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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consultant, support professional, or transformation lead, Humanising IT: We Need to Talk About IT will challenge outdated thinking and help you rethink what better IT service really looks like.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] Speaker: This is super exciting. Um, Wesley Eugene here. Uh, and I'm here with both Katrina McDermott, author of Human-Centered Design for IT Service Management, and the new book, Humanizing IT: Um, Exploring the Experience Distortion in IT Service Management. And I'm also here with Mark Basham, uh, CEO of HIT Global.
[00:00:33] And we have a special guest that I'd rather turn the mic over to, to Kat or Mark to introduce.
[00:00:41] Speaker 2: Oh, am I taking this one? Go for it.
[00:00:43] Speaker: I would just tease that, uh, I'd like to think of this guy as the godfather- ... of ITSM. But with that, Kat,
[00:00:53] Speaker 3: over to you. I think that's a good, I think that's a good way to set it up, actually.
[00:00:56] Yeah. He is the don. You
[00:00:57] Speaker 4: started off saying you were super excited, but it's not till you got right to the end there that you started to look excited.
[00:01:06] Speaker 5: Well, getting you introduced is, uh, definitely a highlight here.
[00:01:11] Speaker 2: Well, you did say, um, I'll be totally honest, the godfather. Last night we said the grandfather, and we decided to make it godfather. But let's be honest, we're all getting old. My pleasure to introduce, uh, David Ratcliffe. He's the president of Pink Elephant.
[00:01:27] Um, on a personal note, I've known David for a long time. I've also known of, um, your incredible company, Pink Elephant, and what your company and your team have done for IT service management. Um, and I, I don't say this lightly, you have been responsible for shaping, um, what we know today. And I said to Wes, um, earlier that I remember in Australia, I, I did training through Pink Elephant.
[00:01:55] I listened to your podcast that you did many years ago, before podcasts were fashionable, with Troy and George. Yeah. Um, oh gosh, I love them. We should replay them in one of our podcasts. And it's a pleasure to have you here, David, and thank you so much. And as we've discussed, this is just we're shooting the breeze, having a chat about the state of IT service management and the expectations of it today, and how it's changed from your day.
[00:02:24] Well, that's
[00:02:25] Speaker 4: very, very nice of you, Katrina, to say those things. You can invite me back anytime you like- ... just to hear those words. I think most of what you said was probably true. I'm not sure about the godfather. No. Yeah, I don't, didn't bring my little friend with me, so. Our little Pink Elephant friend.
[00:02:40] Don't we call that governance? No, I'm kidding. Well, yeah, it's great to be here. It's nice to talk to fellow enthusiasts, right? Who are, we share a common background from different parts of the world. Yeah. Um, s- so, uh- Let's get going.
[00:03:01] Speaker: As we're about to dive in, I just wanna take a point of personal privilege, uh, because my journey with you and your company started long before we ever met.
[00:03:12] I was, uh, the chief of staff to the CIO at a company called Aflac. Oh. And I was charged with redesigning and deploying modern ITSM because it was broken at the moment. Um, I had resources, I had Gartner consultants, I had Forrester, I had PwC. At the end of the day, my strategy was driven by a company with a funny name-
[00:03:43] called Pink Elephant. And what made the, all the difference is that in reading the white papers that your company was putting out then, it was not just thoughtful, it was actionable. We got it. And that made all the difference.
[00:03:59] Speaker 4: Yeah. That's kind of it, Jason. Uh- Yeah ... I think, you know, with, uh, myself and my business partner, Fatima, uh, we've always been very proud of the team that we have, and their enthusiasm and their passion.
[00:04:12] And, uh, you know, we do our best to guide them and, and produ- give them some, uh, kind of framework for coming up with the actionable, practical solutions. Because after all, where we all came from was definitely a world of theory. Mm-hmm. You know, and I, I, um, I would be very, uh, remiss to make, uh, remarks about where the original books on IT service management came from and make it sound like they were just kind of made up- Right
[00:04:42] by people. But, you know, you can see the twinkle in my eye when I say that. You know, there are some people who I have a great lot of admiration for who contributed to those early books but weren't really deep practitioners.
[00:04:55] Speaker: Right.
[00:04:56] Speaker 4: You know, they were, they were very thoughtful people, uh, ac- maybe more academically minded than industrially minded.
[00:05:04] Mm-hmm. Uh, but that's what got us started. That's what got, got this thing going. Yeah. We've got something to refer to. And one of the first things people talk about with IT service management is the common language that we get. So at least, you know, those very first books provided a starting point.
