Digital Leadership for Humans

Barclay Rae

This session

• What is leadership, and how is it more than just management?

• How do you develop leadership skills and competencies?

• Can everyone/anyone be a leader?

• How can organizations develop and leverage their people, skills,

and competencies to improve business performance?

Barclay Rae

Service Management Consultant since 1994

Writer and analyst

Director EssentialSM

ITIL4 Lead Author Team member

ITIL Practitioner co-author

Director (ex CEO), itSMF UK

SDI Associate and auditor

SDI standards co-author

Agenda

Background

1 Leadership

2 Communication

3 Automation

4 Supporting people…

5 New models and ways of working

6 Relationships

8 How do we change ?

9 Summary

IT Service Management is at a critical crossroads.

Roles and skills constantly change

Vocational disciplines must keep developing to meet changing needs

People need to develop to meet changing needs and new opportunities

New people and skills are often needed

Staying relevant is a never ending task

Context

What’s changing?

The role of IT needs to evolve, from:

Systems to Service provider

Engineer to Retailer

Geek to Broker

1 Leadership - What is Leadership?

‘Leadership is a process of social influence, which maximises the efforts of others, towards the achievement of a goal..’

(Kevin Cruse)

What is Leadership?

Its not just ‘Managing’ people, or being a ‘manager’

Its not:

• Title – not just a manager

• Role – not just managing people or a product

• Attributes – charisma, forcefulness, influence

• Leadership is a process of social influence, which maximizes the efforts of others, towards the achievement of a goal. (Kevin Cruse)

Developing Leadership skills

Who can be a leader?

Leadership for organisations

• Culture – how things are done here…

• ‘Set the tone’

• Sense and respond

• Transparency, collaboration, openness..?

• Mentoring, buddying, career development?

• Leadership programmes?

Culture – where are you?

2 Communication…

Communication is a 2-way process

We are all communicating all the time

There is no single way of communicating

Timing and frequency matter

The message is in the medium

3 Automation, Robots, AI

• Automation is key to improve service quality and help remove technical debt

• Classic automation can be seen in request management, event management, where manual and error prone tasks can be managed more quickly.

• This also frees up people to do more useful and interesting work

3 Automation, Robots, AI

• Chatbots are hyped everywhere – these are still years away from being effective in e.g. IT Service Desks

• Automation is useful in very specific areas – e.g. to manage large call queues, routing etc.

• Any RPA/AI/Robotics and automation requires excellent data quality –knowledge, configuration management etc.

• Most IT organisations are not ready with this.

We must focus on the areas where we can add value as humans, in

areas where robots can’t…

4 Supporting people…

We support people not just technology

Success depends on our ability to interact productively,

positively and professionally with people

This involves collaboration:• Between people

• Across teams and IT departments

• Beyond IT departments

• With partners

5 Models

Models Known

stuff…

ITIL

COBiT

ISO20K

SDI/HDI

TOGAF

Models

New stuff…

DevOps

Agile

VerISM

Lean

SIAM

BRM

IT4IT

Known

stuff…

ITIL

COBiT

ISO20K

SDI/HDI

TOGAF

New Models

Useful focus on key skills and roles – plus organisational capabilities and requirements

Some useful new models (e.g. BRMi – Order take to Strategic Partner)

Some very useful content and training IP

Institute and membership focus

Events – plus, Devops days, DASA, LEAN Agile Association, DOI,

How do we choose?

6 Relationships…

Communication…

Communication is a 2-way process

We are all communicating all the time

There is no single way of communicating

Timing and frequency matter

The message is in the medium

Relationships…

It takes 2 to make a successful relationship – it’s a 2 way process

Proximity and intimacy mean we are all communicating all the time

We need to be creative - there is no single way of communicating

We need to understand what work and when for our partners - timing and frequency matter

Attitude and positivity can’t be digitised - the message is in the medium

7 Skills

We need to develop People - not simply follow frameworks

IT professionals must develop a broad set of skills and

competencies.

People Skills…!

Many of the issues that we face still rely on people, relationships and business focus, and no single model can ever be expected to deliver this.

These include a broad variety of capabilities for communications, personal interaction, leadership, influencing, mentoring and good business skills.

With more potential automation the scope for human interaction is reduced and this also means that actual interactions between people must be excellent.

We talk about ‘soft’ skills –

as if these were easy, fluffy, inferior, or unimportant

Soft or Hard?

Soft Skills…?!• Relationship building

• Maintaining customer focus

• Delivering great communications skills

• Demonstrating business skills and knowledge

• Building a successful business case

• Understanding and managing risk

• Influencing and motivating difficult/resistant people

• Dealing professionally with varied customer issues

• Standing up to experienced technical people

• Being able to calm down angry/difficult people

• Achieving agreement on difficult issues

• Keeping up to date on new developments

• Procuring/negotiating contracts

• Managing budgets/finance

• Being positive and resourceful

How do we gain these skills?

• It doesn’t matter how

• Good comms and leadership are universal

• The paths to the new competencies are varied – there is no single way

• Look outside the IT/ITSM bubble for new people and new skills

8 How do we change?

How do we change?

8 How do we change?

• Use tools e.g. 5 dysfunctions of a team to build, trust, attention to results, accountability, harmony

• Organisational Change Management – e.g. Cotter

• Use the best bits of the models… e.g. BRM Maturity model, key skills etc

• Don’t use the models as crutches/props

5 dysfunctions

of a team.

Patrick

Lencioni

8 How do we change?

• Focus on competency and ‘soft skills’ development

• Encourage open, collaborative new ways of working –transparency, visibility, swarming, CSI

• Develop people-based competencies, skills and career development

• Use collaborative projects to develop teams and teamwork –SLM/Catalogue, CX

The new Service Manager

• Tomorrow’s industry leaders need knowledge of:

• Organisational change and people development

• Key business knowledge/skills

• Contract and supplier management

• Supply and demand management

• Marketing and communications

• Relationship management

• Contract negotiation

The CIO – digital leader

Stepping up – and on to CEO

Must challenge and disrupt – IT

Has to demonstrate value

Must promote good governance

Needs to ‘sense and respond’

Needs support and trusted data

Must clarify that: IT ‘can’t do it all’

Challenges for employers

Defining a (digital) service management profession

Creating a career path for service management

professionals

Helping HR to understand roles and opportunities

How to establish reward and recognition

Digital Leadership

LESSONS LEARNED

Focus on competency and ‘soft skills’ development

Encourage open, collaborative new ways of working – transparency, visibility, swarming, CSI

Develop people-based competencies, skills and career development

Use collaborative projects to develop teams and teamwork – SLM/Catalogue, CX

IT involves technical disciplines. IT is a business function

People in IT need to embrace both to stay relevant - T shaped model for skills

Don’t use Models as crutches/props…

Keep learning - use new ideas. Don’t forget the stuff that works…

Be a leader – promote new skills and learning

KEY TAKEAWAYS

THANK YOU!

Barclay Rae@barclayrae

bjr@barclayrae.com