Fear, uncertainty, doubt. Immature, confusion, disillusionment. Impossible, challenging, complex. BS. Smoke and mirrors.

Lots of things cloud the viability of Business Service Management (BSM). Whether it’s a good working definition of what BSM is, navigating organizational and cultural challenges or choosing which vendor best enables one to deliver on their BSM Strategy, practitioners and executives are challenged with delivering something that provides value when adopting BSM.

With so many options, levers, knobs, dials and widgets out there, we’re way too focused on the underpinning technology choices that vendors choose to go to market with. It’s no wonder most clients struggle with providing true value from their BSM initiatives, they’re focused on the wrong things.

What if you only had twenty questions to ask a new client that would be used by you to design, develop, deploy and operationalize their strategic, value oriented BSM vision? Could you formulate the right questions, facilitate the right discussions and peel the layers of the onion back to discover what really matters most for your client?

Forget about the underpinning technology, vendor approaches or capabilities. I believe there’s much more important things than this that must be the initial focus. There’s a series of twenty or more questions that apply down the road as you operationalize the BSM strategy as well. (more later)

Think about the potential this simple concept has. What if this was the basis for starting all BSM discussions? Totally vendor neutral, blind to the sales and marketing pitch and all about the client. I envision a powerful, motivating and crisp slide deck that can communicate this concept and the twenty questions in less than ten slides. This would be the basis for facilitating a BSM discussion with the client in a client-focused, win-win way.

Don’t tell me about your grass seed, talk to me about my lawn. (Thanks Hank!)

Thoughts?