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Humanising IT: We Need to Talk About IT is the podcast for IT leaders, service management professionals, and digital transformation teams who know that great IT is about more than process, tools, and frameworks.
Hosted by Katrina Macdermid and Wesley Eugene and brought to you by HIT Global, this podcast explores how to make IT service management more human, more effective, and more relevant in a world shaped by experience, AI, and constant change.
Each episode dives into the real conversations happening across modern IT, including:
- IT service management (ITSM)
- Human-centred design in IT
- ITIL and experience-led service management
- Digital employee experience
- Service desk and support leadership
- IT transformation and organisational change
- Humanising AI and modern service design
If you work in IT and care about creating services that actually work for the people who use them, this podcast is for you.
Whether you’re a CIO, IT leader, service manager, consultant, support professional, or transformation lead, Humanising IT: We Need to Talk About IT will challenge outdated thinking and help you rethink what better IT service really looks like.
Expect:
- Honest conversations
- Fresh perspectives on ITSM
- Practical insights you can apply
- Thought leadership from experienced voices in the industry
- A more human view of IT, service and experience
Subscribe to Humanising IT: We Need to Talk About IT for new episodes, expert insights, and modern thinking on the future of IT service management.
Explore more from HIT Global: https://www.hitglobal.services/
Learn more about Humanising IT™ training and certification: https://www.hitglobal.services/podcast/
[00:00:00]
[00:00:05] Speaker: Well, Hello Chris, welcome to an episode of Humanising IT. It's, uh, beyond a pleasure to have you here. Um, and I mentioned earlier one of the reasons, one of many, that I wanted you on the Humanising IT podcast because, uh, you're a veteran, is that fair, of IT service management?
[00:00:23] Speaker 2: I think I'm a veteran. I'm not sure about
[00:00:25] Speaker: IT service management.
[00:00:27] There you go. But here we have a very special guest, and we're talking IT service management and ITIL, and frameworks. And I don't think we mention incident, problem, or change once, do we, Chris?
[00:00:38] Speaker 2: Hopefully not.
[00:00:39] Speaker: Okay, great.
[00:00:40] Speaker 2: Hopefully we can squeeze some value in there rather than those three.
[00:00:42] Speaker: I was gonna say, well, what the heck do we talk about?
[00:00:46] So on that note, I have great pleasure in introducing Chris Barrett, transformation manager of what? I'll allow you to introduce yourself.
[00:00:57] Speaker 2: I'm a transformation professional. There's several roles in there. Yep. I mean, chief transformation officer is the, uh, is the current role.
[00:01:01] Speaker: Great. And also we spoke, and we'll lead onto this a bit more, what the heck is transformation?
[00:01:11] Speaker 2: Yeah. How long have we got, Kat? Tr- transformation is, uh, is shifting an organization from one place to another. Not from A to B. B is quite often not achievable. C is probably where you end up. It's got a beginning, a middle, and an end, and they use us professionals to get you there.
[00:01:26] Speaker: And what does it often get confused with?
[00:01:30] Speaker 2: That's a leading question, but, uh, continuous improvement again.
[00:01:33] Speaker: Continuous improvement. Yeah.
[00:01:33] Speaker 2: Continuous improvement for me is business as usual. It's something that people inside the organization are driving and delivering incremental improvements as opposed to something that is probably enterprise-wide, large, substantial, and hopefully accounted for in a slightly different way.
[00:01:48] Speaker: Mm. And have you seen a true transformation project or initiative in IT service management?
[00:01:58] Speaker 2: A quick answer is yes Mm-hmm My hesitation though is how successful it's always been. You know, there's always a, a question as to how successful transformation is, setting out the objectives up front. But if we talk in maturity terms, yes, people have achieved step changes in maturity in IT service management- Mm
[00:02:13] through transformation.
[00:02:14] Speaker: Well, that is absolutely going to be another podcast, Chris, 'cause I would love to hear about it, um, 'cause I've been in IT pretty much I think as long as most people of our listeners have, and I've seen s- incremental successes, but I wouldn't say a h- a, a transformation how I would describe a
[00:02:34] Speaker 2: transformation.
[00:02:34] That's
[00:02:34] Speaker: fair. Yeah. So I'm gonna take you up on that.
[00:02:36] Speaker 2: Hold that thought.
[00:02:39] Speaker: You've recently started some r- interesting posts on LinkedIn. I
[00:02:44] Speaker 2: have.
