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Where The Prices Are Insane! July 10, 2009

Posted by Chuck Musciano in Leadership, Technology.
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6 comments

It happens four times a year, like clockwork.  Just before the end of March, June, September, and December, the phone calls and emails flood in, all promising the same thing: unheard-of pricing on products you absolutely cannot live without.  These once-in-a-lifetime prices are only available for a short time, if you act now!

What’s being sold at immense discounts?  ShamWow or Snuggis?  A Pocket Fisherman or a 12-CD set of the greatest hits from the 70s?

Nope.  The big sale is on software.  Big software: databases, ERPs, business intelligence platforms, and the like.  Even with the fabulous discounts, the prices still run well into six figures, plus implementation costs.

Who buys software like this?  Is there a CIO anywhere in the world who will write a check and buy software at the drop of a hat?

Done correctly, big system purchases take a long time.  Requirements analysis and market evaluation are tedious but vital to ensure a good fit for your organization.  Understanding the deployment costs and timeframe is crucial for success and can takes weeks to figure out.  Just reading and negotiating the support and licensing contracts is a major exercise all by itself.

Moreover, as CIOs work to gain the respect of their executive peers, the last thing any of us should be doing is running to the CFO’s office on June 30th, looking for a signature to close a deal before 5 PM.  Rushing a deal to save a buck is unprofessional, and any other C-level executive should question our abilities if we behave like that.

That isn’t to say that I don’t appreciate a good deal.  But the right way to approach a quarter-end discount is to start working towards it at the beginning of the quarter.  Everyone on both sides of the table knows that pricing gets tighter as the quarter and year ends.  By doing all the heavy lifting well before that time, we can focus on solid price negotiation without being pressured to short-circuit our diligence when things go down to the wire.

I really appreciate those vendors that come to me well in advance to put together a great deal with plenty of time to spare.  Not only does that let me do my job on my side, it also lets me manage the process with my management team, giving them plenty of time to learn about the proposal.  When I do go forward with the final pricing at the end of the quarter, there are no surprises to delay the process.  By helping my company reach a good decision in a timely fashion, a vendor makes themselves (and my team) look good.

Selling is about relationships and providing solid value over time.  Vendors, please leave the high-pressure tactics to late-night TV ads and used car lots, and give your customers time to evaluate and respond to good offers in a timely fashion.  We’ll all close on more deals with a lot less stress.

Let Go Of The Details July 8, 2009

Posted by Chuck Musciano in Leadership.
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5 comments

IT leaders tend to manage a detail-oriented bunch of people.  Technology only works because someone pays attention to the details, and those who ignore the details are not long for our business.  We actively seek those who can absorb and deal with vast detail on a regular basis.

As qualified individuals rise through the ranks of IT, they face a troublesome trend: more and more of their job involves letting go of the details.  This can be a terrifying proposition for many of us.  If letting go of the details has been a proven recipe for disaster in the past, how can letting go of the details be crucial to my success going forward?

Leadership involves owning responsibility for more stuff than any one person can handle.  To manage all that stuff, we build teams that can collectively address the problems at hand.  Within that team, we divide and conquer, assigning different details to different people to get the job done.  Once assigned, we need to let go of those details and trust our team to handle it.

This is agonizing, especially for new managers.  I can remember when I made the transition from being a Unix systems administrator to managing the team of Unix admins.  As I relinquished my direct responsibility for our storage systems to another admin, I could feel my fingers shaking as they were pried off the keyboard of the console.  I was like a mother advising her newly-minted teenage driver as they took the car keys for the first time, blurting out bits of advice in an effort to forestall what I was sure would be an unmitigated disaster.

It wasn’t a disaster, of course, and that team of admins did a great job managing the servers that were once mine.  But the desire to stay engaged at every level, to track every detail, was overwhelming and almost fatal.  It took a lot of effort and focus to let my team do their jobs.

Failing to let go creates disaster in several directions.  At the very least, it tells your team that you do not trust them, and that you must stay engaged in order for them to do a good job.  Your lack of faith in their abilities will become a self-fulfilling prophecy, creating a team that lives up to your expectation of inadequacy.

