Steve's IT Perspectives

I recently received an email from an employee at a previous job asking for some interview advice. He is a very strong technical resource and wants to step up into a management role and wants to know the best way to tackle this. This is my advice:

Be Business Focused

Generally speaking, you will be interviewed by a broad spectrum of people when being interviewed for a management position in IT. The type of people you will typically talk to will vary by company size, but expect the major stakeholders to be involved.

If I were hiring for an IT Manager I would involve my business power users as much as possible. These power users are the people from outside of IT that regularly engage IT services as part of their day to day work. While the power user may not be able to grill the candidate technically, I would expect them to be able to tell me if the candidate is someone they would want to interact with on a daily basis.

From the candidate side, this means you need to present yourself as a problem solver. Someone who understands and can empathize with that user regarding their specific business problems and how you, as an IT Leader, can help solve them. Also, make sure you don’t ramble on with too much technical jargon – you don’t want them glassing over!

Listen for themes when interviewing.

Here’s another trick I’ve learned from many years of interviewing. Generally, (yes I am generalizing all the way through this) an interviewer will draw their interview questions from one of two sources:

a) Google – there is an endless supply of interview questions on the Internet. As a candidate, make sure you have gone through all the basic questions and are ready to answer them

b) Current or Past Situations – these are usually the most enlightening as they can reveal a lot about the current state of affairs at the company.

Are a lot of the people asking about your experience with solving problem X. If so, then that probably means that problem X is a current problem and you would be expected to solve it. Make sure you focus on these issues and the techniques you would use to steer the company away from these issues.

These themes can also make it clear as to whether this is the right company for you to work at. Is everyone asking about your willingness to work around the clock? This probably means that will be required of you – is this what you want?

Cost Savings

This is a very important topic in today’s economy. Even if the questions are not asked directly, make sure you highlight ways you can save the company money. You will need to do some research on the company and come prepared with some ways you think you can save them money. Renegotiation of telco contracts is always a great place where you can offer cost savings. Telcos are very eager for business at the moment and are willing to make some concessions and offer more aggressive discounts in order to keep or win new business.

Be prepared to wear many hats!

This is another function of today’s economy. Companies are often looking for new (and current) employees to step up and be willing to take on tasks that they may perceive to be outside of their domain (or job description).

I ran into this in a previous company where an employee was completely unwilling to perform any task that was not written in the job description when he was hired.  I firmly believe this type of behaviour is unacceptable and that you need to make it clear during the interview that you are prepared to step up where necessary.

When stepping up to management positions in IT this may require you to be more hands on than you expected – be prepared to do this in addition to your ‘management responsibilities’.  Make sure you shine in both domains.

These are a few techniques I have used in the past and will continue to use.  Make sure you separate yourself from the rest of the candidate pool by highlighting what problems you can solve for the hiring company.

Most importantly, be yourself and be confident.

I’m starting up a new series today that I’m calling “Elementary Truths”.  These are fundamental truths in life that so often are overlooked or forgotten about and have really been in the forefront of my mind.  The first elementary truth I’m going to highlight is the basic concept that there are usually two sides to every story and that you, as a manager, spouse, friend or relative, are responsible to seek out and understand the ‘other side’

It has been very interesting to see where my source of inspiration has come from since I started blogging.  Most recently, however, the game of Rugby has really proven to be a great source of inspiration for me.  Last week I spoke about the parallels between the scrum and decision making and this week I’m going to be blogging on commentary and how points of view can so easily differ.

I was fortunate enough to get to watch two versions of the rugby game between South Africa and Australia.  The first time I watched the game it was the Setanta Sports version in which the audio stream carried the South African commentary on the game.  For the record, the South Africans won quite convincingly.  I (being born in South Africa) thought their call of the game was a very fair and accurate representation of the way the game was played.  As you can imagine the winning sides’s commentary team were gloating with pride and enthusiasm in the way their team had played.

