81

7 Expert Insights on the

FUTUREOF SERVICE AND SUPPORT

2

7 Expert Insights on the

FUTUREOF SERVICE AND SUPPORT Contents

3The Future Is Bots: Two Perspectives on AI and Automation

• AI, Automation, and the IT Service Desk | Stephen Mann

• AI: Shifting Work and Shifting Skills | Roy Atkinson

107 Tips to Take Your Service Desk to the Next Level | Ryan Ogilvie

13Coping with Organizational Change: 4 Strategies to (Re)build Trust in the Workplace | Gregg Gregory

6Change Management in a DevOps World Greg Sanker

15Modeling Success: 9 Guiding Principles for Service Leadership Stuart Rance

17The Authentic You: 5 Steps to Becoming a More Effective, Engaging, and Authentic Leader | Julie L. Mohr

C L I C K / TA P O N T I T L E SB E LO W TO J U M P TO

A N Y A R T I C L E

3CONTENTS

The More-Obvious AI Use CasesSome AI use cases are easier to visualize than others. Three, in particular, are commonly talked about:

• Predictive analytics for incident management. Using data analytics to better understand what’s happening where, and where the risks and issues are, or will be. Of course, this also lends itself well to problem, change, capacity, and availability management, giving IT support staff a “crystal ball” capability that provides the proactivity needed to reduce the pressures of reactivity.

• Intelligent workflow. Firstly, using AI to understand which groups/people are best for particular issues or requests (and factoring in availability) and routing tickets accordingly. Secondly, better managing the customer journey, systematically and quickly, taking them through the most likely ways in which they will get the help they need.

• Demand planning. AI can accurately predict what will be needed—whether people, service capacity, new hardware and software, or other resources—in near real time. In a service desk context, this could relate to a spectrum of needs, from the relative busy-ness of the service desk at different times during the day, week, month, and year, to the purchase of additional products/services.

Helping with Self-Help and Knowledge ManagementSelf-help and knowledge management are two areas that IT, and the service desk, have traditionally struggled with. AI can help in a number of ways:

• Intelligent search and “recommendations.” A search capability, for both IT and end users, that comprehends context and meaning, and what has or hasn’t worked before, not just the existence of specific keywords. Plus, suggestions of things that will directly help or that might be of interest/use. Such AI-powered recommendation engines are what Amazon and Netflix already use to better serve the needs of their customers.

• Making self-help more consumable. For instance, through intelligent autoresponders where end-user emails are automatically responded to, by email, providing the most likely solutions. When a solution works, an embedded task automatically records the solution that worked and closes the ticket. It’s self-help via email, and on the end user’s terms, rather than them needing to visit the self-service portal on the service provider’s terms.

• Making the “process” of knowledge management easier for time-strapped staff. AI can be used to identify knowledge gaps. This might be new articles that need creating or existing articles that can’t easily be found or effectively used. AI can then help further through the automated creation of new articles from existing, recorded ticket resolutions.

AI, Automation, and the IT Service DeskWhile “AI, Automation, and the IT Service Desk” might not sound as interesting, or as crazy, as C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, artificial intelligence (AI) and the increased use of automation are poised to make the IT service desk a more magical place. Which is quite fitting given Arthur C. Clarke’s third law, that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

But this is more of an IT-support nirvana than it is an IT-support Narnia, with the use of machine learning and chatbots, in particular, poised to radically change how we think about and deliver assistance and services to the consumers of corporate IT services. AI and automation allow IT departments to create better customer-supporting solutions that:

• Speed things up

• Reduce costs

• Are potentially more effective than people-based efforts

• Deliver a better customer experience

The Future Is Bots: Two Perspectives

on AI and Automation

By Stephen Mann Principal | ITSM.tools and

Roy Atkinson Senior Writer/Analyst | HDI

4CONTENTS

Bringing Support Capabilities to People Rather than People to the Static Support CapabilitiesAI-powered autoresponders, such as chatbots and virtual assistants, bring intelligent self-service to your customers. Consider:

• Chatbots can answer simple, and some complicated, questions, learning as they work. They can also be used as service desk “concierges,” undertaking taking an initial level of data capture and/or triage before passing the end user to a service desk agent if needed.

• Virtual personal assistants (VPAs) can augment what people already know or facilitate them in doing the things that they need to do. Chatbots or other bots can be engaged with via voice-based VPAs thanks to natural language processing: for instance, a service desk agent could simply request “Close all tickets related to the New York office network issue.”

Delivering a Better Customer ExperienceMuch of the above has the desirable side effect of delivering a better customer experience to both end users and IT staff. However, AI can also do more “sensitive” things related to the customer experience. For instance, machine learning can be employed for sentiment analysis, either in real time during a chatbot session or to understand what transactional or seasonal customer satisfaction survey data really means.

There will, of course, be many other applications of AI for the IT service desk, some of which we can’t even imagine, let alone do, yet. How are you using AI for IT support already? What do you plan to do? Or are there operational issues that you’d like AI to help resolve?

AI: Shifting Work and Shifting SkillsAs usual, there’s a major gap between what the headlines say and what we’re experiencing in our daily work lives. If we were to take all the articles predicting “the end of work” at face value, we’d probably all be stockpiling food and water in a bunker. But it isn’t really like that. So, instead of guessing at the future, let’s look at the present to get some sense of what is going on.

How Has Automation Affected Headcount?

STEPHEN MANN is principal and content director at the ITSM-focused industry analyst firm ITSM.tools. He is also an independent IT and IT service management marketing content creator and a frequent blogger, writer, and presenter on the challenges and opportunities for IT service management professionals. Stephen previously held positions in IT research and analysis (at IT industry analyst firms Ovum and Forrester and the UK Post Office), IT service management consultancy, enterprise IT service desk and IT service management, and IT asset management. Follow him on Twitter @stephenmann.

