CHAPTER 4: SEARCHING FOR THE RIGHT PLACE TO START

My meeting with Jessica, Ramesh and Jason had been a ritualized and highly structured beat-down, organized by organizational stature and the degree of suffering you felt you had endured.

Jason yelled at Jessica. She then yelled at Ramesh. Ramesh yelled at me, and since there was no one else in the room that was lower in the organization, I just had to sit there and take it.

Jason didn’t want to hear about plans, or efforts, or goals. All he wanted was an ironclad guarantee that it would never happen again. Fortunately, Jessica was smart enough not to give it to him. He didn’t take it very well. I didn’t know if it was just Jason personally, or customer facing people in general, that make them seem so demanding and unreasonable when they get to be the customer. I guess they treat IT the way they often get treated.

As I left the meeting, I tried to put it all behind me. But I knew I wouldn’t survive much longer if I didn’t find a solution to reducing the outages. What we were doing wasn’t working, and no one here seemed to have any idea of anything different to do. I hoped all those ITIL and ITSM books Jessica gave me would have some answers. But right now it was the end of the day on Friday and I was going out with my friends for a few hours. I’d do a better job of figuring out a solution if I gave myself a little time off.

After I finished a long Friday night with my friends, I locked myself away and spent the rest of the weekend slogging through the books Jessica had given me. Some of it I remembered from my ITIL course, but these were a lot more detailed. I hoped that was a good sign.

I was determined to find the answer I needed on how to stop our incidents. I’d fallen asleep several times working my way through the minutia in the ITIL standards, gotten lost trying to figure out the limited notes and documentation from our ticketing system, and by Sunday, had even built a footrest with documents I’d waded through, each purporting to have the solution to our situation.

And they all had the solution … but only up to a point. And that was my dilemma.

They were all impressive pieces of work. Like all great ideas, the basic concepts seemed simple and obvious once you understood them. Each had strengths and added to my knowledge.

I was fascinated by the way the incident, problem and change processes leveraged each other to the benefit of our users; much like a fire department protects the local residents.

Those in incident management were the fire-fighters, the first responders. They were the ones tasked with stopping further damage and putting the fire out. The problem management team were like the arson squad, picking through the ashes to understand why the fire broke out and what could be done to prevent it from recurring here, or elsewhere in the neighbourhood. While those in change management were like the building inspectors, the gatekeepers working hard to ensure that based on what the arson squad learned, nothing was put into the neighbourhood that might threaten anyone’s safety and security in the future. Each made perfect sense to me and I understood something that had never reached me in my brief class. Having any one of them would yield benefits, but if I could get all three working, they would leverage each other, giving us more than the sum of their parts.

I was also really impressed with how much ITIL turned the old-school IT perspective upside down; shifting IT’s focus from inside-out to outside-in. Inside-out was IT creating what it thought were the best tools available, and offering them to the users. But outside-in was ITIL turning that perspective around, to understanding what was important to the users, and providing them with solutions to meet those needs. It was elegant, efficient and effective.

But knowledge isn’t the same as a solution. Knowledge is what you get from going to school. Solutions are what you get from real-world experience. Sometimes the distance from knowledge to solutions is an apparently uncrossable chasm.

Knowing what was in the books, and having the experience to adapt them to my current situation, were very different things. Knowledge was generalized and fleeting, unless you used it. Experience was earned and yours forever.

Even if I had all this knowledge inside me, I really didn’t have the experience to make it relevant to my situation. And the scary part was that right now, I was probably the most knowledgeable person on ITIL and ITSM in the entire company.

The one comforting thought I had, was that the only way one gains experience is by doing. And that in the real world, doing is often a very messy activity.

By Sunday night, swarms of process charts, life cycles and roles spun through my head, but I still couldn’t unlock the key that would tell me how to match the theory to reality. I’d looked everywhere, and couldn’t find it in any of the books. Worse, I couldn’t even find a place to start. Beginnings are important, and I wanted to make the right choice the first time.

I read and re-read the material over and over. I started to doubt my ability. I just knew the tactics and procedures had to be in the books somewhere. I needed something practical, manageable and executable.

I didn’t want this to be my life’s work. I didn’t want to be an expert consultant, or advance the theory of the next version of ITIL. Smarter people than I could have that, as far as I was concerned. The later it got, the more I just wanted to get Ramesh off my back and keep my job.

