Duke: all right.
Corey, what are we talking about today?
CJ: Duke today.
We're talking about making friends with your users.
Duke: That's right.
, we thought about this one because we had both noticed, over our past few
customers that sometimes you have these paradigms where the ServiceNow team is
its own silo and Maybe they're popular, maybe they're not, but they, but there's
no really good communication with the stakeholders, either the people in the
business that consume the services on service now, or the people who are in
charge of delivering those services.
And so you come in and maybe you're a freelance architect.
It's like, we have all these things we need to improve and all these
things that people don't like about the current situation and
go, go, go build, build, build.
But yet the organization still acts like nothing's changing, right?
And so this is all about how do you formally build channels of
communication with the people who are using your product?
, CJ: yeah.
, all of that Duke and there's so many, tendrils, ? To this one that,
it goes deep and wide, cause the first thing that comes to my mind is.
, the lack of this for most it organizations is one of the causes of shadow it.
Not being able to communicate with your user community, understand
what their actual needs are so that you can provide for them.
Um, you know, uh, one of the other causes is that, and not actually
listening to them when they talk to you, but that's a different episode.
, Duke: I think people's instincts are that everything has to be in the tool.
So a bunch of people are making requests.
There's the rhythm, there's the project, there's the incident, whatever.
And we chat with them through that interface, or we email them, or every
once in a while, we have a meeting with.
Some kind of VP level directorship, but it can be so much better
with way more open channels.
CJ: Yeah.
And my last company, they did this, , very well.
So it was an internal app and there was a group of folks that
they identified power users.
You want to call them folks of influence, whatever you want to call them.
. And so they had this group of folks, they call them app champions, and they were the
folks who got the constant communication.
They got to see the early builds.
They got to influence the development direction.
They were the folks who were.
, talking to their, coworkers and telling them about the things that are coming
up next and how good it was going to be, or maybe how bad it was going
to be or , , what have you right?
But it was, , a formalized group of folks , who were basically
blessed by their management.
, in this council, to discuss the app and to talk about the app and the direction of it
and to ensure that, there was an alignment between development and business.
Duke: And, , what's your experience with setting them up?
Have you ever set one up?
CJ: Not formally and not in this way.
No, and definitely , not at scale like that either.
But I think we all have to a certain degree, right?
Most of us who've been in this space as long as you and I have Duke,
? Like we've set up a cab, ? And that's a sort of similar thing, ? You're
going out, you grabbing folks who are, , party to this process and
getting them together and then help it.
And then they're helping make decisions , on a process.
Yeah.
, cause I don't know about your experience, but my experience, the
cap didn't only, meet to, discuss changes they met to actually discuss
the direction of change management.
Right?
Duke: I've done it a bunch of times and it's definitively easier when you're the
person on the inside, when I've tried to set it up being a freelance architect,
and you don't have any political sway it's not that you can compel , your
handlers to move in a certain direction.
? And so you're more like, you have to put a lot of emphasis
into the ask and how it's asked.
So that they understand the criticality of it.
But when is your app and you're the product owner in your company, it's
way easier just to reach out to either the people who complain the loudest,
. Or the people , who love it and, , are bought in , and bring them close, um,
We didn't organize this very well.
So we're just trying to figure this stuff out, the haphazard.
CJ: Yeah.
Let me push back on that actually a little bit Duke, because I don't
know what the correct percentage is.
. But I think there are some cases where being the outsider actually
helps you organize that easier.
. There are some cases where internal it isn't necessarily trusted
by the business at this moment.
And so them trying to reach out and get together, a user stakeholder group,
? Might not be met with a whole lot of, , optimism or excitement, but if
you bring in someone with credentials,
? Like you and I have and then we say.
Hey, you know, what would be really cool?
How about we put together this stakeholder group comprised of users.
And let's make sure we identify the folks who are both love the
system and don't love it as much.
And let's get everyone together and let's have some conversations.
And because we have the gravitas and the experience and the work and the
titles and certifications and all that kind of stuff, and we're an independent.