To date, automation has led to a decrease in headcount in just over 8% of organizations, while there has been an increase in headcount in about 12%. In 45% of organizations, headcount has been “reassigned to other tasks.” In some ways, this reassignment has been going on for years.

Take password resets, for example. The old model (still happening in many organizations) was that people would call in or visit the support center and their passwords would be manually reset. Password resets were, industry-

12%

8%

45%

35% ••••

Increased

Decreased

Headcount reassigned to othe tasks

No change

4CONTENTS

Bringing Support Capabilities to People Rather than People to the Static Support CapabilitiesAI-powered autoresponders, such as chatbots and virtual assistants, bring intelligent self-service to your customers. Consider:

• Chatbots can answer simple, and some complicated, questions, learning as they work. They can also be used as service desk “concierges,” undertaking taking an initial level of data capture and/or triage before passing the end user to a service desk agent if needed.

• Virtual personal assistants (VPAs) can augment what people already know or facilitate them in doing the things that they need to do. Chatbots or other bots can be engaged with via voice-based VPAs thanks to natural language processing: for instance, a service desk agent could simply request “Close all tickets related to the New York office network issue.”

Delivering a Better Customer ExperienceMuch of the above has the desirable side effect of delivering a better customer experience to both end users and IT staff. However, AI can also do more “sensitive” things related to the customer experience. For instance, machine learning can be employed for sentiment analysis, either in real time during a chatbot session or to understand what transactional or seasonal customer satisfaction survey data really means.

There will, of course, be many other applications of AI for the IT service desk, some of which we can’t even imagine, let alone do, yet. How are you using AI for IT support already? What do you plan to do? Or are there operational issues that you’d like AI to help resolve?

AI: Shifting Work and Shifting SkillsAs usual, there’s a major gap between what the headlines say and what we’re experiencing in our daily work lives. If we were to take all the articles predicting “the end of work” at face value, we’d probably all be stockpiling food and water in a bunker. But it isn’t really like that. So, instead of guessing at the future, let’s look at the present to get some sense of what is going on.

How Has Automation Affected Headcount?

STEPHEN MANN is principal and content director at the ITSM-focused industry analyst firm ITSM.tools. He is also an independent IT and IT service management marketing content creator and a frequent blogger, writer, and presenter on the challenges and opportunities for IT service management professionals. Stephen previously held positions in IT research and analysis (at IT industry analyst firms Ovum and Forrester and the UK Post Office), IT service management consultancy, enterprise IT service desk and IT service management, and IT asset management. Follow him on Twitter @stephenmann.

To date, automation has led to a decrease in headcount in just over 8% of organizations, while there has been an increase in headcount in about 12%. In 45% of organizations, headcount has been “reassigned to other tasks.” In some ways, this reassignment has been going on for years.

Take password resets, for example. The old model (still happening in many organizations) was that people would call in or visit the support center and their passwords would be manually reset. Password resets were, industry-

12%

8%

45%

35% ••••

Increased

Decreased

Headcount reassigned to othe tasks

No change

5CONTENTS

ROY ATKINSON is one of the top influencers in the service and support industry. His blogs, presentations, research reports, white papers, keynotes, and webinars have gained him an international reputation. In his role as senior writer/analyst, he acts as HDI’s in-house subject matter expert, bringing his years of experience to the community. He holds a master’s certificate in advanced management strategy from Tulane University’s Freeman School of Business, and he is a certified HDI Support Center Manager. Follow him on Twitter @HDI_Analyst and @RoyAtkinson.

Join Roy for session #105,

“4 Ways Automation

Will Help You—If You’re

Prepared,”at HDI 2018

See the Full Conference

Program

wide, about 30% of total contact volume. When automated password and identity management systems gained traction, the work shifted.

In many cases, the contact volume for password resets went up after automated systems were installed, but those days are—mostly—behind us as people have grown much more familiar with the whole process. Security questions and password requirements are commonplace in daily life, and people have learned how to deal with them. Improvements have also been made on the IT side of the equation, where the need for users to remember multiple passwords has been reduced.

The bottom line here is that 30% of the support workforce didn’t disappear as the result of automated password reset; instead, they moved on to more complex tasks. Year after year, case volume goes up in support, with the number of customers, applications, and devices cited among the reasons.

The work hasn’t gone away; rather, the complexity has increased.

Way back when help desks were just getting started (and dinosaurs roamed the earth), the model for Level 1 support was catch and dispatch: take the call, write down the description, and forward the case to someone else to work on it. Now we try to resolve as many incidents and requests as possible on first contact, using sophisticated service management tools, knowledge bases, remote control, and monitoring. The level of technical proficiency at Level 1 has increased, and the more complex demands have been met.

The question, then, is not whether work will still exist, but what will the work look like? What skills will be necessary as advanced technologies such as machine learning and AI take their places in the businesses we support?

Some of the skills future analysts will need include:• Knowledge capture and sharing• Complex problem solving and troubleshooting• Database queries and data visualization• Process and procedure development and documentation• Network configuration and troubleshooting• Collaboration in person and remotely• Understanding multiple frameworks and methodologies• Business relationship management

The need for good communication and customer service skills will not go away, but added technical components and methods of communication will change the delivery of customer service. Now is the time for directors and managers to chart their course into a more complex and technical environment for support. The ways in which we integrate automation, AI, and machine learning into service and support are important to us, to our customers, and to the future of the industry.

5CONTENTS

ROY ATKINSON is one of the top influencers in the service and support industry. His blogs, presentations, research reports, white papers, keynotes, and webinars have gained him an international reputation. In his role as senior writer/analyst, he acts as HDI’s in-house subject matter expert, bringing his years of experience to the community. He holds a master’s certificate in advanced management strategy from Tulane University’s Freeman School of Business, and he is a certified HDI Support Center Manager. Follow him on Twitter @HDI_Analyst and @RoyAtkinson.

Join Roy for session #105,

“4 Ways Automation

Will Help You—If You’re

Prepared,”at HDI 2018

See the Full Conference

Program

wide, about 30% of total contact volume. When automated password and identity management systems gained traction, the work shifted.

