Oh, hello.

I'm back.

Not for long though. Just to share some thoughts about 2016.

Ha, ha, not the big geopolitical picture - I'm sure that is going to be analysed to death in the next two weeks.

I'd rather talk about my 2016: ITSM, data , organisations and all that.

From a personal professional perspective, it was an interesting year.

After a number of years of delivering data solutions in diverse industries, I returned to my ITSM roots to put my skills to use here.

I was a little surprised to find that not a great deal of the fundamentals had changed. In the particular organisation I was working in, things were ticking over adequately, but the leaders were obsessing about the failings.

It’s the right thing to do I suppose, that striving to be better. But my, isn’t there’s a lot of shouty opinion in ITSM!

I had some dealings with qualitative customer satisfaction data and I was heartened to find that many of the reports of positive experiences were centred around the individual service giver. It was rare to read respondents enthusing about the process or the toolset, but there were many comments of the nature of “Eileen was amazing. She was really knowledgeable and patient, and not only fixed the problem, but showed me what to do if it happened again”

This was all very heartening as it fits squarely with the elegant theoretical conception which I outlined in my 2014 book. In summary, it goes: find the right people with the right values, set them free, but obviously keep light elements of control to guide and channel and keep them focused.

The other great thing that came out of this assignment was the realisation that the way that ITSM functions use data is a bit outdated. In my opinion, they could be a bit smarter about it and use the power of statistics, and the easy availability of tools such as R, SAS, and SPSS to take a good deal of the guesswork and opinion out of the practice of IT service.

I’ve written a paper about this which I believe that the itSMF will publish soon. Even if they don’t, I’ll be posting it on my Medium and LinkedIn pages in the new year.

As for 2017, I’ve accepted a new job. I’ll be an employee again after years of freelancing! It’s a super position – I’ll flitting between data development and data science in a global and important role. And it’s not ITSM!

My parting wish for ITSM is as follows – I hope that everyone can try pull together instead of pulling in different directions. I think the surety which improved data methods can provide will help that. I hope that leaders can learn to trust their people more - yes, of course there are some who are not worthy of trust, but I say again, replace them with individuals who hold suitable values – and then trust them. And then set them free.

I’m not sure I’ll be returning to ITSM, so I hope you guys get to where you want to be. But then again I said that the last time I left – so you might not have not seen the last of me!

Truth and Work

Gormley at Yorkshire Sculpture Park (Peter Johnson)

This may be a somewhat naive position, but I am among those who believe that academic pursuit should aim towards truth. That truth may indeed be relative, but I hold to the view that the goal must be to seek a universal a truth as possible. This is certainly not an unusual idea; it is normally expected that the work of (quantitative at least) researchers is guided by the search for generalisability. This epistemology holds that - as far possible - good findings are applicable to individuals, groups, societies and even humankind. Indeed, like natural scientists everywhere, work psychologists should also be aiming for truths that apply across the universe!

From the sublime to the mundane. That is, from work psychology as a quest for universals to work psychology as tool of corporate management. It has occasionally been suggested, that within this subject area the pursuit of scientific truth can be deflected by the interests of industry. The effect of this would plainly be that some work psychology research is weighted towards the realpolitik of the enterprise (profit, productivity, efficiency) rather than the greater human truth of the people (staff) within it. Therefore, in such instances teleological assumptions would not resemble, for example 'well being at work as important human end in itself', but rather 'well being at work as a psychological device to enable greater end product'. If work psychology is underpinned by the latter then perhaps the discipline should be conceptualised on a rather more vocational basis; i.e. all the best courses and great research programmes in the grandest universities are no more than training for the next generation of managers and consultants:

Enrol on a work psychology course and learn how to make staff work better, longer, harder.

Don't Fear The Future

Quote displayed in the Legacy exhibition at the Nobel Museum, Stockholm

I'm certainly no physicist. I do however enjoy the subject. I find it inspiring to read about the history of the discipline.

