From ITIL® Adoption to Enterprise Resilience – A Leadership Call to Action – Part One
David Nichols – Co-Founder and Executive Director of the DVMS Institute
For many leadership teams, the story of ITIL adoption is familiar. Certifications are achieved. Processes are documented. Tools are purchased and put into use. In some organizations, entire careers have been built around ITIL implementation and training. However, when you step back and ask the boardroom question—has all this resulted in a strategic advantage in the market? The answer is often disappointing.
That disconnect is fundamental. It’s not that ITIL lacks value. On the contrary, it has improved service stability, incident management, and change control across thousands of organizations. However, while operationally important, these improvements rarely translate into strategic wins. The number of tickets does not influence customers, investors, and regulators, whether closed or how smoothly the change windows run. They care about resilience, trust, and an organizational ability to adapt in a volatile environment.
At no point ever did an executive wake up in the middle of the night worried about their MTTR or incident close rate. This is the pressure executives feel: they have invested significant time and money into ITIL, but don’t see the results in the most critical areas. And here’s the hard truth—adopting ITIL alone will never get you there, nor will it ever be enough to get you there.
Beyond the Frameworks
ITIL is not unique in this regard. NIST, ISO, COBIT, Agile, and DevOps all offer value, but each functions as a framework or approach rather than a comprehensive management system. When used in isolation, they risk creating silos. Each covers part of the puzzle, but none provides the integrated whole necessary to succeed in a fast-changing digital environment filled with constant disruption. None offers an overarching governance system as an assurance mechanism.
Your organization likely already has all these components in some form. You’ve created playbooks, toolsets, and gained expertise. However, the results often feel disconnected. Processes function within their own domains, but they don’t integrate into a system that benefits the whole enterprise.
The question is not whether ITIL or any of these frameworks are relevant—they are. The question is whether you, as leaders, are willing to go beyond your siloes and integrate them into an adaptive system that creates, protects, and delivers value as part of a new organizational paradigm.
The Leadership Imperative
This brings us to the importance of leadership. Processes and tools alone cannot resolve this issue. You could deploy the most advanced ITIL processes globally and still be susceptible to disruption. What truly makes the difference is the culture you build at the top.
Culture, after all, is not built on frameworks. It is shaped by leadership choices—what gets emphasized, how accountability is defined, which behaviors are rewarded, and how risk is viewed. If ITIL is regarded as just a checklist, that attitude will influence the entire organization. Compliance will take precedence over adaptability. Service management will stay an operational cost rather than evolve into a strategic driver.
However, ITIL practices gain new significance when leaders demonstrate adaptability and promote resilience as a strategic advantage. Incident response shifts from focusing solely on service uptime to maintaining trust in customer relationships. Change management moves beyond approvals to balancing risk with innovation. Service delivery is no longer just about efficiency; it’s about reliably creating and delivering digital value, even amid disruption.
This change cannot come from the bottom up. It must be driven from the top down. That is the challenge today’s executives face: to lead not only in financial results but also in resilience, adaptability, and trust.
Stepping Outside the Current Paradigm
Many leadership teams are tempted to see ITIL adoption as complete and declare “job done.” They might think the processes are in place, certifications are earned, and tools are integrated. However, this viewpoint offers a narrow perspective. It views ITIL as the final goal instead of as a foundational step.
The current call to action is to move beyond that paradigm. To reimagine what your organization could become if ITIL and other frameworks were not endpoints but foundational elements in a unified approach to value management.
What if your enterprise became the example others follow—recognized for operational stability, resilience, adaptability, and the trust it earns among customers and regulators? What if ITIL was not the peak of your digital transformation but the start of a broader journey toward integrated governance, resilience, and assurance?
These are not rhetorical questions. They go to the heart of how organizations will survive and succeed in a volatile time. Cyber risks are rising. Regulatory requirements blow in the political winds. Customer expectations for trust are higher than ever. In this environment, service management cannot remain just an internal IT function. It must become a core part of how the enterprise governs and competes.
Building the Integrated Whole
The good news is that you don’t have to give up what you’ve already built. Your investments in ITIL, training, and tools are not wasted; they serve as the foundation. What is needed now is a changed paradigm and integration of your ITIL foundation into something much larger and more strategic.
Think of your organizational capabilities as strands of fabric. ITIL provides a framework for service management. NIST and ISO establish structures for security and risk. Agile and DevOps accelerate delivery. Each strand is strong alone, but only when woven together do they form a resilient fabric capable of absorbing shocks and adapting to new opportunities.
This weaving together is the core of resilience. It allows governance, resilience, and assurance to develop not as separate checklists, but as natural aspects of how the organization creates and delivers value. It turns ITIL adoption from a sunk cost into a competitive edge.
The Role of Leadership in the Journey
None of this happens by accident. It requires strong leadership. Leaders must define the vision and emphasize that frameworks like ITIL are not ultimate goals but components of a larger system. They need to promote integration across silos, encourage adaptability, and assess results based on the resilience and trust built with stakeholders.
This is a cultural shift as much as it is an operational one. And culture always reflects leadership. If executives define resilience as strategic, the organization will follow. If they fail to elevate the conversation, the organization will remain stuck in operational silos.
The choice, ultimately, is yours.
From Adoption to Advantage
ITIL adoption isn’t irrelevant—it’s just incomplete. The real opportunity for leadership teams today is to build on what has been established and create a unified system that governs, safeguards, and delivers digital value at scale. This shift isn’t about collecting more certifications or adding more processes. It’s about courageous leadership that is willing to move beyond the comfort zone of the current mindset.
So, ask yourself: What would it mean for your organization to become the shining example others point to? What would it mean to demonstrate—not in words, but through outcomes—that your enterprise is resilient, adaptive, and trusted?
ITIL has given you a foundation. The Digital Value Management System (DVMS) shows you how to build on it—transforming adoption into advantage by weaving your existing capabilities into a resilient, adaptive whole. We’ll explore that journey in the next part of this series.
As the great American philosopher, Yogi Bera, once said, “If you come to a fork in the road, take it.’ There is an opportunity before you. ITIL has given you a foundation. The next step is yours to take.
About the Author
Dave is the Executive Director of the DVMS Institute.
Dave spent his “formative years” on US Navy submarines. There, he learned complex systems, functioning in high-performance teams, and what it takes to be an exceptional leader. He took those skills into civilian life and built a successful career leading high-performance teams in software development and information service delivery.
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