Service Strategy & Tranformation

At the core of Service Strategy is the act of Transforming resources in to Valuable Services. Service Strategy represents Vision & Goals, Service design, transition and operations are progressive phases of the lifecycle that represent change and transformation. Continuous service improvement represents learning and improvements.  The Structure of ITIL Lifecycle is an organizing framework.

The ITIL Service Strategy uses the Systems approach which is based on the “4P Strategies” model defined by Prof. Henry Mintzberg. According to Prof. Mintzberg, “Strategy, is one of those words that people define in one way and often use in another way without realizing the difference”. One of the main reason why strategies fail is “because of the assumption that thought must be independent of action”. The key for Crafting Strategies is establishing intimate connection between Thought & Action.

4P Strategy merges formulation and implementation in to a fluid process of Learning through which creative strategies evolve.

·         Perspective gives the sense of purpose , direction, and governing set of Values. A Strategic Perspective articulates the business Philosophy of interacting with customers and the manner in which services are provided.  

·         Plan is often referred to an Intended Strategy; it is the deliberate course of action, charting path towards strategic objectives. Plan defines the organization, structure, policies, processes & methods for execution. 

·         Positioning becomes the mediating force between the Organization and the environment i.e. between internal & external context. Position describes the decision to adopt a well-defined stance.  

·         Patterns describe a series of consistent decisions and actions over time. They are the basis for Emergent Strategies, distinctive patterns in action reinforced over time by repeated success. 

All Strategy making walks on two feet, one deliberate, the other emergent.  The use of all 4Ps, recognizes both intended as well as emergent strategies.  Best practice service strategies mix these to maintain control while fostering learning; see the Big picture while deciding on details.

Prof. Henry Mintzberg describes the characteristics of Managing under the three dimensions of Art, Science & Craft-

Art encourages ideas & insights that give shape to Vision & paint the Big picture.  Walking on two feet, one leg on Perspective and the other on Plan helps us to define and articulate the Vision. Perspective provides the sense of Purpose & Direction to formulate the Vision and Planning takes us to chart out the concrete steps in terms of resources, methods & timelines to implement the Vision. This is can be compared to Art, where one needs to see the Big Picture and same time paints the picture with intimate knowledge of material in hand.

Science provides structure and order, through systematic analysis and logical steps. Science walks on Plan and Positioning to Create the outcomes in line with the articulated Vision. Plan defines the organization structure, roles, responsibilities, process and technologies Positioned to Serve the customer environment. Positioning becomes the mediating force between the Organization and the environment i.e. between internal & external context.  

And Craft makes connections between the intended strategy and the emerging patterns, building on tangible experiences. Craft Walks on the legs of Positioning and Patterns. Like a Potter who sits before a lump of clay on the wheel, while his hands are working on the clay, his mind is making connections using his past experience and future prospects to Create the best product. He is in harmony with the material at hand, feeling of intimacy, long experience and commitment to envisioned future product.  As we implement the Vision using a Plan and move to the operations run phase, everything may not work exactly as per the Plan i.e. as per the intended/deliberate strategies. Craft helps us to see the Patterns i.e. the emerging strategies and connect the dots to bridge the Gap between Vision & Execution, Theory & Practice, Knowing & Doing.

Copyright Sunil P Rangreji

What is Work?

When we think of work, what comes immediately to our mind is Performance and Results? No doubt, Work is closely related to performance and outcomes but if we try to understand what each one of us do on daily basis, we can clearly see that – All work is service work , We Serve one or the other person. Service is work done by a person or group for the benefit of another. From the standpoint of business, to work is to serve, no matter what the work involves. From the most microscopic level of one person’s job, all the way to the macro level of the organization’s delivery of value to its customers, Service is about Serving people. But, many times we don’t see the people behind those machines, we get lost in the technologies and the processes.

If we really want to enjoy our work, we should have a genuine desire to Serve. When I started my career, I learnt Service Management in addition to technology skills like Novell Netware, SCO UNIX etc and what still remains with me is Service Management.