[00:05:20] Speaker: Yeah.
[00:05:21] Speaker 4: And you then have the opportunity to start saying, "Let's, uh, make this practical. Let's..." And it's where our customers tell us they have the biggest problems, you know? Frameworks don't run organizations. Mm. People do, right? And so we can have all, all of the books in the world. Books are important. They're the best education you can get is reading a book, but when you've got a book and you can ne- a- and, and you've still gotta do some work, you've gotta cross that bridge from what does the theory tell me and how do I put it into practice?
[00:05:58] And we were very fortunate that we provided the space and we gave the resources to our team to be able to start creating approaches. We can talk about technology till the cows come home and how we've got some fantastic new technology these days. All that does is it makes things happen faster, possibly more accurately.
[00:06:17] Mm. Uh, it's good, but it, but, you know, AI doesn't make the decisions that run our business. So it needs-- we need people in the business to be leading the business and using what resources they have, whether it's processes, whether it's tools and technologies. So that's all part of the making things practical, is how do you get, get that stuff that's written down that people will say is good practice or best practice, and how do you turn it into something useful for us?
[00:06:45] And, you know, training and coaching is often the first thing that gets cut from budgets, and we still know there are a lot of organizations who are not investing in what they want, what they know they need, because it's the easy thing that can get cut.
[00:07:02] Speaker: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
[00:07:03] Speaker 4: But the need is still there.
[00:07:04] Speaker: Right. Yeah.
[00:07:06] Well, you, you triggered the word, Mark, investment, right? Like, I know you and I talk about this all the time. As a CEO yourself, what is it you feel that people need to see in order to make the case for that investment in these very necessary disciplines, trainings, uh, these
[00:07:30] Speaker 3: capabilities? Mm-hmm. So, uh, Navigot, it's, listen, it's a great question, and, and it's, it's one I ask a lot of clients that I talk to and, and, and, and you guys.
[00:07:40] Um, and the point that I've made for years is, you know, pe-pe-people need a return, right? People will only spend coin if they're gonna get something back for it. So it says, what's the return on any investments gonna be made? But hold the thought for a minute. For years, training in our space and has, has been on, on largely the same stuff, right?
[00:08:00] So IT organizations have b- have, have training budgets, and they still do today. And w- we're blessed by having a lot of people come to us and talk about, uh, and, and, a-and, and seek training on, frankly, on experience and humanizing IT. So right now, there seems to be a shift towards experience-based training activities.
[00:08:24] For years though, people have been doing, you know, ITIL has been, uh, and, and remains a huge part of most organizations' training budgets. But I do think it's shifting. Um, I've heard more and more customers saying to me that they are stopping that, that spend now, so they're, they're not going for that repeat certification activity.
[00:08:44] Um- My observations are people are still doing it, but not in the same numbers. I have no access to accurate numbers right now, so the, the... what I'm sharing is, is feedback and triangulation, but certainly that would seem to be the case. So there's a shift, and pe- and that's bec- has to be, people are not spending as much on, on that classic service management training.
[00:09:06] It has to be because their perception is the value is not there. They're not getting the return that they previously did.
[00:09:12] Speaker 4: Hey, I have to challenge you.
[00:09:13] Speaker 3: Go on.
[00:09:14] Speaker 4: So it's not all about getting a return financially. Mm-hmm. There's other obligations we have, legislation, privacy- The compliance and governance stuff
[00:09:23] uh, respecting, you know, things like, um, not just the trademarks, but IP. I mean, this is one of the things with, um, the ethical dilemmas- Yeah ... that we have with using AI. Sure. And there's still a lot of people don't really understand that. In our organization, we spend a lot of time talking about this, and so there are times when we maybe are nibbling at the edges of what's legally correct.
[00:09:48] Yeah. And I don't mean something very sinister. I'm talking about, you know, uh, quoting from someone's book, right? How much do you... how much is, are you really allowed to, to quote? Right. There... I mean, there are, there are rules on this, but some of the rules are based on whether you're in a- in the academic world.
[00:10:04] Mm. Academia, you can actually do more. But if you're developing products that you're gonna sell, you know, you can do less. And so where is that line? So there's obligations ethically to how we do our work. So,
[00:10:18] Speaker 3: so Dave, you're talking about reasons for taking training, reasons for investing in, in, in learning and development and so on.