In many cases, the contact volume for password resets went up after automated systems were installed, but those days are—mostly—behind us as people have grown much more familiar with the whole process. Security questions and password requirements are commonplace in daily life, and people have learned how to deal with them. Improvements have also been made on the IT side of the equation, where the need for users to remember multiple passwords has been reduced.

The bottom line here is that 30% of the support workforce didn’t disappear as the result of automated password reset; instead, they moved on to more complex tasks. Year after year, case volume goes up in support, with the number of customers, applications, and devices cited among the reasons.

The work hasn’t gone away; rather, the complexity has increased.

Way back when help desks were just getting started (and dinosaurs roamed the earth), the model for Level 1 support was catch and dispatch: take the call, write down the description, and forward the case to someone else to work on it. Now we try to resolve as many incidents and requests as possible on first contact, using sophisticated service management tools, knowledge bases, remote control, and monitoring. The level of technical proficiency at Level 1 has increased, and the more complex demands have been met.

The question, then, is not whether work will still exist, but what will the work look like? What skills will be necessary as advanced technologies such as machine learning and AI take their places in the businesses we support?

Some of the skills future analysts will need include:• Knowledge capture and sharing• Complex problem solving and troubleshooting• Database queries and data visualization• Process and procedure development and documentation• Network configuration and troubleshooting• Collaboration in person and remotely• Understanding multiple frameworks and methodologies• Business relationship management

The need for good communication and customer service skills will not go away, but added technical components and methods of communication will change the delivery of customer service. Now is the time for directors and managers to chart their course into a more complex and technical environment for support. The ways in which we integrate automation, AI, and machine learning into service and support are important to us, to our customers, and to the future of the industry.

CONTENTS 6

In the world of ITSM, the stakes have generally been much more pedestrian. But as the need for speed increases in the businesses we serve, we could learn a thing or two from the elite crews of automotive racing.

I’ve been involved with change management, in one form or another, for most of my professional career. I’ve been a change manager and attended more CAB meetings than I care to count. I’ve heard every objection and seen every trick in the book to avoid the CAB. (I may have even contributed a few myself back in the day.) But as IT systems have gotten increasingly complex, the negative impact of badly managed changes has grown exponentially, sometimes with catastrophic results.

Unfortunately, the response has often been a variation on a theme: ”If a little is good, a lot is better.” More rigid change policies evolved into heavy-handed threats of disciplinary action to be taken against change management refuseniks. Along the way, change management amassed unilateral powers wielded in the form of a CAB with singular authority to approve or deny changes.

What was the scope of these change juggernauts? The more we realized that any change could impact critical IT services, all changes fell under CAB review.

Let’s play a quick word association game. I say “change management,” and you say, “slow and bureaucratic.” I say “CAB,” you say, “Marathon meeting so painful, I’d rather have a root canal.”

Wow, you’re good at this.

One more time: I say “RFC,” and you say “Really!? (I have to) Face the CAB?”

Rockin’ the CAB, Old SkoolIf you go way back to the early days of computing—before the smartphone; before the PC; heck, before the fax machine—you find a fairly monolithic mainframe computing environment, where highly skilled developers were intimately familiar with every aspect of the hardware over which their programs commanded control. The architecture was well understood, and pretty much everything was under the control of developers. If changes didn’t work as expected, developers were often able to fix the error on the spot, and users would be none the wiser.

I admit it: I’m a fan of auto racing. I love how the teams work together, with practiced precision, to give their driver every opportunity to use her wits and skills to compete against equally formidable opponents. Engineering. Mechanics. Teamwork. Racing against the clock. Outwitting opponents on the track and in the pits.

My favorite racing is Formula 1. Open-wheeled cars mere inches apart, screaming down the track at over 200 miles per hour—this is no place for the faint of heart. The slightest mistake both on or off the track can mean disaster or worse.

Change Management in a

DevOps WorldBy Greg Sanker

CIO | State of Oregon, Department of Administrative Services

CONTENTS 7

in racing would be catastrophic, even life-threatening. It’s unthinkable to allow that level of risk without proper change management oversight, right?

Given the level of risk, let’s establish a change policy that states all changes must come to the CAB before implementation. Unauthorized changes will not be tolerated, and crew members who perform unauthorized changes will be immediately relieved of their duties and suspended, no exceptions. This isn’t a game, folks.

Next, we need a change manager. It must be someone who’s fairly knowledgeable, but without undue ties with the individual disciplines represented on the CAB. Let’s make the crew chief the change manager.

The CAB will be comprised of the heads of all the race disciplines: race strategy, fuel, tires, engine, suspension, chassis, driver welfare. These are the best of the best; a finer team of professionals could not be found.

We then need to establish CAB meeting frequency. Because of the nature of the race, it seems to make sense that changes would be reviewed on the same frequency as pit stops. That way, changes can be implemented in a systematic and orderly way during the normal pit. Think of it like a change window. All changes will be thoroughly reviewed and flawlessly executed, each pit a well-vetted release. This is starting to sound like a really great way to improve performance; pity those teams who just implement changes as needed!

The crew has been fully briefed: all changes must be reviewed by CAB and approved by the change manager. No unauthorized changes. But, as soon as the car gets out on the track, the driver is making unauthorized changes right and left.

The crew chief asks what he thinks he’s doing out there, making unauthorized changes. “Driving the car,” is the family-friendly version of his response. “We’re getting unauthorized changes to throttle position sensor (a.k.a. accelerator), multiple unauthorized gear changes, and untold numbers of unauthorized braking.”

I think you see where I’m going. If race cars ran at a few miles an hour, then you could possibly review all changes in a CAB-like fashion. But, in racing, like in business, speed is of the essence. Can you imagine a Formula 1 race team operating like the typical change management program? If you follow the logic that all changes have risk, with significant likelihood of negative impact, then you’d have to agree that race teams would have to review all changes. But that’s exactly how many organizations’ change management capability runs. Everyone knows just how silly it is, and yet it’s more common than you may think.

