Don't forget this key ingredient!

One of the key ingredients for success when adopting ITIL practices has nothing to do with executive support, good organizational change management, or a powerful enabling toolset. Without question, the preceding are all very important, but there is another ingredient that, when present, will make an organization hugely successful. That ingredient is discipline.

If your organization has a culture of discipline, it will be able to realize the outcomes that ITIL adoption typically seeks much more quickly. One of the first things I try to get a feel for when evaluating an organization is how much discipline they have ingrained into their culture already. 

For example, are existing help desk tickets thoroughly filled out? Are standard procedures well-documented and formally reviewed? Are teams held accountable uniformly across the organization? 

The answers to these types of questions can either be good signs or red flags, and they are indicative of a disciplined or undisciplined culture.

If you are considering implementing (or re-implementing) one or more ITIL practices, ask yourself what the current level of discipline is in the organization generally. If your answer is that the organization currently has a low ability to be disciplined, then consider finding ways to start building up the "discipline muscle" in the organization even before you begin adopting a new ITIL practice — and know that you will need to spend considerable effort on building that muscle as you go along. The ingredient of organizational discipline helps to ensure success for everyone involved.