[00:10:22] So you've called out governance and compliance. Yeah. Absolutely spot on. Yeah. And that will never change, 'cause organizations and individuals have to remain the right side of those- But
[00:10:31] Speaker 4: there's always been a, a- Yeah ... the need for you to respect- Yeah ... other people's property.
[00:10:36] Speaker 3: No, I agree.
[00:10:36] Speaker 4: Right? But AI's just made it so much easier for people to do things that maybe they should think twice before they do,
[00:10:43] Speaker 3: right?
[00:10:43] So other reasons. So I mean, another one which is a given, and I don't think goes away, although when times are hard, you might be challenged a little more, a little bit more to justify, is people development. So as a, a, as a manager, as a leader, um, where you're working with teams and, and colleagues, you want to be investing in those people.
[00:11:04] So you want your individuals to be growing, developing- Yeah ... performing better through that. Yeah. But also- Yeah ... feeling personal growth and, and, uh, you know, developing loyalty and so on to the organization through it. So there's another reason for ongoing- Yeah, but- ... investment in pe- I also- ... in individuals
[00:11:18] Speaker 2: think this is, again, this is just a personal opinion. Yeah. Like, traditional training that we do in IT service management, um, with AI is becoming irrelevant, because I... Dave, I'd like your opinion on this also, and Wes, that it... I'll dumb it down, if you will. Incident management as we know it, change management, enable, whatever you wanna call it, as we know it, service it, that will no longer be the same.
[00:11:42] As what we've been taught for decades- Mm-hmm ... and decades and decades. You know, we always followed this process, but AI will completely change all that. And, and what we've been learning is irrelevant. You know, don't even have to log a ticket now. We don't have to tell the difference between a service request and...
[00:11:57] All this stuff that we were taught and, you know, problem management and incident management, I believe, and we've talked about this too, as, you know, configuration management and CMDB, do you need it with AI? So what... And this is why I think the traditional training that we do in IT service management with, as we all know, the big framework, I, you know.
[00:12:18] Yeah. Uh,
[00:12:19] Speaker: to me, I'm very curious where David's gonna come in on this. The godfather. Yeah, yeah. Um, but to me, I feel like this, AI presents us the largest shift left opportunity we've seen in a generation. And so I don't think that it's so much that these things, um, configuration management, incident management, are no longer needed, it's just, it's really how much of this procedural work can we shift to our digital coworkers, and how much of it needs to be l- uh, needs a human leading from the front.
[00:13:06] Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
[00:13:07] Speaker: And so, so that's, that's kind of the way I-
[00:13:10] Speaker 2: But what I'm getting at Wes- ... I think about it ... is like, you know, uh, correct me if I'm wrong, Dave, like, you know, log, step one, log a ticket. You know, this is the process. Sure. Triage it. Level one does it, then it goes to level two. Like, that's what we've been taught, and that's what our frameworks or third eye tools taught us- Yeah
[00:13:24] or guided us. That's irrelevant now. Is it? Yes. Well-
[00:13:28] Speaker: I, I, I, I think- Well, it's who's doing it, isn't it? ... it, it is a difference... Uh, e- exactly. I think it's- Of how it's done ... how it's done, who's doing it- Yeah ... and then also having a human in the loop. But David- See,
[00:13:37] Speaker 4: your AI, your AI tool's only gonna make decisions based on how you prime it.
[00:13:41] Yes. Right? Sure. And so there's still decisions that have to be made. As, as the world progresses, as business changes- Yeah ... as the way that we, uh, use AI for different purposes- Yeah ... changes, it has to be primed, it has to be managed, and therefore somebody's gotta be making decisions. Right. And then you've got data that you're capturing, which maybe, you know, nobody's ever opened a ticket lately, but there's tickets.
[00:14:07] Right. What are they telling us? Mm-hmm. Right? And maybe we can use an, an AI tool that can say, "Let's take, let's do some analysis of those, and let's start creating problems and change records." Sure. But is it always gonna be... You s- you used the word completely, that's where you got me. Right? Completely, you're exaggerating.
[00:14:26] Right? Right? It's not gonna completely eliminate incident management with interaction with humans and incident management and problem management. Maybe- ... in a few generations There'll be some type of technology that will be, that will come along which I don't yet understand. Yeah. But at the moment what I'm seeing...
[00:14:47] First of all, let's, let's all back up a little bit. There's a lot of, uh, talk about AI which is hype, right? You've got tool vendors, but bless them, who wanna encourage us to look at what products they have and what services they have. But when I hear about something being built as an AI native product, if you know what I'm talking about here.
