The Problem with Priorities

ITIL’s lack of an operations process and inconsistencies around prioritization are wildly different than the VALUE Formula’s WIGs and USM’s concept of priority, and reminds me of the recent webinar, Service Management's Missing Link (which you can replay here).

One problem with priorities is that there’s too many of them, and as the saying goes “when everything’s a priority, nothing is.” Priorities also change, increasing the importance of a unified management system.

In Ken Wendle’s VALUE Formula, he talks about wildly important goals (WIG) and this is not inconsistent with the Unified Service Management method’s concept of priority.

Wildly Important Goals (WIG)

But wildly important goals (WIG) are slightly different than prioritized activities based on impact and urgency. The VALUE Formula references The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey and Jim Huling.

One of these disciplines of execution is to focus on WILDLY IMPORTANT goals. While goals can be prioritized in a similar way as activities (i.e., based on impact/urgency) it is critical that we differentiate WIGs from what the author’s call the ‘whirlwind’.

This ‘whirlwind’ includes all the other competing ‘urgent’ priorities in the organization.

The VALUE Formula also references the other disciplines of execution, each of which align to the Unified Service Management (USM) method. In fact, USM dramatically simplifies service management and can complement both the VALUE Formula and practice frameworks such as ITIL.

Comparing ITIL and USM’s concept of priority

USM’s process model and standard workflows enable a simple, consistent approach to priority and is compared with ITIL in the post, The concept of ‘priority’.

But one of the things I like about the Unified Service Management method is that it actually has a very simple OPERATE process defined in its non-redundant process model. In the USM process model all operational actions are triggered as service requests, which is why all USM standard workflows include the OPERATE process.

But the workflows that generate these service requests can be one-off or repetitive. One-off requests are simply planned and executed in OPERATE.

Requests for a repetitive action can have more consequences since the required action appears repeatedly on the OPS calendar and becomes part of management rules and manuals. These requests for repetitive actions are therefore only requested via change management.

Both the USM method and the VALUE Formula discuss the importance of planning. USM incorporates planning into the operations calendar and ensures that appropriate stakeholders are engaged in the planning process by embedding these activities into daily routines.

Organizations can leverage the VALUE Formula to aid in goal setting and aligning activities to WILDLY IMPORTANT goals, while remaining focused on the ‘whirlwind’ of daily execution.

So, the Ops Calendar can now show all operational activities and makes all operational work visible. While ‘tickets’ are still required for dynamic operations, repetitive or routine work is planned and defined only once and becomes part of the static operations calendar.

Aligning Activities and Goals with USM

In a Rolling Uphill post, Thinking before doing is not nothing, I stated that while USM does not directly address cultural change, it supports the organizational change approach with:

• a detailed description of the organizational structures, routines, and support technology, which provide a stable environment for all employees.
• a structured deployment, based on a step-by-step approach in the form of improvement sprints, in which the organization adapts the processes and the technology to the planned improvement goals in an integrated way.

Once WIGs are clearly understood, both the USM method and the VALUE Formula apply the PDCA cycle as a standard routine of the enterprise (i.e., the Second Discipline).

The operational visibility we described above helps to keep a compelling scoreboard (i.e., the Third Discipline). USM’s flexibility to adapt to different organizational structures and localized practices dramatically simplifies the creation and maintenance of this scoreboard.

And finally, USM provides guidance on organizational accountability via separation of duties (i.e., the Fourth Discipline).

But perhaps the most important area where the USM method and the VALUE Formula are very much in synch is related to systems thinking. USM establishes a viable service management system.

The viable system model (VSM) is a model that supports organizations to get in control of their performance, in a changing environment. The VSM describes the structure of an autonomous system that is capable of adjusting itself (and its performance) to changing requirements. A viable system can survive in a context that is continuously changing.

This is also consistent with the VALUE Formula’s philosophy:

Everything Working and Everything Working Together

“Getting each individual element to work helps us begin to realize our value, but we begin to maximize our full value potential when we get these five elements working together to achieve synergy and discover that the whole really is greater than the sum of the parts.” - Wendle, Ken. The V*A*L*U*E Formula?

The Unified Service Management method’s non-redundant process model enables 8 standard workflows that capture all interactions of a service provider.

This integral and integrated (i.e., unified) management approach restores and optimizes the control over each contribution to the system, and consequently restores and optimizes the control over the whole system.

Want more information? Our next FREE USM Workshop is May 2nd!