A few days later, I got sent a copy of exactly the same game, shot with the same cameras but it had the Australian commentary team calling the game. I was blown away by the difference in opinion on how the game played out!  The Aussies were complaining about the referee, the style of game the South African’s were playing and just about everything else they could attribute the loss to.

This really got me thinking! How many times are we in a situation where we see the ‘game’ from our perspective and don’t take in to account the other side’s perspective! This is especially true in management where you are called in to mediate a disagreement.  It’s very easy to make a judgment call based on the perspective of the person calling the issue to your attention.  It is your responsibility to seek out and understand the other side of the argument if you are to make an informed decision or offer advice regarding the subject matter of the conversation.

I know this topic sounds very straight forward and logical, but I can’t tell you how often (in both my business and personal life) I encounter a situation where this basic premise had not been followed. The only way to effectively communicate is to understand both sides of the story.

The purpose of the scrum in the game of rugby union (the sport played in heaven by the way) is defined by the International Rugby Board (the governing body) as “a way to restart play quickly, safely and fairly, after a minor infringement or a stoppage.”

In an effort to make the scrums more organized and controlled the International Rugby Board changed the way the referee calls the scrum together. The referee will call “crouch” then “touch”. The front rows crouch and using their outside arm to touch the opposing players’ shoulder. The referee will then call “pause”. Following a pause the referee will then call “engage”. The front rows may then engage.

I saw the South African Springboks beat up on the Australian Wallabies in the Tri-Nations tournament this weekend. Hearing the referee say “crouch, touch, pause, engage” really got me thinking about how this applies to everyday life in so many ways.

Let’s explore this scrum analogy. “Crouch, Touch, Pause, Engage”

Crouch:

Get down eye to eye with your issue. Whether this be a potential new product, employee or opportunity – you need to get down and dirty and examine it from the perspective of the issue. Let’s take a potential new CRM system as an example – when you’re in the product discovery meetings, try to put yourself in the position of the end user of the product, and not the person that’s approving the product. IT usually implements the CRM system, but very few IT personnel have any field sales experience. The field sales people will be the ones living in the CRM system – make sure you truly examine the product from their perspective

Touch:

Never move forward on a decision without at least feeling the issue out. In the CRM product example above you should ‘kick the tires’ and see how the product will work in your environment. Have a representative from the field sales team involved in the ‘touching’ process. Be cautious of issues / opportunities that you can’t feel out before making a decision.

Pause:

This is the most important part of the decision making process. Never get rushed into making a decision! I find the best way to see if the decision you’ve made is the right one, is to make the decision internally and then sit on it. Don’t tell anyone your decision – just commit to it in your mind and see how it sits with you over a couple of days. In my experience, you will know if you’ve made the right decision or not with how it feels internally. If you’re excited about the decision – you’ve probably made the right one. If you’re still questioning your decision – then you probably want to get back to the drawing board and tackle the issue from another angle.

Engage:

This is the most fulfilling part of the decision making process! If you’ve followed the steps above and the decision is sitting well internally, then engage and engage aggressively. Now is the time to action your decision and show everyone around you that you’ve confidently made your decision and it is time to execute!

I recently attended a Predictive Index session here at work. The Predictive Index is designed to provide a “practical, reliable indicator of workplace behavior, to help you make sound, people-smart decisions with the best results for the company and for the people themselves”. One of my strongest behavioral traits (apparently) is that I am “impatient for results” and that I “put pressure on myself and others for rapid implementation”. I like making fast and informed decisions – give me the details and the justification and I’ll give you a yes or no quickly, but then expect you to implement and deliver! As a result I find myself impatient to make a decision because I want to engage and implement! Personally, I really need to concentrate on “pausing” and digesting my decision before engaging!

I encourage you when making your next decision to think about the steps involved. Find out where you fall short in the decision making process, and most importantly, pause before committing! Sit on your decision and see how it feels after a day or two. You’ll find that you make better decision that you will be much more confident about and that will lead to better implementation and execution!

