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.

Third, after taking responsibility and apologizing, president explained what company was doing to fix system.

His description of fixes also took right tack. He made no attempt to describe technical nature of fixes, nor did he try to impress us with how hard he and his people had worked. He simply explained that backup and warning systems were being put into place, and should prevent further outages from same sources.

Fourth, he promised that affected customers would get two weeks of free service, to compensate for their inconvenience.

That's an excellent way to communicate a company's sincerity. While apology and acknowledgment would satisfy many customers, offer of compensation underlined a genuine interest in customer satisfaction.

So, this effective communication strategy had four parts: first, it acknowledged problem and took responsibility for it; second, it offered an apology; third, it explained what it was doing to fix problem; and fourth, it offered compensation to those who had been affected.

Of course, simply communicating in a crisis situation won company some recognition. And having communicated well made initiative that much effective.

In summary, crisis situations make special communication demands on organizations. This company rose to occasion by not only fixing problem, but also by communicating effectively with people who were affected.