Information Technology….According to Kris

Philosophy

• Technology is not there for IT’s sake….it’s there to support the business
• In any IT decision, provide 3 options and the cost/benefit of each.  Let the business decide
• High quality customer service is MANDATORY from IT at all times
• Use the right tool for the right job.  ALWAYS.
• Making a mistake is better than not making a decision
• In making a mistake, fix it, move on and don’t do it again
• It’s okay to change your mind.  Revisit and re-assess often
• Have a strategy
• Always have a plan….short term, long term and always, ALWAYS have a plan B!
• Study your user community; how much do they know, how do they work, how do they learn, how do they communicate
• Like it or not, you’re in sales
• Roll up your sleeves and get dirty when necessary
• Wear a lot of hats
• IT requires more creativity than you think
• The devil is in the details

People

• Put 100% trust in your staff and  hire very carefully
• You can teach people technology, but you can’t teach them to have a good attitude and work ethic (well at least I can’t)
• Require and cultivate a “right hand man” or a trusted “go to” person from your team.  This person can do everything you can do (in most cases better)
• Multiple brains are always better than a  single brain
• If there is a mistake made, it’s my responsibility, if there’s a job well done, it was the team
• Put a good organizational structure in place where everyone has a backup and everyone has a growth path
• Believe in a matrix organization….everyone is cross trained and everyone has a back-up (DON’T use matrix style as an excuse for a bad organizational structure)
• Problem solving is a key skill in the IT department and the organization.  It’s IT’s job to teach these skills to the organization
• Don’t expect anyone to do anything you wouldn’t do
• Sometimes qualified expertise will get paid more than you do.  Deal with it.
• IT people work 24×7.  Deal with that too.

Environment

• It’s nice to have the biggest and best technology, but it’s not a requirement to be successful
• Cost IS an object!
• Pretty is nice….but functional is better
• Buy vs. build is an analysis process that HAS to be done.  Assuming one or the other is wrong
• Outsourcing is a viable strategy and needs to be applied wherever possible and appropriate
• Vendor management is critical.  Create partnerships, not vendor/supplier relationships
• Negotiate hard but do not squeeze every last dime out of deal.  Both sides have to have benefit from the relationship
• Centralize IT management and systems control (can you say “control freak”?)
• Don’t go anywhere without a white board (or two)
• Establish and follow hardware and software standards
• Have easy to follow request procedures for your users
• IT is responsible for anything with a power cord
• Use AUTOMATION wherever possible and reasonable
• In a vendor relationship, the system may belong to the vendor but the data always (ALWAYS) belongs to the customer

Communications

• Over communicate with your clients and user community
• Study your users and communicate the way they want you to
• Training and teaching people how to help themselves is a value in any organization (particularly when it comes to IT)
• Companies require collaborative tools that allow them to work from wherever they are
• Be accessible and provide escalations for technical issues

Data

• ALL companies should have a master data warehouse or data repository.  You can’t run a business without it.  This is a HUGE priority!
• Data should be EASILY accessible by all groups and divisions within an organization…not just IT
• Data should be protected with all the appropriate business rules, security and strategies
• Data grows with the organization….data management can start small but there must be a strategy in place to handle it as it grows
• Robust Integration and data management is CRITICAL.  Dedicated resources need to be assigned to manage both.
• STRONGLY believe in data warehousing, business intelligence and/or decision support

Technology

• I believe Microsoft is a successful standard for business software
• Open source is appropriate for some applications, use the right tool for the job
• Systems integrations, systems auditing and reconciliation are key priorities in any transaction oriented business
• Technology should be a corresponding size and scale for the business size and scale
• Have a collaboration server and central document library with check in and check out
• Always get the maintenance agreement
• Always read the book
• Someone has solved the same problem you have already.  Don’t recreate the wheel
• Keep up

Policy and Procedures

• Put IT Governance in place.  Make it efficient.  Make it understandable
• I believe in correctly licensing all software
• Security should be appropriate to the organization and not overwhelming
• Contracts are there for a reason
• Stay up to date with regulatory compliance

A Mentor…Me?

It might sound strange, but I fell into mentoring out of pure frustration.

I’m a technology geek.  I just get it.  I understand computer systems, programming, infrastructure, troubleshooting, the whole works.  (I can bet some of you are already glazing over at the thought, but stick with me here.)

I inherited an interesting mix of staffers on my first official information technology job.  There was a tattooed uncontrollable systems engineer, a very young girl (she looked 12) that worked the night shift in the call center, a helpdesk technician that spoke massively broken English and 600 beleaguered and belligerent users.

Despite it all, I was ecstatic.  This was my first team and I was determined to help drive the most fabulous technology into the organization, show off my genius to the (male dominated) executive management team  and make everyone’s life just a “push button” dream.

Uhhh….well.   Reality check please!  This was a fortune 50 company, and that my friends, comes with all the bureaucracy and political back stabbing, in-fighting and ladder climbing you could ever want.  Instead of the “push button” dream I had created in my head, we were more like the Three Stooges, running frantically from place to place, bumping into each other and falling over our own feet.

One of our first major failures was when our phone switch went down.  When a phone switch goes down for a large customer service call center, it’s a M-A-J-O-R event.  Our technology was old, we didn’t have a contract and we were inexperienced.

Armed with the enormous phone switch technical manual, and a six-pack of diet Pepsi, I grabbed the call center girl, Lisa, shoved her into the switch room and locked the door.  (I locked the door so the restless natives couldn’t get in, not so Lisa couldn’t get out!)  I looked at the terrified Lisa and she looked at me.  I said….”We can do this.”

We cracked open the book and went from page to page.  I showed her how to troubleshoot.  How to take the information you know and keep refining and adding on until we hit the issue.   In the comfort of that switch room, she engaged.  She was sharp and got it.  She kept asking questions, making me think and I asked her questions, making her think.  Together, we narrowed in, found the problem and solved it.

When we walked out of the switch room exhausted but pleased,  Lisa was standing tall.  That was the day I knew she had a spark and a burning intelligence that needed a comfortable environment in which to light the fire.  She needed confidence.

For 5 years, I worked with Lisa to help her with systems administration, troubleshooting, switch programming and even switch installation.  With every project, she gained confidence and was able to stand on her own a little more.   She went from shy self-proclaimed “worker bee”   to strategic project manager and engineer.  I watched her go from hiding in the back of a room for a meeting to sitting at the table next to the big boys and holding her own in technology discussions.

Admittedly, there were a few moments along the way that I just wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her screaming “You are SMART, You are CAPABLE, you can DO THIS!”  I would wonder why I would have to say it over and over again.  Even though she knew it on the inside, she needed to hear it out loud.

Lisa is a professional Telecommunications Engineer today.  She didn’t KNOW she could understand switch technology.  She never thought she could.  That’s where I was able to help.  I showed her something she never thought she could do.

I never specifically set out to mentor Lisa, but just fell into it.  In our male dominated environment I certainly never HAD a mentor so never really considered that it might be a good idea to BE one.  But since my experience with Lisa, I truly value helping provide the confidence that allows someone to step into their zone of genius a little faster than they may have done otherwise.