I know some puddle sitters. Waiting for motivation and a good thing to come along and wondering why they don't ever seem to get anywhere.

I have tried to help them. Tried to convince them that motivation cannot come from external forces, it has to come from within. They head to motivational seminars and like my best attempt at crash diets there is some short term benefit, but then the garbage collects again and they are back to where they started.

I don't have a magic elixir for "puddle sitters", but I have stopped wasting my firewood on them.

You probably know some puddle sitters and they are quite possibly good friends, great fathers,  a wonderful mother, sister, aunt or brother; but they are tending to rely on other people to make things happen for them in life and careers.

I know some fire starters!! One young man in particular is not waiting on anyone else to make his plans for him; he is writing his own destiny and you can already see the aurora of success around him. He lives the adage that says "if you leave your plans to someone else, they probably don't have that much planned for YOU". He is busy crafting a career and a future that will simply be great and I watch with interest as he moulds his own destiny.

So what does all this have to do with an IT Service Management blog. Some may say "nothing"... I say "everything". As ITSM professionals we have to recognize that there are "puddle sitters" inside any organization and despite your best efforts to light a fire, they are sitting there with an extinguisher as backup.

The job of implementing improved ITSM processes (be it ITIL, CoBit, Six Sigma) is challenging enough and while you can't ignore those that choose to resist you can apply the right degree of effort to them.

Just as I can't shake the pounds that seem to creep onto my expanding waistline, so to I cannot make these people believers in what I'm trying to do or the story I'm trying to tell them. What I can do is acknowledge them, be courteous and be patient.

It takes a long time for some puddles to evaporate.