[00:02:44] Speaker: And, uh, I love them. I think another reason, uh, or I don't think I know, that we're, we've invited you on this podcast is of the voice that you're giving to IT service management, uh, a conversation, and conversations that need to be had.
[00:03:00] And I think respectfully many people in IT don't know how to have those conversations. And one thing that I love about your recent posts is about ITIL and the boardroom. You had a saying, It never gets invited- ... into the boardroom.
[00:03:22] Speaker 2: I, I, IT in the boardroom and IT and value, value creation is a, um, it's a bit of a gap.
[00:03:27] Let, let's, let's be straight upfront. Um, and this was a bit of an itch for me to scratch. It's something I've seen. It's something I wanted to comment on given my kind of unique, uh, unique background I would say. I'm IT service management savvy. I'm transformation through and through. That's my DNA. Uh, and I've sit in enough boardrooms to, as I said, judge the artwork.
[00:03:46] So, um, yeah, this, this, this seemed to be me in a, uh, a, a particular Venn di- diagram space. I'm sitting in the middle there, and I thought, "Yeah, I've, I've got something I wanna say here." So that, that was the, uh, that was the cathartic reason for doing this on my own time. Um, and I'm, uh, I'm enjoying it.
[00:03:59] Speaker: Hmm, I can tell by the posts and the engagement you're getting out there.
[00:04:01] They're going really well. And when you're sitting in a boardroom- Do you ask for Money. What, what do you ask for in, from a regard from an IT department? Who's representing IT in that boardroom?
[00:04:18] Speaker 2: Yeah. Here's the thing. Well, it is, it's a tech leader. Let's call it the CIO for now. Um, and the conversation, the current conversation is, it's cost focused, it's operationally focused, and it's probably negative.
[00:04:28] You're starting from availability numbers, for example. You're working backwards from 100. That person's on the back foot already. They are, and I think I use the analogy here, IT's rocking up to the boardroom in a, in an ambulance. Everyone else is driving around the tracks having great conversations about growth, building things, growing the organization and the people.
[00:04:48] Everyone loves the a- the fact the ambulance is there, it's not the main attraction. Um, and it's not really generating value. Uh, I think they wanna get IT in a car.
[00:04:57] Speaker: And is it... Do you think that's the frameworks itself, or is it a branding issue? We don't know how to articulate value. What, what do you think it is?
[00:05:04] I think it's in the, in the articulation. Um, it's 100% not
[00:05:08] Speaker 2: the frameworks. The frameworks were designed to do what they do at an operational level, and they do really, really well. Mm. Uh, not just ITIL, uh, but across the board. Um, they serve, uh, the operational focus. They give people the framework. They give people the structure to deliver world-class ITSM.
[00:05:24] So you've got world-class ITSM in many organizations, not in all, uh, and the engine's running beautifully. Mm. It's fantastic. Uh, but the captain's up top thinking, "Well, the propellers are going around, everything's happy." Mm. Not really much interested about anything else.
[00:05:35] Speaker: Yeah.
[00:05:35] Speaker 2: And that is, that's where we are.
[00:05:38] Speaker: Mm.
[00:05:38] Speaker 2: Uh, where could we be if we had a translation layer, uh, that said, yeah, that we've got some, uh, we've got some great stats. Every service now, every, um, uh, every, every, every system generates enough metrics here-
[00:05:50] Speaker: Mm ...
[00:05:50] Speaker 2: to know what we're doing. It's translating that into a language that the board understands.
[00:05:55] What's the value of that? We can use examples here.
[00:05:58] Speaker: Absolutely. So back in the day, I would present the availability. We, we all know the watermelon reporting, but that's what we reported on, availability, response times, meantime to restore, all those, DR. Mm-hmm. Can't even remember what we called now, but, um, that's what we reported on, and you're saying no.
[00:06:15] Speaker 2: I'm saying they're fantastic. Mm. Let's pick on their MTTR, so mean time to recovery. Let's say it's, it's 40 minutes. It's not a bad score for some organizations, but that means absolutely nothing to the CFO. It means nothing to the board. But if you translated that and said a downtime, MTTR, uh, what that translates to is customer churn.
[00:06:34] How many customers did you lose because the system was down and wasn't returned? Uh, what was your regulatory exposure as a result of that? 'Cause you can quantify that, and you can put a, a number on both of those things. So translating MTTR into something that's got a value to it, and turn it around. So if we reduce our MTTR, what we're effectively doing is reducing our risk exposure, risk of fines, whatever that might be.