, entity outside of the normal it infrastructure.
We sometimes can compel the business to come together and think, well,
this time it might be different.
Duke: Oh, you know what else we're disposable,
CJ: That too.
Duke: So it's kind of like, I've been in situations where the stakeholders
are kind of afraid of the rest of the organization, ? They're not
well liked and Oh, well, yeah.
I don't know how to sway them , or I don't want to commit to anything or
be perceived to commit to anything.
And then get, , punched down later when I don't deliver.
In those situations, it's easy for somebody like us to say, , let me do it.
I'm comfortable in a room.
I'm used to dealing with hostile stakeholders and I could put a smiley
happy face on and if I still can't do it, you could be like, yeah, that Fedora
guy, we never should have , let her never should have let him out of the kennel.
, we won't make that mistake again.
, CJ: and then they can commiserate right over , how horrible you were, right.
You know, and, and they can,
Duke: That's one thing you have in common now.
CJ: Right.
And they can use that to come together, right.
Whatever works ultimately at the end of the day.
, I'd love it if my clients didn't have to fire me in order to, uh, to, you
know, get movement on the project.
Right.
But
Duke: Oh man, it would not be funny, but it's getting just fun to laugh at now.
CJ: right.
But maybe if they come back, if they fired me to get movement, reach out and say,
Hey, here's a bonus because actually, we all hated you, but that, that was
the best thing that ever happened to us.
It was like, that's great.
Duke: So I would like to talk about one of my experiences with this too if you are,
, a ServiceNow product owner who really feels the pressure from the rest of the
organization, let's just leave the idea of , do they like the experience or not?
But let's say they want more.
Everybody wants stuff improved, stuff built, whatever.
So if you're feeling like you're under pressure and you don't have a
Stakeholder council get one because I have found it's the easiest way
to show the organization that.
It's not them versus you.
Like why, how come you aren't getting my stuff done?
? It completely diffuses that tension because people will see that it's
not them versus you, the product owner, it's them versus the weight
of the rest of the organization that also wants ServiceNow stuff done.
They don't have any way of seeing that, Bob wants cleaner notifications,
but meanwhile, Jane is responsible for, , getting asset management up
and running and there's millions of dollars at stake with this.
. And so now people can see their own requests in the
context of the bigger picture.
CJ: That's a really good point.
And honestly, this is something where, , my nighttime job, ? It really comes
in handy and it's really useful and we don't do it well, enough there either.
Right.
But in that context, I talk about it as transparency, what
demands are in the queue.
And what's the priority of those demands?
Right.
What's our level of resources and why are these things getting done before others?
Right.
Like,
Duke: Well like just on that point too.
I think so many people say transparency But what they imagine is i'm comfortable
showing you the performance on my tickets Even if it's bad, which is
noble but , not big enough thinking because part of transparency is
what can we do with this app?
What are we under utilizing that we've bought?
How many people have performance analytics just sitting there, right?
CJ: Hey everybody.
Duke: Just sitting there, just like part of transparency is getting people together
and say like, Hey, we have this tool that can really drive process performance.
Or all the people that just didn't have a good strategy for catalog right out the
gate or for all those companies who have suffered major mergers and acquisitions.
And so you got three different ways to order the same SharePoint request.
Cause it's three different companies that used to do it.
Right.
Like, like how else are you supposed to bring that to the table?
And it's a place to put your vision in place.
A lot of companies will be like, Oh, make sure you show us a roadmap.
And sometimes what they mean is we're going to tell you a whole bunch of
stuff and you put it in the single file that is most appealing to us.
But as a seasoned ServiceNow resource, you're certain to have ideas to improve
the platform, utilize more of the platform that nobody will ever ask you for.
CJ: Yeah,
Duke: But how do you get that stuff out in front?
, CJ: yeah, again, , I think this stakeholder council idea is a
great ability to showcase from both ends, right, is the user community,
showcasing, hey, these are the troubles that we have and this is
how we rate those troubles on our end.