The physicist turned philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn has long been my guide in making sense of the twists and turns of the natural sciences. He described the way in which one paradigm (for example Einsteinian physics) replaces another (Newtonian physics) in the march of progress. However, he argued that the new paradigm is always able to incorporate the functionality of the old.

This is why in an age when the errors of Newtonian physics are well known, and when relativity and quantum mechanics describe the (current) truth of our world, many engineers can still use Newton's concepts to build engines, bridges and buildings. Newtonianism is flawed as a truth, but for simpler practical applications still works.

Ancora Imparo - The Stockholm Interpretation

Stockholm á Minuit. Peter Johnson

Ancora Imparo. 

Apparently Michaelangelo was fond of this phrase. It means 'still I am learning' and indeed, anyone in the business of creativity, design or innovation needs to keep an open mind.

Wandering around Stockholm this evening, I reflected on all the conversation and feedback from this last week. While I walked, I made a big effort to view these discussions from the Swedish perspective; from the point of view of one who loves order and hates chaos.

I'm pleased to say that the result was a mild epiphany.

Crispbread, Meatballs and erm, Chaos.

Sundsvall A.M. by Peter Johnson

I'm sat in a busy hotel in Sundsvall. I've just finished a series of four talks in different parts on this country which were organised by the lovely people from itSMF Sweden (special big shoutout to Daniel Billing).

I was of course here to flog my Control-Chaos-Values approach to the workplace. What I love about doing this in public is the range of responses that one receives. There are still too many of the folded-arms, rigid expression variety, which generally tell me that I'm either being boring (sorry if that was the case), or that these individuals are simply not prepared to countenance such radical change to the way things are currently done.

Getting Used to This

Typically Langdocien (Peter Johnson)

It's very hot.

I'm sat on a large, typically Languedocian balcony high above a typically Langdocian street, drinking a glass of the local rosé, while Mrs J. is watching a French quiz show on TV inside the flat, as she does each night to improve her already excellent language skills.

I'm just chilling out. It's the last week of this southern chaleur as, on Saturday, we'll be heading northwards. It's been a great vacation. The temperature has been lovely - in the mid-thirties throughout our time on the Italian and French riverias, and during the first week in Montpellier. This week it's mainly been high twenties but that'll do! It seems like ages since we were in Yorkshire.

Travels, Things Quantum and Work Psychology

Villa in Riva del Garda, Italy. (Peter Johnson)

I'm starting to feel a little like a character in a 1960s euro-movie. I'm sat in bed in a hotel on the Italian riviera, auburn-haired woman asleep by my side (ok, it's the wife but let's not spoil the simile). We have driven here from Sheffield, via Operation Stack on the M20, delayed Eurotunnel trains and illegal immigrants in Calais. We stopped for a night in Troyes in  the Champagne department of France, and the next day drove to wonderful Geneva, Switzerland where we spent a lovely evening.

After queuing for ages to get through the Mont Blanc tunnel the following day, we made it into Italy and were presented with the challenge of the busy (and a little scary!) Friday afternoon A4 Autostrada traffic around Milan, Bergamo and Bresica. By early evening we had made it to our little hotel on the edge of Lake Garda.

It's Complicated

Does politics fit into the techno(logy), psycho(logy) and socio(logy) brief of this blog? Yes of course it does - especially in the latter category.

So I guess you are now appraised of the fact that I'm going to bang on about politics for the next few hundred words. If that's an unpleasant thought, you'd better click away now.

Isn't it funny that, especially during and since the recent UK general election, everyone thinks that their punditry matters. That'll be the democratising power of the internet I suppose - even if this supposed pluralism is largely an illusion. Power exists even here.

So to politics and the future.

Still Here

Christ Church Meadows, Oxford. Peter Johnson

Oh, hello!

I've been away from this space for a little while, and I thought I'd pop in to see how things are in the worlds of ITSM and work psychology.

I typed in #ITSM in Twitter and noted that the sector is chugging along as usual; front line service desk types still looking for deterministic and formulaic solutions to complex fuzzy people problems.

Hmm.