The reality is, this kind of change management simply doesn’t support the pace of change required by many businesses today. They just don’t have time for unnecessary drag, for time wasted tangled up in bureaucracy and delays. Change management has to match the rate of change required by the business it serves. Change must be managed, risk must be evaluated, and outcomes must be assured. But, really, does every change need to be formally reviewed in a CAB meeting?

As time went on, help desks emerged as the point of contact for users who experienced problems. Often, the first the help desk became aware of changes was when angry users called to complain. One of the bigger challenges was that of communication. The logical (though culturally radical idea at the time) solution was for development and operations to get together for weekly change meetings.

Development lifecycles were long—often six months, a year, or more—so getting together once a week to review upcoming changes was no big deal.

The basic concept of a weekly change meeting continues to this day in many organizations; it’s the foundation for many effective change management programs. The good news is, change meetings can do much to prevent unnecessary business impacts. Getting smart people together to discuss change implementations can help an organization avoid a lot of problems.

From a capability maturity standpoint, that’s both good and bad. Good, in that it’s improving service delivery and avoiding negative business impact. Bad, in that it can only do so much to ensure desired business outcomes are achieved. Bad too, that staff form a view of change management that it’s little more than a quality inspection point at the end of the development cycle, a last check before implementing.

If Old Skool Change Management Ran Formula 1Imagine, if you will, a world in which car racing adopted traditional old skool change management to manage changes. I think you’d agree that the slightest mistake

8CONTENTS

watched a Formula 1 pit crew, it’s a thing to behold, every move carefully choreographed and executed with precision. While the decision as to when to change tires and what compound to use is made by the crew experts, the process used to remove and install them is practiced again and again until pit crews can perform them rapidly and repeatedly.

In change management terms, standard changes are established for changing tires. Standard changes are worked out over time to ensure maximum performance and accuracy. Once approved, standard changes are executed as needed in daily operations.

3. Chassis adjustments. Adjustments to the chassis are somewhat more complex and require considerable understanding of driving conditions, aerodynamics, and automotive engineering. In short, adjustments are not to be undertaken without proper consideration.

However, the ability to quickly achieve the desired results, the process and guidelines for chassis adjustments have been distilled down to their essential elements and are executed in a consistent manner—what’s known in change management as a change model.

Change Management at the Pace of BusinessEver heard the phrase built for speed? Change management, in business as well as automotive racing, must be built to meet the needs of the business. Not the other way around. Let’s take a look at some of the “unauthorized” changes in my story above.

1. Gear changes. The transmission in a race car is designed to optimize engine power and torque, adjusting, as needed, to speed and track conditions. Put another way, the race driver has been delegated the authority to change gears as he sees fit to optimize performance.

Drivers have a deep understanding of the machines they drive, and it would be unthinkable to suggest that they require permission to shift gears. If they don’t know when and how to change gears, they don’t belong in the driver’s seat.

2. Tire changes. Tires are a critical component of competitive racing. They wear quickly under the intense punishment of competitive racing. Tires are changed at pit stops as a matter of course. If you’ve ever

In practice, change models serve as templates, of sorts, for ensuring that similar activities are performed in a consistent and predictable manner. Change management has the opportunity to review and influence the model, but CAB input is generally not required for changes.

DevOps and Change ManagementI hope you’ll agree that reviewing every change is an old model, whose time has passed. But have new methodologies like DevOps rendered change management obsolete?

I frequently talk about change management in my writing and speaking. I hear from a lot of people who are struggling with these and a lot of other change-related issues. A lot of organizations are still struggling with getting a handle on basic change management. Others see DevOps as a way to accelerate implementation of business-required changes and put an end to traditional change management with its infernal CAB.

Change-related risk must be managed. That’s a fundamental precept of IT: do no harm to the business. But somewhere along the way, many organizations got the notion that to do that, every change had to be

9CONTENTS

GREG SANKER is an ITSM blogger, speaker, and practitioner with decades of global IT experience with organizations ranging from Fortune 10 tech giants to the public sector. After leaving the corporate life, Greg headed the service management office at a state agency, where he led the adoption of a basic change management program. Follow him on Twitter @gtsanker and on LinkedIn.

Join Greg for session #405,

“A Crash Course in

Change Management”

at HDI 2018

See the Full Conference

Program

reviewed. Even a passing knowledge of the work of W. Edwards Deming points out the limitations of last-check change management. In Deming’s words, “Cease reliance on mass inspection to achieve quality. Eliminate the need of inspection on a mass basis by building quality into the product in the first place.”

Notice that Deming didn’t say to cease managing quality. He said that quality had to be built in in the first place. I contend that inspection-before-implementation change management has limited value and represents the most basic form of change management. Rather than stepping up inspection at this last stage—that is, all changes must come to CAB—change management must be preoccupied with building quality into the overall development process. To mature, change management must shift its focus away from individual changes and begin looking at the overall value chain, especially ensuring that desired outcomes are being achieved in the process.

10CONTENTS

Realization 1: Focus on the Service Desk as a Capability, not a Team

Many IT organizations view the service desk as a Tier 1 function. This dated thinking limits what the service desk is capable: IT ends up staffing with a Tier 1 mindset, which means low-value activities that could be better served via automation. IT needs to think in a more service-oriented way to be relevant to the business it serves.

Take into account that the service desk deals with all manner of issues, enhancements, and questions every day. If we thought of the service desk as a capability to provide service rather than a Tier 1 function for tracking tickets, IT would be better positioned improve its relationship with the business, moving toward a partnership that adds value.

If you think about this role from a big-picture perspective, the skills required to be technically savvy with a high degree of customer service skill are far from entry level.