, and we want to be involved in helping us fix them right now.
We don't want you to just go away in a black box and come back and say, hey.
We took three sentences from you and we built a solution, right?
Like we want to actually have some, skin in the game, help it
identify the actual solution.
And I did, and then you'll get into your point, right?
Like allowing you to tell us.
What else you could possibly do or how you could possibly solve this in a way
and then going having that back and forth?
Because now we we're starting to understand the
platform a little bit better.
Now we can ask for more and we can ask for better or we can contextualize
our problem more because we can be confident that a solution out
there potentially exists for it.
Right?
And then as the product owner, you and you're the folks on your team
have this place where you can bring a little bit more of that knowledge,
as a developer, you maybe you don't necessarily get to exhibit that.
In those internal meetings as much, right?
Like you get a story assigned to you work.
It is done.
It's a great story.
You done it.
Did it really well, right?
Like you get kudos.
Hey, yeah, that was really efficient, but you might also have thoughts on
how you can solve a complex problem because you that's all that's a skill
set that you don't get to show too often.
But in the stakeholder council, right?
When you're having this open communication, maybe that's the
sort of thing that bubbles up to.
Oh,
, Duke: there's one other element I want to bring to this.
Because, if one's good, why not two?
Um, and I think you'll very rapidly get into this.
Case 2 and so I would be prepared to have 2 councils.
Okay.
1 would be a council assembled of people who are in there every day.
? Get me a frontline service desk person.
Convince the service manager to give you somebody like an hour a week or something.
But the people that actually work on the thing, because there's going to
be lots of Intel they can give you, but then the second stakeholder council
is more like the VP level of the org.
You know what I mean?
So you could talk big picture stuff.
Like what can the CMDB do for all of us?
Versus the more in the trenches people be like, well, it sucks that
all these tasks go to the wrong places.
CJ: Yeah,
Duke: And it's the same conversation kind of CMDB.
How can it help you?
But it's from a different angle, a different facet on the gem.
Yeah.
CJ: I get exactly what you're saying.
what you're talking about?
Really?
It's like an executive stakeholder council as well as a champion
council, which is a level below that a little bit more, people
with boots on the ground, right?
Who are actually doing the work.
And utilizing the system day to day.
. So they could give a little bit more tactical feedback , and tactical ideas
where at the executive level right now, we're talking about aligning the
platform with the business outcomes.
And I'll tell you like it's three things, that people buy service now for, and
, it is to make money is to save money or is to decrease slash manage risk.
And so when you're talking at that executive level, , the platform's
going to start to align with one of those three buckets, right?
Or it should.
And if it's not, that's where you want to steer the conversation.
And then, as you start to align, those potential, , project implementations with
those buckets, then that starts to shower down to that next level of stakeholder
council where now we're talking about, , why are all these tasks going this place?
Maybe the question is, why do we even have these tasks?
Right?
Who's using them?
What are we using them for?
Right.
You know,
, Duke: you definitely get to, , deburr the tool when you, when you, when you talk to
the people who actually use it every day.
You just find out where the stuff is.
But , where I've seen this most recently is that , the front liners have way
more to say straight out the gate.
And in contrast, the VP council, which I thought for sure would be the most, , not
contentious, but you know what I mean?
They'd have more critical things to say , and they'll want more out of the app.
But they were saying things like, we don't even know what
capabilities are available to us.
What a golden opportunity to be a service now, anything and you're, and
VP level stakeholders are like, you know what, we don't even know this tool
well enough to know what to ask for.
Wow.
Am I ever going to make your day?
CJ: yeah, you know, dude, that's an interesting, , position to be in, because
the first thing you start thinking about is, oh, you don't know service.
Now, let me tell you service now.
But then there's another way of thinking about that too.
It's in that way is I don't think I know the business enough.
Yeah.
and what I mean by that is when a VP level C suite level check writing
level person says to you, I don't know your tool well enough to give
you direction on how to use it.
