From Adoption to Advantage – Integrating ITIL into the DVMS Approach
Restructuring the Organization for Optimal Adoption and Adaptation of the DVMS Leadership Series – Part Four
David Nichols – Co-Founder and Executive Director of the DVMS Institute
Introduction
Leaders today operate in an environment where volatility isn’t a temporary phase but the core characteristic of digital business. Traditional management models—hierarchical, siloed, and compliance-heavy—may stabilize operations, but they rarely provide the flexibility and resilience needed to thrive in a digital-first economy.
The Digital Value Management System (DVMS) offers an alternative approach. It is not just another framework to add but a way of structuring leadership, processes, and behaviors so that resilience naturally arises from how the enterprise functions. When fully implemented, DVMS shifts Governance, Resilience, and Assurance (GRA) from oversight programs to the tangible outcomes the organization consistently delivers.
But reaching this goal requires more than just process changes. It calls for a core shift in leadership, structure, and behavior.
Rethinking Leadership: The Z-Axis as the Lever of Change
The DVMS 3D Knowledge Model represents the enterprise along three axes: Leadership on the Z-axis, Structure on the Y-axis, and Behavior on the X-axis. The key takeaway is clear: if these axes are not aligned, the organization becomes vulnerable. Structure can be efficient and behaviors disciplined, but without adaptive leadership on the Z-axis, the system drifts.
For executives, this involves going beyond episodic oversight and embracing adaptive governance—a continuous process of aligning strategy, risk, and value delivery in real time.
Equally important is discarding the outdated separation of culture and capability. Culture is not just an HR concern; it’s the environment where every capability is activated. Without a culture that embraces adaptability, no amount of investment in capabilities will build resilience.
The leadership imperative is to cultivate a learning culture where experimentation is encouraged, failures provide insights, and resilience is viewed as a collective achievement rather than just a compliance requirement.
Redesigning Structure: From Silos to Minimum Viable Capabilities
Once leadership sets an adaptive direction, structure acts as the framework that supports it. Traditional silos—IT, risk, operations, compliance—divide value delivery and hinder quick responses to change.
The DVMS addresses this through Minimum Viable Capabilities (MVC): the smallest set of organizational capabilities needed to Create, Protect, and Deliver (CPD) digital business value. Mapping an organization against MVCs is often the first eye-opening step for leadership. It exposes redundancies, highlights gaps, and reveals where hidden risks build up.
This mapping enables leaders to organize around value streams instead of functions. Teams aligned with value streams integrate the “create” activities of design and innovation, the “protect” responsibilities of risk and compliance, and the “deliver” functions of operations and customer success. Governance is not just an external checkpoint but a management overlay woven into workflows. Assurance becomes an embedded feedback loop rather than a once-a-year audit.
Some companies establish a Resilience Office or GRA hub that reports directly to senior leadership. Far from being just another bureaucratic layer, this cross-functional nerve center ensures governance, resilience, and assurance are aligned across value streams.
Shaping Behavior: Embedding CPD and Evidence-Based Assurance
Leadership and structure establish the foundation, but behavior—the daily actions of individuals throughout the organization—brings resilience to life. The DVMS CPD Model requires that every workflow demonstrate how it creates, protects, and delivers value to stakeholders.
This reframing shifts focus from efficiency alone to resilience outcomes. A process that fails during disruption is unsuitable, but one that adapts and recovers quickly is.
The DVMS uses the Question Outcome/Question Metric (QO/QM) model to make this measurable. This approach encourages teams to ask outcome-focused questions and connect them to evidence. Instead of saying, “Our supply chain is resilient,” leaders ask: “What evidence proves our supply chain can withstand a ransomware event tomorrow?”
The revolutionary change is that resilience responsibility is now shared. Assurance is no longer solely the duty of IT or compliance. Every role, from customer service to finance, has a part in safeguarding and delivering the value it helps generate.
Implementing the DVMS in Phases
Restructuring for DVMS adoption is not a one-time initiative; it unfolds in deliberate phases:
- Baseline assessment through MVC mapping to identify strengths, redundancies, and gaps.
- Integration of governance into workflows so assurance is a continuous process, not an external audit.
- Reorganization around value streams, breaking down silos, and aligning CPD across teams.
- Cultural reinforcement, embedding CPD thinking and QO/QM discipline into daily practice.
- Ongoing adaptation, using embedded feedback loops to evolve resilience as the environment shifts.
This phased approach ensures leaders move decisively but avoid overwhelming the organization.
The Outcomes of Restructuring
Once this restructuring is implemented, the enterprise functions and appears in fundamentally different ways. The transformation is not superficial—it changes the core way the organization creates, protects, and delivers value.