[00:06:55] It will be monetary. You can reduce your customer churn. Customer churn is a- Percentage, fantastic. We chipped away at that because our systems are more available. Now you're generating a value conversation, not a cost conversation. Mm. So just one example, one metric. There are plenty out there obviously.
[00:07:11] This is a need for a translation layer. Mm. And other people have done this.
[00:07:15] Speaker: But, uh, I agree fully. What I found hard when I had a normal job was we reported on these availability response time metrics, and there was no association to the customer impact And, and I think that's another layer that's missing
[00:07:32] Speaker 2: You're describing the same layer.
[00:07:33] Speaker: Yeah.
[00:07:34] Speaker 2: That is exactly the same layer. That's- I
[00:07:36] Speaker: mean, I didn't know ...
[00:07:36] Speaker 2: you, you're losing customers because the service isn't available. Yeah. You're going through your customer journey, you're trying to pay... You, you're putting your credit card details in, system down. You've lost a customer. Mm. That's a system thing- Mm
[00:07:45] that generates a customer churn number. Customer churn number is huge.
[00:07:49] Speaker: Yeah. And, and quite often, you know, the digital team have these stats, like if the website's down because of the back end, but it's not put together in IT. Again, that translation layer, um, where, where I find, you know, digital... Do you find digital have a seat at the table and listen to the...
[00:08:06] Yes, no?
[00:08:08] Speaker 2: Not always.
[00:08:08] Speaker: No? Okay.
[00:08:09] Speaker 2: No, no. AI, yes.
[00:08:10] Speaker: Well, of course. Yeah. Of
[00:08:11] Speaker 2: course. Uh,
[00:08:11] Speaker: it- Of course ...
[00:08:11] Speaker 2: may- maybe pick out some of the examples from the, uh, the other functions here who have got to a point where they have found their translation layer. So HR will be talking about, um, uh, the churn of the internal staff, the, the, the loss of good people.
[00:08:22] Now, Mercer have got that translation layer, so they can translate that into an impact on P&L. So if we lose X amount of people, percentage per year, HR can report on that. They can create a dashboard. They've got their metrics. Not interested in those metrics. What's the P&L impact? So as you mentioned that the CFO has got an interest- Yeah
[00:08:39] and they're approaching something to an HR dashboard that replicates what the CFO turns up with, EBITA, margin, revenue, and you get some- something interesting.
[00:08:49] Speaker: Mm.
[00:08:49] Speaker 2: Or something that the board, like, would get a hold of.
[00:08:51] Speaker: And, and so there is this gap, translation gap. So my next question is, you've been handed a budget to run, um, major, let's say, transformation, um, initiative.
[00:09:05] How much of the total budget percentage wise would you allocate to IT service management?
[00:09:12] Speaker 2: Gosh, well, that's a loaded question, Kat. Um-
[00:09:14] Speaker: Why?
[00:09:16] Speaker 2: Uh, you gotta go value led. What, what's the benefit in here? And therefore, uh, how much should you be spending on it? So, and then if you pick out where you wanna create your value, is it pure EBITDA?
[00:09:26] So is it pure margin? Is it pure bottom line? You wanna pull cost out. I know you've got something that people can get a hold of. That's a transformation program, operational cost and efficiency. Language people do understand. Mm. Yes, you would spend money on that, and yes, you'd expect a return on that money.
[00:09:39] Now, within there, you've got a lot of IT initiatives and IT service management initiatives that you should really be chasing after. Mm. But again, if you pull the metrics, if we can improve things like MTTR, or we can consolidate systems, or we can maybe make our CMDB work for us- Factoring technical debt, then we're chasing something, we're either reducing EBITDA, reduced systems, uh, or reduced errors attached to systems, reduced maintenance attached to systems, that's got a cost attached.
[00:10:04] But if you're gonna reduce your technical debt, then it added another framework value, not just your EBITDA, not just your cost, your bottom line, but, uh, your deal price. So provision attached to someone buying an organization will be less if you've got less technical debt.
[00:10:19] Speaker: Mm. And so that was the bad questions.
[00:10:21] The, the question should've been what are you trying to achieve first versus-
[00:10:24] Speaker 2: And for me, value is where you should be shooting for ...
[00:10:28] Speaker: value. And how do you-
[00:10:29] Speaker 2: Start with value ...