My thought is how do I make the most of this 15 minutes you're about to give me
to under, to make you understand that we need to devote a lot more resources to
this thing, because it's going to take whatever you care about and turn it to 10.
Right.
So I got to understand more about what you care about so that I'm
not showing you asset management.
If you care about, , P.
P.
M.
Duke: Yeah.
Yeah.
CJ: And that is 1 of those things.
When you do get that green light that, we don't know this at well enough
to even know what it can do for us.
Ooh, you get the fingers going like, yeah, but let's make sure
we we're targeting that too.
Right.
Duke: That's why you should always have a PowerPoint going on with your daydreams.
How would I sell it?
Somebody just said, Hey.
Give me an elevator pitch on what you do, just pull that thing out.
I'm glad you asked.
CJ: Right.
Right.
Glad you asked, you know, I've been working at this company for five
years and these are the places where I've seen, we've been falling down.
This is how service now can help you in those guys.
Yeah.
Boom, boom, boom, boom.
Right.
, Duke: I got a couple other kind of tactical points.
CJ: go for it.
Duke: okay.
So when you're at the VP level, let's call it the strategic council.
Okay.
CJ: Yep.
Duke: And then the other one, let's call it the tactical council, right?
That's
CJ: I like that strategic versus tactical.
I like that.
Duke: Okay, so get this on the tactical council talk tactics and strategy
because I think everybody wants to make the big picture manifest right there.
Yes.
I'm buried in stuff.
No, I don't know what all these dang FC tasks are.
Well, what?
I'm not supposed to work on the rhythm like, deal with all that stuff, but
also talk strategy layer with them.
If we all, agree to this, this is how the org gets faster, better, and eventually
the weight moves off of all of us.
And people I found respond really well to that, but at the
strategic layer only be strategic.
Cause they'll say stuff like, , how can we improve UX?
That was one , on one of my customers , latest meetings.
We need to make sure that the customer experience is very, very good.
The communication is very, very open and, just so, and, I was helping
them craft a deck and it was just like, , here's the 36 Project tasks we have
in the system to talk about UX and the things that we might want to do and the
things that we already, I'm like, no,
CJ: Yeah.
None of that matters.
Duke: yeah.
Don't don't talk about the 36 things that we are or can do.
In terms of features, right?
We're going to turn on notification digest and we're going to, you
know, just, no, just like we're doing a notification overhaul.
One thing,
CJ: Right.
Duke: Make it broad categories and don't get them in the weeds of the features
because there's this sense of, um,
what's, I don't have a good metaphor for it, but it's kind
of like, there's a tipping point, where that person looks busy.
. And , it looks good in their favor because they're clearly getting
stuff done and they're on the ball.
Right.
But there's a certain level of detail about what the work is that they're
doing and they're busy where it starts paying negative dividends.
CJ: Yeah, I think if I'm reading you right, like it's a, I don't necessarily
need to know like every percentage of your 150 percentage points of utilization.
Right.
What I need to know is overall, like how you're moving the needle.
Duke: Oh, I got it.
I got the metaphor.
Okay, if I tell you, uh, I'm gonna spend the weekend organizing my house.
You're kind of like good for you, right?
But if you saw my house and you saw that I was a hoarder you'd be like That
means nothing like you're a hoarder.
It's hopeless.
Like this is hopeless at a certain level of mess It's hopeless.
So , don't expose that.
Think like talk strategy layer only is all I'm saying.
CJ: I got you.
I got you.
Here's the bonus points too.
, if there's a way.
To tie those buckets of things that you're going to like the
project, the notification project, we're going to enhance, , internal
communications by revamping the notification structure of our service.
Now.
If you could map that to an organizational goal.
When you're talking to strategy level, right?
Then all of a sudden, you've got a little bit more gravitas
on the reason for that project.
Duke: Yeah.
And this is another tip.
Shout out to Kristen Reeves for giving me this one.
, if you're going to go to either council and they express things that
interest them, like we don't have any idea what capabilities we do have.
when we get to the next council , when we list stuff out, be sure to
tell them if there's an initiative underway and what phase it's in.