[00:15:12] There's, there's, there's a set of books that have just been released which have been described as AI native. If you know what AI native means, it means it was built- ... using artificial intelligence. Yeah. Right.
[00:15:26] Speaker 2: Not, not godfathers. Not godfathers
[00:15:29] Speaker 4: who have still been around through four or five versions, right?
[00:15:34] So, you know, there's, there's example one of hype. Mm. Yeah. But the tool guys- Good point ... not letting them completely off the hook, some of them have got fantastic, uh, uh, functionality- Right ... uh, the extension of the tools they've been building for years.
[00:15:47] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[00:15:48] Speaker 4: And in fact, uh, to be, uh, fair, is in the early days we used to talk about people, process, and technology as the three- Mm-hmm
[00:15:56] core enablers- Right ... of service management, and technology was always kinda like the poor, you know, runt in the litter, 'cause it's really all about intelligence, which is the people part of things, and people design processes, and we use tools to help us do things faster. Mm-hmm. Right? Or more consistently.
[00:16:15] I would like to say right now that the tools are leading the way, as they're providing opportunities for things we didn't know we could do, right? And it is, it's almost like, you know, they're taking over the asylum. Mm. Yes. Right? Yeah. It's... And it, and it's not because we're not capable of doing anything, we just can't do it as fast or as accurately in a manual way.
[00:16:35] Right. You know? And what it means is our leaders have gotta be smart enough-
[00:16:40] Speaker 3: Yeah ...
[00:16:40] Speaker 4: to read between the lines and understand what have they really been sold. You know, what is it I still have to do? Because you're still gonna need to make some decisions. Remember what I said earlier? Yeah. Frameworks don't run organizations.
[00:16:54] Yeah, people do. People and leaders do. Yeah. Right. And when I say people do and leaders do, it means they have to make decisions. They have to look at what's going on, and they have to drive- Yeah ... forward impro- improvements in an empathic way for the benefit of employees and customers- Yeah.
[00:17:10] Speaker 3: Yeah ...
[00:17:10] Speaker 4: and the ul- ultimate benefit of the business.
[00:17:12] Do you know, I, I love
[00:17:14] Speaker 3: how these conversations weave all over the place. I, I didn't for one minute think we'd be
[00:17:17] Speaker 4: talking about- I call it rambling. I, I,
[00:17:20] Speaker 3: I, I, I love it. We're being appro- We, HIT Global right now, has been approached by a lot of tooling companies, um, to see how we can partner with them to help them position better their services- Yeah
[00:17:34] with their end user clients. Because what they're seeing is that it's only... And, and you absolutely nailed it, it's what humanizing I, I, humanizing AI talks about. As, and, um, is, is this gap, is if you just drop the tool in to a bad set of processes, it, it automates nonsense. And so what they're asking us to do, and what we're now starting to do, is working very collaboratively with them and their clients, designing great process, helping them to design great processes, great experiences, user experiences.
[00:18:07] Um, then put the tool in, and the tool then will drive much, much stronger outcomes. And that circles back, I think, to investment justification, because user experience ultimately, improved user experience- Well, it, it is, but, you know,
[00:18:24] Speaker: I hate to, uh, um, kind of be the, the, the- Are you gonna be a doom monger? A bit.
[00:18:30] A bit. But, but, you know, um, let, let me, um, let me roll with this a bit. So here's a question. Um, as I hear, David, what you just eloquently talked about, as well as you, Mark, I'm seeing a strong business case for companies to invest more in consulting services to improve their s- uh, to improve their processes so that they can actually get the ROI that's possible with AI.
[00:19:05] I am curious though, how does this reshape the training landscape if in fact, let's say, a tooling vendor comes in and says like, "I've taken these books that are written by these godfathers, and I've trained all these agents based on these books." Mm-hmm. As a CIO, what is my imperative on providing that base level training, training to my organization?
[00:19:39] How should I rethink that? Is this something that's just for my architects now, and it's not really- But,
[00:19:45] Speaker 2: but that's what I was saying was, I think with Dave saying with the tooling, that, that, you know, that it's incredible what they're doing. Do we need traditional training? Because the tool is doing it, and, and I, I gave you incident management, Konvi.
[00:19:55] Knowledge management is probably a better example. Back in the day, Dave, remember- Yeah ... knowledge management, my gosh, what a chore that was. We don't really need it anymore. Yeah. And this is what I mean, how relevant is that training? And I think I'm gonna throw to you, Dave- Yeah ... with the, the fresher approach you have to service management, and the framework that you've, the PINCAS?
