This week’s guest is the multi-talented Karen Ferris – as author, trainer, consultant, who ‘accidentally’ wrote a book on Change – ‘Balanced Diversity’. We discuss a lot of current topics initially, from the value of horse-power and internet enabled cows to experience management. We also focus on the approach that Karen espouses in Balanced Diversity. The good new is that its quite straightforward – it’s about the ’why’, having good conversations and ongoing dialogue to engage people and bring them with us. Part of the challenge is to get people on board and remove their fears and uncertainties. All this takes time of course and that’s why many projects fail due to lack of realistic planning and the need for re-work. There’s a great example that comes up about how ‘nobody planned the pandemic’ – but still everyone ‘got it’ – ie had a shared sense of commitment. Thanks to Karen for a great discussion and also for getting up in the middle of the night to join us

This week’s guest is Tim Flower, a highly experienced IT thought leader and podcaster, with a wealth of varied experience across our industry. He is the Director of Business transformation at Nexthink and host of the Digital Experience DEC podcast.  The discussion centres around the developing world of Experience Management, XLAs, SLAs, SLDs, - with a focus on the ‘A’ – i.e. the ‘agreement. ‘ An XLA takes a village’ - we discuss, and also look at the current realistic and practical uptake of XLAs, and other aspects of how we can improve collaboration and data assimilation around service delivery, particularly in the new word of work… And yes we end up in the bar...

What do we mean by Experience Management? How do we make it work? Should we co-create experiences..? Are we going too far with this? Our guest this week is Greg Sanker, who works as CIO periodically, as well as podcasting, tweeting and authoring on ITSM and IT management. The conversation moves swiftly around enterprise and IT service management, then we look at experience from a fascinating ‘governance’ perspective. It’s not just asking people about their experience, maybe its also about already knowing this… Somehow we end up agreeing and having a drink at the bar.

This weeks’ guest Alan Berkson is Director of Analyst Relations for Freshservice – ‘the coolest job I the world’ – well he would say that. However, as we learn it is a much misunderstood and important role, that requires an understanding of everything going on in a company. Alan joined Freshworks in the early days in an ‘evangelist’ role – this has now grown into a major global brand.  The discussion focusses on various key aspects of trust – (PET)  Proactivity, Engagement and Transparency. Alan also draws on some clear distinctions around thought leadership and marketing, and how vendors can work with analysts to gain insight. After a really constructive and engaging chat, as ever we end up discussing exotic drinks in the bar.

This session's guest is the whirlwind of attitude, behaviour and culture (ABC) - Paul Wilkinson, of Gaming Works. Paul energy levels come from a daily diet of plutonium sandwiches, washed down with rocket fuel. Paul is the original service and value evangelist, who has preached the need for developing ABC rather than just processes or tools or other 'shiny' things. The discussion is focussed on how practically develop and improve culture, communications and other good behaviours that actually make a difference for success.  We need to use real language rather than jargon to improve communications, not just simply follow processes. If you want to learn about ABC and how simulations can be effective – listen on… Paul also claims to be retiring, but no one believes this

Listen to our guest Sally and you hear passion, commitment, focus, enthusiasm and a real understanding of what is needed to make service management successful. Sally was already a successful service management practitioner before she joined NHS digital – the IT and digital part of the UK NHS organisation. We discuss some eye-watering stats and the scale of change, particularly with Covid over the last 2 years, moving from 500K users to 60 million…!! We hear some great advice for modern/digital service management – the need for flexibility, recognition of people and of course the need for a clear sense of shared purpose. We need to know not only what we are expected to do but also why and this builds commitment and purpose – i.e. the passion!!. This must be our most motivational episode to date – play it to your team and stand back…!!!

Actually, despite the title, this is our Christmas and New Year special episode. To confirm that Ian was dressed as Father Christmas for this (audio) podcast..! James is a well-known member of the global ITSM community, with a variety of industry associations, working as a partner with TCS, as well as being an experienced podcaster, with a history of broadcasting from various weird situations.. We put to right the worlds of service management, discussing how we confuse operations and metrics with governance (yes), the people and human element, the post-agile (yes) world, ISO38500 (yes). Ian also sets out the reality of the war-time ‘bat-bomb’ (yes!?).   The serious point in this discussion gets to the core – what are organisations there to do…are they working on doing this? We also need to include more tolerance, human centricity and focus in our commercial contracts - being human and inherently benevolent.

This session is short and features just hosts Ian and Barclay, doing a review and ‘lessons learned’ session. We note that there is more talk around people and humanity, mental health as major themes – would this have happened even `5 years ago? Its certainly not just about tools. We discuss the ideas espoused in the podcasts so far – some thinking that ESM can be damaging, if not part of a major wave of new ways of working. We’ve talked robots, the universe, Buddhists and bastards, moments that matter, radioactivity, experience.. and of course, the bar. Join us to listen and reflect or join us on the podcast in 2022..!

IT people don’t understand marketing or value – says this week’s guest Ryan Ogilvy in this engaging and practical episode. That’s a strong but generally true statement and we debate the need to get away from just focussing on what we do to why we are doing it… Ryan has worked on a many projects over the years and comes with a great portfolio of experience, working as an external consultant/contractor with many diverse organisations.  The discussion is highly practical and keeps retuning to the core point of the need to do the right thing, and simply, not just follow orders or expect a toolset to deliver ‘value’ without some understanding of the bigger picture. We also discover the 18monte Zoom call and the fact that Ryan has some dubious claim to being a Scottish Lord. Or is this just another excuse for whisky drinking ? you decide.

This episode was recorded and aired as a session at this years itSMF UK annual conference – the 30th Anniversary event. For that we needed a really special guest and of course ‘industry treasure’ Ivor fitted the bill perfectly, as we were discussing past present and future. There are some great nuggets of wisdom here which span the early days to current and future thinking around service management – why wouldn’t we do things in an agile way, why don’t we trust ourselves and our judgement more, and why we should focus on people not just on tech. We also identify that success is about not being visible... We don’t solve the puzzle of the cats that are terrified of cucumbers but really who cares. We end up in the Horseshoe bar in Glasgow for a nice wine…