Your constant meddling will also drive your team crazy.  What you see as helpful interaction is really micromanaging, and nothing is more frustrating to a competent employee than a micromanager.  You’ll lose your team’s respect and with it, any ability to actually manage them when it really matters.

Finally, all the time you’ll spend doing their job will keep you from doing yours.  Your boss is not expecting you to continue in your old role; he or she expects you to take on new responsibilities and deal with issues at a more abstract level.  Given that time is finite, every moment you spend mired in detail is a moment you could have been dedicating to your new job duties.  This incremental neglect of your new role will ultimately destroy your career.  If you really want to deal with all that detail, your boss will be happy to return you to a position that provides that opportunity.

Let go of the details.  Let your team do their job, so you can get on with doing yours.

Eschew Entropy July 6, 2009

Posted by Chuck Musciano in Leadership.
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Many of us in IT like to proclaim that we are Agents Of Change, bringing wonderful new technology to the world on a regular basis.  We spend a lot of time discussing Change Management, learning how to help people through the stress of change.  We look at change as a Good Thing, a necessary step in improving our lives, both personal and professional.

Really?  Let’s be honest: as Oliver Kamm points out, the “most common form of change is decline.”  Are we simply Agents Of Decline?

Like every other system and entity in the universe, software and hardware are subject to entropy, the inexorable collapse of everything over time.  Computers fail.  Disk drives seize. Power supplies overheat.  Cables crack. Ports fill with dust. Databases fill up. Logs grow inexorably. Software gets patched.  Left on its own, everything we own and touch on a regular basis simply gets worse.

Disciplined operations is the heart of IT.  Consistent operational discipline is our only defense against entropy.  Without it, our systems will grind to a halt.  Unfortunately, there are two problems with good operations:

  • It takes an ever-increasing amount of effort to do it well

and

  • No one cares until we stop

As we deploy new things, bringing change to the world, we increase the operational burden.  Every system deployed today must be maintained forever.  More and more of our time and resources are spent on simply keeping the lights on.  Even worse, all of these systems communicate with each other, so that the potential system conflicts grow super-exponentially.  Running IT is a lot like those plate-spinning acts you used to see on the Ed Sullivan show, except that your audience is throwing plates at you during the act.

For some strange reason, users expect us to keep all of the plates in the air all of the time.  And why shouldn’t they? Why would we deploy a new system if we didn’t intend to keep it up and running? No one deploys a new system along with a planned shutdown date. (”Here’s your new collaborative environment!  We’ll keep it up and running until December”)  No, we deploy things with the promise of maintaining and expanding them forever.

As our systems grow in number and complexity, the cost of maintaining them grows as well.  This cost can overwhelm our budgets and limit our ability to develop and deploy new systems that really are important to our business.  As our ability to develop new tools diminishes, our perceived value to our customers drops as well. That’s a dangerous vicious cycle with bad career implications.

We’ve portrayed ourselves as Agents Of Change, so our customers judge us on that.  We didn’t label ourselves the Enemies Of Entropy, so users really don’t care that we spend most of our time forestalling the inevitable.  Behind the scenes, we need to strike a balance between both roles so that our systems keep running, our users are happy, and new systems arrive on a regular basis to keep our businesses ahead of the curve.

Is it easy?  Of course not!  If it were, everyone would be in IT.  Is it challenging?  You bet!  That’s what makes it fun.  Can you hold off entropy and still deliver the right stuff for your customers?  Even more importantly, will you enjoy doing it?

The ABCs of Hiring July 1, 2009

Posted by Chuck Musciano in Leadership.
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9 comments

Few of us get to assemble our teams from scratch.  Most likely, we acquire a team as we move into a new position.  Much like a college football coach that inherits players recruited by his predecessor, we have to play the game with the team with have.

Over time, we get to reshape the team to our liking.  As folks move on to new opportunities, or as you “assist” folks in moving on to new opportunities, you’ll get the chance to bring new people to your team.  This is a big test for any leader.  People understand that you are not fully responsible for the team you inherit, but they won’t be as compassionate when someone you brought to the team drops the ball.

There’s a simple rule for hiring that should shape these decisions:

A people hire other A people.  B people hire C people.

When asked, every leader will insist that they hire only the best, brightest candidates.  But do they?

