“Gatekeepers” as enablers? With a well-executed governance model, they certainly can be.

Webster defines a gatekeeper as “a person who controls access” (www.m-w.com, n.d.) while dictionary.com says, “a person in charge of a gate, usually to identify, count, supervise, etc., the traffic or flow through it” (www.dictionary.com).  From a business perspective, one could say a gatekeeper is a “junior officer (such as a secretary) who has the authority or ability to control access to a decision maker or to certain information” (www.BusinessDictionary.com).  Colloquially, however the gatekeeper has taken on the role of “a member of a decision-making unit or social group who acts to prevent or discourage by controlling the flow of information and/or access as would a secretary who does not put calls through to the decision maker” (www.AllBusiness.com).

So, how does the idea of “gatekeeper” transform itself from being a controller of access, which is a good thing, to a preventer or discourager of access, which is a bad thing?  It is no wonder why we demonize the term “gatekeeper” and staff would naturally deny they are “gatekeepers” when they really are.  In a non-collaborative culture, a “gatekeeper” is viewed as an inhibitor to progress – the perception of being watched which may lead to a fear of failure and then ultimately extreme risk aversion.  This is the death of innovation.  Why do anything if it’s only going to be blocked anyway?  To quote Office Space, “That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.” 

 

In a collaborative culture, a “gatekeeper” is really good governance.  So, let’s change the conversation and change the culture.

 

From a literal perspective, we know who the gatekeepers are; and many are performing necessary and productive roles in governance.  According to ITIL Service Strategy and other models, Governance is basically three things:

• Evaluate - This refers to the ongoing evaluation of the organization’s performance and its environment. This evaluation will include an intimate knowledge of the industry, its trends, regulatory environment and the markets the organization serves.
• Direct - This activity relates to communicating the strategy, policies and plans to, and through, management. It also ensures that management is given the appropriate guidelines to be able to comply with governance.
• Monitor - The governors of the organization are able to determine whether governance is being fulfilled effectively, and whether there are any exceptions. This enables them to take action to rectify the situation, and also provides input to further evaluate the effectiveness of current governance measures.

 

Clearly, good governance is part of any well-run organization because it promotes continuity, consistency, and integrity.  We must guard against turning governance into “bad” gatekeeping by running it as inhibitors and preventers.  That is a two-way communication: first governors must prove they are not “bad” gatekeepers by doing their jobs of evaluate, direct, monitor with consistency and integrity.  Second, once management and staff see the consistency of decision-making they must view this “gatekeeper” as good for the continuity, and ultimately the resiliency, of the organization.  The management and staff will begin to take risks and work hard enough to innovate without fear of failure or being blocked from success. The culture will move from merely seeking terminal value, which are desired goals or outcomes, to also seeking the instrumental value of desired modes behavior.

 

          In a collaborative culture the gatekeepers are “good.”  So, “Gatekeepers” as enablers?  With a well-executed governance model, they certainly can be.

Presenteeism - The new Work-Life balance or wasting company time?

Presenteeism has typically been examined in the context of decreased productivity by employees coming to work sick.  The term is considered the opposite of absenteeism and has received a good deal of attention in the management and human capital realm.  Mostly, presenteeism is considered when studying employees who come to work with the intention of being productive, but cannot be because of illness.  Lately, there has been attention given to employees who come to the office well enough to work but do not because they are engaging in personal business on the job.  Is this part of the new “work-life balance” paradigm as we blur the lines between personal and professional lives?  How much has technology, flexplace/flextime, and amenities such as on-site daycare or fitness centers created “borderless” divisions between work, home, leisure?  And, how much does your organizational culture tolerate this in the name of employee satisfaction, employee development, or innovation?

Tolerance for this work-life boundary crossing is usually part of the organizational culture and rarely part of a formal policy.  This type of culture allows employee autonomy to negotiate these boundaries.  This is a culture that acknowledges, respects, and even supports an employee’s life outside the office.  Research shows allowing a certain amount of presenteeism may be beneficial and indeed some human resource practices acknowledge the need to assist employees in their work-life integration as personal business could cross into the workday.

Studies show employees spending about one hour and twenty minutes in an eight-hour workday engaged in non-work activities.  Qualitative research suggests that non-work related presenteeism may be due to convenience, time constraints, timing, or boredom.  If individuals are engaging in these activities on work time because of such things as boredom, then non-work related presenteeism is indeed a human resources issue.

Presenteeism costs productivity and thus costs a company money.  Alternatively, what of the employee who takes calls at home or after work hours?  These might be the same employees who cross work-life boundaries all day.  Are they practicing presenteeism in their home life?  Should it become an accepted cost of doing business?  And is engaging in non-work related presenteeism a necessary evil for achieving work-life balance?  Is presenteeism the new paradigm for this balance? 

