Greek crisis: Human freedom as the grit in the management machine?

I'm writing this in May 2012, which in the UK currently is much colder than one would expect of late spring. At the moment I am engaged on a data analysis contract, helping a national media corporation to roll out new product offerings to its customers. In the somewhat warmer corresponding period a year ago I was in wind-down mode after terminating my contract at a large banking organisation. The immediate future looked wonderful. I had a long vacation in the South of France planned for July and August during which time I would be writing a book about IT service. In preparation for that I was geared up to spend June ensconsed in Western Bank library (Sheffield University), reading and note-taking. It turned out to be quite idyllic. I would cycle the 5 miles down from South-west Sheffield (and it is down, my house is 500ft vertically above Sheffield city centre) to the library where I'd read, write, doze, and take the occasional stroll around the city.

Social Luddism?

By now most British internet users will be familiar with the YouTube video of Emma West expounding her controversial views about the ethnic makeup of the UK on a South London train. The video appears to have been shot on a mobile phone and quickly "went viral". Fascinating how what once would have been a purely local issue, a story to amuse colleagues with at work, became - through the power of these new technologies - a national news story and a case for the judiciary. For good or ill, big brother is certainly watching us, and yet with our personal recording equipment to hand, we ourselves are all the means of that surveillance.

'Tunnel Vision' or 'ITSM and the Passage of Time'

My career has taken many twists and turns over the years. However, in my work, technology has always been a constant. From analogue to digital electronics; assembly code through ansi C to visual languages; and desktop support into line management and ITSM. I've recently popped out of my umpteenth chrysalis and find myself fluttering my wings in the pretty garden of data and predictive analytics. ITIL seems like a distant dream (or is that nightmare?).

A Heresy: Social Media Ain't Perfect

File this one under heresy. Burning at the stake is thankfully consigned to history, but "flaming" is not. The responses to this may therefore be quite interesting. Also this is not actually related to the psychology of IT service management, but rather to the psychology of social media use. It's a departure, I know, but hopefully an entertaining and thought provoking one...

The process of changing one's perceptions can begin in the most inauspicious of moments. I've already alluded to this in previous blog entries by way of the manner in which my older views towards radical feminism and operatic music were changed during chance encounters.

I had another such damoclean conversion recently. At the time I thought very little of the sentence that prompted the change; I considered it another fashionable utterance designed to make an impression. The time and place was the Sheffield DocFest early in 2011 and the catalyst was a talk given by the filmmaker Adam Curtis (All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace). What he said was this: "Twitter is a self-aggrandising, smug pressure group, that's all it is". I enjoyed the quote and watched it reverberate around the blogosphere for a couple of days.

Climate Change

I'm heading down to the Languedoc in southwest France later today. I planned this trip some time ago and the idea is to enjoy the cultural and culinary delights of the region and to write a lot (not blogs, I'm working on a book). In addition, I was also looking forward to having a real summer and topping up those vitamin D levels. The last time I visited that region (in 2007), the temperature was regularly in the mid-thirties, and even in the dead of the night it was very hot. I've been keeping a close eye on the weather in recent weeks, and those who watch Le Tour de France will have also noticed that there has been a lot of rain in southern France this year. The Languedoc, a normally sun-pounded setting, is a little less so this year, leading folk to talk about climate change.

#ClimateNotCulture

I thought I'd take some time out from some rather serious and quite involved writing that I'm doing to exorcise (exercise?) a minor obsession of mine.

Organisational culture seems to be a buzzword in ITSM circles at the moment, and for good reason. I think its becoming clear to most that the laudable aims of our discipline cannot be achieved without paying attention to the people who work within the sector. Good old homo sapiens, were not like microprocessors; we don't execute a JP NZ 4000H command if certain conditions are met or not met. So the question appears to be, how do we align the mindset of those working in the ITSM enterprise with its stated goals.

The answer to most is simple. Get the culture right.

Out of contract

It's been an intense year of analysing ITSM data for a large fast-growing enterprise, but the contract is over, the Fairday Research Ltd coffers are suitably replenished and I'm back to exploring people and organisational issues within the ITSM field. In fact, during the course of this contract I sketched the outline of an idea which I look forward to sharing with readers here. It draws upon the previous foci of this blog (culture, motivation, autonomy etc.), but also introduces some new theoretical ideas into the mix. The work pressures during the contract were such that I had a very limited amount of time in which to develop the concept so I have much research and fleshing out to do. As of today (Tuesday) I'm still in post-contract chill mode, but from Thursday I'll be surrounding myself with books and journals in Sheffield University's Western Bank Library (pictured), where hopefully I'll begin tying all the threads together.

As for the contract, it had its pros and cons, much like every other ITSM assignment I've ever taken on, with the additional stress of a 250 mile round-trip commute! There were extremely demanding directors on both the business and the IT sides of the fence. So demanding were they in fact (for statistics, analyses, reports, new initiatives, new processes) that it seemed to me that the organisation had evolved a structure geared in large part to meet those demands rather than using the considerable abilities of the workers to create increased value (via efficiencies, automation etc) and deliver great service. Such an approach is predicated on the idea that the ten people at the top are better placed to innovate than the 500 specialists 'below' them. Such organisational toxicity ultimately helps no one; neither the customers nor the staff, nor ironically the top brass themselves. What CIOs want isn't always what they need...