Which IT Service Desk Manager Skills and Attributes Help Your Career Advancement?

Organizations are becoming more worried about IT skills shortages. You might have been personally concerned about them for a while in your IT service desk manager role, with various related predictions and statistics increasingly being shared in media articles. But, while such reports are definitely problematic for employing organizations, the upside is that they offer up opportunities for suitably focused IT service desk managers – such as yourself – who wish to take the next step in their IT careers.

So, if you’re looking for your next career move, which of your current skills and capabilities will be of most use? This blog tries to determine this through the use of crowdsourced data and information.

Taking your next step after service desk management – the most important skills

Many IT service desk managers have worked their way up, through the service desk ranks, thanks to their hard work and a combination of technical knowledge, interpersonal skills, and then management capabilities. It makes them well-rounded individuals, with a wide spectrum of knowledge, skills, and expertise – and not only in terms of technology and IT support but also in terms of business operations.

However, if you currently manage an IT service desk, it can be difficult to know where to invest your time and opportunities for training. To start, there’s not a clearly mapped out career path (as there is from service desk analyst to supervisor/leader to manager). Help is at hand though in the latest (2019) and previous (2017) Service Desk Institute (SDI) Service Desk Benchmarking Reports, which offer some helpful development-related statistics.

The 2017 report surveyed service desk managers to understand where they’re focusing their development efforts (sadly, the question wasn’t included in the 2019 report) and the results are shown below:

What skills or aptitudes do service desk managers require to help make the next progression in your career?

Source: SDI, Service Desk Benchmarking Report 2017

With the report’s author Scarlett Bayes stating that:

“While Leadership has remained as the most important skill for service desk managers to progress, as identified by 76% of respondents, it is closely followed by communication for leaders, which has seen an incredible surge in significance since 2013 and increasing by 36% (i.e. doubling) from 2011 to 2017.”

Hence, leadership and communication are both seen as vital for career progression. But what else will help you to progress?

Taking your next step after service desk management – the “important” qualifications

We could debate the relative importance of qualifications versus having the right knowledge, skills, and experience. But I think most people would agree that qualifications do make a difference to a recruiting manager who “doesn’t know you from Adam.”

The 2019 SDI report asked about the qualifications recently undertaken by service desk managers and their teams. And while not directly targeted at the next career step of a service desk manager, the following chart does offer up four interesting observations:

1. Interest in ITIL is slightly up when ITIL v3 and ITIL 4 figures are combined (although this is below the 77% level of 2015)
2. Investment in technical qualifications is significantly down
3. SDI qualifications continue to increase in popularity (but please note that SDI members will make up a good proportion of the survey takers)
4. 12% of teams had no investment in qualifications in the last year.

What qualification have you or any of your staff achieved over the past year?

Source: SDI, Service Desk Benchmarking Report 2019

Source: SDI, Service Desk Benchmarking Report 2019

When a forward-looking view is taken, technical qualifications are still much lower than in 2017. ITIL qualifications drop too, SDI qualifications hold fast, and 14% of service desk managers state that they and their team will receive no training in the next 12 months.

What qualifications are you, or your staff, due to take over the next 12 months?

Source: SDI, Service Desk Benchmarking Report 2019

The big drop in technical training qualifications is interesting and perhaps marks a continued  “change of tide” in IT service desk staffing strategies – with script-based and knowledge management approaches increasing (plus, in 2020, that people-people are being preferred for IT service and support roles over those with high levels of technical acumen).

Finally, the high level of organizations that aren’t going to be supporting their people – at all – in the pursuit of workplace-related qualifications is worrying. On the one hand, it’s probably a sign of the times, with training usually one of the first things cut in times of financial austerity. On the other though, it might not actually save as much as organizations think – with the negative impact of not investing in people potentially including:

• Increased operational costs – as people do what they’ve been told (to do) rather that what’s optimal, i.e. they work in an “uneducated” way
• Employees are “lost” – either in terms of day-to-day motivation (due to the lack of recognition and career support) or by finding alternative roles elsewhere.

Taking your next step after service desk management – preparing for the future of ITSM

Your next role might not be in ITSM but if it is, then are the above-mentioned skills and qualifications enough?

There’s the industry joke that the average (ITSM) consultant will say “It depends” in response to most of the questions that come their way. And in this case, they’d be right – we don’t know what the future will hold for ITSM professionals. Thus, the required skills, capabilities, and experience will depend on how ITSM as a profession changes in the next five years (and beyond). Which in turn will depend on the changing business and IT landscapes. And let’s not forget that different IT service desk managers will have different ambitions, and capabilities, relative to the route they wish their career to take (including the focus of the roles they take up).

What we do know, though, is that certain things are driving the future of ITSM. And we can use these to help predict which skills and capabilities will most likely be valuable to IT service desk managers looking to move into a new role and to continue their career progression.

As to what these are, you could spend hours trying to figure out what will and won’t happen tomorrow. Instead, I recommend that you take a look at the views of 20 ITSM-industry influencers related to the “Skills and Capabilities Required of a 2020 ITSM Professional.” These include:

1. An understanding of AI and Analytics and associated personal capabilities
2. Knowledge Management capabilities
3. Business Relationship Management (BRM) capabilities
4. An understanding of what Business Value is and how to create it
5. Customer Engagement skills
6. Communication and Collaboration skills
7. Problem Solving skills and capabilities
8. A focus on Innovation for better business outcomes
9. A desire for Continual Learning
10. Personal Flexibility and Agility, with the ability to deal with complexity

Hopefully, this blog has offered up a point or two that will help you to take your next career step. But I’m also interested in what you think you and your peers should be focused on in terms of personal development. Please let me know in the comments.