Intelligent DisobedienceA service dog idea for

service management

Ivor Macfarlane

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30+ years of Help Desks

• Cool New Idea– ITIL® selling point in early 90s

• Became de rigueur –Seen as expensive necessity

• Deskilling, outsourcing, and offshoring–All intended to reduce the

costs

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Automation and self-service

• Technology taking over from people

• Expect work to reflect home

• New generations expect phone app, not phone call

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Change in Standard+Case balance

Rob England’s excellent perspective on routine and exception situations

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Changing nature of remaining calls

• Less calls but (way) more effort on each one

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Effect on Service desk roles

• Understand and adapt – when justified

• Obedience to script -> innovative

• Room for judgment and innovation again

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Intelligent Disobedience

• 1930s guide dog idea

• Not absolute

– Code words

– Boundaries

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Brief word about the opposite

• Stupid obedience

• Can we find people as smart as labradors?

• Ever been seen in ITSM?

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Service Management disobedience

• Not about anarchy

• Innovation with constraints

– Parameters

– rules about breaking rules

– Parameters and rules are dynamic

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Context is everything

• What is right sometimes is wrong other times

• Need to explore the context

• Judge relevance

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Some simple examples

• Discovery

• Knowledge

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Making it work

• Empowerment

• Like standard changes?

• Documentation

– Turning discovery into knowledge

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Front line staff need

• Awareness

• Boundaries

• Data and information

• Recognition and reward

• Support

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Management’s role

• Biggest single factor for success

• “First do no harm”

• Give support

• Facilitate This picture deliberately

left blank

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Making and letting good guys work

• “Make it so” culture

• Judge by intention

• As well as by results

• Judge over time

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Facilitate - Learning and practice

• Experiential learning and thought experiments

• ITSM has experience of how:

– Workshops for changeconfiguration etc

– Service rehearsals

– Incident & problem reviews

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Be Intelligent Disobedience aware

• Don’t try and plan for everything

– Be aware of the break even points

– Accidental culturalimposition

– Knowledge management

• But also don’t be a virgin every time

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Innovation should feed Knowledge Mgt

• Customer service innovation can redefine normal

• Learn, capture, document and make available

• Basis for procedures & training

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Management support (Leadership)

• Back up the decisions made

• No blame culture

– To keep 90% success

– Praise the 10% good try

• Encourage conversationand cross fertilisation

• Value near misses

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The challenge?

• Getting intelligent staff isn’t difficult

• Getting appropriate management might be

• Seeing cost benefit of innovation …… but requires understanding

• Space to perform

• Knowledge management

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Resources and Contact information

• White paper http://freshservice.com/resources/

• Rob England’s Standard+Case Websitehttp://www.basicsm.com/standard-case

• Some of my blogs– http://www.macfpartners.com/?cat=3

– http://allthingsitsm.com/category/life-as-i-know-it

Ivor MacfarlaneEmail: ivor@macfpartners.com

Twitter: @ivormacf

+44 7725 706617