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
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
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