[00:10:29] Speaker: how do you, how is value defined, Chris?
[00:10:33] Speaker 2: Are you sure I've got a definition for value?
[00:10:34] Speaker: Well,
[00:10:34] Speaker 2: yeah. Yeah. But enterprise value is probably where you wanna end up with that one, which is EBITDA multiplied by the multiplier, less the provisions attached to that with debt and structuring.
[00:10:44] Speaker: But you're talking language that is not a language we speak in IT. But it's
[00:10:49] Speaker 2: not rocket science, is it?
[00:10:50] Speaker: But we don't speak it, in my experience.
[00:10:53] Speaker 2: You're a layer away from it, though.
[00:10:55] Speaker: You're a layer away. Should we be closer to it?
[00:10:57] Speaker 2: With a layer, absolutely. You're, you're, you're drawing lines, you're connecting dots between really good service management and numbers the board understands.
[00:11:06] Speaker: So it's interesting 'cause, uh, as you know, we, we teach Humanising IT, and we do consulting, so I, me and our team have a lot of opportunity to meet organizations around the globe, and mostly they're facing the same problem. You know, I say, I say this quite often, it's 2026, guess what the top calls to the service desk are?
[00:11:31] Top call.
[00:11:33] Speaker 2: Password
[00:11:35] Speaker: Yes
[00:11:37] Speaker 2: It's like a yes?
[00:11:38] Speaker: Yes. So can you see this huge gap between what you are championing and what we should be championing to actually what's happening on the ground? And why we can't even get b- the basics right, respectfully.
[00:11:52] Speaker 2: Uh, and that's a, that's a, that's a maturity thing. That's a how can we get good practice in there?
[00:11:56] Not best practice, just good practice. Helping understand things like improving our, uh, just our ticket response time, um, all the way through to enabling password, uh, changes, all the way through to some of the really tactical things. Mm. They're all the good things. They're all the good things. Uh, and that's a maturity layer.
[00:12:11] That's a maturity journey you can go on that can be transformational, can be continuous improvement. But improving those, great. That's, that's operational best practice. Yeah, that's... And the tools to do that exist The tools exist.
[00:12:25] Speaker: But I think what happens in IT organizations, and, and I was guilty, is that you follow frameworks, and that's the best practice.
[00:12:32] But you're forgetting, and I know this is said, but I really believe this, we're forgetting the why.
[00:12:38] Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
[00:12:38] Speaker: And, and language that you're bringing into the conversation is something that certainly, uh, was not in my vocabulary when I worked in IT, uh, ever really.
[00:12:45] Speaker 2: S- some of it's in there though, surely.
[00:12:46] Technical debt.
[00:12:48] Speaker: Technical debt, but what does that mean? How much is it? What does it cost? Yeah.
[00:12:51] Speaker 2: And the means to actually putting that into pounds, pence, dollars, cents is not there.
[00:12:57] Speaker: Ex- exactly. Yeah.
[00:12:58] Speaker 2: In some places it is. Yeah. Yeah, there are bespoke different, uh- Yeah ... board structures, board dashboards- Yeah
[00:13:02] and consultancies that have done this. It's, it's piecemeal. Mm. It's very much piecemeal. There's no standard that says, "Technical debt is made up of these elements. We can cost it like this." So I think there's missing, a missing layer includes something probably in a value accounting standard here.
[00:13:14] Speaker: Mm. And, and you know, there's a, a famous sort of line we use in IT, like, h-how do you know what it's costing you?
[00:13:21] You wait till the bill arrives. Like...
[00:13:23] Speaker 2: Or, or you cost the people and the earlier tech. Yeah. You've, you've got, you've got a, a cost, yeah, of
[00:13:28] Speaker: IT- Mm ...
[00:13:28] Speaker 2: per employee. Yeah. Uh, it's, it's a, it's a baseline metric. Yeah. Ex- exactly. But again, you're very cost focused there.
[00:13:33] Speaker: Mm.
[00:13:33] Speaker 2: Those people are generating value, and technical debt again.
[00:13:36] They, they're addressing technical debt. Um, they are reducing EBITDA-
[00:13:39] Speaker: Mm ...
[00:13:39] Speaker 2: which will balloon if it's left on its own. Uh, the actual, um, the costs and therefore the bottom line. Um, and the, uh, the attraction of an organization to the next purchase, the next investment, uh, cycle, it, it is improved with- Mm ... with better, better tech.
