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Shift Happens: How?

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Demand is increasing.  Dynamic or changing business requirements are a norm.  Business and customers must have quality services provisioned fast.  Ok … we get that.  Now let’s think about the service provider and what their condition or state is.  Some service providers are stuck in an organizational structure and management style that propagates an isolated us vs. them type of culture.  Others have legacy overburdened outdated systems.  Disparate and replicated tools between networking, storage and other functional teams including service desks generally create more havoc than business value.  Many efforts including data center transformation, new sourcing models, cloud computing and more have helped to some extent.  Even after these very costly initiatives many service providers experience a resistance to change and find they are working within a very rigid environment.

Rigid structures, rigid process or rigid anything will not enable a service provider for success.  Some organizations are so rigid that they can not bend and they can not be forced out of shape.  How then will we ever be able to meet the dynamic increase in performance that is required to provision services?  We can change tools, change process and can even change strategy. Service providers could try one methodology after another but if we do not change the culture required, performance could be impossible.  A cultural shift towards change, flexibility and adaptability is required.  You can not change people.  You can create an environment that triggers change in how people behave.   That behavior results in a cultural shift.

High performing IT service providers have crossed the cultural divide and made that shift happen.  Is a cultural shift needed in your organization?  Just knowing this and just wanting this to happen is not enough. One approach for “how” to make that happen is for service providers to understand that providers can’t just talk the talk when it comes to Organizational Change Management (OCM).  For those organizations who are trying to achieve agility and achieve continuous delivery, continuous deployment of service, OCM could be the difference between success and failure.
Successful OCM strategies include:
  • Agreement on a common vision for change - no competing initiatives.
  • Strong executive leadership to communicate the vision and sell the business case for change.
  • A strategy for educating employees about how their day-to-day work will change.
  • A concrete plan for how to measure whether or not the change is a success - and follow-up plans for both successful and unsuccessful results.
  • Rewards, both monetary and social, that encourage individuals and groups to take ownership for their new roles and responsibilities.
For information training and certification for DevOps and Agile, or workshops relating to Organizational Change Management go to www.itsmacademy.com
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