IT Lessons Ripped From the Pages of Aesop’s Fables

Slow and steady wins the race. That’s the underlying message in Aesop’s fable of The Tortoise and the Hare. While the hare’s speed put him at a great advantage over his shell-sporting competitor, the tortoise’s steadfast focus on the task ultimately won him the race.

Imagine if your IT organization combined the hare’s speed with the tortoise’s drive and determination.

Agility versus stability is a paradox for service management teams who are more versed with the command and control environment. Concentrating on internal operations at the expense of an innovative, user-centered approach is when failure occurs.

Why organizations fail to support agility

Reasons why organizations fail to support agility include complex processes, functional silos that don’t communicate effectively, a lack of alignment with the needs of business users to maintain productivity, and the inability to understand and take advantage of new trends quickly. Business units become frustrated that their internal IT team is slow to respond and is not error free.

While business units don’t want to run their own IT, they believe they don’t have a choice.

Meanwhile, service management teams express frustration that users search out and purchase their own tools, which they still expect to be supported corporately.

To keep pace, service management teams must develop an “outside-in” approach that helps the business identify and understand signs of change and turn these into actionable goals.

Modernizing ITSM

The modern ITSM organization has become one of the most critical departments in the business, but it’s time it took a more active role. IT can lead out in identifying and applying value creation activities, process improvements, digitization, and service automation opportunities to enable greater effectiveness across IT and into the business, including finance, HR, procurement and supply chains, and facilities.

ITSM manages most of the services that run an enterprise and is already focused on building consistent, repeatable processes that reduce time to action and improve productivity. Initiatives that prove impactful within ITSM can be incorporated into the delivery and management of business services beyond the realms of IT. Service management teams become a consultative role model for the enterprise. An integrated, process-driven ITSM system becomes an effective enabler of enterprise agility. Many departments beyond IT are benefiting from this approach already.