Shaking the Box: Creating Indelible Organizational Change

Shaking the Box:
Creating Indelible
Organizational Change

Kirk Holmes
President, Holmes and Associates, Inc.
kirk@holmesinc.net
http://www.holmesinc.net

© Holmes and Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved 1

IT Organizations are Challenged

• Declining budgets

• Increasing customer demands

• Competition and outsourcing

• Fast technology change


Best Practice Programs
Can Be Hard to Sell

IT If you aren’t already following the Best
Staff Practices available with the money you
already have, then what kind of service
“Flavor of the day” are you giving me now?
“Process crap”

“I’m special” Customer
“Bureaucracy”

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


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)?


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

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


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


A Change Model You Can Use:
8 Steps to Cultural Change

8. Enshrined Culture
7. Consolidation
6. Quick Wins
5. Empowerment
4. Communication
3. Vision and strategy
2. Coalitions
1. Urgency
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
Baldrige National Quality Award Criteria
A tool for understanding and managing components of culture
http://www.quality.nist.gov/

Organizational Profile:
Environment, Relationships, and Challenges

2 5
Strategic Workforce
Planning Focus
1 7
Leadership Results

3 6
Customer and Process
Market Focus Management

4
Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management


Try The Baldrige Framework

Example of Using a Self-Assessment Workshop

• Brief 1 day self- Self-Assessment Categories:

assessment or LEADERSHIP
• The reward and recognition system is
long term program aligned with our business and quality
• Discussion goals and accomplishments are
publicized and shared
• Commitment • Our vision is shared and
• Collaboration 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)


Using “the Spread” to
Understand the Culture
• People learn
LEADERSHIP from each
WORL
D
other
CLASS
100
81-100 81-100 • Strengths are
Optimistic
80
61-80 61-80
affirmed and
Self- 60 built upon
Assessment
40
41-60 41-60
• Weaknesses
Ratings
20
21-40 21-40 are
0-20
Pessimistic0-20
challenged
• Honesty
0
0% 100%
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100 0% 50% 100%
%

% of Responses usually
Falling into each
Rating Band
prevails


SCENARIO 3: The First
Self-Assessment

WORLD 100
CLASS 81-100 81-100 81-100 81-100
81-100 81-100 81-100 81-100 81-100 81-100
80
61-80 61-80 61-80 61-80 61-80 61-80 61-80 61-80
61-80 61-80
Management 60
41-60 41-60 41-60
Summit 41-60 41-60 41-60 41-60 41-60 41-60 41-60
40
Self-
21-40 21-40 21-40 21-40 21-40 21-40 21-40 21-40 21-40
Assessment 21-40
20
Ratings 0-20 0-20
0-20 0-20 0-20 0-20 0-20 0-20 0-20 0-20
0
0% 40% 60% 80% 100 0% 0%100%100 0% 40%100%50% 0% 100% 0% 100% 50% 0% 50% 100%
0% 20% 100% 50%
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 20% 0% 80% 100 0% 50% 100% 0%
0% 60% 100% 100%
0% 0%50% 100% 0%0%
100% 50% 100%

% % %
% of Responses Falling into each Rating Band


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 Raising the Stakes
• Scope
• Participation
Inserting the Wedge
• Process integration
• More training
• Investments


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


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 Data centers lead the way
their way represents best in ITIL implementation
practice
“We need our uniqueness “We need more audits and
because we know our zero tolerance for non-
customers best” compliance.”
SVP and Consultant do SVP and Consultant do
most of the talking at virtually no talking
Summit


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

OLD TRANSFORMATION
 Lingering instability  69% reduction in # of
 High customer service events
costs  73% reduction in MTTR
 New fixes never fixed it
ITIL  Almost defect-free
 Getting worse! Implementation
Total Durations Per Month
13 data centers # Events Start Pilot
# Events Total Durations Per Month and hdqts Per Month
Per Month Dev &
Deploy
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





Thank You!

Change the culture
and you can World Class
change your world
Technology

Kirk Holmes Process
Holmes and Associates, Inc.
(301) 998-6108
People
kirk@holmesinc.net
http://www.holmesinc.net


Shaking the Box: Creating Indelible Organizational Change

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