[00:20:17] Yeah. Don't know what you're calling them. Yeah. Tell us about that a bit.
[00:20:20] Speaker 4: Well- And
[00:20:20] Speaker 2: what prompted you to
[00:20:21] Speaker 4: do that? But you, you're, you're right when you talk about how so much is changing right now. The traditional training was a- What I used to call chalk and talk, you know- ... it's like being at school. You'd stand in a cla- you'd be sitting in a classroom and there's somebody standing at the front.
[00:20:34] And that would go on for two or three or five days, or 10 days. Uh, one, um, so how do we give knowledge which is gonna be valuable and useful to people if nobody wants to sit in a classroom for two or three days? Right. I mean, so now it's a, we're at a just-in-time training where people can... And we all do it, right?
[00:20:56] I was driving in my car and it was a funny noise. I'm straight onto YouTube. Right. Right? Here's my model of car. Here's the funny noise. Here's where I think it's coming from. Yeah. What do, what is it, what do I need to do? Mm. So it's all just-in-time training now. Mm-hmm. So we're in this transition from the old two, three, four, five-day training course with certification and exams to making sure that people actually still learn things, but they're doing it in a different way.
[00:21:21] Right. So if I'm the CIO, I'm thinking, "Where do I spend my training budget?" Right. Uh, how do I make sh- how do I then evaluate, uh, make sure I get something out of it? What I would say to those CIOs if they were sitting here, I'd be going, "Oh, really? So suddenly now you're interested in wanting to know if the training was worthwhile?"
[00:21:47] And how do we measure that when you apply that changed behavior, we're actually getting a positive result? You know, you come back from the class and the boss says, "What was it like?" And you go, "It was great. The g- the guy was very funny. It was really entertaining. We lear- and I learned a lot." Great lunch.
[00:22:01] "Oh, really? What did you learn?" Had a nice
[00:22:02] Speaker 2: lunch too. Yeah. Had a nice lunch,
[00:22:05] Speaker 4: yes. But level two is where you actually get some formal feedback, which is usually filling in a form, you know?
[00:22:13] Speaker 5: Yeah.
[00:22:13] Speaker 4: Circling, you know, happy faces and things. Again, not really very scientific, but it was an attempt to at least say, "Should we continue with this type of training or should we look somewhere else?"
[00:22:26] Speaker 5: Mm-hmm.
[00:22:27] Speaker 4: But what, where is the real value? Levels three and level four eva- evaluation is where you can look at somebody's changed behavior. So if I'm gonna send someone on a training course, and I say, "Look, when you come back from this course, you're gonna know how to open a ticket, how to match incidents, how to then link them to problems, and make the changes work," because, you know, and it's maybe technical training- Sure
[00:22:50] on the, on whatever the tool is that you're using.
[00:22:53] Speaker: So when I was rebuilding ITSM at Aflac, this is well over a decade ago, um, I would make targeted investment in training. And so it would align specifically to the individual's role. So in other words, "Hey, Daniel, I know you've been talking about knowledge management.
[00:23:18] I want you to, I want to prepare you to become our knowledge manager." Send him out- Yeah ... for knowledge management training. Yeah. And then over time, watch how he is hungry. Center him as an expert, 'cause I don't have the time to learn as much about knowledge management as I, I'm sending you to do. Well- I'm literally p- preparing you to be the, the expert.
[00:23:42] This is your zone of genius- ... in our enterprise, right? And then, um, the other thing that they were all charged to do, everyone who went to training was charged to do a lunch and learn, and-
[00:23:55] Speaker 4: Yeah ...
[00:23:55] Speaker: to help others understand what they had learned from the training, to disseminate the knowledge. Because I didn't have, um, never-ending dollars, right?
[00:24:04] Yeah. So those were two things- That, that- ... that I found very helpful ... but what you've described
[00:24:07] Speaker 4: there is exactly the s- the s- things that we are most l- more likely to see. And by targeting training to somebody who's interested in the subject- Yeah ... and it's a subject for which common sense tells us we'll benefit from having greater capability- Right
[00:24:25] then you, you're kind of feeling like this is probably a good thing. Right. Right? It's not scientific, right? And it, and you don't really know if at the end of the day, the bottom line of the organization's gonna be any better off, right? But you're just hoping that you're bringing the pieces together, you're putting the things on the table in front of you, and hoping they congeal and get to a point of an end product that actually delivers the value that you are looking for.