Freedom Now - Or how to stifle business innovation via corporate IT

For around fifteen years I worked on the other side of that veil of separation that is known in corporate environments as the IT service desk. On the employee side of the service desk you have the ordinary 'business users'. Here be folk who are simply trying to do their jobs: customer service agents, pricing analysts, underwriters, engineers. Their drivers are the usual human things; to get the job done with the minimum of fuss, achieve business goals in order to help with their career ambitions, or keep their jobs, or to go home with the sense of a job well done.

All of this activity above involves (or at least should involve) contributing to the overall business objectives of profit and growth. The customer service agents do this by helping retain customers and to please them such that they recommend the firm to others, pricing analysts help to keep the organisation focused on selling profitable products, underwriters make risk decisions favourable to the bottom line and engineers build the infrastructure that the company's services run upon.

These various workers use tools to help in their travails, and these are myriad. However in the information age they will largely be IT based. This, then brings us to the other side of the curtain;  that shadowy authoritarian world behind the impenetrable boundary of the IT service desk.

Deep Thought: Existentialism, Lumiere and IT service

Jean-Paul Sartre addressing students at La Sorbonne, May 1968 Claude Dityvon

Today I'll be mainly blogging about philosophy. It’s a viscous subject, especially for those who don’t roll that way naturally, but it’s the method by which we get to the deepest understanding of things and I guess it is for that reason that it will always be there, behind the scenes; at the back of things . Anyway, in this piece I hope to use philosophy to arrive at insights about my work approach Lumiere, and a little bit about work in the IT service industry. We love a bit of diversity here!

It's The People, Stupid

The Cumberland Hotel on Day 1 of #aapcon14 (Peter Johnson)

I should be sleeping. Or at least dozing. I'm on my way back to the post-industrial north having spent two utterly fantastic days at the All About People conference in sunny (and it actually was) Bournemouth.

The Voice of Occupational Serfdom?

Artwork by Ursula Von Rydingsvard. Photographed by Peter Johnson at Yorkshire Sculpture Park, 2014

I recently attended an event organised for the benefit of those who work within, or who have an interest in the provision of healthcare. I'll say no more about it as I really want to protect the innocent – they seemed like nice people with their collective hearts in exactly place where the specialist, looking at the x-ray would expect to find it.

They were seeking to initiate new conversations about the way in which healthcare services are provided and run, and I, with my book to promote thought that it could be a useful opportunity to generate some interest in Making Light Work.

Tomorrow's People: A Sketch of a Post-Mechanistic IT Service Department

'Blue Sky Thinking'. Edale, Peak District. Peter Johnson, 2013

Regular readers of this blog and my followers on social media will be aware that in recent years I've taken to relentlessly critiquing the thinking which dictates the interactions between corporate IT and workers. It's fast becoming my online raison d’etre. That said, I have always, and will continue to acknowledge that much of what is designed and implemented by IT departments is useful, stable and appreciated by employees.

There is a however, however, and it is that IT is ever-evolving. Those of us who work in this area can never rest content on our laurels, safe in the knowledge that 30 years of the Tayloristic-cybernetic paradigm known as ITSM has delivered everything that our audience wants and could ever desire.

It doesn't.

Yes it's broke. The question is, how do we fix it?

Stones in my Garden. Peter Johnson, 2009

With my advancing years I suspect that I must have arrived at the state of mind often described as ‘grumpy old man’. In addition to regular gripes about the state of the roads and the priorities of the local authority in the city where I live, I've also noticed my becoming a tad dismayed with the never-ending stream of commentary about things that don't work as they should in ITSM and the ways in which we should fix them.

New Wave IT

'The Great Wave off Kanagawa'  Katsushika Hokusai, 1833

It’s 2014, over 30 years since the IBM PC hit the streets. The corporate IT community remains as afraid as ever to move on from the ITSM approach that has been its bedrock in most of that time. In many ways I understand why, but on the other hand such conservatism also bemuses me. To start with the latter; the underlying sector – IT – is one which thrives on change, indeed it refuses to stand still. Even in the midst of great achievement (for example the PC) it was looking beyond to the next thing, that which promised even greater delights (the internet, mobile computing, cloud). It is strange therefore that in corporate IT, we choose to be satisfied with a rather ancient (in IT years) method of facing off to the parent corporation in order to help them leverage these amazing technologies.

