Latest / The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers / Humanizing IT: A Paradigm Shift for Better User Experiences w/ Katrina Macdermid

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Humanizing IT: A Paradigm Shift for Better User Experiences w/ Katrina Macdermid · The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers

0:01
Welcome it, change Makers to the Deck Show with Tim Flower and Tom McGraw.
0:07
Let's get into it. Hello, change makers, got another deck show
0:11
for you. I'm Tom McGray. I'm here as always with Tim Flower and
0:17
Tim We've got we've got we've got a situation here where we've got We've got
0:20
two authors on the show, yourself and our guests who all who are introduce
0:24
in a moment and it feels like you're trying to make me feel bad.
0:27
You know, no book to my name, no no bibliography here, don't.
0:32
I wouldn't put myself in the same category as Katrina. Mind's more of
0:35
a pamphlet. I think Katrina's got a legitimate books. I don't feel bad.
0:38
Time. Well we did, Okay, we put it like that.
0:41
We're teered for zero author, the nid author. I'm a real author,
0:46
and well we'll get to the real author, Katrina McDermott. I'm hi,
0:53
Katrina. How are you Hi? I'm very well, how are you?
0:56
I'm very good, very good, lovely to have you on the show.
0:59
We're we're admirers of your work and of humanizing it principle and a letter both.
1:07
But it's it's lovely to have you here and before we talk about your
1:10
excellent book, it would be great to hear a little something about you and
1:12
your your pre or foil career as it were. Sure, So, Katraine
1:19
mcdummott, I'm from a stray. I'm actually in the UK at the moment.
1:23
I've just done a world too of humanizing it which has been fantastic.
1:27
Yeah, very very cool actually Las Vegas, Finland and UK. Wow,
1:34
very very busy. Yeah, it's fantastic. Yeah, thank you. So
1:40
before my book, what was I doing? That was pretty much on the
1:42
cusp of COVID actually, so I was doing consulting work and training primarily,
1:51
and during that time, especially during training, this neat naggling feeling that I've
1:57
always known there was a gap ninety service management and that's talking about experience.
2:02
So COVID kind of seemed to be the perfect time to start writing, to
2:07
be honest, sure, sure was it. So this was a nagging feeling
2:13
for a while. It was an absence you'd felt for some time. But
2:15
did COVID put it into stark relief? And what was the sort of the
2:22
series of events that led you to actually conceive of an execute a book.
2:27
I think that as I was, as I said, training, and I
2:30
guess for the last you know, five six years, people that have sort
2:35
of followed me for one of a better word. I've always talked about the
2:38
lack of experience in ninety service management, and the more I kept training and
2:43
the more I kept consulting, I just kept noticing that this lack of experience,
2:50
of thinking about experience, and lack of empathy when we're doing it service
2:53
management just continues to happen, and it just continues to create really sub to
3:00
more results for IT service management and for IT organizations as a whole. M.
3:06
I mean, you talk about your world tour. The book's obviously doing
3:10
extremely well. Has it has it outdone your expectations? Would you say at
3:14
this point what was your what were those expectations of a book? How how
3:17
much of a readership did you think you were going to reach? What did
3:21
you dream of reaching? I should say my expectations were low because everyone kept
3:27
saying to me books are hard to sell. You probably know that they are
3:30
hard sell. But it's exceeded my expectations. And I'm the sort of person
3:35
that when someone says, oh, you can't do it or won't happen.
3:38
I'll go watch me, I'll make it happen. And so I'm determined to
3:43
go out there and in Vegas. I'm not sure if you sorry, did
3:46
a post that the book sold out in the Las Vegas conference that was there.
3:51
Yeah, it was a high selling book besides the key night. But
3:53
that's all right. I'll take that. But yet continues, and I get
3:58
amazing messages that still, you know, I feel so humbled from people on
4:01
LinkedIn and say I'm just what your book or I see posted that brought the
4:04
book and say, you know this is this is what we need in it
4:08
service management. So I feel very privileged and blessed, and I say that
4:12
with all sincerity. I never thought that this would be attracting the attention that
4:15
it has done. Magnificent. So Katrina, I'm I'm a big believer in
4:20
the ability to change your own long term and long held beliefs in the face
4:28
of new information right and be able to change your own opinion. And when
4:31
you apply that to business and to it, what were your realizations what shortcomings
4:38
did you feel, especially around the pandemic and specifically within service management that needed
4:44
that new assessment, that new opinion what needed to change. Well, it
4:50
was interesting because during the pandemic, this is where it really shone, shined,
4:58
and we didn't get the reward for So basically the frontline staff, nurses,
5:03
doctors, you know, clean as everything, we're getting praise and they
5:08
should have, absolutely, But what it did it was it re pivoted organizations.