CJ: Oh, yeah.
Okay.
, Duke: there's a lot of capabilities that ServiceNow can do.
Take the CMDB.
We're actually in the middle of a CMDB project.
We're in the build phase,
CJ: Right.
Duke: right?
We could do asset management.
We're currently in the planning phase for that.
CJ: Right.
Duke: And , not only does it allow you the opportunity to say , look at
all these awesome things that we can do, but also your forward thinking
ness about where they're actually at.
Like, how close are we to achieving that?
CJ: And then also to allow that strategy council to weigh in on those
and say, of the things that you've shown me, I think there's heavy,
, anticipation for project number 2.
Is there any way we can put a little bit more resources behind that so that we
can take it up a priority level, right?
Allows you to give them that transparency, that insight into the organization
and the work that's being done.
So then they can weigh in on the priority schedule too.
Duke: I hear that, yep.
And, it gives them the option to right the ship in a way too, right?
Cause it's,
CJ: Yeah.
, Duke: why is this more important than that?
All my customers are saying that nobody ever calls them back..
And so why is the notification overhaul taking priority over that?
Why can't you make people call my customers back?
CJ: Yeah.
I mean, that's a good question too,
Duke: now we're talking SLA's or whatnot.
, CJ: or maybe you're talking about the same projects, but you can answer
that question with how that project is going to influence that concern.
Duke: yeah.
CJ: don't, you don't get there , if you're not elevating that project to that level,
and causing that conversation to happen.
Ultimately, what it just comes down to for me, Duke, . Is just communication,
. It's a winning strategy, , and you might think you're doing enough,
you're probably not doing enough.
If you don't have these stakeholder councils, you're not doing enough, right?
Because there's probably communication , that's hidden from you because you
don't have the right people in a room talking about whatever the thing is
that needs to be talked about, or just in the room and having spontaneous
conversations happen in the course of those directed conversations too, right?
It's just more communication that you can get with around like the governing layer
of the product, ? The more you can align.
The product with the overall direction of the business from top all the way
down, right from strategic level, all the way down to the tactical one.
Duke: that makes me think of something.
Once you form these things up, I think be careful about how labor you give somebody.
You should always formulate them at the start as being an invitation, right?
Like we can talk about ways to make your life better because one
thing I think people miss a lot is that The ServiceNow app in an
org is not there for its own sake.
CJ: Ah, yes.
Duke: You know what I mean?
Like,
CJ: I know.
Duke: so , you have to make it about how they're going to benefit, not how much
better it's going to be for the ServiceNow platform and your team if they just.
, fill in the blank, whatever,
CJ: Yep.
Yeah.
Right.
Duke: let, you know, too, because, , I've been in this situation where there
was , a performance cleanup, right?
Senior leadership said, no, there's way too much old crap.
There's way too much busted.
Everybody's got to get in here and sweep your old crap.
And the service now team has to lead it.
In lieu of having other process ownership.
So it's like the teams are like, Hey, why do we care about
making your team look better?
Right?
I'm super busy.
CJ: Right.
Duke: And so, there's a delicate communication style that you
have to let them know that it's for their benefit, not yours.
But also be cognizant of the fact that don't ask them to do things for you.
Do things for them.
CJ: That's the philosophy of making your partners rich.
, if we use networking as an example.
. We always say you should network, you should get more people in your network.
Right.
And most people think, yeah, I should get more people in my network
so that they can do stuff for me.
And that's not how networking works.
? You get more people in your network so that you have more people
who might ask you for stuff.
And maybe you've got more chances to deliver favors.
And as you deliver more favors, you got more people who look to you as somebody
who can do things for people and they start wanting to do things for you.
Duke: Oh man.
We've talked about that way earlier , in CJ and the Duke to like the secret
economy in the service now world, where it's kind of like, , I've seen
Corey publicly help people and Corey's coming to me with a question, so I'm.
Paying off or you know what I mean?
Like
CJ: Yep.
