical Software company and want to introduce my small service

desk team to ITIL Foundation course ,

I will carry out the exercises we did across the tables and see how they come

across.

Reply

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