5:14
It allowed organizations to function, and I didn't see any thanks for it
5:17
staff or it professionals. So I did a post called the Unsung Heroes of
5:23
the Pandemic and it reached trending status and that is that was a moment to
5:29
me. It was like it people, we are really good at what we
5:30
do. And as someone said to me, a very senior man won't name,
5:35
and it has stayed with me. He said, why is it that
5:39
it professionals act really well in a crisis? Yea, And when there's not
5:44
a crisis, yeah, that that collaboration and working together just kind of disappears.
5:49
So we're really good at priority one incidents. Yeah, we all jump
5:55
in and we all all work together. But as soon as that's sober,
5:59
we go back to a very solid way of working. And again, you
6:02
know, I feel a lot of frameworks have blood on their hands in some
6:05
ways because of that, because it never really taught us to behave like this.
6:10
It taught us to follow process, to support technology, not to support
6:15
each other. I had a senior executive at my former employer, so I
6:18
was in it for over thirty years and an end user compute, and I
6:23
had a senior leader who who put that observation front and center to the whole
6:27
team. We are we love crises because we perform so well in them.
6:31
We're great at being the superhero firefighter. But the dirty little secret is we
6:38
and it probably caused that fire. We probably lit the match and caused the
6:43
outage that we're now being praised for being heroes for. So you've got to
6:47
change how you do business in the good time so you don't actually create the
6:50
bad times. It's it's an interesting conversation with a senior leader. But for
6:56
your books, it feels like it was pretty collaborative. Feature and other contributors
7:01
and other sources. What was that experience like about collaborating You talk about collaborating
7:05
in good times with it and other people in it. How about in writing
7:09
a book and getting that kind of circulating the content more broadly, for more
7:14
insight and more opinion was how was that journey for you? Am I letters
7:20
swear a little bit a little bit it was. It was bloody tough to
7:28
be and look and I think, you know this is yourself. Writing a
7:31
book was not my day job. I was. I was starting a new
7:34
business. You know, I lost my job during COVID because I worked for
7:39
the aviation industry. So I had to start a new business and running a
7:42
business, building clients and then trying to write a book on the side.
7:46
So I wanted the book to be collaborative, and I wanted to have different
7:49
perspectives, and I wanted it to be written by very senior people and people
7:55
that worked in operations, not saying they're not senior. So initially and the
8:00
tweet nus, I really didn't have a good structure of what the book was
8:03
going to be about. I just knew that we had to write about something
8:05
needs to change in ninety service management. So luckily, you know, my
8:09
network of friends are just the most beautiful people. They're very tolerant of me
8:13
um and you know, there's time zones were also a big, big issue
8:18
from all over the world, and they had day jobs as well, so
8:22
it was that collaboration and a lot of patients from them and really, you
8:26
know again, appreciate all the all the effort that was put into that to
8:30
give different perspectives. Yeah. Cool. Let's get into the core concept,
8:35
the human humanizing it principle. Stuff you've even trademarked it. I can't help
8:41
but notice everywhere I probably got there just before the next think marketing department.
8:46
To be fair, what are what are its core components? Break it down
8:52
for us. The core components is human centered design is a philosophe a framework,
9:01
way of working, whatever you want to call it. That I call
9:03
it like there's two worlds out there, human center design and IT service management,
9:07
and a lot of IT professionals don't know about human center design, and
9:13
conversely, a lot of human center designers have no idea what IT service management
9:16
is and the idea of humanizing it is. To incorporate those two words together
9:22
because we are on the business of service IT service management, and very few
9:28
professionals have been trained in what design and experience is and in humanizing it.