Are you ready for the understatement of the century? Well, it is HOT here in Arizona in the summer time. I moved here last year and am just amazed at how people can live in an environment that is constantly hot. It never cools down! Nights are ‘cool’ at 85 degrees and the days have been reliably in excess of 110 degrees!

I like to run to keep fit. This turns out to be quite the undertaking when the heat is on! Since the summer hit, I’ve started getting up early to hit the pavement before the temperature hits the triple digits – which has worked pretty well and brings me to the point of this post! Morning runners (and cyclists for that matter) are friendly, happy and sociable people! This came as quite a shock to me!

I found when I started running that as soon as I approached another runner, I would drop my head and pretend that they weren’t there. I would look up at the last minute and be greeted with a friendly gesture and a hello and would be filled with guilt for being such a self-centered prat!

This got me thinking about how I fit in society on a daily basis. I’ve found myself in my daily life becoming less and less aware of my surroundings. I’m tied to my Blackberry when I’m walking around either reading email messages or tweets and completely ignoring everyone around me. The more I think about, the more it disturbs me. And I know I’m not the only one who does this!

While I’m on the topic of being more social, another thing that irks me is that people rely FAR too heavily on email and texting as a form of communication (might as well throw Facebook and Twitter in there too). I can’t tell you how many times I’m copied on an email string between 2 people that goes on and on for hours without getting any closer to a resolution! As a manager I have had to (metaphorically) grab the 2 people by the ears and drag them together into a conference room to resolve the issue – the resolution usually occurs in a matter of minutes!

I don’t want to ramble on about this just to fill up the white space, but I think we could all make a concerted effort to be more sociable and acknowledge the presence of others. I now look forward to when I come upon another runner and I’m given the opportunity to say G’day and smile – it’s quite liberating! Next step is to extend my morning happy hour to the rest of my day – put down the Blackberry, look around and be friendly! I encourage you to do the same! We are here to interact with people on a personal level – let’s up the ante!

There is no shortage of buzz around Cloud Computing and SaaS and I know a large number of companies are looking at SaaS as a cost-effective mechanism to get applications out to their users, but who should own the deployment and management of a SaaS application?

Cloud computing is defined by Wikipedia as:

“Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. Users need not have knowledge of, expertise in, or control over the technology infrastructure in the “cloud” that supports them.”

I have been involved in a few SaaS deployment over the past couple of years and have learned some lessons from these deployments that I’d like to pass on to hopefully prevent these mistakes from happening to anyone else!

In the ‘pre SaaS’ days, if a HR department (for example) wanted to purchase a new HRIS system they would be forced to engage the IT Department (even if at the last moment) as ultimately they would at least require servers to install the application on. There was at least a crude mechanism in place to prevent a rogue application deployment.

Nowadays a non-IT business unit can very easily procure and deploy a SaaS application and have it up and running with absolutely no IT knowledge or engagement – and this is extremely scary! For an organization to grow and deploy applications successfully they need to centrally managed.

I have worked for a couple of companies now that have deployed SaaS applications – both successfully and unsuccessfully and below are some of my experiences:

1) IT Involved at the Last Minute

This is my biggest concern regarding SaaS. It is far too easy for a department or group to go out and sign a SaaS contract for a software application they claim they need without council from IT. It is easy for a SaaS vendor to turn up an environment and hand it over to the end user department. What the department then discovers is that the setup, configuration and administration of the software is not as easy as it looked when the vendor salesman was doing his demo. At that point they have 2 options, either pay the vendor for additional professional services hours or call IT up and request assistance.

2) Post Go Live Integration Woes

One item that can be overlooked is how these SaaS applications will integrate with current IT systems. A number of SaaS vendors adhere to SOA standards which make the integration piece technically possible, but if the integration is overlooked or left until the last minute then this can cause problems and unscheduled IT projects.

3) SaaS Applications Not Meeting the Need

Another interesting observation is that users underestimate the flexibility of the SaaS application. It is only after the SaaS application is deployed and being used that the users find out how inflexible a hosted application is. This makes sense to us IT people but our users expect an application that is hosted in a Cloud Computing environment (shared among many subscribers) to be as flexible as an on-premise solution! And quite simply, it is not!

