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Lori

Thanks for the comment.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying social media is dead.  As I
stated in the article “So, is social media dead? No, it isn't dead and will
likely be around for some time, but I do think we will start to see a
significant shift in how it is used.”

I agree with you about the futility of government regulation trying
to control this.  The very nature of the internet and technology is to open and
ever changing for government regulation to be effective and I think that is
good as I’m not in favor of government regulation of the internet.  The
downside to all of this is that spamming, hackers, privacy concerns will change
the way social media works by driving us to premium services where we have more
individual control (rather than government control). 

Mike

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Chris,

Thanks for the comment.  Change is never easy nor comfortable but it is the nature of our job.  In this case it is IT that has to change rather than IT helping others to change.  It will be an interesting journey.

Mike

Respectfully,
-Chris Nelson

Good points - in the end IT is no different than any other business - it's all about the customer.

Mike

A long (and I mean LOOONNNNGGGG! ;-) time ago, a mentor from early in my career taught me that there is no point in pointing fingers and assigning blame while the ship is going down because all that does is detract from fixing the hole in the side of the ship. As a result, I learned to view everyone between me and the ultimate end user as "my customer" and to assume that, although my customer may not be able to express him/herself in the most IT literate terminology, my customer is to be satisfied and served to the best of my ability and my customer should leave the experience, if at all possible, with a "good feeling" about themselves and IT. This may take my being extremely patient and tolerant but that is how I would want to be treated, so that is how I treat them. This may require my being willing to swallow my comments when my customer tells me that I have done it wrong, again, but that is my customer's perception, so that is my customer's reality.

This is not to say that I will always accept all of the blame for projects that go awry or for problems that arise; however, this does mean that I make sure that my part of the task is completed correctly before I pursue the errors that my customers may or may not have made. If I find that I have made an error, I confess to it; if I find that my customers have made an error, I try to make sure that they are no more embarrassed by it than is necessary.

In the end, if my customers are happy and their work is easier to complete, then I have succeeded in my job. If I succeed in my job, not only do I get to keep it but I can mitigate the general unhappiness that everyone seems to have with IT. If I can mitigate that unhappiness, then IT and the Business side of the house can better collaborate and the business can better grow . . . I, hopefully, I can get better raises. ;-) (Yeah, I'm not totally altruistic! ;-)

Respectfully,

Ralph D. Wilson II

While the "revenge of the nerds" scenario is possible I don't think (or at least hope) that is too common. In most cases in terms of "nerdiness" it may be that IT naturally attract people that are more comfortable with the exact nature of IT (binary thinking one or zero) as opposed to dealing with the more vague concepts and traits in dealing with people. Thanks for the comment.

Mike

I agree - that is exactly what I meant when I said "Embed your people with the business users they work with. Having them work among your users will give them the opportunity to see all the issues firsthand and understand how the users work." You also raise a good point about the user needing to reach out and welcome them into the group as part of the team. Thanks for commenting.

Mike

It seems the identity issue - where one feels at home with similar folks - 'causes IT service people to stay close to their cubicle. Another is that being strange because they don't understand their user's language makes them freeze up. It's a hard behavior to crack other than perhaps throw them in a cubicle deep into "other" territory and take away their IT cube!

Put another way, I say, "We're service folks. How are you going to serve your users/customers when you're in your cube far far away in a different galaxy?"

But by the same token, our good users also need to reach out and make IT folks welcome and reach out. It's not Aliens vs. Predators either.

Cheers,

I like the concept of empathy. It convey the concept of IT being a service provider and understanding and answering the needs of our customers. Thanks for commenting.

Mike

I agree that both sides need to work together to bridge the communication gap. However, too often IT gets defensive and complains that the business side is not carrying its weight. While this may or may not be true it is irrelevant. We should take responsibility and the initiative in improving communications regardless of whether or not the business side is cooperative. As you say we should put in the extra effort in to building the "international" relationship.

Mike

Just to expand on your articles point and this statement, "The design, testing and training phases are instrumental in gaining user understanding and acceptance". I think it all comes down to creating empathy for the end user. Using User Centered Design processes can be an excellent way to apply empathy to the development process. Methods such as Personas and Scenarios, can not only elicit valuable requirements but also create an empathy in the development team towards the target audience and their perspectives when using the technology.

Thank you for commenting. I agree that it would be nice if enterprise applications were routinely delivered by the web or virtualized or a via a USB stick. However, this has been talked about for quite some time and I'm not as optimistic as you in regard to how quickly we'll ever see this in a big way. This is analogous to the promise of the "paperless" office that never fully materialized. While we are making progress and there may be pockets of this type operation I think we'll need Windows 7 and quite probably 8 and 9 . . .

Mike

A more interesting question is: is Windows 7 to little, to late? A product for an earlier time?

r.

PEG

Thanks for commenting. I agree we should never use standards as an excuse. As you and Peter have pointed out using exceptions as an improvement opportunity is a great way to improve your service levels.

Mike

I remember our transaction pipeline was very specific to each customer so we had to make exceptions quite frequently. I told my staff that it was all right to make exceptions if it will help close a deal. As Peter Thompson mentioned, I also requested my staff publish these exceptions so we can all learn from them. We tried to develop standards and policies to capture these exceptions an address how best to manage them. Standards, policies and rules should ever be used as an excuse not to take action especially when it will impact the company’s bottom line.

That is a great article. The point it makes about the impact of our policies and standards on recruiting and retaining employees is an excellent and often overlooked one. The part about "Try to spend most of your day enabling rather than denying the use of technology" is spot on. Doing otherwise which is what IT often does is what I call "The un-marketing of IT" http://mikeschaffner.typepad.com/michael_schaffner/2008/10/the-un-marketin.html

Thanks for sharing that link.

Mike

http://www.thomaspurves.com/2009/09/17/how-to-be-a-cio-in-a-20-world/

Really enjoy your postings.

I hadn't seen that video but I'm glad you shared it. All I can say is "Wow". What an excellent video. Barry Schwartz is spot on. I especially liked his comments on the need to incorporate kindness, care and empathy and how we never see these elements in job descriptions but they are so crucial to someone being successful in their job.

As you point out, too often we use standards and policies as an excuse. That ultimately results in poor service levels. Standards and polices are good but I'll reiterate, "they are the means to an objective and are not the objective".

Mike

Those are great articles. Thanks for sharing them. I like the concept of letting user select their own platform of choice. As you say it does help to remove some of the tension between what is good for the user and what is good for IT. It helps get towards the goal of IT being there for the benefit of the users not the other way around.

Mike