9:35
We say that any process practice, whatever we want to call it, that
9:37
interacts with a user is a service. And traditionally we didn't. We treated
9:45
them as a process though an incident management We had no consideration for the user
9:48
experience. We had consideration about how it should act. And when I presented
9:56
in Las Vegas recently, I showed the student we had the over sixty people
10:03
in the training course. It was a world first actually for us. That
10:05
there's a technique in human center design called moments that Matter, And what you
10:11
do is you document the experience or service from the customer or user site.
10:16
And we never do that in the incident management process. We document it from
10:20
our side. So we logged the ticket, we categorize the ticket, we
10:26
escalate the ticket. Where is the user in that experience? So what we
10:31
need to do is, you know, one of techniques is what is the
10:33
user doing when the incident occurs? Where are they? What are they thinking?
10:37
Are they going to call the service desk? Are they going to call
10:39
a friend? Are they go to YouTube at Google, etc. And so
10:43
it's really about flipping it around. And in human center design, as in
10:48
IT service management, we have a framework the life cycle IT service management.
10:54
Life cycle human center design also has something similar called the double diamond. And
11:00
in a double diamond, we that's where we do research and really understand our
11:03
users. What we tend to do in NINT service management is go to the
11:07
second diamond, and that's called solution mode. We assume that best practice is
11:11
best and I have huge issue with that because again at the conference, I
11:18
asked this question every time. To be honest, Tom and Jim, that
11:22
hands up in the audience, who has a CMDB that's working? Quiet?
11:30
No hands up? I take pictures like occasionally I'll put a heart that you
11:37
see half a hand and go you need to write a book, you know,
11:41
if you got a CD. So this is an example. There's so
11:43
many things in NINET service management that we keep doing it at the same way.
11:46
We keep doing the same process approach, and it's it's not working.
11:52
So we go back to the first diamond and do our research, understand our
11:54
users, understand constraints, you know, be imaginative and you know in it
12:01
where we're not taught to be imagined and been creative as we are in Human
12:05
Center design. If only there was some software that could tell it what v
12:09
end user is experiencing, Katrina and I say it with my tongue in my
12:13
cheek a little bit. We have a next thing podcast. After all,
12:16
I just I just I ask what is your experience with next thing? If
12:20
at all? You know, you know, these are principles that exist independently.
12:24
I totally acknowledge that. I was just curious if you've used the technology
12:26
professionally and yourself. You know, we sound so sympatical, That's what I
12:31
mean to say. Correct, Yeah, And it's like, you know,
12:35
how do you think the user feels, well, they're winning listening to that
12:39
automated recording press one for this, press two for that, press three?
12:43
How do they feel about that? How about the music that's playing? And
12:46
then telling you it won't be too long? Like, as I said,
12:48
turn it around and map that moments that matter of what they're doing when when
12:52
their experience and incident, not how we act, it should be how they're
12:58
acting. And another another something in the book jumps out. It was the
13:03
idea of the df V principle, tell us what it is and its centrality
13:09
to the application of humanizing idea if you would please, well, in human
13:16
center design, you know that there's sometimes a concept that we have designers and
13:18
they create this great experience. And so when I say create an experience,
13:24
it might be how you walk into a coffee shop and how you order it
13:26
and how you pay for it and how you throw your cup away. So
13:31
it's all about thinking about what you do as an experience as a customer user.
13:35
But you can't design everything and what the DVF model does. It's about
13:41
is it desirable, is it viable, and is it feasible? Can you
13:43
afford it? And do you have the technology to support it? You can't
13:48
have everything. It's it's it's not dissimilar in some ways to the constraints of
13:52
project management that we face, but I think what human center design brings in
13:58
is it desirable. And another thing is that, you know, are we
14:03
fixing the right problem, because quite often in my experience in IT service management
14:07
is that we're fixing the wrong problems. You know, we're looking at fixing
14:11
the incident management process. Well, that's not the problem. There's nothing typically
14:16
wrong with the process. We're looking at the you know, the change management
14:22
process as well, there's too many failed changes. Well that is not the
14:26
problem. And what I'm really passionate about is that, you know, as
14:31
a team said before, we're really good at fixing things. What we need
14:33
to do in IT service management is stop them happening altogether. Don't you know,
14:39
design our products and services and our processes so that they are lovable,
14:43
they're easy to use. So it is preventing those costs of the service desk.