Duke: so I'm going to take care of Corey because Corey takes care
of people and some of those people might take care of me and vice versa.
And yeah, you
CJ: thing here, right?
Like, just like you said, you know, it's not, you know, the work is like, I'm busy.
I can't do work.
That's benefiting you.
Yes, you can.
Right, because you, if you doing that work, that's going to benefit
another group is going to , bring that bounty back to you in so many
ways that you can't even anticipate.
. And, , if everyone is engaging in these reciprocal actions, , all of a
sudden a rising tide lifts all ships.
Hey, that's just how I look at it.
it's just the reason why I try to pick generosity over,
whatever the opposite of it is.
Duke: it so often.
You forgot what the opposite is called.
CJ: I couldn't think of a, of a, of a good word that would, yeah,
whatever the opposite is called.
Duke: Yeah, I hear that.
I hear that.
I think you're going to be surprised to like, super high performance
is really boils down to doing a stupendous amount of small things.
Very, very well.
CJ: yeah, I'd agree with that.
Duke: You're going to be surprised by the amount of.
Stuff that the organization doesn't know about service now, both
at that VB level, I didn't know it did asset management, right.
Or in the front lines, like, what do you mean?
I'm not supposed to.
Reassign the rhythm or, you know what I mean?
Just all this stuff that they don't know.
What do you mean?
There's favorites.
What do you mean?
I can build my own reports.
Like you'll be so shocked by the amount , of little stuff.
There's just, nobody knows.
Nobody gets, nobody does.
Right.
And, at the start, it might feel like, Oh my goodness.
We're buried in this kind of stuff, but it's okay because you get to
solve that they're easy solves.
They're easy, easy solves.
, CJ: for me, it just highlights, , that service now costs a lot of money.
Yeah.
And I don't think we think about that aspect enough, right?
Like that, it, you know, serves now cost a lot of money.
So the more you can do with it, the better it is for your business, right?
The better it is for you as an individual, right?
And I think that just has to be one of, I don't know if it's the North star,
but maybe it's in the sky somewhere.
Duke: Yeah, I, I put that right beside because only a couple people pay for it.
You know what I mean?
Or , feel like they've paid for it.
CJ: Right.
Duke: Like the service desk.
Nobody's pulling out any of their wallets to contribute to
the service now fund, right?
So, so there's a lot of people that have to use service now that don't
have financial skin in the game.
They don't care if it costs a million dollars or a dollar, but
they do care about the amount of time they have to spend on it.
And the paradox of it all is from our perspective, it's raw, raw ServiceNow.
Look at all the different things you can quantify and measure and improve
and automate and blah, blah, blah.
But to the average ServiceNow user, this is a bureaucratic, , this
is like dental checkups level of
Of excitement.
It's just I don't want to do this.
I don't want to get a dental checkup in the same way.
I don't want to go into service now and log the fact that it's a
bureaucratic time suck on them.
, CJ: and I think that gets lost to , the, one of the goals of any
service now project has to be to make sure the product is easy to use
by the people who need to use it.
And part of that, it means not just making it look clean and
slick when you land on the page.
But what is the obvious next step for the person you designed that page for?
Are we ever showing them that?
And look, I'm not a UI UX guy.
I don't know all these paradigms and so on and so forth.
But that doesn't mean that that Can't be one of the things that guides me when
I'm building our user interfaces, right?
Like, what do I not want the person who lands on this page to be thinking about?
And how can I make their next click as easy as possible?
Right?
I don't want them thinking about what they should do when they get here.
Like, if you get on a page and it's got your, list of, open requests, I want
you to immediately see a big button that says, view this request, right?
Duke: it's
CJ: view details or whatever.
Duke: yeah.
And there's no bottom rung on simplicity.
CJ: Yeah,
, Duke: I've never really had an occasion where people said this is too simple.
All right.
That's 38 minutes of record.
So I think we're just going to call it a quits right here and,
, work on getting a proper outro.
CJ: Yeah, absolutely.
Duke: All right.
We'll see you on the next one.