Shaking the Box: Creating Indelible Organizational Change

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Shaking the Box:

Creating Indelible

Organizational Change

Kirk Holmes

President, Holmes and Associates, Inc.

[email protected]

http://www.holmesinc.net

© Holmes and Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved

mailto:[email protected]


IT Organizations are Challenged

• Declining budgets

• Increasing customer demands

• Competition and outsourcing

• Fast technology change

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Customer

IT

Staff

If you aren’t already following the Best

Practices available with the money you

already have, then what kind of service

are you giving me now?

Best Practice Programs

Can Be Hard to Sell

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The Culture Challenge: How do you transform your organizational culture to embrace best practices without major new funding?

“Process crap” “Flavor of the day”

“Bureaucracy”

“I’m special”


YOU Are Changing Places

• 3 organizational change scenarios

• Which one of the following three leaders

would you rather change places with

(inheriting their situation and adopting

their plan/approach)?

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Scenario 1: Executive Push to

Fully Implement ITIL

Deputy CIO for infrastructure (data centers, network, operations) embraces

ITIL wholeheartedly and has carte blanche for ITIL from the soon-to-retire CIO

•Executive plan is to move quickly and aggressively:

• Put entire Ops leadership team and employees through ITIL training

• Require contractors to train their employees through contract requirements

• Perform Gap Analysis (internal only) against ITIL and defines roadmap

• Target Incident, Service Desk, Change, Config, Release Management

• Lock down the desktops and freeze the baseline as they implement

virtualization

• Take back control from rogue business unit operations that cause major

disruptions through unplanned and invisible changes

• Not formally engage customers executives in Phase 1 in order to ensure that

the Ops team has positive results to show before they engage (credibility)

• Use proof of reductions in cost, improvements in stability, and improvements

in operational response

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Scenario 2: Mid-Level Manager

Focuses on Narrow Slice of ITIL

Mid-level data center manager in an investment bank

owns servers running major trading applications

• Bootstrapped knowledge of ITIL

• No success in getting any funding, executive support, or peer

support for “process crap”

• The manager’s plan is to:

• Engage with the most important IT Customer

• Make component availability visible to everyone through proofs of

concept and vendor demonstrations

• Trace availability to the component level and tie to services

• No money for training, tools, or process reengineering

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© Holmes and Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved 7

Scenario 3: Voluntary Process &

Technical Transformation

Senior VP of Operations for a national service provider

• Predecessor’s best practices program had just FAILED • History of strong financial success (“what problem?”)

• Little control over key operations functions

• History of non-cooperation between functional silo’s

• Data centers spread all over the country serving business Divisions

• Executive plan is to enlist his entire management team in voluntary process transformation

• Use ITIL, PMBOK, etc but not explicitly refer to them

• No formal ITIL training or assessment is planned or funded

• Use limited consulting budget to coach, but depend on management team to buy-in and become the leaders

• Focus on business objectives


GROUP ASSIGNMENT

• Pick one of the three leaders you would

rather change places with (inheriting their

situation and adopting their plan/approach)

• Gather with others who made the same

choice

• Take 10 minutes to brainstorm:

• Biggest reasons you chose this scenario

• Biggest risks and concerns

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A Change Model You Can Use:

8 Steps to Cultural Change

1. Urgency

2. Coalitions

3. Vision and strategy

4. Communication

5. Empowerment

6. Quick Wins

7. Consolidation

8. Enshrined Culture

From J.P. Kotter’s “Eight Steps to transforming your organization”, as depicted in “Information Technology Infrastructure Library®, Service Transition.” TSO. 2007


STEP 1: Establish a Sense

of Urgency

• Storm on the horizon

• Metrics

• “OH NO” moment

• Inspire desire to create a positive outcome (altruistic motivation)


Kirk’s Favorite Change

Tool #1

11

1

Leadership

2

Strategic

Planning

5

Workforce

Focus 7

Results

3

Customer and

Market Focus

6

Process

Management

4

Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management

Organizational Profile:

Environment, Relationships, and Challenges

http://www.quality.nist.gov/

Baldrige National Quality Award Criteria

A tool for understanding and managing components of culture


Try The Baldrige Framework

• Brief 1 day self-assessment or long term program

• Discussion

• Commitment

• Collaboration

Self-Assessment Categories:

LEADERSHIP

• The reward and recognition system is

aligned with our business and quality

goals and accomplishments are

publicized and shared

• Our vision is shared and

communicated such that everyone

knows where we are going and how

we plan to get there (e.g., products

and services, quality, customer

service, business success)

