Innovation is something that is rarely in abundance within IT organizations today. The vast majority of resources are spent merely "keeping the lights on." Even the capital investments and development projects that IT organizations undertake are typically pedestrian, realizing only incremental improvements rather than driving true innovation.

There are many reasons for this and certainly the long string of funding cuts in recent years has not helped the situation.  However, it is not funding that is at the center of IT's innovation problem.  The problem is a lack of imagination.

Information Technology organizations whose operational execution follow an IT strategy leveraging both service management and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) practices are much more likely to contribute, and be perceived as contributing, to their company’s business value.  A Service Oriented Organization (SOO) is one that has embodied the concept of running IT as a business leveraging service management practices across the complete portfolio of a company’s IT services. Becoming and excelling as a Service Oriented Organization requires that the organization have an IT strategy that addresses both IT internal customers AND the business’s revenue generating customers.  It is this latter area of focus on external customers that is of particularly high value to your company.

IT organizations are under attack.  Right now.  But you either don’t know it or are afraid to admit it.

You probably don’t think of your IT organization as having “competition.”  You are, after all, the sole-source provider of IT services to your business.  Aren’t you?

The reality, however, is very different.

If we recognize the need to create a culture which is ready to accept change as a constant then we need to be prepared to undertake the hard work of building a learning organization. Just as effective execution is a baseline for IT to engage and become intimate with the business, the ability of an IT organization to adapt and learn is a baseline for this ability to execute.

To build a learning organization you must develop specific personal and organizational capabilities. Once these capabilities are present, you can then consider how to adopt and apply models of organizational change management to your organization. It is possible to develop these capabilities as you plan for your IT Transformation initiative, but it is critical that your organization be prepared before attempting to execute such a large scale change.

Intimacy is not a word that is often used in IT organizations. But it should be.

Almost from the moment that the first computer was developed, there has been a divide between IT and "the business." Technology is intrinsically complex and requires a certain type of (typically non-business) person to make it function. For a long time, this worked – the business didn't understand what was going on and didn't want to. And the IT guys preferred to be left alone to play with their blinking lights.

But as technology became more and more entwined into the fabric of business, this divide became a problem. The business was now reliant on these blinking lights and the folks that made them run to deliver their core business services. And so began the long conversation about how to bring IT and "the business" together. Join us for this insightful look at how to create intimacy with your customers.

In this webinar, we will give you both the theoretical and the practical with key take aways for your own efforts.
itSMF On-Line Conference Programs Presents: Beyond Alignment: Why IT Must Create Customer Intimacy with Charles Araujo, CastlePointe.

People are naturally resistant to change. We prefer the pain of what we know to the fear of what we don’t. But overcoming this resistance and driving behavioral change is the key to a successful service management adoption. It is what must occur to transform your organization in a way that actually solves your most important business problems. Effectively leading organizational change is what will be the difference between your ITSM adoption having a lasting impact or merely being a “flash in the pan.”

In this brief thirty-minute webinar you will learn key insights about the nature of resistance, the resulting barriers to change and techniques that will help you overcome them to have a lasting impact. We will answer questions such as:

• Why your tool and process improvement efforts fail to deliver the full value you expect
• How you can break through change barriers such as inertia and apathy
• How to structure a team that can overcome these barriers and build momentum
• Why you must create a focused governance structure to protect your effort
• How to create deep engagement throughout your entire organization

The Four Things You Must Do to Lead Your Team Through a Transformation

I recently posted a column at ITSM Portal entitled, "The 4 1/2 Things You Must Do To Affect Change."  Here is an excerpt:

Why is it so hard to make changes stick in your organization? You go through the process of identifying inefficiencies or areas that will create a significant improvement in the delivery of services, you figure out a better way of getting things done - and then splat. People go to the training, they nod knowingly and they start trying to implement your better mousetrap. But inevitably, they slowly revert back to the old ways of doing things. Particularly in large IT organizations, making change stick may be one of the toughest challenges you must deal with if you truly want to have an impact and create lasting change.