Recommended Reading (Part 2)

Part 2: Recommended Reading

Who Moved my Cheese? by Spencer Johnson
The E Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber
In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters
The Balanced Scorecard: Transforming Strategy in Action by Robert Kaplan and David Norton
Good to Great by Jim Collins
Competitive Advantage by Michael Porter
Competitive Strategy by Michael Porter
Reengineering the Corporation by Michael Hammer and James Champy
Reengineering Management by Michael Hammer and James Champy
Principles of Scientific Management by Frederick Winslow Taylor
First, Break All the Rules by Marcus Buckingham
Now, Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham
Go, Put Your Strengths to Work by Marcus Buckingham
The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge
Organizational Learning: a Theory of Action Perspective by Chris Argyris and DA Schoen
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
Turn the Ship Around by L. David Marquet
It’s Your Ship by Michael Abrashoff

Comments

Four Service Characteristics

Recently I came across several articles by researchers and experts that laid out definitions and characteristics of services. ITIL provides us with a definition that can help drive the creation of value-laden services: A means of delivering value to customers by facilitating outcomes customers want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks. An area that ITIL is not so clear is in terms of service characteristics. Several researchers and experts put forth that services have four basic characteristics (IHIP): Intangibility—Services are the results of actions not things. They have no physical presence and represent a logical set of elements. One way to think of service is “work done for others.” Heterogeneity—Also known as “variability”; services are unique items because of the mechanisms used to deliver services, which is people. Because the people element adds variability, the service is variable. This holds true, especially for the value proposition—not eve...

What Is A Service Offering?

The ITIL 4 Best Practice Guidance defines a “Service Offering” as a description of one or more services designed to address the needs of a target customer or group. As a service provider, we can’t stop there! We must know what the contracts of our service offering are and be able to put them into context as required by the customer. Let’s explore the three elements that comprise a Service Offering. A “Service Offering” may include: Goods, Access to Resources, and Service Actions 1. Goods – When we think of “Goods” within a service offering these are the items where ownership is transferred to the consumer and the consumer takes responsibility for the future use of these goods. Example of goods that are being provided in the offering – If this is a hotel service then toiletries or chocolates are yours to take with you. You the consumer own these and they are yours to take with you. ...

The New Four Ps of Service Management

By Donna Knapp For years, people , process , and technology (PPT) was a widely recognized framework for balancing and integrating the components needed to achieve optimal performance and outcomes. In the ITIL v3 Service Design publication, this framework was expanded to the four Ps: people , processes , products , and partners . ITIL 4 has further expanded and evolved this framework to the four dimensions of service management. These four dimensions are collectively critical to the effective and efficient facilitation of value for customers and other stakeholders in the form of products and services. The four dimensions of service management are: Organizations and people Information and technology Partners and suppliers Value streams and processes. These four dimensions represent perspectives which are relevant to the whole service value system (SVS), including the entirety of the service value chain and all ITIL practices. Each ITIL practice is a set of organizational resources base...

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