Realization 2: Stop Thinking Like IT and Think Like the BusinessA key challenge for the service desk when it comes to business focus is understanding the business’s objectives and having enough business acumen to prioritize work effectively and help the business reach those objectives. Begin by starting a real dialogue with the business on day-to-day functions, responsibilities, and expectations. What applications are important? What functions or times of the year are critical? This type of conversation lets the business know that you really have an interest in helping it be successful. Frankly, when your business wins, you win, too.

In many cases, the business simply wants high-quality service as fast as possible. This is where you need to take another look at how you provide service. Are you centralized? Global? Do you have a self-service capability?

Businesses are increasingly expecting IT to automate, ensuring that service can be provided quicker and more accurately for low-impact and low-urgency requests. To be able to accommodate that mindset, the service desk requires a level of service awareness so that activities can be prioritized appropriately and actioned by the service desk. Streamlining processes, automation, and self-service will be crucial activities in this regard. Your service desk is positioned perfectly to identify what requests can be automated and what content is fit for purpose from knowledge management, but only if it has this awareness.

Realization 3: No Win Is Too SmallThis all sounds great, but what about a real-world example? An organization I was with was expending an enormous

One of the challenges of managing a service desk is seeing past the volume of work to improve service delivery. While good intentions are laudable, they aren’t going to be enough to make the lasting improvements that your business might be looking for. To continually add value, focus on three key areas: business focus, analytics, and communication.

Think about your current challenges today. Jot a few of them down and take a closer look at each one. Focus less on what the issue is and start thinking about why it’s an issue. In many cases, you’ll find the roadblocks that exist are a result of your inability to understand, communicate, and measure your interactions with the business.

BUSINESS FOCUSIf you take away nothing else from the discussion on business focus, remember that we have to shift our thinking on how we support the business. Businesses in our current economic climate must be nimble and scalable to be competitive. As service providers, we too need to think in terms of business deliverables rather than IT objectives. To do that, we need to provide service in a way that lines up with the objectives of the businesses we serve.

7 Tips to Take Your Service

Desk to the Next Level

By Ryan Ogilvie Supervisor, Client Services | Inter Pipeline

11CONTENTS

wasn’t used, a monthly report would identify those people who weren’t using it and the application would be uninstalled.

ANALYTICSYou’ve probably heard that “you can’t manage what you don’t measure.” The trick is deciding what needs to be measured. Just because you can measure something doesn’t mean you need to. Deciding on what you need to improve is paramount. From there, to make continuous improvements, you need to leverage the data to be able to make informed decisions on next steps.

Realization 4: Quantify Your Customer ExperienceWhen you look at the challenges that you jotted down before, think about how you’re able to measure what’s happening around those improvement initiatives. Do you have too much data or not enough data? The first step in achieving success in this area is to right-size your analytics.

The first step in this journey is to understand why you are measuring in the first place. Think about where you want to end up, but also keep this simple if you want to achieve your goals. Have an honest look at where you are right now to determine where you want to be. Don’t judge or try to explain where you are; just come to terms with that reality. The next step is to pick three KPIs to support your business’s objectives and measure them. If you’re waiting for perfection, it will never arrive. Make sure you’re agile in your approach so that you can adapt and overcome as required through this process. Remember that this is a marathon rather than a race and that you will need to have some perspective on

what your analytics produce. In some cases, it will look worse before it looks better, but understanding this and communicating it to your stakeholders effectively is critical in the improvement initiative.

Looking back at my example, the organization I was with focused on three KPIs that would support the business’s service delivery expectations. We chose volume of requests and incidents, assignment by group, and mean time to resolution. By identifying baseline metrics, we built a roadmap to improvement based on where we were and where we wanted to be. Part of making this successful was ensuring that the service desk was intimately involved with the KPIs. To do this, we established scorecards that would be reviewed monthly. Additionally, we ensured that the business goals and KPIs became part of the team’s annual goals and part of performance reviews. It was also made clear that this was not a goal that would ever be achieved; the needle would always be moving. The improvement cycle would be reviewed quarterly to ensure continual service improvements were made.

COMMUNICATIONMany people immediately assume that communication only accounts for the delivery of information, but communication is a two-way street. The best place to start improving communication is by becoming a better listener. When getting information from the business, repeat what you’ve heard for clarity. Understanding what they’re saying will allow you to properly capture the information and ensure that you aren’t capturing details based on what you think they should be.

amount of time on granting people in the business access to Microsoft Visio and Project. Since cost was associated with this access, a requester was required to outline a detailed business case, submit it to their manager, and create a service request that required approval from an application owner. Then, either Visio or Project was provisioned to the requestor. Sounds pretty complicated, right?

In general discussions with the business around how well application procurement was going, this very topic came up several times as an issue. We decided that since we had the capability to monitor usage, and that almost every business case would be approved, having four or more people look at each request was simply not providing any value and was overly time-consuming. To streamline this process, the approval and installation was automated. If the application

12CONTENTS

was wrong than right. But that was okay. I knew where we needed to start.

Many of the issues had to do with the fact that there were people on the service desk who didn’t understand the business’s activities, didn’t know who to escalate issues to, or didn’t know how to assign priority to requests and incidents. The first step was to re-educate those on the service desk team who needed that help to reduce or eliminate any of those unknowns. Once we got a handle on working better with the business, we implemented a survey. We kept it simple, with four or five questions. Each week we would follow up with all participants to let them know that their feedback was appreciated and that we were addressing issues that came up.

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT IS KEYThe three improvement streams don’t flow independently; they intersect. The important take away is that we always take the time to look back so that we can move forward to make a lasting improvement. The key is to make small iterative improvements and communicate the successes. Having these discussions allows for transparency and opens dialogue for continued improvement.

Realization 5: Not All Conversations Will Be EasyIn any customer-centric role, you’ll have people who are simply not happy with their service. Shying away from this reality doesn’t help. Get the problem out in the open, and outline a plan to correct it or prevent it from happening again.

