3.3 Management commitment

Management commitment is about motivating and leading by example. If you or your managers do not support the use of best practice openly and demonstrably, or if you are not fully committed to Change and innovation, then staff cannot be expected to improve themselves, Service Management processes or service to Customers. Genuine management commitment is absolutely essential to 'staying the course' when implementing Service Management in an organisation.

3.3.1 Aspects of management commitment

Modern organisations require IT/ business alignment, and therefore a total quality approach to leadership is required from managers. The different aspects of management commitment can be found in commonly used Total Quality Models such as the EFQM (in Europe) or MBNQA (in North America) models.

3.3.2 Management commitment in the planning stage

Why do implementations fail?

This question has been asked many times in the past. If we examine the causes for failures at the highest level a pattern appears. Simply designing and implementing a new or updated process does not guarantee success. A number of factors could result in the process not realising its objectives. In most cases failure is caused by lack of attention to the 'process enablers'. It is not enough for management to provide the funds for the implementation process and then sit back expecting everything to work. Management should be committed during the entire 'plan-do-check-act' cycle, and should also address all aspects of the Service Management framework. Other common reasons for failure include:

• lack of staff commitment and understanding
• lack of training
• the staff given the responsibility for implementation are not given sufficient authority to make the required decisions
• loss of the Service Management 'champion' (the person driving the implementation)
• loss of impetus after the initial hype
• lack of initial funding and lack of quantifiable long term cost benefits
• over-focus on tactical, isolated 'solutions' rather than a strategic solution, i.e., addressing individual elements of Service Management rather than the overall picture
• overly ambitious expectations of immediate benefits or try to do everything at once
• unrealistic implementation timetable
• no one accountable
• difficulties of changing the culture of the organisation
• tools unable to support the process, requiring tailoring of the process or of the tool
• inappropriate approach taken to implementation - not under Project Management controls
• inappropriate scoping of the process
• lack of appreciation for the hard work and discipline required to implement Service Management.