In the past years I’ve been publishing a daily Twitter based Service Management newsletter using paper.li. Service Management was one of my professional interests since I got introduced to ITIL in the nineties. Because of the automatic nature of the paper.li service I have very little control over the content. I also found that my interests are broader than service management itself. So I have decided to change gears and end the Service Management paper.li. I will replace it with a weekly overview of articles and blogs that I found shareable and interesting. This is number 1.
ITIL 4 is coming
When ITIL v3 was introduced I was strongly involved in its launch in The Netherlands. At the time I was portfolio manager Service and Performance Management at Getronics PinkRoccade (also known as old Pink Elephant) and ITIL was cornerstone content for us. It was an interesting experience to see how little appetite for change their was among the ITIL consultants and how much the image of ITIL was already tainted by bad implementations (and you should and do not implement ITIL anyway).
Now, we see the introduction of ITIL 4 and I feel a bit mixed about it. It seems at one side that the expected update will add value to the existing material. That is a good thing. At the same time I realize that most of the new ITIL will represent what many of us ITIL consultants were saying for a long time. And that means that ITIL is still treated as a computer program instead of the management guidance it is supposed to be.
Digital as an adjective no longer needed?
When I started as a freelance consultant I was searching for the right angle to present myself to potential clients. One of my first engagement meetings was with an IT director that I got introduced to through my network. When I introduced myself as an experienced consultant in IT, he immediately dived into the technical ins-and-outs of his datacenter. I realized that IT has a descriptive term is perceived as very technical. And I am not that technical. So, I went out looking for a better term to describe my field of expertise and ended up with the Digital Organization. The adjective Digital sounds less technical and more futuristic and, also important, it attracts stakeholder in business management as well.
Of course, when IT is turning up everywhere and User Experience (UX) is getting truly of the ground, than all business are digital, all transformations are digital and all organizations will be digital. Now, we are not there yet. For many the digital world is still a world of wonder and automagic. For the next couple years we will still be doing digital transformations.
Conceptual or Experimental Innovation
The last several years I have been working as a program manager on creating the Digital Experiment Center for the City of Rotterdam. This center allows colleagues from any department of the City to experiment with digital technology and solutions. Learning in an iterative way in how IT can help solve complex or difficult problems in the daily work and in the interaction with citizens and other stakeholders. Sometimes you can have a great idea, come up with a killer design and change the world. My experience is that often you need to tinker and tweak to come with the best solution. And often you do not even realize that you already have found it.
We tend to applaud the genius of the conceptual innovator, a Mozart or a Picasso, who can deliver something powerful seemingly without effort. In the end the works of an experimental innovator, a Beethoven or a Cezanne, are just as lasting. But they had to put in much more effort and their work is more iterative. This podcast by Malcom Gladwell explores these different approaches.
Editorial Note
On this website and in this newsletter I curate articles that are relevant to my field of work or that interest me. As a freelance consultant the time I can spend on keeping up the website and newsletter varies. I try to keep it up to date and to mention all information and references correctly. If you feel that information is not correct you can send me mail and I see what I can do to change it: info@idwell.nl