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