14:48
How do you prevent that in the first place. It's not about fixing
14:50
it once it's happened, it's preventing it. And a lot of the issues
14:54
and another example I'll give Tommy's with the instant management process. Again, the
15:00
real problem is a lot of the times the ticket is logged incorrectly or categorized
15:05
as an incident when it's not an incident in the true sense of a term
15:09
of what an incident is. Tickets are usually used the knowledge or the system
15:13
can't do it. Yeah, and so again you know you we're fixing go
15:18
and look at it could be a governance issue. Quite often it's actually not
15:22
the instant menagerement process. So again we spend a lot of the time analyzing
15:26
tickets, speaking to users, including it professionals that quite often feel unempowered or
15:31
disimpowered to have a voice. And another principle of humanizing it is that everybody
15:37
has a voice, and it's an encourage to be very collaborative as well.
15:41
So much of a talk this year on the show, and of course elsewhere,
15:46
Katrina has been around the Fourth Industrial around Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies right so
15:52
AI, automation, etc. Et cetera. Generally these are of I would
15:58
say, it's like human tools. You know, they're almost tools which which
16:02
threatened or aspired to almost supplant human beings in the workplace, or that's how
16:07
people worry about them and are concerned about them. They mimic human behavior,
16:11
but they're there obviously not human. How do you feel that the humanizing principle
16:18
dovetails with this emerging technology or indeed contradicts it? You know, is there
16:22
at tension here? Are they complimentary? What's your view? I think they're
16:27
complimentary, and this is the importance of humanizing it, because, make no
16:32
mistake, this technology is coming faster and faster. I believe that my research
16:38
is that the way we do service management today is going to be very very
16:41
different very soon. I mean, it is amazing what's going on there,
16:45
you know, to the extent you know, the level one I don't believe,
16:48
you know, essentially will exist. And to me that's a good thing,
16:52
because we don't want humans doing tasks that can be automated, mundane tasks.
16:57
And this is what you know, humanizing IT is about, is that
17:00
we need to now start educating IT professionals about these new ways of working with
17:07
technology. Is to put that human lens on it because a lot of the
17:11
tasks we do in IT can be automated and should be automated, and we're
17:15
not doing it. And you know, the smarts can pick up about things
17:18
going into production that shouldn't be going into production. You know that that's all
17:22
going to happen. And so then we move on to yeah, exactly,
17:26
we move on to the next step about IT professionals being able to be employable.
17:30
And again, make no mistake the CIOs that we interact with CDOs,
17:37
they all want they're all talking about user experience and customer centricity and you know,
17:42
moving things to the clouds great, great, great, But there still
17:45
it is about the human experience and what does that mean for the end user
17:49
as well? And again, as I keep saying, for the IT professional
17:53
that is an amazing answer and you know, such a strong I haven't heard
17:59
something so unequick of a cult about where it is going in that specific area
18:03
before it's really interesting. Okay, let's look at culture and leadership. I
18:07
mean, how significant are vis to the overall process of humanization within the IT
18:14
YORGA. Yes, I really liked this question when I read it because I
18:21
controversially think there's a lot of senior leaders don't really understand what service management is,
18:30
and therefore we very rarely get enough budget for service management. So we
18:36
get enough money for tech, but we don't get money for the service.
18:40
And you know, it is the difference between being a five star hotel or
18:44
a two star hotel. I mean, you can only work with what you've
18:47
got, and I get very frustrated and very annoyed when the CIO isn't and
18:52
whoever's in charge of budgets and cultural leadership whatever, you know, it becomes
18:59
disappointed with how their IT department's running. It's because we haven't got money,
19:03
like you know, to create experience cost money or else you end up with
19:10
a two star hotel. And so this this it must come from the top
19:15
down. And I think, you know, humanizing it were shortly to launch
19:19
a course certainly educates um IT professionals in the concepts of what humanizing it is.
19:25
To actually embed it into the workplace. It must come from leaders.
19:30
Um. And I'm not sure if your listeners or you've heard of a company
19:33
called Ideo. Ideo. No, don't about the listeners, could you have?
