General thoughts
Holiday time (and a reminder to always take the photo)
The lead up to this year’s end of year holiday period has been met with less anticipation than previous years.
After years of deteriorating health, my father was finally diagnosed with moderate to advanced Dementia in October this year. With his mental capacity rapidly falling, he has already needed to enter full time care instead of being at home. As you can imagine, the stress has taken a toll on members of the family.
While I generally take a pragmatic “deal with what’s in front of us” approach to things; I can’t deny there have been times it’s gotten to me too. There is an unspoken yet sober realisation now that this year’s Christmas will be the last for us with Dad where he is mentally and/or physically able to be with us.
While we all understand that Father Time comes for all of us and that there will be a final time for our lives one day; it’s unnerving to know it is a final time before it happens. I’ve knowingly had this experience once before that I can recall.
A couple of years ago, my mum and her sisters reunited at my parents place. Being located across the world, the unfortunate passing of their brother during the pandemic, and the known medical diagnosis of some; it was an unspoken but well known understanding that this was the last gathering.
I’m normally not keen on extended family gatherings if I’m honest, but I had a purpose that night as the amateur photographer in the family; take all the photos.
The night was a success. With dancing, singing and many photos taken and shared since. While I’m generally always the one taking photos at family gatherings anyway, I’m normally hesitant to take many photos of candid moments. But in times of realisation like these final gatherings, they are the ones I want to capture the most.
This year, I find myself having that purpose again. I’m unusually grateful that I even have the chance.
But I mainly write this to implore any of you reading of one thing: Do not wait for your realisation of the final moment. Always take the photo.
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