Realization 6: People Like to Be Treated Like…PeopleWhenever you can, take some time to ask the people you’re supporting how things are going. You will likely find out valuable information that might not otherwise be shared with support. When people feel you’re genuinely interested in them and not simply attempting to push some IT triviality on them, they are more likely to share information.

Realization 7: Don’t Forget to Communicate InternallyWhile most improvement initiatives focus on improving communication with the business, don’t forget to communicate internally with your own support teams. Silos exist or develop in the absence of good collaborative climates, so be the champion for collaboration. This will help to further streamline support as well as improve other service management capabilities that require the collaborative work of all support teams.

Going back to my earlier example, when I began with that organization, I knew full well that there were issues with service delivery (the IT team told me so). To quantify the issues and to ensure that I was getting the full picture, I interviewed 100 people from the business to ask them what worked well and what did not. Unfortunately, far more

RYAN OGILVIE is a service management practitioner with Inter Pipeline in Calgary. In his current role, he helps Inter Pipeline realize value by leveraging service management best practices. Aside from his own blog, Service Management Journey, he has guest blogged for TSO, AITS.org, and various ITSM vendors. He was recently recognized by HDI as one of the Top 25 Thought Leaders in Technical Support and Service Management and is an HDI Featured Contributor for 2018. Follow Ryan on Twitter @ryanrogilvie.

Join Ryan for session #103,

“3 Tips to Take Your

Service Desk to the

Next Level,”at HDI 2018

See the Full Conference

Program

13CONTENTS

With this overlap, team members began jockeying for position over the different ways to do things. This was causing tension within the team, and it was getting noticed by David’s senior leaders. Even the CIO had gotten word about what was taking place on David’s team.

The thing is, David had been in his management position for more than five years. His team, once performing well, now seemed to be crumbling right in front of him. What happened?

About three months earlier, the company went through a reorganization, and David took on one full team and part of another in addition to his current team. He went from a team of seven to more than fifteen direct reports. While some of the challenges could be attributed to the reorganization and his increased workload, the biggest challenge was now the lack of trust among the team, especially the newer members.

Melding a New TeamAny time there’s a significant change on a team, it is critical to recognize that the team moves back to forming, the first stage of building teamwork. This requires the team to develop ground rules and expectations as well as build vulnerability-based trust.

David had high levels of trust with his original team. Many of the newer members felt that they weren’t really included, thus causing the friction and distrust of each other as well as of David as the team leader.

How many times have you heard of a well-run service desk team being thrown into chaos after an organizational change? It’s a story as old as corporate America: a

group of employees and their manager have become a well-oiled, well-performing machine, and suddenly this team receives an influx of new members as other groups are broken up and reassigned to new projects. Stress levels rise for everyone; the new members are trying to figure out their places on the team, while the existing members take on a self-protective attitude, jockeying for a favorable position. Meantime, the manager is suddenly juggling increased responsibilities, trying to get familiar with new people, and managing everyone’s expectations. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

While managers can’t always predict how their teams will change over time, especially when companies make organizational changes, they can flex with the changes and use the tools and strategies they already have to regroup and strengthen their team.

In David’s case, a chat with his manager made him aware that problems were brewing among his team. The senior manager pointed out the issue and gave him four can’t-miss strategies to rebuild the sense of trust and teamwork in his section.

David’s management style was confusing the heck out of his team. Once an on-the-ball leader who directed his service desk clearly and got them all working toward a goal, David’s actions seemed erratic lately. His directions to team members were unclear, and some of the tasks he assigned overlapped two members’ responsibilities in the workplace.

For example, in a recent meeting with Felicia, David gave her two action items regarding recently released service desk software. Just as he gave her the basic information, David’s phone rang and he took the call, motioning to Felicia to leave.

As Felicia walked out she was not completely clear on what she needed to do. This wasn’t unusual for her, or anyone else on the team. David had been giving assignments and then quickly moving on to other tasks. He had not been keeping the team in the loop on what others were doing. When team members talked, they noticed there was moderate overlap in what they were doing, and that was having a negative effect on their overall teamwork.

Coping with Organizational

Change: 4 Strategies to (Re)build Trust

in the WorkplaceBy Gregg GregoryCEO | Teams Rock LLC

14CONTENTS

Building TrustEmpowered with these strategies, David began to rebuild his team’s workplace cohesion. He held a lunchtime “get to know your fellow team member” gathering at a nearby restaurant, encouraging team members to sit next to members they didn’t know well. He also reorganized the partnering structure, pairing existing team members with new members so they could immediately discuss how to handle various service desk issues as they arose.

Once he recognized the situation that was forming among the newly organized, larger service desk and put in place strategies to build trust between all the members, David’s team was able to develop a stronger sense of trust, which is the first building block to great team success. With a clearer sense of purpose among all of the team members, David’s assignments made more sense to them and eased the amount of hands-on work he had been doing.

Great organizations emphasize this kind of team building constantly and augment their efforts by planning employee training and development on a regular basis. As trust is elevated, team and organizational culture is strengthened, employee retention is fortified, and productivity increases. Trust is the foundation to teamwork in the workplace—both with the leader and with peers—and building trust is everyone’s responsibility.

1. Partner new team members with existing ones. Pair up members with someone they don’t know as well. A couple of times a year, rotate partners. This isn’t just a method to help new members learn the ins and outs of the team process; it makes both new members and older members accountable to one another, and the team as a whole.

2. Schedule an outside team activity. Organize an activity outside the office like a night out for pizza and bowling, an afternoon of paintball, or a similar fun, relaxed activity. While this may sound counterintuitive to making a team more productive, the more team members can connect with each other outside of the workplace, the more engaged they will become as a team at work. That builds overall trust and, consequently, a stronger team.

3. Share personal history. From sharing a photo of their new baby to discussing their lifelong devotion to a professional sports team, team members can build a great deal of trust in each other by sharing personal histories. This kind of conversation opens up team members’ vulnerability, and when everyone becomes vulnerable, trust strengthens.