19:40
Probably? Yeah? Well, well it's it's interesting, Tom because a
19:44
lot of it people don't know about Ideo, and I certainly didn't. I
19:47
worked in it or my career and I happen to come across studying human center
19:51
design. And when you study human senate design, your your mothership of who
19:55
you go to as a company called Ideo, the American based company, the
19:59
biggest at a firm on the planet. They co designed the Applemac mouse and
20:03
they have done amazing work, you know, socially and commercially for companies.
20:07
And I want all chips should be come for me with this company. And
20:14
I was so very fortunate in Las Vegas the CIO has came across humanizing it
20:19
and we actually messaged on LinkedIn and I was telling on my designer friends and
20:23
guess what, the CIO from Ideos contacted me and he actually and bravely I
20:30
asked him to co facilitate the boot camp in Las Vegas and he said yes,
20:36
and there was probably one of the best days of my life with Leslie
20:40
Eugene, the CEO of IDEO co, facilitating Humanizing It boot camp, and
20:45
he showed our students a film clip about IDEO and how why they are so
20:52
successful, and there was an example of a workshop and the CIO and every
20:56
leader is in those workshops and everybody's equal, and it's not when the boss
21:03
walks in and everyone's quiet. It is a very collaborative way of working in
21:07
and very rarely do I ever see in it when if we have workshops,
21:12
do I see a CIO in there? Very really and yes, And it's
21:18
this whole really different way of working. And I think to a lot of
21:22
it, service management frameworks such as I tool have created this very soloid way
21:26
of working. You know, I'm the change management, I'm the problem manager,
21:30
I'm the knowledge manager, and they work very soloed. And again we're
21:33
never really encouraged to come together like that with everybody from the business. You
21:38
know, we tend to have workshops in isolation, and I say to my
21:42
students, go out on the street, or I come and ask one of
21:45
your teenage sons to come to these workshops, because my gosh, you know,
21:48
we're designing these processes and then they've got such different views on the world
21:52
of how they use technology and from really fabulous. You know, we had
21:56
a workshop. One of the ladies sons said, why we people call a
22:00
service desk? You know that's that's old fashioned. Yea yea consumer raised on
22:08
consumer? I correct, yeah, exactly. Um, and what about tools
22:17
and technology Cottriunity, We've we focused largely on culture, on principle, on
22:22
core principles, other emerging tools which you think are exciting and significant and space
22:29
or indeed established ones. Well, when you say tools, we have tools
22:33
out there at the moment, it service management tools. We have fantastic tools
22:37
that do fantastic things. Unfortunately, most of the tools configurations I've seen are
22:41
not doing fantastic things. So we have the technology already out there, and
22:48
what we're not doing well is utilizing them because as I said, we were
22:52
not really a lot of the time given budget for that. Tools already have
22:56
a lot of AI capability, and I still this is true. I still
23:00
see companies, you know, they're setting passwords manually, you know, like
23:06
you know, forget about AO and all that sort of stuff. At the
23:08
time, just look at why is this happening when you have a Rolls Royce
23:12
of a tool set and you're not using it, or the service catalog is
23:18
written in such an unuser friendly way that you know, I can't even understand
23:22
it if I wanted to use that service catalog. And again, because we're
23:26
not thinking about the user experience, we're thinking about it from how we would
23:30
see it. So lots of tools out there that we are already a lot
23:34
of companies have access to. Fantastic, fantastic. Well, Katrina, I
23:40
absolutely adore talking to you today about your wonderful book, and I loved hearing
23:45
about the tour and the success that you're having and the principles themselves. Been
23:52
absolutely fantastic to have you on the show. I wish you all the best
23:55
for the rest of your tour, and maybe you should tell people where they
23:59
can get hold for volume. Yes, so, I would love that,
24:03
and so thank you for having music I so. I was very delighted to
24:06
receive the email and request, well than delighted, So thank you. Yes,
24:11
the book is available at time from my publisher at TSO TSO or from
24:15
Amazon book Sales as well, and as I said out, Humanizing It Online
24:19
course is launching very soon and that will be available via our website, which
24:26
is called hit Global. Thank you, I think we best have you on
24:29
again sometimes. Oh we'd love that opportunity. To make sure that you never
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24:53
Thank you so much for listening. Until next time,