By early Sunday evening I began to suspect I was having a hard time seeing the solution, because I was trying to absorb too much information. My mind was burnt. I needed to change the air in my head. I grabbed my keys and went out to get something to eat. Perhaps the change of scenery would reset my thoughts.

I wasn’t looking for a fine dining experience, just planning to tank-up on regular. There were plenty of places that fitted the bill nearby; all franchised theme eateries, with modified bar food that were nearly indistinguishable from each other. Eventually I picked one, because I didn’t have to turn left to enter the parking lot, and it had a traffic light, so I could easily get out and back to work.

The restaurant was crowded and noisy. It was half-price pitchers of draft night, and that meant at least 30 minutes before I could get a table. As I stood wondering whether it made sense to go somewhere else, I spotted Jahred, an old friend of mine from college.

This was a casual restaurant, and he was heavily over-dressed in what was clearly a very expensive, custom suit. He looked more appropriate giving a pitch to the Board of Directors than slurping down an order of fried wing poppets, slathered in fiery hot sauce, while sucking down generic beer that had been brewed to be inoffensive, rather than good. I waved and managed to get his attention. It had been more than a couple of years, but he recognized me and waved me over.

Jahred stood and shook my hand. “Chris, how have you been? You look great!”

I smiled, “You look fantastic, although perhaps a little overdressed for this place. Or are you interviewing for a position as a maître d’?”

“If I were the maître d’, then you’d ask me for a better table, and I’d have to ask you for a 20 dollar tip.”

He laughed. “Seriously, I’m on the road and the airline lost my luggage again, so I’m wearing work clothes. But I had them send my suitcase on to my next city, so I’ll pick it up when I land tomorrow morning. It’ll probably be there before I am.”

“You travel for work?” I asked, slightly embarrassed that I hadn’t kept up enough to even know what he did for a living.

“Better to ask when am I not travelling. But that’s part of being a consultant. You can’t very well manage clients long distance. You need to look them in the eye and press the flesh if you’re going to have credibility. People need to establish a personal connection with you if you are going to succeed. And no matter what you do, it’s all about people.”

I nodded and thought maybe he ought to work in IT for a while and try to live without technology, or even processes like ITIL.

“I see how that helps build good relations with your clients, but what about the rest of your life? Doesn’t that make it hard to have strong relationships with your family and friends? I mean, if you’re always gone, that must strain things a lot. Surely some of the long-term clients are adults and don’t need all that face time, do they?”

Jahred took a loud slurp of beer and shook his head. “You gotta do whatever it takes to make your clients happy. If it wasn’t for them, there’d be no reason for you to be around. Besides, when I’m on the road, the company picks up all my expenses; meals, cleaning, entertainment … everything.”

He leaned across the table. I could tell by the smell of his breath that this might not be his first pitcher of beer. “And it’s always easy to round those expenses up a little, with a little creative accounting, if you know what I mean,” he whispered. “It’s like free money. I’ll bet you don’t get that kind of perk at your job.”

He tossed a sauce covered hunk of something fried into his mouth, talking as he chewed. “As far as family life, it has to come second. Sure, there’s a high divorce rate in consulting. That’s why you either stay single and get your fun on the road, or find a spouse who understands that it’s not forever. At the rate I’m billing, in a couple of years I can leave consulting and my wife can open that bed and breakfast on Nantucket Island she always wanted, while we are still both young enough to enjoy it. You gotta do the work before you get the cookie.”

Jahred pulled a business card from his pocket and handed it to me with two hands, such that I could read the text even before I took it. Even with all the beer in him, it was so fluidly done, I figured he must have practised it for hours.

“If you think you want to try life’s fast lane, just let me know, and I’ll put in a good word for you at the firm.”

“And what are you doing?” he asked.

I felt naked without any business cards, or other proof of my work, as if somehow that made me less valuable.

“Just got a new job. Been there less than three months and they’ve switched me to a new assignment.”

“I knew you were a player,” smiled Jahred, as he tried to high-five me. I missed his cue and he quickly pulled his hand back to the fried bits covered in sauce. “You must be doing something right.”