[00:13:51] Speaker: Yeah.
[00:13:52] Speaker 2: The kicker on this is potentially due diligence as technical due diligence improves.
[00:13:57] Speaker: Mm.
[00:13:57] Speaker 2: Not saying it's fantastic everywhere. If that improves, then the pressure will come downstream. Mm. So we're taking this amount of money off price of the, uh, of the deal, the value of the company, enterprise value, we're taking a provision.
[00:14:09] That's coming off the price. But if you'd attacked with that over the previous three, four, five years, that big slug of cash coming off the price of the organization wouldn't be the same. Yeah. That's value to chase.
[00:14:19] Speaker: Yeah. And, and I, I feel too that, um, in IT service management, we're the victims of the crime we've created.
[00:14:27] Speaker 2: It's always the neg- it's always the negative, isn't it? It's always the negative.
[00:14:31] Speaker: Yeah. A- and, and conversely, uh, uh, I taught a, a group of students this morning actually, and I'm really passionate that we actually do a really good job in IT. As IT professionals, we keep organizations safe, running, profitable, bonuses- Yep
[00:14:47] paid. You know? That if it wasn't for us, and, and then to your point, you know, ITIL is very... it was always great at, at doing that, gave us a common language. But again, that translation layer that you are passionate about- Is
[00:15:02] Speaker 2: It's missing, so we're- It's missing ... we're, we're looking at the costs. Yeah. And the, the person fronting this at, at a board is talking about, uh, cyber incidents, negative.
[00:15:09] They're talking about the costs of going off, of implementing a platform, maintaining a platform, that's a negative. Availability, well, it's less than 100, so therefore it's negative. The, the, the beleaguered CIO is on a hiding to nothing. Um, and that's one of my anecdotes as well, and it's true. Uh, the, uh, the pre-brief before a board of the CEO was basically telling the, uh, the CIO that, uh, if he had no questions on IT whatsoever, then you're a success.
[00:15:31] And do you
[00:15:31] Speaker: agree with that?
[00:15:32] Speaker 2: No. I mean, that was a horrible thing to witness. Yeah. Let alone actually, uh, see. But it's not the fault of the CIO. It, it, they, they've been trained in a, in a tech career, and that's what they're trained in. The CEO is just simply stating what the investors are interested in, and so therefore neither have got the tools to actually have a valid conversation.
[00:15:47] It's neither of their fault, it's just a circumstance of what we've got. And the CIO's probably running a world-class IT service management, using IT to the potential.
[00:15:56] Speaker: Mm.
[00:15:56] Speaker 2: Uh, but we're not interested.
[00:15:58] Speaker: But, and I agree, and I, I also say that I, I used to train ITIL, and I can count on one finger how many C-suite I had in my classrooms.
[00:16:08] I, I had one CIO in all the years I trained it. Uh.
[00:16:11] Speaker 2: But if you equip them with the, uh, the tools to have that conversation-
[00:16:15] Speaker: Yes ...
[00:16:15] Speaker 2: this is, you'll get full of classrooms I'm sure.
[00:16:19] Speaker: Absolutely. Absolutely. Another question. Um, if the board doesn't care about frameworks in IT service management, what do they care about?
[00:16:31] Speaker 2: Capital investment, return on investment, risk-based, uh, and EBITDA. So they're the value end items. Yes, board's concerned with a lot of things, it governs a lot of things, but the things that we're interested in there are the value elements. Quite often, you know, if you just play those three back, the CIO is not equipped to answer any questions on any of those.
[00:16:49] Speaker: Mm.
[00:16:49] Speaker 2: Uh, we can talk about cost, so yes, I'm part of the budget for the organization, and therefore I'm, I'm a big drag on your EBITDA. That's the focus of the conversation. Mm. But if we turn it around, we'll perhaps get to post-GAFM in the future, what it could be- Yeah ... is something, yeah, potentially a lot more positive.
[00:17:05] Speaker: As you said, rather than reporting on the crashes we either had or avoided, um, we should be reporting on how we got c- customers or people from A to B. Ex-
[00:17:13] Speaker 2: exactly. Mm. Exactly. Yeah. And, uh, let's
[00:17:14] Speaker: take
[00:17:14] Speaker 2: an example. Procurement have been through this. They don't, they don't turn up a board with supplier, uh, score cards, supplier rated cards.