4. Laugh at yourself. Don’t be afraid to use self-deprecating humor and laugh at yourself once

in a while. Many great comedians have made a career out of directing the laughter at themselves, pointing out their own foibles and flaws. When a leader shows some of their own weaknesses to the team members, reveals some of their misgivings or imperfections, they won’t be laughed at. Rather, their trust factor is bolstered.

GREGG GREGORY is the teambuilding mastermind America needs today. A Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) with more than twenty-five years of experience at all levels in corporate America, Gregg’s experience goes beyond expectations. His expertise and articles have appeared in hundreds of business and trade publications, including SellingPower.com and Boardroom Magazine, as well as appearing on Blog Talk Radio. Follow Gregg on Twitter @TeamsRock, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Join Gregg for session #306,

“5 Behaviors of a Cohesive

Team”at HDI 2018

See the Full Conference

Program

15CONTENTS

1. Focus on value. It seems obvious doesn’t it? Everything you do must create value for your organization, and its customers, or the effort is wasted. If you’re doing things that don’t create value, then you need to ask yourself why, and you need to seriously consider what you can do to reduce this wasted effort.

2. Design for experience. Value is essential, but don’t think about it too narrowly. The bottom line is vital, but customers don’t just want financial value. Every interaction with a customer or a user contributes to their experience of your services. It’s an opportunity to impress, and you need to make the most of it. In an increasingly competitive marketplace, making sure you give your customers the best experience of IT that you can will help you to retain them.

3. Start where you are. If you need to improve how you work (and every organisation has some areas that need development), then don’t just throw away everything you’ve done already and start again. There will always be some things you’re doing well. Make

sure you know what they are and build on them. This approach is not only less wasteful than starting from scratch, by preserving the value you already have, it also helps you to keep your people on board. They are much more likely to support the changes you need if their previous contributions have been appropriately valued.

4. Work holistically. Remember that when you make changes, they can have a wide impact; if you haven’t carefully considered this impact, it can be far wider and less helpful that you had anticipated. This is because a local optimization can have repercussions further down the line that result in a worse service overall. So, don’t improve one process, or one team, or one piece of technology, without thinking about how the proposed change may affect everything around it. You need to understand the impact on the whole system before you make changes.

5. Progress iteratively. Experience tells us that multiyear improvement projects that involve large investment and only deliver value after a very long time rarely deliver the value that was anticipated. So, it’s better not to do that, even if you’re planning a big change. Instead, remember that even a very large improvement can be broken down into multiple small changes that will each result in measurable gains. If you approach big improvement projects that way, you can create some value quickly and continue to create value at every step of the way.

If you’re involved in any aspect of service management, then you are probably familiar with the many challenges involved in delivering services effectively. It’s all too easy to get bogged down in the detail and focus on what’s currently a challenge rather than the things that are actually most important to your organisation and your customers. This is where guiding principles come in.

It’s impossible to overstate the value of appropriate guiding principles in helping help you make effective decisions, decisions that will ensure you deliver value to your customers. Ideally, these will be principles that everyone in your team knows and accepts, which means that you need you make the time to discuss them with your team, and write them down. In other words, you need everybody to contribute to a shared vision of what you want to achieve.

Here’s a brief overview of the nine ITIL guiding principles for you to think about and discuss with your teams. Adopting them can make a big difference to how you approach your work, and can increase the value you create for your customers. In fact, increasing the value you create for customers is the subject of our first guiding principle.

Modeling Success: 9 Guiding

Principles for Service Leadership

By Stuart RancePrincipal | Optimal Service Management Ltd

16CONTENTS

6. Observe directly. Nothing beats first-hand experience, so don’t just rely on reports and abstract data. Go to where the work happens to see for yourself. Talk to the people doing the work and ask them about it.

7. Be transparent. When you hide things from people, they inevitably find out in the end, and the loss of trust can have a greater impact than whatever difficulty you were trying to conceal in the first place. If you’re transparent with your customers, your suppliers, and your colleagues, you can build and maintain an environment of trust which allows everyone to work together to maximise the value you create.

8. Collaborate. People who work in silos can get very good at performing specific tasks. But when tasks change, or something requires a skillset outside their repertoire, they’re instantly at a

STUART RANCE is a consultant, trainer, and author with an international reputation as an expert in IT service management and information security management. He was an author for ITIL Practitioner, lead author of RESILIA: Cyber Resilience Best Practice, and author of ITIL Service Transition. Stuart is chief examiner for RESILIA, an examiner for ITIL, and an instructor for ITIL, CISSP and many other topics. Follow him on Twitter @stuartrance.

Join Stuart and Lou Hunnebeck for session #107,

“Modeling Success: Service

Leadership’s 9 Guiding

Principles”at HDI 2018

See the Full Conference

Program

disadvantage. Since you can’t do everything yourself, that’s something that’s going to happen a lot. So, organisations need to foster collaboration. When people collaborate, everyone benefits. You create more value for yourself, more value for the people you collaborate with, and more value for your mutual customers and partners. People working together can create much greater value than people working in silos.

9. Keep it simple. Finally, keep it simple. Don’t do anything that isn’t necessary. Focus on the simple things that create value, rather than on following complex processes that have been in use for a long time and that nobody remembers the reason for.

ITIL’s guiding principals have worked in practice for countless IT organizations, but you don’t have to take my word for it: try them for yourself, and see what a difference it makes to you, your organization, and most of all your customers.

17CONTENTS

You might think that authentic leadership is just about being yourself. On the one hand, you would be right, but on the other hand, it isn’t that simple. Do you have a clear understanding of who you are and what’s important to you? Are you the best “you” that you can be? Who do you want to be? How will you change?

Step One: Love YourselfEveryone has a story. We’ve all had bad experiences or been in less-than-favorable situations. These stories define who we are; they become threads in the fabric of our lives. But when bad things happen, it can bring fear or doubt into our minds. Or, even worse, we can live with anger and resentment. The key is to get through all of those challenges and feel at peace with the person you become. Learn to love who you are—all the warts, blemishes, and imperfections.