- Leadership is adaptable. Senior executives no longer see governance as a one-time review but as an ongoing process of alignment. Culture and capabilities are synced in real time, ensuring that decision-making mirrors both the strategic organizational goals and everyday behaviors. This creates leaders who are not just guardians of compliance but drivers of resilience and flexibility.
- Structure is driven by capabilities. Instead of rigid silos, the enterprise is built around Minimum Viable Capabilities (MVCs) and value streams. Functions that once operated separately—risk, IT, operations, compliance—are combined into cross-functional teams that manage the entire lifecycle of value creation, protection, and delivery. This flexible structure enables the organization to grow quickly, handle shocks, and adapt to changing markets without constant reorganization.
- Behavior focuses on resilience. Daily actions are guided by the CPD model and assessed through the QO/QM discipline. Employees at all levels understand not only the value they generate but also how they safeguard and deliver it. Evidence-based assurance replaces assumptions, shifting behavior from “trusting processes” to “trusting proof.” This cultural shift encourages staff to act confidently, knowing their decisions support enterprise resilience.
Most importantly, Governance, Resilience, and Assurance no longer function as separate programs that leaders manage or fund. Instead, they become emergent properties of the system itself. Just as healthy ecosystems self-regulate, a DVMS-enabled organization self-corrects, self-adapts, and self-assures. Compliance is achieved not because it is pursued, but because it is embedded. Trust is earned not through declarations, but through demonstrable outcomes.
This signifies the enterprise’s shift from reactive to anti-fragile — an organization that not only withstands disruption but also becomes stronger because of it. Supply chain shocks, regulatory changes, or cyber threats are seen not as existential crises but as chances to strengthen capabilities, validate resilience, and build trust with stakeholders.
For leaders, this is the most crucial outcome: a system where resilience is no longer a goal to strive for, but the default state of how the organization operates.
Continual Innovation
Leaders today face relentless shareholder expectations, regulatory scrutiny, and disruptions that no fixed framework can manage. The DVMS makes clear that resilience does not come from adding new programs, issuing more controls, or layering on additional frameworks. Instead, it develops when leadership, structure, and behavior are continually aligned and realigned—so that resilience is not a project or initiative, but the natural state of how the enterprise operates.
This ongoing alignment is what makes the DVMS approach unique. It rejects the false dilemma between stability and innovation. By organizing around the CPD model, leaders build systems where stability underpins constant adaptation. Governance is not sporadic but adaptive. Assurance is not retrospective but real-time. Resilience is not added on but integrated, evolving as conditions change.
The levers available to leaders are straightforward: align on the Z-axis of leadership, identify and strengthen Minimum Viable Capabilities, integrate CPD into workflows, and adopt QO/QM as a discipline. When these steps are practiced consistently, they ensure that Governance, Resilience, and Assurance are no longer static programs to manage but emerge as properties of a learning organization.
This continuous innovation mindset represents both the challenge and the opportunity of leadership today. The challenge is breaking free from the comfort of frameworks that promise certainty but only deliver compliance. The opportunity is designing enterprises that do not merely withstand disruption but become stronger because of it.
This is the core of the DVMS approach: resilience not as a one-time feat, but as a renewable resource—nurtured, tested, and strengthened through ongoing innovation. Leadership’s defining challenge in the digital age is to steer organizations that genuinely thrive on the edge of chaos.
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.
Traditional best-practice approaches to IT Service Management (ITSM), Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC), and Cybersecurity are insufficient to manage today’s complex digital ecosystems’ resilience, compliance, and trust requirements.
The DVMS Institute Certified Training programs and publications provide detailed guidance on transforming best-practice programs into an integrated Digital Value Management System® (DVMS) that drives adaptive governance, operational resilience, and performance assurance across complex, digital supply chains.
The DVMS seamlessly aligns organizational digital Strategy, Governance, Operations, and Culture into an integrated, adaptive, and culture-driven overlay system capable of governing and assuring the delivery of resilient, compliant, and trusted digital business outcomes.
By adopting a DVMS, organizations are positioned to:
- Maintain Operational Stability Amidst Constant Digital Disruption
- Deliver Digital Value and Trust Across A Digital Ecosystem
- Satisfy Critical Regulatory and Certification Requirements
- Leverage Cyber Resilience as a Competitive Advantage
DVMS Explainer Videos
- Architecture Video: David Moskowitz explains the DVMS System
- Case Study Video: Dr. Joseph Baugh Shares His DVMS Story.
- Overlay Model – What is an Overlay Model
- MVC ZX Model – Powers the CPD
- CPD Model – Powers DVMS Operations
- 3D Knowledge Model – Powers the DVMS Culture
- FastTrack Model – Enables A Phased DVMS Adoption
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