4.Dictators cannot afford, or tolerate, even one failure. If you are an autocrat, beware! Just one bad or unpopular decision and “troops” will pounce all over dictator’s leadership and attempt to tear it down.

5.The overall quality of services and products will decrease because of demoralized workforce. The internal strife and stress that is produced by dictator will eventually cause bottom line of organization, or its mission and goals, to suffer.

If you find this story believable, or are honest enough with yourself to admit that you may be an autocratic leader in need of a makeover, then do not waste any time – start changing your style today! Just how does one get transformed from a dictator to a humble leader? First, it begins with you. In order to reinvent or breathe life into your organization, you must first reinvent and transform yourself.

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Which brings us to second, but probably most important critical success factor, namely management commitment? If you are responsible for an ITIL implementation, make sure you have commitment from top; otherwise ITIL might just become another failed IT project throwing time and money down drain. And management commitment does not mean, "the manager says his committed". The manager must walk and talk ITIL and continuously show his commitment. In practical terms this means empowering staff through professional training, tools etc., appointing right people in right roles and managing by means of ITIL, e.g. demanding right reports and taking action... Kotter's 8 steps to organizational change is actually a good guideline for top management to follow.

Management commitment is probably most important success factor for ITIL, but in my experience, probably also most difficult to find. That is why a lot of ITIL implementations just become a black hole sucking up money. I think there are a lot of IT managers that is under this misconception, that ITIL is a silver bullet to fix all their problems. Just install ITIL (almost like installing a new technology) and everything will be OK. What they do not understand is that ITIL is a major organizational change, including a culture change. We used to focus only on technology, but now we have to focus on customer.

Another reason for low management commitment is also that ITIL is usually an internal IT department endeavor and not a direct requirement from business. ITIL is a methodology for improving IT and not as such business. To overcome this, an ITIL project should become a business requirement and commitment is needed from all way to top, from CEO.