What is Service?

Service is a series of processes or transactions aimed at providing Value to a customer. Many times, our focus is on transactions, on technology, process or metrics and we forget the Value creation. We bring life to Transactions by adding Value and making it a Great experience for Customers. It is the moment of truth when we Go beyond transactions & discrete events; step out to connect with the Big Picture and make it a real Great experience both for our customers and ourselves.

ITIL defines Service as “A means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks”

Service Management:

Value is derived by building specialized capabilities around resources like financial capital, infrastructure & information etc. Service Management is a set of specialized organizational capabilities for providing Value to customers in the form of Services. Capabilities take the form of functions, knowledge and processes. But just having the best infrastructure and world-class capabilities is not good enough; the connecting glue here is People. To add Value and bring Life to Service, one needs to go beyond the transactions and capabilities, it all hinges on the People with genuine desire to Serve.

Copyright Sunil P Rangreji

Bridging the GAPS

According to Peter Senge author of seminal book "The Fifth Discipline", -The Gap between my vision and current behavior holds the potential for creative change. The problem lies not in the gap but in failing to recognize and tell the truth about the gap. Until the gap between my Purpose, Vision and my current behavior surfaces consciously, no learning can occur.

Winning at any cost drives us to blind spots where we fail to recognize and tell the truth about this Gap between Vision and Reality. To learn, we need to acknowledge that there is something we don't know, we’re not good at. But in most corporations, ignorance is a sign of weakness; temporary incompetence is a character flaw. The overemphasis on competition makes looking good more important than being good. The resulting fear of not looking good is one of the greatest enemies of learning.

In response, our defensive mechanism takes over -like Avoiding the mistakes, risks & conflicts and Pretending to display best faces in public by manipulating information, numbers, position & relationships etc. Prof. Chris Argyris calls this "skilled incompetence," skillful at protecting ourselves from the threat and pain that come with learning, but also remaining incompetent and blinded to our incompetence.

Winning at any cost against Competition and developing defenses to display our best faces in public -the term that best symbolizes this is “competitive advantage.” Today, one hardly talks about strategy without using the language of competition.

The other reason why many organizations don’t see this Gap between Vision & Reality is because we still continue to carry the analytical mindset of Industrial era. The Command & Control model which was extremely successful in industrial era, still rules us in this Knowledge era. This past Success has put us on auto pilot rituals that are detached from Listening & Learning.

Even IT Organizations are not immune to this, the command and control model takes it’s root in the extremes of Specialization i.e. Heavy Technology bias which gives raise to functional Silo’s and Standardization i.e. Too much focus on Process leading to Rigidity.

Historically IT Organizations are Technology centric teams, right from the IBM mainframe days IT department was always organized around the technology functions like networking, computing, data center support etc. Even with distributed computing and internet computing the same structure continued but the business requirements and the pressure to align with business increased dramatically. In an effort to balance the business demands and the technology focus, IT Organizations started implementing IT Service Management best practices which produced very good results to start with. But over a period of time, on the other extreme, the Process controls and documentation have introduced lot of rigidity in the system and changes are seen only as quick fixes. Many times process and metrics are just used as a means to play the number games and show great results.

The Theory behind the Command & Control model is grounded in the analytical mindset of industrial era. It takes us on the path of linear thinking & problem solving; the focus is on series of discrete events within the technology silo’s, process boundaries & metrics. The reality is not a straight line but our mental model is driven by the Theories of Analytical mindset like an assembly line in the factory. The path of linear thinking which is focused on discrete events does not see the patterns and interconnections within the Big Picture.

ITIL V3 introduces us to this very interesting concept of Systems Oriented Service Management.

According to ITIL – Systems approach to Service Management ensures learning and improvement through Big Picture view of services and service management. It extends the management horizon and provides a sustainable long term approach. The Service Life cycle is a comprehensive approach to service management: seeking to understand its structure, the interconnections between all its components and how changes in any area will affect the whole system and its constituent parts overtime.

Copyright Sunil P Rangreji