There appears to be a bit of 'Maslow Mania' taking root in the business press these days. I've been a fan of his straight forward approach to understanding human psychology since I was introduced to his concept of the "hierarchy of human needs" by my dad as a kid. But I really hadn't thought much about it or him until recently.
Over the past few weeks, I've been reading "Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow" by Chip Conley, the CEO of Joie De Vivre hotels. As you might guess, he has used Maslow's theory as the basis for both his book and for how we runs his chain of hotels.
Then a couple of days ago, I read a great article from Baseline Magazine entitled, "Multiple Online Personas: The Choice of a New Generation." In it, it discusses how marketers must start a new type of conversation if they are going to break through with what Gartner is dubbing "Generation V" - for Virtual. The gist of it is that Generation V is not defined by age or geography, but by their desire for belonging, esteem and self-actualization, realized in online communities - the top three layers of Maslow's "needs pyramid."
So how can stories about a chain of hotels and retail marketers selling to an online generation and how they are using a 50+ year old psychology theory apply to the world of IT?
Applied to business, Maslow's theory is really about understanding a customer's needs. And let's face it, this is something that has not always been IT's strong suit. But perhaps the most important thing that it can do is to frame an ITIL adoption effort. One of the greatest challenges that an IT organization must overcome to succeed with an ITIL adoption program is to answer the question why? Why is this project being undertaken? Why is the investment of human and capital resources worthwhile?
These questions can only be answered by understanding the needs of IT's customers. And Maslow's theory can help frame those needs. Maslow basically said that humans (and therefore your customers) need five layers of needs to be met (paraphrasing a little): Physical, Safety, Belonging, Esteem, and Self-Actualization. Chip Conley in PEAK boiled this down further into his Customer Relationship Model and identified three distinct stages in the relationship with your customer: Meets Expectations, Meets Desires and Meets Unrecognized Needs.
At it's core, ITIL is really about understanding and meeting a customer's base set of expectations and needs. According to Maslow, until we've satisfactorily met that need, we cannot have a meaningful conversation with our customer about meeting any of their other needs. So, why should you adopt ITIL? First, because it is a key way in which you will help your IT organization meet the core, underlying needs of your customer. Second, until you do that, you will be unable to move up the pyramid and find success with your customer at any higher level.
At the same time, when you begin an ITIL adoption it's also important to realize that adopting ITIL is also not enough. While meeting their base set of needs is the first step, it's not what the customer really desires. They are looking for solutions that will drive business value and help them succeed (personally and professionally). The goal must be to enable IT to meet the "customer's desires" by enabling transformative uses of technology and ultimately identifying innovative ways that technology can provide competitive and differentiating advantage to the business ("unrecognized needs").
But none of this can happen until their basic, operational needs are met first. So Maslow provides an incredibly useful framework for ITIL adoption: use it to meet the base needs of your customer, but only in the context of achieving a larger goal of business transformation that leverages technology for the betterment of the enterprise. Not bad for a 50 year old theory.