[00:17:21] They don't turn up with supplier details and all the costs attached to that. They've got operational metrics. Mm. Same with IT has. But what they do do is translate that into P&L.
[00:17:31] Speaker: Very good point.
[00:17:32] Speaker 2: We've got our procurement systems, our framework procurement, our strategic procurement. Our impact on the EBITDA is visible, and we can turn up with a dashboard that says, "This is what we do.
[00:17:41] You don't need to see the detail, but this is the dashboard that says our impact on P&L is this." IT is probably 10 years behind procurement, potentially.
[00:17:49] Speaker: Mm.
[00:17:49] Speaker 2: But they've got a translation layer.
[00:17:50] Speaker: Mm.
[00:17:50] Speaker 2: Take finance as well. I mean, GAAP and IFRS. Okay. GAAP and IFRS don't tell you how to run a finance operation.
[00:17:57] IT don't tell you how to run an IT operation. But you, you have your GAAP, your IFRS numbers. They are instantly recognizable in any board. Mm. That's the translation layer. Yeah.
[00:18:06] Speaker: CFOs
[00:18:07] Speaker 2: run a dashboard, EBITDA, margin, revenue. We're just looking for the same dashboard.
[00:18:13] Speaker: And on that, uh, I imagine, I've haven't been in a board room, um, what the board's interested has changed.
[00:18:19] So for example, they're interested in cyber now.
[00:18:23] Speaker 2: Um- Cyber, AI, ESG. AI.
[00:18:26] Speaker: ESG, AI. How about experience?
[00:18:30] Speaker 2: In terms of?
[00:18:32] Speaker: Are their customers happy? Are their people
[00:18:33] Speaker 2: happy? Customer experience, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Uh, whi- which is measured, and there are value metrics attached to that as well. So customer churn, uh, recurring revenue, net recurring revenue, annual recurring revenue.
[00:18:42] They're all dependent on the customer satisfaction. You can get NPS, and internally you can go to eNPS as well. These are all metrics that can be influenced by IT sitting behind it.
[00:18:54] Speaker: So I'm-
[00:18:54] Speaker 2: Mm ...
[00:18:54] Speaker: going to ask maybe a challenging question. If you're sitting in the boardroom and, uh, the staff morale is very low, um, the...
[00:19:04] And the board is generally concerned 'cause e- everyone's not happy in place.
[00:19:08] Speaker 2: Eesh. Yep.
[00:19:09] Speaker: What department gets allocated the money to uplift employee wellbeing and-
[00:19:15] Speaker 2: I'm not sure I know the
[00:19:17] Speaker: answer to that one. Mm.
[00:19:18] Speaker 2: It wouldn't be IT, would it? Uh...
[00:19:18] Speaker: Or would it?
[00:19:20] Speaker 2: No. No. Yeah I, I don't think it would be. Uh, you, you'd be into, um, CHRO
[00:19:24] Speaker: territory.
[00:19:24] Hmm. 'Cause that's why I asked how much money do you allocate to IT service management, um, because I think it's usually by headcount, not by capability
[00:19:35] Speaker 2: Uh, and this is a disconnect of knowledge both sides. Exactly. The, the gap is both ways. Does the board really understand how much IT costs? Well, CIO will turn up with a budget for the next year.
[00:19:44] Mm. This is how much it's gonna cost based on everything to be done, dev, cyber, infra, and that is service management, and then present that back. But without the understanding, all that gets is top sliced. So unless you turn that into a value element, say, "I can deliver you great service management, and it will influence the metrics we've talked about before."
[00:20:04] Yeah. "I can improve customer experience. I can improve your customer retention. I can improve your, uh, well, your, uh, your recurring revenue, monthly recurring revenue, annual recurring revenue. I can do this through these mechanisms." Mm. Now that seven-minute conversation becomes 17 minutes- Yeah ... 27 minutes. So you're right.
[00:20:18] No, tell us how you do this.
[00:20:20] Speaker: And, and you're absolutely right, Chris. We do have the data, but we don't present the way that you should. Yeah.
[00:20:26] Speaker 2: Or can.
[00:20:27] Speaker: Or can. Well, that, that's the other thing.
[00:20:29] Speaker 2: Yeah,
[00:20:29] Speaker: yeah, yeah. And that's where I think IT is in some ways missing out on, because we don't know what, we don't know where to ask the data is another thing.
[00:20:37] Yeah.
