General thoughts
Realities of being an ITSM Change Practice Owner / Manager
Having been a Change Practice Owner for a few years now, I’m finally at the stage where I’m confident in my ability to run a Change Management/Enablement practice within an organisation.
I’m also confident in calling out that the role unfortunately gives you very little in terms of validation of a job well done. You pretty much have to do that on your own (or have a very good manager like I do that calls it out).
Coming from specialising in Major Incident Management, the contrast of feedback for your work is drastic.
Changes are expected to go smoothly. The expectation is that the practice will minimise or eliminate the risk; so it’s generally easy to point the finger at the practice when things don’t go smoothly. So when things go well, you’re just doing what you were hired for. When things go bad, your work is questioned even if it may not be a procedural issue.
Contrast this with Major Incident Management; where a promptly resolved incident leads to almost immediate praise for everyone involved for helping address a critical impact to the organisation. Even in the scenario where a resolution takes significantly longer than hoped; the feedback is generally one of appreciation for the time and effort put into working towards a resolution rather than a critique of how you and the teams managed the incident.
At this point, I have to call out that I think this is more a natural human reaction rather than an organisational culture issue. I think it’s normal to respond positively on activities that help us in times of need; while almost ignoring activities that help to prevent such an impact in the first place.
As a result of all this, a Change Practice Manager will occasionally need to adjust the level of rigour in the Practice based on the organisational risk appetite at any given time.
If you have a period of successful changes, organisations generally lean towards working more fluidly and look to reduce the barriers to getting work done and the rigour goes down. Get a few unsuccessful changes that causes an impact to an organisation, and the level of rigour increases as Stakeholders demand stability.
This leaves Change Practice Managers in the unenviable position of occasionally being the bad one; who has to re-enforce the standards and effectively prevent work from occurring until the level of quality increases.
This is just a very long way of explaining why I have to be the bad guy this week. I’m annoying good at this now, but it is tiresome at times.
#ITSM #ServiceManagement #ChangeEnablement #ChangeManagement
How distraction-free devices make you more productive
I was watching a YouTube video recently from Spencer’s Adventures around his experiences with the AlphaSmart 3000 electronic word processor. Many of the comments reminisced about their time with the device in school, or how they still use it for their writing needs.
However there was a few comments pretty dismissive of the idea; with this one in particular catching my eye:
The underlying idea in this comment is common among discussions where the topic of technology usage is concerned: if it’s such an issue, why don’t you just stop doing the distracting things?
For various reasons, while many may be able to stop themselves from distracting apps and services in order to get something done and be productive; many of us still struggle. I’ve personally tried to take various steps on my phone and laptop in order to stop distractions and be more productive on those devices. Some actions have been successful, but to be honest many haven’t.
For myself, while a laptop is more than capable of being an excellent device for typing out a journal or blog post; its distractions of connectivity, apps and services it is capable of running are generally too much for me to ignore.
I’m sure many of you can identify with this. How often have you gone to check something quickly on your laptop or phone only to go down a completely unrelated rabbit hole of content; be that social media updates, website articles or YouTube videos.
A device like a dedicated electronic word processor (which I’m writing this on) helps by way of its limitations; it can’t do anything else but be a word processor. No emails, no internet browsers, no apps, no videos or music to play in the background while I pretend to focus on the item at hand.
Devices like this save us from ourselves and our willingness to fill in any sense of boredom with noise or entertainment. It’s the same story with single purpose devices outside of the productivity scheme.
There’s a rising popularity of old iPods in an era where unlimited music streaming services have seemingly turned music into a constant background activity, limiting our ability to truly listen and connect with a song and rendering the album almost insignificant.
Digicams have had a resurgence among young people; embracing the friction of the experience and lo-fi nature of the results compared to the always on, highly processed and instant sharing nature of smartphones.
Part of the resurgence of distraction-free or single purpose devices might very well be an over correction to the rapid on boarding of these devices in our daily lives, particularly our smartphones. These are indeed incredible tools when used correctly, with capabilities often exceeding their single purpose counterparts all within our pockets.
But many of us are overwhelmed. The technology changes have been so swift and drastic that our primitive brains, which in the past have had long periods of history to adapt to changing technology and social norms, are struggling to keep up.
Some are thriving with these new technologies; but an increasing amount of people in this world are looking for the alternatives, to simplify and slow down. To single task instead of overloading our brains with attempts of multitasking.
Distraction-free devices, whether from technology of yesteryear or new devices dedicated to a craft, provide a way some of us can get back in control of what we do and when.