“Maybe. I’m taking over a high-visibility project from someone they just fired for not producing the results they want. No one in the company understands how to make it successful, or has been able to do it. I’m supposed to become the expert and make their problems go away fast … or else I get fired, too. The visibility is great, but I’m a little nervous about the risk of getting tossed under the bus like my predecessor.”

Jahred shook his head, “Chris, you’re looking at this all wrong. You’ve been given an incredible gift. This is a career-making opportunity. It’s the type of thing the consultants in our firm do every day. This is life in the big leagues. You can turn every event into an opportunity. That’s what winners do.” He raised his sauce-covered thumb and forefinger in the shape of the letter “L” against his forehead. “Or you can be a loser and cast yourself as the perpetual victim.”

If Jahred was being honest and not drunk, maybe I could pull some ideas out of him to help me. “Have you ever done IT process consulting? Do you know about incident management? I need some specific tactics and steps I can take to reduce the number of incidents.”

“No way. But I don’t need to. That’s for losers and junior wonks new to the firm. I’m strictly a big picture strategy and transformational guy. My success is based on managing the two most important pieces of the client relationship; the vision and the client. The rest is just execution. Anyone can do that.”

Jahred poured the last of the beer from the pitcher into his glass and took a big swallow. “You can’t see the truth of this because you’ve let the company leadership push you too far down in the execution detail. You’ve lost sight of the vision. Remember the old joke about a consultant being someone you hire to look at your watch and tell you what time it is?”

I nodded slowly, but still didn’t see the connection.

“In my work, I always find that the answers are all there. If I simply work with the client, they end up telling me what they want and what they think the solution should be. Once I have that, I just repackage it, add some special sauce to fill in the gaps, and I’ve got everything I need to close the deal. With the deal signed, I just turn it over to their staff for execution, and move on to my next opportunity. The one thing my clients really want is reassurance that what they are doing is right. All the best practices do that for you. You just need to explain those best practices to company leadership, and relate it to their situation. Once you do that, call it done, stick a fork in it, and move on.”

Jahred was starting to slur his words a little. Judging by his condition, he’d either been hitting drinking hard, or been here a long time. I’m not sure I cared. I just wanted to hear more if it could help me solve my situation.

“But how do I make those celestial perfect-world truisms real and operational? I understand the standards backwards and forwards,” I lied. “But if I don’t do something practical that produces results, I’ll lose my job, too.”

“Do more by doing less,” he mumbled, and slurped some more beer. “It’s the secret sauce that makes it work. Keep it simple for your clients. Their world is complicated enough as it is.”

He put his glass down, leaned across the table, and pointed a finger at me. “I really shouldn’t share this secret with you. Since we’re both O.G. I’ll share it with you,” he said quietly, as if he were revealing a state secret.

“I used to think like you do, too,” he said. “I know you’d never believe that looking at me now, but it’s true. I was once as wonky as you, if you can believe that. Then one of the senior partners … my mentor in the firm to be specific, straightened me out. He became my mentor after I’d covered for him one day when his wife called, and he was not where he was supposed to be … if you get my meaning. From then on out, we had a great relationship. He helped me by having my back for relationships in the firm and I helped him by having his back for his relationships … outside the firm.” Jahred winked and smiled.

“You can’t be the expert in everything for everyone,” he said. “It’s like the C-level executives I deal with all the time. They don’t know the specifics about anything. They just know where they want to be, and how soon they want to be there. That’s the vision thing. They set up the vision and the timetable. Then it’s up to their staff to figure out the mundane bits. No one can know it all. That’s unrealistic, and more importantly, it’s not what they get paid for.”

I tried to imagine presenting what I found out to Jessica and having her issue orders for her staff to make it happen. The picture seemed hard to believe, but maybe there was a kernel of truth in Jahred’s ramblings. He was very experienced and very successful. Maybe the problem was that I was making this too complicated.

“And when it comes to the next layer down,” said Jahred. “Because you know the C-levels are going to want you to share your knowledge with their staff … just explain the principles to them in a way they can understand, and step aside, so they can do what they do best … marshal their teams and instruct them to go execute. If you explain it right, the benefits of doing it will be obvious to them. Once they understand what the vision is and why it’s important, they’ll step right up and ensure their teams make it work at the detailed level. Give them the credit for their capability that they deserve.”