The best leaders surround themselves with people smarter than they are.  The best teams to lead are those where you are the dumbest person in the room.  If you are the smartest person in the room, your team has a serious problem. Find experts in the pertinent domains, create a culture that supports their efforts, and get out of the way.

Sadly, not every leader is the best leader.  Lesser leaders hire lesser people, intended to make themselves look good.  The result is a team of people that collectively rank just below the skills of the leader.  Given that any leader following this strategy is less than stellar, the entire team winds up being mediocre at best.

Few leaders will admit that they are intentionally hiring sub-standard candidates to make themselves look good.  Where, then, is this rule being applied? By everyone around you, that’s where.

People will closely scrutinize your every hiring decision.  Their assessment of each new candidate will reflect on you.  If you make good hiring decisions, people will notice.  If you make bad hiring decisions, people will notice and talk about it.  You may claim (and even believe) that you are hiring A players, but every C player you bring aboard knocks you further down the scale to becoming a B leader.

This ABC rule goes beyond technical ability.  It’s even more important when people consider the fit of your candidates into the current culture.  The ease with which your new team members integrate into the culture says a lot about how much you respect that culture.  If you diminish the importance of culture in your hiring decisions, you can lose the support of your existing team.  You may also make it much harder for your new people to succeed in their new role.

No one wants to be thought of as a B or C leader.  Seek out the A candidates while hiring, and you’ll go a long way to ensuring your own success as an A leader.

Swing, Batter-Batter-Batter! June 29, 2009

Posted by Chuck Musciano in Leadership.
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8 comments

It’s easy to tell when a youth baseball team is struggling: they fall silent.  If the silence persists for any length of time, the coach (or a parent in the stands) will yell out, “Let’s hear a little chatter out there!”  This request hopefully refocuses the team as they start talking again.

Baseball chatter falls into two broad categories: inane repetitive noise and helpful advice between the players.  The inane noise is designed to annoy and distract the opposing team, especially the pitcher and batter as they duel at the plate.  The helpful advice is more important: players call out potential defensive plays, adjust coverage, warn about possible bunts or steals, and so forth.

The parallels for any support team, and especially IT organizations, is obvious.  A happy team is constantly communicating with themselves, in matters both large and small.  As changes occur and problems arise, they go out of their way to make sure people know what is going on.  The communication is fluid and consistent.  Ideally, most of the chatter should fall into the “helpful advice” category, although it could be fun to taunt your DBA during a big upgrade. (”Drop, table-table-table!”)

As a leader, are you listening for chatter in your team?  Are you even in a position to hear it?  Chatter is in the break room, the hallways, and the parking lot.  It’s both verbal and electronic, via Twitter, SMS, and instant messaging. Chatter isn’t in the formal memos, project charters, and design documents.  It may not even be in the general email flow.  In fact, formal communication is the enemy of chatter.

When teams get bogged down in Memos and Documents, they stop chattering.  They begin to formalize their communication, creating paper trails and looking to cover their read ends.  They think before sharing and selectively reveal information to suit their own agendas.  This kind of thinking, putting self before team, is disastrous for any group.  If it persists, the whole group will fail.

Leaders must create a culture that promotes chatter.  This includes both physical and cultural components:

  • Does the work environment provide places for people to gather and chatter?  Are teams co-located so they naturally interact?  Are there places for groups to meet informally?  Is it easy to see when people have gathered, so that others can join the conversation?
  • Are people inclined to chatter?  It’s easy for people to send email back and forth all day.  Do you encourage them to get up and actually engage in conversations?  Do you walk around and engage in conversations?  Do you provide positive feedback to groups when you see them gathering and chattering?  Do you use chatter to communicate to your direct reports?

Stuffy, staid environments inhibit chatter.  Do you work in such an environment?  Have you inadvertently created one?  Here’s an easy test: from your office, can you occasionally hear laughter?  If your people are not enjoying themselves to the point where they laugh every now and then, how can you expect them to chatter?  How often do you laugh with your team?

Our work teams are more complicated than a baseball team, but the core value of chatter is just as important.  We can’t simply call out and make them start chattering.  We have to build environments and foster cultures that make people chatter on their own.  Are your people chattering?