Author Archive

If you find yourself agreeing with this perspective, you’re in good company. Unfortunately, you’re also absolutely wrong. Hard to believe? I’ll prove it. It will only take about 30 seconds.

“Leadership is leadership. There’s nothing special about IT and there’s no such thing as IT leadership.” This is what I was recently told by a successful CIO of a billion-dollar plus company with a staff of more than 100 full time employees.

Click here to read the entire article on CIO Insight.

“Why does this system have to be so complicated?” Can’t you just fix this already?”

Sound familiar?

That’s what I heard last night from my beloved wife when our home theatre system didn’t respond to her iPod-based remote control the way she was accustomed.

I’ll spare you the details of our home theatre setup but suffice it to say as a techie and someone who enjoys movies and music, we’ve got it all. Tivo, BlueRay, Roku, Apple TV all HDMI connected to the Onkyo network amp and controlled by a third party IOS remote control app over WIFI. It’s slick—when it’s working. And last night there was a little glitch.

When the remote didn’t respond, my wife became frustrated and irritated … with me. Even though the problem had absolutely nothing to do with me (or the tech as it turned out). In her mind, it was me and my complex “stuff” that was to blame for her missing her show.

My wife is very tuned into my work and is empathic to the plight of the IT professional—heck, she hears about it from me all the time. She is very aware of the pain our community endures at the hands of tech users who make unreasonable demands and blame the technology folks for all things technology related. That’s why it was so interesting to see her reacting in nearly the same way towards me.

It didn’t take long for her to calm down and realize that it wasn’t my fault or the TV’s fault or the system’s fault but a slight human error that was easily corrected. But I was still left with the question – why is this the case? Why is this the default reaction even from our most beloved family members, let alone from our business companions and colleagues? Why is the first reaction to be upset with the IT people when the technology isn’t working for them?

I put this question to a psychologist friend of mine and she explained to me that there’s really one basic issue at play. It’s human nature to want to blame someone. It’s hard to blame a machine but when there’s a person supposedly in charge of the machine they take on the persona and all of the defects of the machine and system. It’s just the way we are as human beings.

My takeaway from this little incident is that no matter how close you are with a particular user, no matter how much they respect or even love you, at the end of the day when something isn’t quite right in their technology  world, they are likely to default to the human reaction which is to blame you. When this happens it’s up to you to recognize that it really is nothing to do with you. It’s just the person acting out the most basic human instincts.

You can and should try to explain things to them so they can more clearly see the distinction between you and the systems you are there to help them with. But don’t have too high an expectation of things changing drastically. The challenge for us is to maintain our composure and  awareness in the face of this inevitable human encounter. Which is a fancy way of saying, keep your cool, smile and remember … they’re  reacting like all people do, just like my wife.

Have you heard?

In a major national survey conducted by Robert Half (the big employment agency) CIOs are reporting the greatest degree of difficulty ever finding and hiring high-quality IT professionals.

I wonder if these are the same CIOs who recently told CIO.com reporters that it was very hard to keep good staff because “they want ever increasing levels of pay and aren’t willing to accept general industry pay levels.”

Finally … IT professionals (real pros that is) are waking up to their worth and aren’t willing to work for pennies just because the folks who are 10 or 15 years ahead of them did, or worse, still are themselves.

As the economy picks up, I see a big shake up on the horizon for IT pros. Those who really have the chops and smarts to get things done are going to flourish. For the meeting-minded fluffernutters who just want to talk about “the cloud,” “consumerization,” or whatever buzzword happens to be about, expect greater pain and suffering at the hands of stakeholders.

I just heard a radio ad for Emirates Air proudly exclaiming that on their flights to Dubai there are 1,200 HD channels to choose from. Wow 1,200 channels.

I suppose their intentions are good. And I suppose that the core of their advertising message is that they have something for everyone. But think about it for a moment … 1,200 channels, does anyone on an airplane ride really need that many channels to choose from?

As I see figure it, deciding what to watch is actually more time consuming that watching your average program. Here’s the basic math:

Let’s say it takes on average just 10 seconds to figure out whether or not a particular program or channel is good for you. (A simple average to allow for channel surfing, stopping and program previewing.) At that rate it would take 12,000 seconds or just under three and half hours to review those 1,200 channels. Jeez. I’m exhausted just thinking about it. I can’t imagine I would have the ability to relax and actually watch something by that point.

So what’s this all got to do with IT Leadership? Well … Sometimes I see IT pros work very hard to give their user communities and stakeholders lots of choices and lots of functionality. Much of it either totally unappreciated or unused.

This commercial is an excellent reminder about the power of a few good choices.