Example of Using a Self-Assessment Workshop


Using “the Spread” to

Understand the Culture

• People learn from each other

• Strengths are affirmed and built upon

• Weaknesses are challenged

• Honesty usually prevails

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% of Responses

Falling into each

Rating Band

0% 100%

LEADERSHIP WORL

D

CLASS

Self-

Assessment

Ratings 40

0

20

60

100

80

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100

%

0-20

21-40

41-60

61-80

81-100

0% 50% 100%

0-20

21-40

41-60

61-80

81-100Optimistic

Pessimistic


SCENARIO 3: The First

Self-Assessment

% of Responses Falling into each Rating Band

0% 100% 0% 100% 0% 100% 0% 100% 0% 100% 0% 100% 0%

WORLD

CLASS

Management

Summit

Self-

Assessment

Ratings

40

0

20

60

100

80

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100

%

0-20

21-40

41-60

61-80

81-100

0% 50% 100%

0-20

21-40

41-60

61-80

81-100

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100

%

0-20

21-40

41-60

61-80

81-100

0% 50% 100%

0-20

21-40

41-60

61-80

81-100

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100

%

0-20

21-40

41-60

61-80

81-100

0% 50% 100%

0-20

21-40

41-60

61-80

81-100

0% 50% 100%

0-20

21-40

41-60

61-80

81-100

0% 50% 100%

0-20

21-40

41-60

61-80

81-100

0% 50% 100%

0-20

21-40

41-60

61-80

81-100

0% 50% 100%

0-20

21-40

41-60

61-80

81-100


Step 2: Guiding Coalition

• Heroic missions

• Personal

• Something bigger

• Shared

commitment

• Geographic dispersion and lack of

cohesion can be a huge challenge


Step 3: Vision and Strategy

Where do you start?

• Conduct assessments, Gap

Analysis (ITIL and/or other

frameworks)

• Focus on Points of Pain, clear

Customer impact, and ROI


SCENARIO: Phasing Led to

Initiatives


Step 4: Communicate

MULTI-MODAL MESSAGE


SCENARIO 3

Communication Keys

• Public affirmation

• Clear communication of expectations

• Opportunity for feedback and discussion

• Focus on the personal stakes (WIIFM)

• Shuttle diplomacy

• Cool names are cool


Step 5: Empower Action

• Go beyond talk to action

• Individuals, Teams, Executives

• Train, Train, Train

• Accountability

• Big promotions/bonuses

• Demotions/termination of roadblocks


Step 6: Quick Wins

• Not too big and not too small

• Noticeable and important

• Don’t forget all of the dimensions


Step 7: Consolidate Gains

• Continue executing the plan

• Expand

• Scope

• Participation

• Process integration

• More training

• Investments

Raising the Stakes

Inserting the Wedge


Step 8: Enshrine the New

Culture

• Embed the new way of doing business • Language

• Processes

• Documentation

• Tools

• New hires

• Celebrate

• Focus on future • Continual Service Improvement (CSI)


Cultural Guiding Principles

• Focus on the things that we can control

• Align all efforts and activities around the business objectives

• Align new transformation tasking with interests, passion, expertise, and existing tasks of employees and managers

• Hit dates

• One team with one common goal; Collaborate

• Leverage existing operational framework

• Prioritize

• Zero tolerance of defects

• Make incremental, tangible progress but understand long-term goal

• Involve all employees: All Hands On Deck!

• Celebrate progress!


What Happened in Real

Life?

• Scenario 1: Senior Executive Push to

Fully Implement ITIL

• Scenario 2: Mid-Level Manager Focuses

on Narrow Slice of ITIL

• Scenario 3: Enterprise-wide Voluntary

Process & Technical Transformation

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Scenario 3: How Fast Did

Things Start?

Within 60 days:

• Support from Subsidiary President

• Personal initiative leadership by 100% of senior

management team

• Committed participation from >30% of field

employees

• Strong support and collaborative process

development with other functional disciplines


Key Cultural Differences

BEFORE AFTER

Each data center says

their way represents best

practice

Data centers lead the way

in ITIL implementation

“We need our uniqueness

because we know our

customers best”

“We need more audits and

zero tolerance for non-

compliance.”

SVP and Consultant do

most of the talking at

Summit

SVP and Consultant do

virtually no talking


SCENARIO 3 Business Results

• Reduced capital expense by over $25 Million

• Increased Business Unit satisfaction

• Decreased MTTR

• Market leadership

• Consolidation and streamlining

• New rewards and recognition

• New leadership core

• Harmony


SCENARIO 3: Avoided $25

Million Project

# Events

Per Month

Total Durations Per Month

Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct


OLD TRANSFORMATION

Lingering instability

High customer service costs

New fixes never fixed it

Getting worse!

69% reduction in # of events

73% reduction in MTTR

Almost defect-free ITIL

Implementation

13 data centers

and hdqts



# Events

Per Month

Total Durations Per Month

Dev &

Deploy

Start Pilot


Change the culture

and you can

change your world

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Thank You!

Kirk Holmes Holmes and Associates, Inc.

(301) 998-6108 [email protected]

http://www.holmesinc.net

Technology

Process

People

World Class

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.holmes-inc.net/

Shaking the Box: Creating Indelible Organizational Change

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