The Importance of Leadership Skills

I recently led the first launch of our newest workshop, ITSM Leadership Skills.  This course was developed in collaboration with PeopleTek, a well respected and recognized executive coaching provider.

The ITSM Leadership Skills workshop addresses the softer skills that are critical success factors for continual service improvement.  Unfortunately, until now these skills were mostly overlooked in the service management classroom.

Topics covered in this workshop include

• Identifying and leveraging strengths
• Vision, Mission, Goals and Measures
• Planning projects
• Managing change
• Enhancing communication
• Managing conflict

Several of the attendees in our first session commented that they had prior experience with many of these topics.  They were grateful for the opportunity to be reminded of their importance while gaining new perspectives and appraoches for being a great leader.   It's so easy to get lost in the mechanics of designing new processes and services; it's just as easy to overlook the human factor.

PeopleTek promotes the belief that everyone is a leader. I agree.  Their definition of a leader supports that view:  To take people where they have not been and would not go on their own.  

Ask yourself:  Who are you leading today and where are you taking them?

The 2011 Edition of the ITIL Library

It was recently announced that the 2011 Edition of the ITIL Core Library will publish on July 29, 2011. Notice that I did not refer to the new release with a new version number - and with good reason. All future revisions to the ITIL publications will be referenced by the year that it was published. ITIL will finally just be ITIL.

If you regard the 2011 ITIL update as the equivalent to the revision of a college textbook, you'll understand why this is not a big deal. Academic textbooks are revised on a regular schedule without much fanfare or impact on prior or future students. Past attendees do not retake their final exams or replace their textbook. Just a normal course of continual improvement. Do you base your decision on whether to take a college course on the edition of the textbook being used? Not really. What's important is the relevancy of the topic.

The 2011 ITIL Edition was approached in much the same way - improve the inconsistencies, formalize a few processes that were referenced in the 2007 edition but did not follow the same format and flow, clarify some concepts based on reader feedback. No major new revelations. Just a normal course of continual improvement that should be introduced without much fanfare and will have no impact on prior students. Past, present and future attendees will essentially share the same knowledge.
Please do not believe anyone that advises you to retake your exam, replace your textbook, change your tool, revise your implementation strategy or base your education plan on which edition of the books are being used.

There are no plans to "bridge" anyone or anything with this release. A change log will be made available that compares the two editions. Webinars, articles and opinions on the revisions will abound. In fact, the first set of FAQs is now available at:

http://www.best-management-practice.com/gempdf/ITIL_UPdate_FAQs_Summer_2011_June11.pdf

ITIL is just ITIL.