Publikováno: 12. 6. 2022
Paul Wilkinson, a well-known, highly respected and acclaimed professional, decided to end his rich and very successful career and retire.
He summarized the main experiences, knowledge and impressions from his 40-year career and the subsequent process of leaving in an extensive blog, which he made available to us. Given its scope, we will publish it in 4 consecutive sections.
In a workshop with 15 CIO’s they confirmed ‘we are expected to walk-the-talk, but we don’t know what that looks like in this era of agile transformation.’ When asked if they or their leadership team had the appropriate skills the answer was ‘No’. When asked if they had initiated appropriate Leadership development initiatives, the answer, more shockingly, was ‘No’. Understandable perhaps why 70% of transformation initiatives struggle!
TIP4: Define and agree the top 5 behaviors that demonstrate ‘management commitment’. E.g., ‘Reserve time (WIP) for teams to learn and improve’ (see challenge 5).
TIP5: Develop Leadership skills for ‘New ways of working’. Take a look at DASA leadership program.
- Barrier: Not investing in the right skills sets and talents
Two top scoring ABC cards:
‘ITIL (or other best practice framework) is the objective, not what it should achieve’
‘(ITIL) Certification means I know what I am doing’.
(I wrote these two article around my frustration on this topic: ‘Has ITSM’s Training focus on guaranteed pass rates gone too far’ & ‘Yeah! ITIL certification Cause that’s solve everything’.)
This has been my pet passion in my career. As a consultant we all have our own pet models that we try to mold reality to fit into. My pet model is the 8-Field model from Kessels and Smit. It is also based upon Kirkpatrick’s model: 4 levels of learning evaluation.
8-Field Model
We are great at ‘Investing in training’, but not so great at ensuring that this develops the ‘right skill sets´.
As an industry we are great at the bottom two levels of Kirkpatrick’s model, such as:
‘Reaction’ (Level 1) e.g., ‘Course and trainer evaluation scores’,
‘Learning’ (Level 2) e.g., ‘Passing the exam’ – more than 2 million ITIL exams for example.
But we are poor at the upper two levels, such as:
‘Behavior’ (Level 3) e.g. Do we see people applying new skills and behaving differently (Our survey revealed 12%, a Harvard report also revealed ‘Only 12% of employees applied new skills learned to their jobs’)
‘Results’ (level 4) e.g. Impact on VOCR (see point 1 above). When had I asked tens of thousands of people (literally) at conferences in the past 20 years ‘How many measure impact in terms of VOCR?’ This is less than 5%. A Harvard article from 2019 revealed ‘25% measuring the impact of training’.
The framework is the Goal
We are so focused on level 2 the certificate! Our whole industry is focused around ‘getting the certificate’ not ‘doing something with the knowledge’. This translates into the ‘framework is the goal’ rather that the results that should be realized by investing in it. This can be related as well back to point 1. No strategic fit, not knowing what we were hoping to achieve by investing.
As I have always said ‘Whilst there is value in the certificate, there is MORE value in being able to apply the theory in practice’ – within the context of what the business needs to achieve by adopting the framework.’
One of the reasons for the low scores at Level 3 and level 4 is that the training is not embedded in an approach – e.g. 8-Field model with appropriate ‘Transfer skills’ and coaching. I am not going to explain the model in this article. I suggest you look it up.
TIP6: Use the 8-Field model!, Ask for practical exercises in training; Start measuring (level 3 and level 4); Look at OBM training!
Groundhog Day
As I watch the Groundhog Day unfolding. revealing the same failures with the adoption of each ‘Shiny New Thing’ it becomes clear, that despite the fact that we KNOW it is important, we STILL do not spend enough time and effort developing appropriate skills around Organizational Behavior Management (OBM) and Organizational Change Management, we continue to HOPE that sustainable change will occur. As I quoted above ‘Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results’. We have turned this into a core capability!
Additional areas of skill that are neglected are ‘Leadership development’ and ‘IT Governance’ -skills for the board and senior managers who need to steer for value from IT investments (and balance scarce resources). This ties back into barrier 1 and barrier 2.
Another area for improvement is the way that we train and the way that we organize conferences. It is the SILOed approach’. We do not do enough of ‘mixing&matching’ end-to-end stakeholders in training classes or in Industry events.
Eat our own dog food? Yeuch!
Are we ever going to solve this? I fear not. This requires us to eat our own dog food and see it as a value chain. From IP owners to examination institutes, to training organizations, procurement, managers and people going on the training. The NEED to shift from ‘theory’ to ‘practice’ and from a ‘certificate’ to ‘impact’. This needs to be engineered in at ALL areas in the value chain. The chain is only as strong as the weakest link. Unfortunately eating our own dog food is a bitter taste to swallow, there is also too strong a commercial model around it for it to change.
- Culture was, is, and remains a key barrier – as well as organizational resistance to change.
What are two common examples of ABC cards? (as well as those ABC cards mentioned above in the other 3 key barrier to success)”
‘Them and Us culture: Opposing and competing forces’
‘SILO mentality’
Part 3 ends with this paragraph. Part 4 continues with paragraph The ABC Iceberg
Autor:: Jaroslav Rokyta