Changing an Organisations Culture to a Service Management approach

I'd like to introduce myself and sorry for the detailed content, but I’m also passionate in, “how do we improve Service Management cultures”. Below I have described my exposure to it and what I understood from it. I have just joined this group after reading "Owning ITIL" and emailing Rob, I would like to get some ideas of others.

I started my Career as a construction Electrician, then Electrical Wholesaling and finally IT, my IT experience is only 8 years, all in ITIL organisations though. My recent engagement (12 Months) was looking at implementing ITIL (dare I use that word after reading the book), however it was a project that should of produced a start and finish for handing over some products/capability that would have been part of our lifecycle journey (transformation) to implement and improve Service Management capabilities.

Two weeks ago I read the book "Owning ITIL", I found comfort in it and what I have been seeing in my 8 years in IT, noting I had my "eyes wide open", and my brain constantly asked "why" and "how" probably from my Problem Management experience and the "5 whys technique" and just on that, with reference to "people are the root cause". I agree if we really apply the "5 whys technique you could find that 'x" problems were all related to the same root cause, for example; poor testing processes can have a symptom in 'x" IT Services, buuutttttt why are they poor, was it the person wrote a very complicated testing process, the person who uses it was lazy etc.

With respect to using ITIL, I agree with Rob, we need to focus on people in order to improve Service Management approaches/practices. I have some thoughts and would welcome some other ideas.

In my organisation we appear to struggle in the delivery of Services because we have no clear roles or responsibilities for services and processes. It appears to me an organisation cannot function well unless we all understand what our role is and how it fits with other roles to achieve an end goal/result. I gave an example to Rob, our HR leave process works in the organisation without any documented process or procedure, it does have an owner; Manager and HR unit and hence accountability, that verbally instructs users how to "request leave" and how the HR unit manages the request, granted we all feel this process is very important to know, is this a clue, importance?.

Food for thought, I said early I was a construction Electrician; it was in the high end building industry (High risers, large factories etc). I look back at the industry, it worked, in that all the associated trades knew what to do and how to work with others, granted they are building a product with a limited warrantee time (1 year) and IT is much more complicated. Some building sites didn't even have a need for a Builder/Project Manager full time, a visit 2-3 times a week sufficed. Granted too, if we did a poor job we would most likely see an issue or consequence, is this a clue, incentive?
It appears to me activities after defining the service and process responsibilities need to be about creating the environment, so placing the right people is one thing, I also know if I replace everyone with replacements from a IT banking sector will go a long way too but what else is there?

I remember when I started this12 month project, developing the stakeholder plan and awareness plans, I remember the actual awareness sessions, short sessions with grouped individuals, describing what were are doing, how it’s just common sense, how we are doing it now but just fragmented and with no clear lines of accountability or how we will do it again. Getting them on board to the benefits that they will see i.e. what the pain was now for them and how this will improve or bridge the gaps. Then it hit me, I saw an image of me at home, my wife telling me we need to clean up the house, “it is filthy” she said. I looked around and it was fine to me, our baselines were different, by the way it was fine. But really she saw the need I didn’t “The CSI to improve the quantity of the appearance of the home” was not there for me, but was for her.

So this was happening in the awareness sessions and in my Organisation, they didn’t see the need to improve the Service Management practices, for them we were doing very well, compared to their baseline and experience it was. Then I realised the next thing, their experiences were different to mine in that, if they were a work colleague of my mine throughout the past 8 years i.e. exposed to the same environments as me, maybe they would be more aligned to my thoughts, note this applies to the construction industry example too, the baseline is also known, I feel anyway, for example we all had a common understanding of what a tiler or painter did, quality and final product. So getting everyone on the same page and aligned is also very important and I think this will be a long journey, but the Organisations Journey as they need to ensure a level of Service Management to sustain the Organisations now and into the future, this is where I see ITIL as a big benefit i.e. a common language of understanding, but it doesn’t have to be ITIL it could be a combination of our own processes, they will be similar, who doesn’t fix their car when it is broken, or look for the root cause when it keeps happening.

Please help me to understand all this information?