Others may include:

·Improve two-way communications between IT Department and business ·Involve key business stakeholders in our decision making processes ·Ensure changes to our infrastructure don't create more problems. ·Improve and leverage maximum value from our 3rd party suppliers ·Create a more agile, process orientated IT Department ·Eliminate our blame culture ·Empower team members to take ownership and responsibility ·Create a culture of continuous improvement ·Create an achievement orientated team

Side salad or seasonal vegetables Sir?

Only most naive senior executives these days fail to recognise importance of creating an agile organisation. Able to flex and adapt to changing market conditions, technological innovations, fluctuating market share, profit margin and profitability. It's a tough, increasingly competitive world and if you don't take initiative you can be sure someone else will. To survive and thrive in today's economy a core capability of successful organisations is agility.

Equally, keeping abreast of organisations aims and objectives requires an agile IT Department. How agile are you? Do your customers have to wait 6 weeks or more for a new laptop? Do new employees arrive on their first day to find they're going to have to wait 3 days for a logon and email account? Does your overtime budget regularly take a hammering? Do you find yourself continually on back foot having to explain systems downtime?

In encouraging development of an agile IT Department one needs to firstly consider individuals, their levels of change acceptance when implementing ITIL and personal loss which may be resultant effect of changes. Otherwise, no matter your expertise and knowledge, or that of your ITIL consultant, Service Manager or Implementation Project Manager, resistance will be high and probability of success, in terms of gaining performance improvements and cost savings, will be low.

Heartburn

Be objective in assessing how much change individuals within your team and organisation can tolerate. Research carried out by Buchanan, Claydon and Doyle (1999) found that over 60% of managers said people in their business were suffering from change fatigue. In a second study (2000) it was found that just under half of respondents claimed that pace of change was causing middle management burnout as with each change, people have to spend time:

-learning new tasks, -implementing new systems and procedures -developing new knowledge -using new skills and behaviours and, -all above under severe time pressure due to having `day job' to do as well.

The cheque please!

If you've already tried to implement ITIL and failed then you need a rescuer and a rescue plan. You need an expert with experience of success and failure. Simply sending a team member on a course in hope they'll come back with sufficient knowledge and experience to face up to task is unrealistic - Jenson Button didn't learn how to race just by reading Highway Code and passing his driving test. Visit http://www.itilhelp.com Free Downloads section to access Knowledge Box and Summary Menu for Success - these will help you assess your own or your change agent's level of experience and reflection and guide your implementation strategy.

©www.itilhelp.com, 2004. All rights reserved

================================================== John Smith - Marketing Director - Your Company Tel: +61 8 8388 5171 Mob: +61 410 642 052 www.yourcompany.com.au john@yourcompany.com.au

Visit our site and sign up for powerful FREE ideas and tips on marketing your business ==================================================

Example 2:

.blah blah blah .text text text. Regards, John

================================================= John Smith Marketing Director www.yourdomain.com john@yourdomain.com Tel: +61 8 8388 5171 Mob: +61 410 642 052

Visit our site for a FREE copy of our 20 page report, 'Your Financial Freedom: what insurance industry doesn't want you to know" =================================================

Example 3:

.blah blah blah .text text text. Regards, Jeremy

================================================= Jeremy Lee Marketing Executive www.leehopkins.net Tel: (08) 8388 5171

ATTENTION: if you are sick of your job and want to earn more money visit my site for information on how you can build financial freedom one brick at a time WITHOUT having to give up your day job. Within a few years you could be firing your boss! =================================================

Example 4:

.blah blah blah .text text text. Regards, Michael

================================================= Michael Bloggs www.bloggsareus.com Tel: (08) 8388 5171 Mobile: 0410 642 052

Bloggs are latest, coolest toys around. Kids just LOVE THEM! Visit our site to grab latest designs, colour schemes and accessories. There's FREE screensavers and sound files too! Go there!! =================================================

As I mentioned above, I get around 100 emails a day. If I attach my signature to every reply, that's 100 prospects a day who get my sales message!

Every email program worth its weight allows you to attach a signature. You don't have any excuse. Start writing some email signatures today and test them out on your replies. Some will be better than others at getting a response - you'll soon know.

4. Create templates to save even more time! =========================================== I get over 100 emails a day and some of them are from different people asking same question. How time wasting to re-type exactly same reply to each different email!

That's why I have created template responses - I can call up a pre-written response and just cut and paste it into a reply, adding any personalising features like person's name. Easy-peezy!

I have dozens of templates, each answering a specific frequent request or question. These save me heaps of time!

Each email program works slightly differently with template files, so I suggest you check out your email program's 'Help' files for more information.

A useful product I've found for Outlook is ReplyMate - check it out at www.replymate.com

So, there we are. If you follow these four tips, you'll find that you're able to spend less time as a slave to your inbox and more time promoting your business.