Episode Summary
In this episode, Landon Miles discusses three important aspects of IT that are often overlooked: communication, enabling end users, and embracing change. He emphasizes the importance of assuming positive intent in communication, understanding the needs of non-IT users, and finding influencers within the organization. Landon also encourages IT pros to ask for help and collaborate with others in problem-solving. Lastly, he highlights the constant nature of change in IT and the need to let go of old projects and embrace new solutions. Overall, the key takeaway is that focusing on the people side of IT is essential for success.
Episode Transcript
Hello and welcome to the Automox Hands-On IT podcast - this is episode 4! As always, I’m your host, Landon Miles.
This month at Automox, we’ve been talking about the happiness of the end user. So, in the last few episodes, we’ve been talking about technology, and methods to enable technology. This one is going to be in a similar vein, but slightly different.
So, IT is the intersection of technology and people - most of us are in IT because technology is the easy part.
For many of us, the hard part of that equation is the people side of things.
In this podcast, I’m going to talk about 3 things that I see often missed in IT. These are some of the lessons I learned the hard way, have seen in my years of IT, or saw other people learn the hard way. So, I’m going to share them here with you so maybe you don’t have to learn the hard way.
Well, if you only listen this far, here are the three items.
#1: Communication is key.
#2: Ask for help!
#3: Change is the only constant in IT.
#1. Communication is key.
In IT, we can simplify communication down to two 2 types of communication.
IT to IT and IT to Non-IT
In a little bit, we’ll talk about IT to IT communications, but for now, let’s focus on communication between IT and Non-IT.
IT to Non-IT
Always assume positive intent from others, and push positive intent when solving problems.
Enable end users - Learn about people, what they do, and what they need.
Find influencers!
Assume positive intent from others, and push positive intent when solving problems.
Assuming positive intent is critically important for IT. Someone accidentally deleted something, or broke something? Most likely, it was because they were trying to do their job, it was probably an accident. They’re embarrassed it happened, and They’re not actively out to get ya. (Now, with cybersecurity, it doesn’t really work to assume positive intent from everyone.., but when working with coworkers' problems, probably best to assume positive intent.)
Now, when you’re solving a problem, or a system is down, a little bit of communication goes a long way to pushing positive intent within the problem-solving process.
Let them know
What you’re doing
Why you’re doing it
When you’re doing it, and how long it might take.
Code-switching - it’s a term in psychology that means switching the way you speak depending on who you’re speaking to. It’s important.
You wouldn’t explain the most deeply technical concepts to a 6-year-old, and honestly, we don’t want to hear the nuanced details of accounting from the accounting department explained to us.
So, know your audience!
Saying:
“There’s a setting that gets flipped in the software sometimes. We’re still working to figure out why, but this should fix it for the time being.”
Sounds a lot better to non-IT people than “There’s a bug in the software that flips a registry key to an undesirable state, and then software stops functioning correctly. We’re not sure why at this time. Our intermediary fix is to set the registry value to this state. Our team should be able to permanently fix it in the next 1-2 cycles.”
Enable your end users!
Be the go-to person if someone has a problem or an idea.
Clip from CISO IT about not saying no.
So, be the go-to person! Find out the intent behind what they’re saying. My Mom frequently uses the phrase “It’s what I mean, not what I say!” So, whether they accidentally call you the wrong name, or ask for something technically impossible, try to understand the problem they need to solve.
Proactively go to each department, and ask them questions about their workflow. Try to find any trouble spots, and see what roadblocks you can help move.
Bonus: If they come to you. They don’t try to solve the problem themselves.
Find influencers!
Sometimes, rolling out changes can be tough. Find one or two people within your organization who get excited about things working better.
Back in the day, when I was in IT, we migrated from 2.5-inch hard drives to SSDs in our laptop fleet. This was maybe 10 years ago or so, and SSDs had just come to a price point where it was doable.
I distinctly remember the first one we did, the employee was NOT very excited about us needing their laptop for a little while, and not being able to do their work.
We let them know the timeline and some of the advantages, but to them, it was just IT getting in the way of their workflow. We got it done as quickly as possible and got them their laptop back.
The next morning, this person came barging into my office. I was slightly concerned, it was 8 AM and normally people didn’t come in with that much… gusto.
However, it was to tell me that they were SOO happy with their computer, and whatever we’d done to it was AMAZING. They couldn’t have been happier. Intrigued at the change in attitude, I pressed in a little bit for some more info. The difference? Their laptop booted up BEFORE they got back from making her coffee.
They quickly began to tell others in the office, and soon we had a line of people asking to be next, instead of dreading the downtime.
#2. Ask for help!
Ask for help, and don’t be afraid to say “I’m not sure, let me look into that.”
Don’t be afraid to ask for help! Guess what – you don’t have to know the answer to every question. You don’t have to solve every problem by yourself. You can bring in others to the problem-solving process – whether internal or external. Contact your software supplier or hardware supplier sales engineers or FAE’s. They see a little bit of everything. Not everything has to be a novel solution.
I’ll reuse a clip that I’ve used in this podcast from one of the earlier episodes of the Automate IT podcast.
CLIP
Another point to make on this one - IT to IT communication.
Problem-solving is creativity. Whether they’ll say it or not, people crave feedback on their creative endeavors. Be specific, too! “Really like how you solved that specific problem! I would have never thought to do it that way, but it’s so efficient!”
Be the first to ask for help. We love it when people come to us for help, for many of us, that’s one of the reasons we’re in IT. In your team, start to foster an atmosphere of asking for help. “Hey, when you have a minute, can you help me look at this problem? Really struggling to solve this one, and could use your help.”
Destigmatize asking for help.
#3. Change is the only constant in IT.
Don’t be afraid to let things go, and move on.
Lastly, learn to let things go, and learn to embrace change. For personal growth, or IT growth, you have to let old projects, positions, or responsibilities go. As IT professionals, we love standing-up projects. We put a lot of time, thought, and energy into every small detail. If it needs to change, we can find ways to make it work. We can use this hardware here, or there, or repurpose this. However, sometimes the right solution is to let it go. Move to a different solution.
When I started my career, it was at a small company that grew very quickly. Being at a small company, my IT career started with “Hey Landon, can you take a look at my computer?” and took off on a rocketship from there. Believe it or not, I started my career in the pre-cloud-for-everything era (albeit, at the very end of that era.) My next project involved standing up server infrastructure and a network. It turned out great!
The company continued to grow and spread throughout the globe. In IT, many times our first instinct is to try to figure out how to make what we have work. It’s hard to decommission a project we worked so hard on to stand up and maintain. But, it quickly became not the right solution. While it was the right solution at the time, moving to the cloud was now the best solution.
Without embracing the change, the company would not have the correct solution for the problem. IT is equal parts pushing new technology, and maintaining old technology. Sometimes the budget for the correct change is there, and sometimes it’s not. But, when technology gets painful, the budget tends to quickly become available.
From delegating tasks to new roles, new solutions, or new jobs. Letting go is tough, but without letting go, we can’t move forward. And now, I’m afraid it’s time to let go of recording this pod for you.
So, with that, my final piece of advice is to set aside time for “People Learning.” We all love reading about technology - the newest hardware, software, and technologies coming out. At least for me, I can spend a lot of time watching videos or reading articles on these topics.
Spend some time, maybe one day a week or so to hone your communication skills. Listen to “people” podcasts, books, or other interesting insights. Everyone has a story.
Brene Brown offers resources and they’re an excellent place to start – check out her podcasts or books. I’ll put some of my favorites in the show notes.
With that in mind, we’ll see you next month! Until then, good luck making your end users happy! It’ll make your IT life much easier.
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