The not-so-slow death of ITSM (or, Be a mammal)

Raar!

It's easy to say it with hindsight, but I was only a real ITIL/ITSM fanboi for a short while. This was in the years between 1999 and 2007. Eight years was long enough to feel the pain of the major flaws. By the middle of the first decade of this century, I'd gone slightly cold on it, hence the focus on work psychology, data, and the softer side of IT service. I'll admit that I was hoping that ITSM could be fixed, but I wouldn't have bet my house on it.

As I say, hindsight is a wonderful thing, but thankfully traces of my scepticism remain thanks to the wonders of the interweb. See that in 2010 I was ruminating about the death of ITIL, and in my 2013 presentation at the Service Desk and IT Show in London I was looking forward to the post-ITSM service desk.

Naturally, I wasn't taken very seriously by the powers that be, although it became obvious that others were detecting the same signals as I was. Now that cloud, BYOD and other shifts appear to be in the process of removing our clammy hands from the technological levers of power, it must be said that across the landscape of corporate IT, ITSM practitioners are beginning to look over their shoulders a little. We probably look a little bit like the dinosaurs did when that extinction event meteorite was on its way earthbound.

"What the fuck's that?"

I Dream Of Kant

In the last 6 months, when I've found myself with a little free time away from the various technology jobs, the household duties, and writing and promoting my book, I've been studying the ideas of the 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant. I had been picking up little snippets of his conclusions over the last 4 or 5 years and I'm really pleased that I'm getting properly stuck into his theorising now. I think the man was genius of the highest order.

A few weeks back I had a really weird dream. It was some kind of futuristic scenario, where I was being made to commit hi-tech hari-kari for some unspecified misdemeanour. Everyone in the dream was rather cheerful and chipper about the whole affair including myself which in itself was highly odd. However the best part of the dream was that as I was waking up, I had a bit of a Kantian epiphany about the process of dreaming.

Customer Service - How We Will Be Working In The Future

In the years when 'youthful' was an adjective that could reasonably be applied to my personage, I used to occasionally (and pretentiously) declare myself a "Zeitgeist surfer". By this I meant that I always seemed to be up there with the trends and current thinking. While I'm certainly no longer a tastemaker, or hip-to-the-now in the worlds of music and fashion, I still seemingly retain the ability to spot the next interesting thing in other fields.

I rather fortunately moved into data and business intelligence (BI) around 2006/2007 just at the time when it was getting ready to boom. Because of this I have enjoyed some rewarding contracts over the last six years. As is always the way in IT, the sands are shifting and the market for building data warehouses and reporting suites seems to be on the wane (saturation?), while anyone with a bit of SQL knowledge is selling themselves as a BI specialist. It's only those who understand predictive analytics (i.e. real multivariate statistical modelling) who can command the big bucks these days.

However, since 2009 I've also been deeply concerned with all things people-related in organisations and especially in service related IT functions - that is, the sub-sector known by the term  IT service management (or ITSM). I spent a large chunk of 2011 writing a thesis about organisations, staff and good service provision. This was never published but provided the inspiration and basis for a book that I have recently completed. Its themes are similar to the earlier thesis, but the conclusions are clearer and I believe it contains an interesting and radical proposal for customer service thinking in the 21st century.

Old School Psych Dude

Rock and roll.

I'm doing the January not drinking very much thing.

So, it's Friday night, and instead of bonhomie in a pub somewhere, I'm in my office at home watching videos of old psychology dudes; in this instance, none other than Carl Gustav Jung.

This video is amazing. They don't make psychs like this any more. His utterances are dripping in open-mindedness, humanity and courage. It makes today's reductionist and materialistic theorising look pretty limited in comparison.

I also love the way these old television interviews provide a fuller discussion of the issues than we're used today. Not a great deal in the way of soundbiting or dumbing down here.

Clear 40 minutes out of your day to watch this!