Service Management Podcast - Paul Culver

The Human Side of Service Management | War Stories, Lessons Learned & What Actually Works

In this podcast episode, Troy Kinsey, Managing Partner at Kinbalo Ventures, sits down with longtime colleague and service management leader Paul Culver for an honest, experience-driven conversation about the human side of service management.

This is not a theory-heavy discussion. Instead, we share real experiences, mistakes, and lessons learned from decades working across service desks, major incident management, CMDBs, business partnerships, and organizational change.

What we cover in this podcast:
• Why service management is fundamentally about relationships, not just tools
• Partnering effectively with the business (and why “asking what they need” isn’t enough)
• Translating business impact into meaningful prioritization
• Reducing MTTR by engaging service desks and teams the right way
• The power of Gemba walks and engaging with front-line teams
• Why “everything is critical” means nothing is critical
• Designing clear criticality models instead of negotiating urgency on the fly
• Major incident management: communication, facilitation, and teams under pressure
• Using templates, automation, and CMDB data to remove stress from incident communications
• Why simulations, tabletop exercises, and runbooks matter more than perfect processes
• The hidden cost of incidents: time, reputation, and downstream recovery work
• CMDB reality: why most fail, what makes some succeed, and where to start

Key takeaway:
Great service management isn’t about having all the answers.

It’s about engagement, clarity, partnership, and creating systems that help people make good decisions under pressure.

If you’re working in IT service management, leading a service desk, managing incidents, or partnering with the business, this conversation is for you.

If you found this useful - please like, subscribe, and share.

Drop your thoughts or your own war stories in the comments. We’d love to hear them.

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