Let me know your organization’s tolerance for presenteeism.

FG

 

D’Abate, C. P. (2005). Working hard or hardly working: A study of individuals engaging in personal business on the job. Human Relations, 58(8), 1009–1032.

D’Abate, C. P. & Eddy, E. R. (2007). Engaging in personal business on the job: Extending the presenteeism construct.  Human Resource Development Quarterly, vol. 18, no. 3, Fall 2007.

 

IT Service Management - Significant Components of the Service Culture

Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) implementations “require” a Service Culture in order to be truly effective.  You may read my dissertation to find the citations on this, but here I ask you take my word for it.  What is Service Culture, how is it measured, and how to we get there?  Basically, how do we “mature” the Service Culture like any other component of Service Models like ITIL, CMMI, or CobiT?  Some of my initial data gathering and analysis is beginning to tell the story.  The Organizational Culture Domain (OCD), which I have written about in my dissertation and earlier Blogs, proposes a model and an instrument to help answer those questions.   

To refresh, the OCD models several components of organizational culture that have significance to ITSM:

• Organizational Tension - The basic trust in a change or upheaval and the amount of "mourning" the organization requires for the old way
• Coordination and Communication - The need for or extent to which key departments and individuals work together to improve the organization
• Organizational Commitment - Convincing those in the organization to be committed to the new vision and their roles in achieving it
• Organizational Competency - Learning the analytical and interpersonal skills managers and employees will use in the Change effort
• Organizational Leadership - The demonstration by top management of visible and consistent support for change.  There is a component for executives to assess their leadership call Executive Leadership.
• Management Innovation - Management support for the business application of creativity
• Organizational Innovation - A culture of continual service improvement
• Organizational Continuity - Retention of cultural fundamentals important to organizational change, such as purpose or mission, core technologies, and key resources and skills.

Recently, I collected data with OCD Assessment instrument and have some preliminary findings.  In the data sample of IT Professionals, there are statistically significant relationships between OCD Components and Organizational Process Maturity.  In other words, maturing an Organization’s IT Services through ITSM can be augmented by also “maturing” certain cultural components of the Organizational Culture.

There were relationships across almost all of the OCD Components, but the strongest relationships were in Organizational Leadership and Organizational Tension.  So what does that tell us?

·        First, the relationship between ITSM maturity and the Organizational Leadership component of Organizational Culture shows having an “agile” organizational structure, leaders who consider organizational-wide impact of decisions, and the ability to seek the input of team members are all significant variables to building the Service Culture.

·        Second, the relationship between ITSM maturity and the Organizational Tension component of Organizational Culture shows having the ability to respond to shifts in the larger society and the larger culture as well as the ability to respond to decisions of Senior Leadership are also significant variables to building the Service Culture.

We can conclude a few things from these findings.  First, this is an initial sample and more data will refine the results and yield more confidence.  More data will lead us to determine industry averages and eventually industry best practices.  This will enable the examination of specific organizations to determine where they may fall along the Organizational Cultural Maturity continuum as compared to comparable industry or government organizations.  Second, some of the things we might believe are obvious are indeed statistically significant and deserve our attention.  This will focus the Organizational Change and Transformation models to important targets of opportunity to affect Organizational Culture change that go hand in hand with Organizational IT Maturity through IT Service Management.

FG

Can we Measure and Mature the IT Service Culture?

I say, "Yes we can."  In earlier post I discussed The Organizational Culture Domain © (Granito, 2011) as an add on to existing maturity models to extend and complement those models and answer the question: "What is meant by Service Culture."  To refresh your memory, The Organizational Culture Domain (OCD) © consists of eight components:

• Organizational Tension - The basic trust in a change or upheaval and the amount of "mourning" the organization requires for the old way
• Coordination and Communication - The need for or extent to which key departments and individuals work together to improve the organization
• Organizational Commitment - Convincing those in the organization to be committed to the new vision and their roles in achieving it
• Organizational Competency - Learning the analytical and interpersonal skills managers and employees will use in the Change effort
• Organizational Leadership - The demonstration by top management of visible and consistent support for change.  There is a component for executives to assess their own leadership called Executive Leadership.
• Management Innovation - Management support for the business application of creativity
• Organizational Innovation - A culture of continual service improvement
• Organizational Continuity - Retention of cultural fundamentals important to organizational change, such as purpose or mission, core technologies, and key resources and skills.

Each one of these components can be measured in the OCD Organizational Culture Assessment instrument © (Granito, 2011) and then assessed for "maturity" as any other domain in maturity models such as CMMI and maturity frameworks such as ITIL and CobiT.  I would welcome my readership taking that survey at this link.  The survey consists of about 80 questions (Yes...a bit long) and is anonymous. 