[00:20:37] Speaker 2: It, it, it's, it, it's a community. It's professional community. Mm. But, uh, I, I think I mentioned it's, uh, it's missed, um, the opportunity to, uh, to, to morph and evolve. Mm. ITIL, great framework. Probably missing the top layer and the additional piece. Doing what it does, fantastic. There's some tools that people need, uh, to run world-class IT service management, but translating it, don't think it exists, or if it does, it's not standardized.
[00:21:01] Speaker: Yeah. And, and I agree. I think as you said, we've got these great frameworks that do a great job. Mm-hmm. Uh, and, and so, you know, like, how do you prove that and, as you said, the value of that, um, or else you just continue to churn the wheel sort of thing, don't
[00:21:13] Speaker 2: you? Well, the opportunity's there. Yeah. The opportunity's there with the, you know, uh, just picking on some things and some ideas here.
[00:21:16] A value accounting standard of getting from MTTR through to customer churn. Where's the linkage? Can we agree that? Can we put some audit statements behind that, that we know, yes, this ca- has calculated and has been done in a way that we all recognize- Mm ... recognize going on. That's, that's, that's a, that's gonna be a powerful tool, but it's no different to the tools that HR have got through merger, procurement- A-
[00:21:34] Speaker: absolutely.
[00:21:35] Speaker 2: Exactly ... and finance have got. We could do that. And then you put a dashboard on front, call it a trust, I've called it a trust score dashboard, but-
[00:21:41] Speaker: Right ...
[00:21:41] Speaker 2: any dashboard that the CF- CIO ends up with, other people get. Right? Now you've got a conversation rather than, "Is the IT working? Did you keep the lights on?
[00:21:50] How's your cybersecurity?" Mm. "Are you okay for ESG? Good. You're done."
[00:21:53] Speaker: And, and just in summary, the, the, the work that, the w- articles and work that you are advocating for about having a, a seat at the board table, if we continue how we are with this missing, will we just continue to be seen as- The back
[00:22:14] Speaker 2: What the
[00:22:14] Speaker: risk?
[00:22:14] The, what is the risk? Yeah
[00:22:17] Speaker 2: The risk isn't that IT becomes any less operational or good at what it does. Mm. That'll happen anywhere. Those are solid, sound professionals. It's a case of strength in depth, absolutely. But, uh, what's the risk? The risk is that the, uh, the value conversations happens, they happen in the board without IT in the room.
[00:22:33] Speaker: Mm.
[00:22:33] Speaker 2: And they'll probably be happening on a, on a cost basis rather than a value basis. But the real risk is the, um, yeah, the service management group becomes invisible or stays invisible.
[00:22:43] Speaker: Stays invisible. Yeah, yeah. And, and I, I like to say that when organizations announce that they've had very profitable year and et cetera, et cetera, you have town halls, I very rarely see the IT CIO on stage.
[00:22:58] But I, we contribute so much to the success of organizations, and as we just don't get the, the credit. Um, and I think that through work like your own, advocating and champion, that we actually are... We do add value to the company. But again, how do you translate that?
[00:23:15] Speaker 2: It's often worse than that, isn't it, Kate?
[00:23:16] You've got a pretty one of the largest teams in, in headcount at least, uh, some of the largest investments, and the largest investment, uh, in terms of maintenance and, uh, and CapEx. But everyone sits around the board table is thinking, "Well, I could spend, well, what marketing campaign can I run with that?"
[00:23:29] That's, that's phenomenal. How many hires can I get in HR and over here? Um, or manufacturing productivity operations, we could build a new factory and then, um... Yeah, so the opportunity cost is, is just makes it even worse. E- ex-
[00:23:43] Speaker: exactly.
[00:23:43] Speaker 2: Yeah. So it's, it's a big, it's a big cost element. It is. If you start talking value, it was seen as the bit I drag.
[00:23:49] Speaker: Yeah, exactly. Okay, Chris. Well, on that note, I'm very positive that so people like you are bringing the change that's needed. Don't stop. And we- and hopefully we'll get the opportunity to speak more.
[00:24:02] Speaker 2: Well, let's see how it goes.
[00:24:03] Speaker: No, I'm sure it'll go very, very far. So thank you for that, and we will speak soon.
[00:24:07] Thank you.
[00:24:08] Speaker 2: Thanks.
[00:24:09] Speaker: Thank you. Thank you.
[00:24:10]
[00:24:15] Speaker: Well,