We’re often our own worst critics, holding ourselves to impossible standards. For most of us, our strengths are not omnipresent but shine in moments. It’s unreasonable to expect that we’re going to exceed everyone’s expectations all the time. Instead, we can learn to tap into our greatness more often and develop the ability to treat ourselves with fairness.

Also, it’s important to surround ourselves with people who believe in us and encourage us to become better. Often the people we love and trust the most put us into a box built of what they expect or perceive as our limitations. The people with the greatest influence in our lives should be people who believe that we can do anything. Listening to negative voices changes our perception

of ourselves. Learn to love yourself and your authenticity will shine.

Step Two: Let Go of PerfectionWhat are you holding onto in life that is holding you back? Were you fired from a job unjustly? Do you still hold onto anger? Many of us have destructive behaviors that take away from our success—the “chip” on our shoulder that we can’t quite let go of—but we’re all human, and we all make mistakes.

“Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.” –Eckhart Tolle

The illusion of perfection manifests itself in different ways. The first is holding ourselves to a higher standard or an impossible level of quality. In this case, we don’t view our achievements as a success but, instead, focus on the little things we did wrong as signs of failure. The second illusion of perfection is placing blame instead of accepting responsibility. To lead requires that you take ownership of mistakes, accept accountability, and find a path to success. The third illusion of perfection is holding onto anger (of ourselves or others) instead of finding forgiveness.

We need to become comfortable with being imperfect and love it. No one is perfect, and no matter how hard we try, we will never be perfect. Once we accept the inevitable mistakes and even potential failures, we can begin to see the world as one great big opportunity to learn about ourselves and others. Remember, forgiveness heals instantly.

We’re all unique. Not everyone leads the same way, and confidence as a leader comes from using techniques that are natural for you. This year, resolve to develop a leadership style that is not only effective but also allows you to feel comfortable being you.

What Is Authentic Leadership?Authentic leadership is not speaking whatever comes to mind. Authentic leadership is choosing your words carefully to encourage others to contribute and collaborate. Authentic leadership is not “my way or the highway.” Authenticity is about self-reflection and developing a deep understanding our motivations, aspirations, strengths, and weaknesses.

Authenticity is about self-reflection and understanding our motivations, aspirations, strengths, and weaknesses.

The Authentic You: 5 Steps

to Becoming a More Effective, Engaging, and

Authentic LeaderBy Julie L. Mohr

Author and International Speaker | JulieLMohr.com

18CONTENTS

Step Four: Clarify What’s ImportantValues are beliefs that are formed throughout your lifetime that guide your actions. Authenticity comes from defining your core values and living true to those values. Identify one or two words that are at the core of who you are—your core identity, your core purpose. Authentic leadership is about leading from your authentic self. What you value about yourself, the fundamental beliefs that are important to you, are at the root of your authentic self. It is important to walk the walk, do what you say, and deliver on what you promise. Back up your words with your actions and set the example for others.

Step Three: Take Care of Yourself FirstWhat do you do every day just for you? We all have things in our lives that cause stress: family, children, traffic on the highway, a car that won’t start, a leaky roof. It seems like as soon as we tackle one unexpected situation, another lurks around the corner. All of these stresses take a toll on our physical and mental health.

It’s important to take time for ourselves and put into our lives things that help us to be the best person we can be. To be healthy, physically and mentally, we need exercise, healthy food, adequate sleep, and a diversity of experience. If we only live in stressful situations day after day, we are likely to empty the tank and impact our long-term health. A side effect of not taking care of ourselves is that affect the world in ways we regret later. Are you easy to anger or snap at others? Are you present in the lives of your coworkers or children, or are you so distracted that you barely focus? It is important to love who you are, but you must also learn to respect yourself.

“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.” – Mahatma Gandhi

Don’t fall into the trap of comparing yourself to others. The key to personal improvement is to focus on improving you. Are you taking care of yourself better than you were yesterday? Are you managing this project better than the last project? Don’t compare yourself to someone else. It sets unrealistic expectations and adds more stress to your life. Remember, we’re all on our own journeys and at different points in our learning and development. Set goals for your improvement based upon your journey and your goals in life.

Clarify What’s Important

Seize the Opportunity

Love Yourself

Let Go of Perfection

Take Care of Yourself

First

19CONTENTS

Step Five: Seize the OpportunityTo learn to lead authentically requires you to take risks and try new things: volunteer in your community, start a project to tackle a problem in your environment, create something. To make a difference as a leader, you must take the opportunity to engage in something that makes a difference.

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” – T.S. Eliot

The more experiences you have in your life, the greater your ability to tackle new challenges. Each experience, each chance you take, teaches you something about yourself and

helps you to understand your strengths and weaknesses. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”

Living with AuthenticityTo lead with authenticity requires to you live your life with authenticity. Learn to love yourself and let go of the mistakes of the past and illusion of perfection. Clarify what brings meaning to your life and take care of yourself so that you can lead others. As you identify new opportunities to explore life, you will become more confident in who you are. But remember, real change is hard work. Be present. Be passionate. And be authentic.

JULIE L. MOHR is a dynamic, engaging leader who brings integrity and passion to everything she does. Through her books and articles and speaking, consulting, and teaching engagements, her purpose is to change the world through thought-provoking dialogue and interaction. Julie has a BS in computer science from The Ohio State University and an MEd from the University of Phoenix; she is currently pursuing her PhD in management and organizational leadership in Information Systems and Technology from the University of Phoenix. She also is an ITIL Expert, Certified Help Desk Director, and Certified Governance IT Professional. She is an HDI Business Associate and teaches training and certification classes for service and support professionals. Follow Julie on Twitter @JulieMohr, on YouTube, and on LinkedIn.

Join Julie for session #206,

“5 Steps to Becoming a

More Effective, Engaging,

and Authentic Leader,”at HDI 2018

See the Full Conference

Program