Here is a sample of questions from each category:

·         Organizational Tension: Your Organization is able to handle new demands as a result of changes Senior Leadership makes.

·         Coordination and Communication: You are satisfied there is adequate oral and group communication in your organization.

·         Organizational Commitment: When employees receive administrative directives or decisions with which they do not agree, they conform but offer dissenting opinions.

·         Organizational Competency: Your group has a record of consistent accomplishment in the organization.

·         Organizational Leadership: The Leadership Culture encourages leaders to build relationships that cross organizational boundaries.

·         Management Innovation: Management does not punish those who challenge norms.

·         Organizational Innovation: Your Organization uses coaching and training to mentor team leaders.

·         Executive Leadership: You seek out and use new or improved work methods. (You are presented with this component of the survey if you classify yourself as “management.”)

Once I assemble a significant number of responses, I will publish the results.  This should enable readership to see more clearly the significant factors behind the service culture and ultimately drive innovation and value in IT Services.

FG

Granito, F.A. (2011). Organizational Resilience and Culture: A Model for Information Technology Service Management (ITSM). (Doctoral Dissertation).

A Culture of Respectul Discussion

I took some time off from professional existence during the Holidays and spent quality time with my 88-year-old Italian mother.  Physically she is a bit frail, but mentally still very sharp.  Being a woman of faith she does not fear death and as a result, we can talk rationally about this and many other things.  And although she only has a High School education, she is a critical thinker and enjoys a good conversation about religion and secular issues.  We got into a discussion about the so-called “War on Christmas.”  She pointed out the concept separation of Church and State was first espoused by Jesus.  I could argue, but the observation was so scholarly I decided to give her the benefit of the doubt. 

She refers to the New Testament account when the Jewish Pharisees attempt to trick Jesus into choosing to pay the Roman Tribute or not.  This was a hot-button issue of the time – much like the “fiscal cliff” discussions today, but without the crucifixions.  Jesus asks to see a coin and proceeds to ask whose image is on it.  “Caesar,” is the reply.  Specifically that of Tiberius.  Jesus’ reply is what my mother refers to as the genesis of the separation concept.

Some read the phrase "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's and render unto God that which is God's" as unambiguous at least to the extent that it commands people to respect both state authority as well as God's authority.  After all, when we donate to charity in the name of our religion or some other purpose, we do so with Government Issue currency. Furthermore, we can legitimately argue that secular law is derived from religious law.  The Ten Commandments come to mind. 

With one straightforward counter-question, Jesus skillfully points out that the claims of God and Caesar are mutually exclusive. A great example of faulty logic called “the false dichotomy.”  This is not an “either/or” question.  The Pharisee's try to make Jesus choose: If one’s faith is in God, then God is owed everything; Caesar’s claims are necessarily illegitimate, and he is therefore owed nothing. If, on the other hand, one’s faith is in Caesar, God’s claims are illegitimate, and Caesar is owed, at the very least, the coin which bears his image.  My mother interprets Jesus' response to mean some things are owed the government and some things are owed because of our devotion to our spirituality...whatever the latter may be.  Hence the "establishment clause" of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution. 

What does this have to do with Organizational Culture?  Other than the reference to the concept of faulty logic, really nothing. Except, we can have serious and respectful discussions with people who have very different views from our own - whether it is between the Jews and Romans of Jesus’ time, within our own organization, or even with my 88-year-old mother.

Happy New Year!

 

FG

The Business Value of ITIL - The Instrumental Value of the Service Culture

Last time I wrote about the “Displacement of Goals” which is turning things from what were once intended to provide instrumental value into things that merely provide terminal value.  Our IT Service Management Culture (or “Service Culture”) has done the same thing.  We struggle to justify the business value of ITIL and in many cases rely on metrics related to the terminal value of our IT Enterprise rather than devote critical thought to instrumental value we provide to the business.  Too often we measure success in classic terms: time between failures, time to recovery, reducing the time to process changes, or mitigating the incidents related to change.  These may be instrumental for IT, but they are terminal for the Business.  We must be more concerned with IT Business alignment: being a line of business in support of organizational strategy and goals.

Notwithstanding the possible inconsistencies among business units which can be a challenge, IT should focus on the delivery of services and not products and how those services contribute to business goals rather than measuring availability of components such as servers, networks and applications.  As ITIL has matured and grown there is now evidence that support its benefits and value to the business, such as achieving good governance.  Additionally, the benefits of implementing ITIL best practices include consistent and repeatable processes for business continuity/risk management; controlling IT costs; improving internal user satisfaction; and ensuring regulatory compliance.  We are now in the “post-industrial society” where the knowledge worker is becoming more important than the service worker.  In the knowledge based economy, the ability to exploit and automate intangible assets, such as knowledge and business processes, has become far more decisive than simply managing static physical assets.  So ITSM practitioners can and need to make a clear case for the business value beyond mere cost savings, improved “processes,” and component availability.  The information is there.  The message needs to be delivered.

