Implementation of ITIL Service Management Training

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Yes, yes, I know, the title of this thread alone may make some of you want to throw yourselves off cliffs like chronically depressed lemmings.

The ITIL Foundation certification seems to be something people are getting more and more (there are certainly a lot more announcements about passes on this as opposed to other Project Management type certs).

If I have it right (from my perusing of the subject matter) the ITIL is service management - ie - the service equivalent of 'process improvement'. And by process improvement, I mean your Charles Handy (whatever his name was) 5S processes, or the Six Sigma methodologies... at any rate, they are a written set of guidelines for IT service management.

What I want to ask is, has anyone, once getting this certification, actually implemented projects or procedures in line with their ITIL training? Or is it a lip-service cert people are getting because their blue-chip employers are bounding onto some kind of gung-ho service bandwagon?

I've experienced managers with service improvement written across their souls, and they are met with nothing but thinly veiled disgust. Whilst you can see a lot of things they are trying to do work, and would make the working environment a far better place, when set to actual practical use, the things you learn in service management courses seem to fall apart amidst the red tape and buerocracy of the day-to-day working environment.

Ironically, as I'm looking at doing the ITIL myself (as I'm a quasi self-hating sado masochistic customer service freak) I'd love to hear how people have experienced life after ITIL foundation - has it actually made a difference to the way you work? Also has anyone on here gone beyond Foundation yet, to the Intermediate Service level?

Also Ken (if you read this) how does ITIL compare to established methodologies such as Six Sigma?

Apologies to anyone who fell into comas in the process of reading this...