SaaS applications can be extremely advantageous to an organization for many reasons, but to be successful in deployment I would recommend the following to any company – large or small:

1) Engage IT… Early!

Your IT department is very well versed in software application deployment and knows what to look out for. They will be able to ask the Vendor many questions regarding both the implementation and integration of the SaaS application to current IT applications.

2) Be Prepared for Tighter Controls

Unlike on-premise applications, with SaaS you are at the whim of the SaaS vendor with it comes to upgrade schedules and planned outages. This is also true for application modifications which are more limited as you are typically on a shared infrastructure.

3) Always Expect Longer Deployment Times

SaaS vendors often quote 30-days or less deployment times and that might be true with respect to getting your environment provisioned but that is not the whole picture! Make sure you press the vendor for just how long it will take to get your environment customized and integrated with your existing systems before making internal time commitment promises!

4) IT Supportability

There is often the assumption made that once the application is Live and being used, that your internal IT shop is the support mechanism for any day to day troubles you may experience. We simply are not and don’t desire to be! One of the benefits of outsourcing the software is that IT doesn’t have to be the expert with your software product. Make sure you have the appropriate support contracts complete with acceptable SLA’s setup with your SaaS vendor to ensure you have the support available when needed.

Please don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to shed a negative light on SaaS deployments – I just want to make sure you are aware of the potential pitfalls and don’t get caught up in the hype that SaaS is the quick, cheap and easy solution to your software problems! I love the fact that my IT department doesn’t have to learn, support and maintain a new application. But please be aware of the gotchas I’ve outlined and learn from my (and others) experiences.

In my role as VP of IT for a publicly traded company, I receive an abundance of calls, emails, mailings and drop-by visits from vendors desperate to get their foot in the door. I’m at the point where I don’t answer my desk phone anymore and check my work voicemail weekly (at best), but that’s not the reason for this post.

Today I received 2 unsolicited emails from want-to-be vendors that I felt the need to showcase. Vendor #1 sent the following:

Hi Steve,

My name is xxx and I represent xxx. I don’t want to bore you too much but I just wanted to introduce the company and touch base. We are a premier solutions provider that partners with best of breed manufacturers in the areas of Systems, Storage, Security, and Networking. We do a lot of work in the valley and can help with all aspects of the IT infrastructure. I have attached our corporate brochure as well as our core competencies to help give you more information on us as a company. I will give you a call next week and would like the opportunity to work with you and earn your business.

Look forward to speaking with you

Pretty bleak and boring if you ask me! “I don’t want to bore you too much”?? How is that going to spark my attention and get me to pick up the phone and call him!

Now let’s look at Vendor #2:

Dear Steve,

I am pleased to invite you to become a member of the xxx Advisory Board. As an industry expert, xxx is looking for your insight to assist us in creating the next generation of thin client devices. Your opinion will help us shape the direction we choose to proceed with our products. In return, xxx will provide you with a complimentary thin client customized to your exact requirements.

As a member of our Advisory Board, we ask that you participate in a short call with our Advisory Board Account Manager. The Account Manager will coordinate the delivery of your thin client and schedule a follow-up call to get your opinion on the unit.

xxx is an emerging market leader in the development of thin clients and network appliances. xxx Thin Clients are Citrix Ready and VMware Ready.

We hope you will accept our offer and join our Advisory Board. Your expertise and opinion are valuable to us. If you have any questions or would like to discuss this further, please contact xxx

Best Regards,”

Wow! I am ready to pick up the phone and call. Now I completely see through the façade of the “Advisory Board” and know this is a solicitation for business but what a great angle to come from! What I like about this (and I will call this guy) is how they are being creative and playing to the executive’s ego!

In these tougher economics times you have to sell yourself better than the other guy. This is true whether you are a vendor, a job candidate or even an employee! Always think about how you can stand out in the crowd and differentiate yourself. No one is interested in ‘boring’!