So, what does that business value look like?  Clearly, IT’s role as an equal partner in determining the most appropriate business strategy has increased as a result of ITIL, but business value falls generally into two categories: development and delivery of the proper IT Services to support the organizational business strategy; and more efficient and effective running of those services.  Let’s look at two examples of each starting with the most tangible: efficient and effective services.

For this tangible value of ITIL, the following assumptions are made for an organization:

 

·         All employees cost $50 an hour

·         Your organization comprises 500 Users

·         The total number of Incidents is 5,000 per year

·         The average time to fix an Incident is ten minutes

·         A working year has 200 days

 

Following the implementation of Configuration Management, the Service Desk has a much greater insight into the relationship between users, configuration items and incidents. The three people assigned to incident can be reduced to two, resulting in a savings of $80,000. 

The less tangible is showing the value of development and delivery of the right services at the right time to support the organizational strategy.  This comes through the more business-value focused ITIL version 3.  Where ITIL version 2 focused on processes, version 3 focuses on business value. This shift attempts to improve the linkage between the business needs of the organization and the IT operational processes that enable them. Hence, version 3 has a more strategic approach than the tactical approach of version 2.  For example, Service Portfolio Management, as described in ITIL V3, is responsible for the investment IT makes in its Services across the Services’ entire lifecycle.  It forces IT to answer questions like:

·         Who is the customer

·         What is the market space

·         What are the opportunities that IT can support the business to exploit

The business value here is to focus IT to think as a business partner and service provider rather than just an IT technology shop.  ITIL v3 and the IT Service Management service culture provides business value by providing the paradigm through which IT uses technology and processes as a means rather than an end.  IT can support and compliment (and sometimes drive) business strategy by designing and deploying the right services.  The business value is being a business partner rather than merely a technology provider.

We need to make this message clear and ensure the business understands this value and the Service Culture understands their role in providing that value.

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Doherty, P. (2009).  Service Portfolio Management: Optimizing the Business Value of IT. White Paper Service Portfolio Management.  Computer Associates.

Harris, M. D. & Herron, D. E. & Iwanicki, S. (2008). The business value of it: managing risks, optimizing performance and measuring results. [Books24x7 version]

Šimková, E. and Basl, F. (2006).  Business value of IT.  Systems Integration.

The benefits of ITIL, (2008).  Pink Elephant

What is IT-business alignment? (2012).  Pink Elephant

The Cover Sheet on the TPS Report - The Dysfunctions of Bureaucracy

If you are a fan of the movie Office Space (and who isn't?), then the "Cover Sheet" reference is almost legend.  This sub-plot to the story portrays a funny but all-too-real example of the dysfunctions of bureaucracy: the displacement of goals (Merton, 1957).  A rule or process orginally implemented to provide instrumental value now becomes merely followed to provide terminal value.

Without knowing the entire back story, let's assume the cover sheet originally had instrumental value.  It could have been for identification or routing purposes; or perhaps for some other practical reason.  The movie shows the overwhelming need to use the cover sheet, but the players really don't know why.  In fact the viewer gets the impression the cover sheet is an end in itself that has no practical value. Indeed, by now the cover sheet has ceased to have the instrumental value intended.  The measure of success is the mere presence of the cover sheet, not whether the cover sheet fulfilled its original purpose.

So, let's look at a real world example.  A present-day organization has implemented a training program.  The instrumental value is bring awareness to security: secure information systems and prevent unauthorized access.  In an environment growing in cyber-attacks, this is critical to business continuity.  At first, the metrics collected on this effort focused on the number of employees trained.  This is a relative measure of the instrumental value since we will assume the more employees trained means more awareness and thus more security.  This is arguable.  Over time, the organization has stressed completing training "early," that is before the required annual deadline.  The organization has lost the instrumental value and has focused on the terminal value: a competition and rewards system has been put in place to foster early training.  Click through the Powerpoints and check the box....success.  Just give me the numbers. 

I'm not sure whether the senior leadership who is stressing this effort actually knows, or can know, the actual effectiveness of the training.  Success is measured in only in the completion of training....and early.  Have incidents decreased?  Are employees more aware?  What of those numbers?  Here, the displacement of goals has led to the dysfunction of bureaucracy.  The employees are aware of the training, but they may not be aware of security.

We can have a good discussion about the instrumental value versus terminal value of Organizational and Process Maturity.  Sounds like a good topic for a future Channel entry as it relates to IT Service Management.

Did you put the cover sheet on the security training metrics report?

FG






Merton, R.K., (1957).  Social theory and social structure.  New York Free Press. Simon & Schuster.