I was prompted to write this column as a result of a discussion on LinkedIn started by Sandeep Patwardhan. The discussion was ‘Which one is better ? ITIL certification or sound knowledge about it ?’. The discussion raised more than 150 comments and differing points of view. I guess the answer is that both are important. Having said that, it never fails to amaze me how many organizations send their IT staff on ITIL foundation training but do not consider it worth adding on an additional one-day practical application (such as a business simulation) I already hear sighs of skepticism from those who know me: they are thinking “….of course he would say that, he builds and delivers simulation training”. But please bear with me.

Let me explain what I mean. I want to take the LinkedIn discussion a step further, and ask the question: how can we fill the gap between the theory certificates and gaining experience? We send our staff on ITIL training because ultimately we want people to change their behavior, to work differently, to use ITIL to do things better, to deliver some kind of additional value. Or we send them on ITIL training because we want to remove some wasted, possibly excessive costs or reduce risks to the business caused by weaknesses in the current way we work……Wrong! We send people on ITIL training so that they can get a certificate. We then let these people loose in our organizations, armed with ITIL theory to wreak havoc and create a bureaucracy of procedures that nobody follows anyway and then we all blame ITIL. Sound familiar?

This is where some kind of practical application, such as provided by a simulation comes in. Teach people in a relatively safe environment how to translate ITIL theory into practice before they can damage anything in the live organization. Help them gain a deeper level of knowledge about what it means to actually use the stuff. However when people are offered the chance of a simulation with a Foundation training, we often hear comments such as: “How will playing a game help me pass the exam? Is it necessary to ensure I pass?”.

The answer is no, but it will help show you how to apply what you have learnt so that you can go and do it in your own organization, it will help translate the theory into practice, it will help prevent you from making mistakes and poorly applying ITIL.
‘’ Yeah, yeah…but it won’t help me pass the exam. If we play a simulation I’ll have less time to study to pass the exam”.
Or the IT manager who feels that to add an extra day will cost more money and people will be away from their work longer: “No just give us the foundation. All we want is that they pass the exam”.

However, it will pay back by creating buy-in, overcoming resistance, helping people improve their own ways of working. They will be able to identify their own problems and see how ITIL will help them.
“Yeah, yeah….but we don’t need that, we’ll just tell them they will be using ITIL and they’ll all do what they’re told!” Is that really true? Perhaps this is why “Saying Yes and doing No” is the second highest chosen ABC of ICT resistance card.

Or we get the purchasing department that wants the cheapest ITIL training company with the highest pass rate. Very often we even get people smirking at us saying “A game? What possible value can that add. This is IT, it is too serious for all this gaming nonsense”. Indeed IT is too serious not to take simulations seriously.

Now the facts and figures. Gartner said 80% of companies adopting ITIL are not getting out of it what they expected, Parity had this as 70% in a report they produced. Forrester said 52% fail because of resistance, despite all the 1.000.000 ITIL certified people walking around. The exact figures do not really matter. What matters I think is that most people will agree that we are not getting the results we expected, and the acceptance and buy-in is generally poor. So we need something to fill this gap between the certificate and experience.

Let’s get back to basics. Right back. Why are we doing ITIL again? What is a service according to ITIL V3? Usually when I ask this in a room of about 300 ITILITES about ten hands go up! Which staggers me. It makes me wonder: If we do not know this, then what are we doing with all that ITIL?

A service according to ITIL V3 is a means of delivering value to the business in terms of the outcomes they want to achieve without the ownership of specific costs and risks. Everybody in IT should be able to quote this! (TIP: ask this question to anybody coming for a job interview who has ITIL foundation certificate mentioned on their resume!) I think this definition it is the most valuable thing to come out of V3. Let’s use this definition to examine the way we currently purchase ITIL foundation training. After all, a Foundation level training course may be seen as a service being offered by training companies.

Our survey, of many hundreds of IT practitioners, reveals most purchase a Foundation training for the following outcomes: a certificate and a common terminology.
Is this the value that a business manager should expect and want when agreeing to let you spend IT budget on sending IT people to this training? I seriously have my doubts. The result of this outcome based approach to purchasing a foundation training is cost. Longer implementation time learning how to use and apply ITIL, higher costs due to resistance and lack of buy-in, additional time, effort and energy redesigning procedures that did not work the first time, not to mention the frustration and lack of trust.
Next to costs, there are also risks: the risk that the project is delayed or fails, the risk that business value will not be achieved, the risk that resistance will become strong enough to derail the program.

What is the real cost of all this? The amount of additional time and effort? If we are honest I am sure it is considerably more than the price of an extra day of simulation or some other form of practical application.
However, most people want the cheap foundation training without the practical application. They would rather spend the time, effort, energy, consulting fees, redesign work fixing what did not work the first time and the costs of replacing the staff that left because of resistance….but hey! We saved on the costs of a simulation! The business has additional risks that the expected value and outcomes will not be achieved and the business faces additional threats to continuity of services, but at least we saved the costs of a simulation! And our staff all have an ITIL certificate .

I think that what the discussion on LinkedIn revealed to me is that it highlighted something that we as an industry really need to re-examine: the certificate, the holy-grail of ITIL, the reason for doing ITIL training, the certificate that will open the gates to job opportunities, the certificate that says you are an ITIL expert.

I realize that a simulation is not going to instantly give anybody the level of experience required. However, practical application will ensure that people recognize and understand that it is not simply a question of designing some procedures and throwing them over the wall (still the top chosen ABC of ICT worst practice card in relation to ITIL implementation approaches). In a simulation, the facilitator can play the angry users or business and show the negative impact on the business when their ITIL procedures do not work. People can actually see performance value being realized and risks reduced as a direct result of applying ITIL processes. A simulation can be used to capture improvement suggestions from the teams themselves, it can create energy, and dare I say it, enthusiasm for an ITIL type approach because participants will have seen and experienced what ITIL can mean for their daily work. But it will not necessarily help them pass a theory exam.

This article is the first in a series of three about translating knowledge into results. According to a dictionary definition, knowledge is:

Expertise and skills acquired through
                                                   experience or education;
                                            the practical    or theoretical understanding of a subject.

Unfortunately, many IT companies focus too much on the education and theoretical level and not enough on the practical and experience approach. After all the purpose of sending all those IT people on ITIL training is to make a difference and achieve some practical results.

In this first article we looked at where we are going wrong focusing on the certificate as the goal or result. The second article will look at how to ensure a training program or training intervention focuses on the outcomes and results you ultimately want to achieve. The third article will be on how to ensure that learning is transferred into real behavior and real results in the work place.
The aim of the three articles is to help us transform the way we use training interventions to develop knowledge and translate it into results.