“You make it sound easy,” I mumbled.

“Look, Chris,” Jahred leaned across the table and poked his sauce stained finger at me; this time barely two inches from my nose. His beer breath almost overpowering. “There are two kinds of people in the business world … those who lead and those who execute. Are you a leader, or some loser who just executes orders?”

“I’m a leader, of course,” I responded immediately, as I’d been conditioned to, without even thinking. But as the words left my mouth, I had some doubts. Jahred seemed to have all the answers, and here I was wandering around in the wilderness trying to figure out how to even start. Could I be that much off the path?

“Then act like one. Sell your clients on the importance … ”

“These aren’t clients,” I interrupted. “These are the senior leaders in my company … people way above me in the chain of command.”

“Same thing. Client, customer, user, partner, business … whatever. They are your targets and you’re trying to close them on the deal. You’re the leader for this and they want to be led. Do you believe in what you’re selling them? If they do what you ask, will it make their organization better?”

I thought about the synergy between incident, problem and change management, for starters. “Well yes, of course.”

“Then it’s up to you to present the ideas in a simple way they can understand and embrace. Sell them on the benefits of doing what you want. These are C-level executives. If they believe in the vision, they won’t worry about the mundane details. You don’t need to do the work for them; you just need to show them the goal. Do that and they’ll be overwhelmed with the truth and rightness in what you’re proposing. Do it right, and before you even get done, they’ll be so excited they’ll already be figuring out who they want to handle the implementation and execution details. Then all you have to do is get their signature on the deal and collect the check. ”

“Jahred, like I said, they are not externals. You’re talking about people inside the company; my senior co-workers. I don’t get paid extra for getting them to like my ideas.”

He shook his head and smiled. “There you go thinking small again. You still get paid, just not money. You get more promotions, better opportunities, bigger raises, stock options … the whole thing. Look, Chris; either go big, or go home. Otherwise, you’ll be one of those little people all your life.”

Jahred stood up and swayed, as he sucked the last of the beer foam from his glass. He was more than a little drunk. “I gotta go get some rest. I’m flying out at the crack of dawn and I need to make some calls before I go to sleep. It was great to see you again. I hope I was able to help clear the fog.”

He took three steps towards the exit then stopped, turned, and wagged his finger at me one last time. “And remember; explain it to them so they can understand the vision. If they can’t understand your message, then you’re giving them too much detail. Once they get your message, you just sit back and let them handle the execution. That’s all there is to it. Just don’t get wrapped up in the mundane details, or you’ll lose them.”

And with that, he disappeared into the crowd and was gone.

By the time I got home it was nearly 1 am. I kept wondering if Jahred was really right. He made it sound so easy. I couldn’t sleep and kept mulling over what he’d told me.

About 2 am, I had a flash of understanding. Jahred was right. I couldn’t see the solution because I was thinking too small. If he was right, my job was the explainer of the vision; the benefits and goals. It was the role of company leadership to embrace the vision and launch their teams into action. And it was their workers’ role to figure out how to build and execute the details to match the company’s unique needs. I was making this harder than it needed to be. I was looking for something that didn’t exist in any book out there. It couldn’t exist. Every situation was different. Every company was unique. All I should do is simply explain to the relevant people what our goal was, and let their teams create an optimal path to achieve it. Once I did that, I could declare victory, and move on to the next project as a winner.

I then spent until dawn putting together a presentation explaining the benefits of all that I’d read … what was in ITIL, why it was good, why it improves the organization, and what types of processes need to be in place to capture all of that greatness for our users. I built the vision and laid out the benefits and the goal; everything leadership needed to be successful.

I was really proud of the thoroughness with which my presentation covered the material. There were no aspects of ITIL I did not explain in the deck of slides. I started the presentation printing and collapsed on the bed to grab at least an hour’s sleep before leaving for work.

I chugged two energy drinks in the parking lot at work the next morning. I needed to offset the lack of sleep, and be in top form today.

I stepped into the building and swiped my ID card on the access door with a confident stroke. It was going to be a great day. I was going to present all 21 pages of my presentation to the CIO and her staff. I was confident they would embrace it. This project would make me a winner, and confirm the company had made the right choice by hiring me. I was the new rainmaker and I had the touch.