Why Are You Here?

Posted on July 16, 2010 by simplyRik

My experience in IT Service Management has been with large, global organizations either driven by fast moving global markets or supporting highly complex infrastructure and application sets. It is easy in these types of environments to forget the main purpose of technology support. When things break, it is usually all-hands on deck. Needless to say, it is a highly reactive environment. These types of environments suck technologist in to becoming focused solely on the technology rather than the reason for being.

In 2003, I was asked to move back into my old support team to head up the group as my old Manager had decided to resign. During my absence the team had grown substantially and morale was less than desirable. The business was growing, as was the demands placed on the team. Having cut my teeth in this environment I was very familiar with the pressures of ensuring that the business was executing on all cylinders, with as much up-time as possible 24×7. This had, and was once again, taking its toll on even the senior support analysts on the team. One of the first things I did when returning to the team was to have one-on-one sessions with each and every one of the 20 team members to determine not just what they were working on, but more importantly where their heads were at.

This was something that seemed the logical thing to do as a mid-level manager of a support team, which I likened to managing troops under my charge during my 8 years in the Marine Corps. I began every session with one simple question which guided the discussion from that point forward. It may seem like a strange question, but one vital to ask anyone in a support role:

Why are you here?

Profound in its simplicity, I was set back by the general response across the team. Most of the responses began with”I support X application,” “I perform monitoring on X systems” or “I respond to user calls about broken hardware.” In every case, in my mind these were all wrong answers. Of course these are the functions they perform while on the clock, but as to why they were there, I wanted to hear things like “To make sure the users can do their jobs,” “Make sure we can deliver to clients,” anything of that vein would have been more than welcome, but it was not what I was hearing. I asked myself why these individuals had lost touch with the basic business deliverable of not only IT, but that of the company as a whole.

To me this is often an oversight of Management lost in administrative responsibilities more driven towards demonstrating delivery to leadership instead of establishing a culture of understanding as to an individuals up-stream contribution to the business strategy and bottom-line. Without that perception of self-worth any individual will quickly loose sight. As a result, you will not get the level of individual performance by a person in technology who is clear on their purpose and contribution to the corporate mission. Take someone in Sales for example, they are very clear on their goals, deliverables, contributions and value to the business. Their approach every day is to bring in new business to raise the bottom line as well as gain a commission, if that is the value structure in place. In technology, this front-line value structure doesn’t always exist to drive awareness of their contribution. For this reason, it is vital that managers keep as part of their responsibility matrix, the importance of communicating the team’s contribution to the overall business delivery model to its clients and how that helps the business be more successful in relation to other competitors.

Reach out to the business and try to get your hands on the annual report information. That information is not only critical for you to understand, but ot use as a motivational tool to get everyone aligned with the business drivers. We used to love hearing this type of information and where our company sat in the market against our competitors. It became a subconscious driver to feel like we were truly part of the team. Not the IT team, but the corporate team, as a result we pushed that much harder to give the business the tools it needed to help the company compete with its competitors.

As managers, it is easy to get wrapped up in the metrics and numbers in delivering technology. Just never lose sight on the PEOPLE who deliver that technology and helping them feel as a vital part of the business, not just a tool used by the business.

Become One With Mother Earth

Posted on July 13, 2010 by simplyRik

One the biggest problems with shooting pictures or video has to do with movement. Whether you shoot with a large SLR camera or a mobile phone, the problem is the same. Without becoming one with the earth, your shots will always have some impact by movement however slight it may be. So why the zen reference with becoming one with the earth? Simple, the earth is the most stable thing around you. Building foundations rest on it, chairs sit on it, cars drive on it and for the most part anything touching it is as stable as you can possibly get. So when possible, stop thinking that your hands and legs can hold your camera still enough to get a good shot. [read more...]

Why Technology is Failing

Posted on July 13, 2010 by simplyRik

For people who are not technically inclined, I have realized that in the world of Technology News there is no real relief from the bombardment of techno-babble and acronyms making any real value virtually impossible to gather. In today's news everything is about Apple vs. Google or iPhones vs. Android Phones, 3G vs 4G and on, and on and on. You see, I work in Technology so I fully understand the garble and volleys being thrown back and forth over which is better. The truth of the matter is, in all of the back and forth there is one thing being overlooked time and time again; YOU.

I have a unique perspective, given the fact that my career has been built on supporting end users, family members and not living the live-long dream of a technologist. IT was not my first career. At one point in my life I was a user dependent on those in Technology to not just give me what I need, but to also support it. What I don't see in the main stream media, blogs or other wise is anyone trying to make sense of all of the techno-speak so that you the general, non-IT consumer can make educated decisions.

It is a shame because much of the technology today is being developed by Technologists the way that they want things to work. In my work life I have enough complexity trying to make sense of what works in the enterprise environment. When I walk out the door at the end of the day, I just want something simple that works and that I don't have to think too much about. That is what I call my "User-Mode." We are in an age of technology where almost anything is possible. Developers and manufacturers are having all sorts of fun playing around with features that, at the end of the day really add no value to my life on a day to day basis. Sure they are cool from an IT perspective, but where is the practicality? How is it going to make my life better, easier, more productive? I would almost argue that 60% of these features do nothing to make my life any better.

So is it time for a revolt? For the Majority to rebel against the establishment that is IT? I, for one am getting quite tired of hearing about the latest and greatest thing that I have to have, when what I do have isn't completely finished. Is the race to put out the next big thing forcing technology to continue pushing new things to market without understanding how they could be used to add true benefit and value? I would say yes. I have to look no farther than members of my own family who use only the basic functionality of their computing devices and could give two tosses about the latest and greatest thing. But what I do hear is all of the complaints about what they do have and use not working right and causing frustration.

IT needs to re-think beyond research & development and start thinking about implementation & user experience. To be 100% clear when I say user experience, I am talking about the average non-IT user, not simple the IT people who test functionality before the company decides to push it to market. IT needs to stop rushing to market to compete on features and look at market share for what it is truly driven by, end user value and productivity. "If you built it, they will come." is no longer a viable option in the marketplace.

The Dust is Beginning to Settle

Posted on July 13, 2010 by simplyRik

So where once I had a single blog, I have blown it apart and sent various posts to the wind. Now, I have about three different homes for the various posts I have strewn about. Posterous has become the new home for surching4me. What once originated as a blog in 2003 called Musashi2000 has evolved to become a very expeditious means of getting what is on my mind out. This is my “Personal” space. Nothing to do with my work professionally or my hobby personally. This is a little bit about everything that doesn’t fit into any of my other adventures. To date, I am well past the 450 post mark and that is saying a lot. Here’s to hoping I can lay out another 450 posts here at Posterous.

Open letter to Social Media Community Managers

Posted on July 12, 2010 by simplyRik

The following is my edited response to the request for feedback on a Social Network I requested to be removed from, but in reading through it, provides some insight into my thought process behind where many Social Media services may extract some value. It should also be stated that this was done in response to my personal on-line experience, not in any usage based on leveraging Social Media for business promotion, marketing or branding promoting a product or service.

Aside from not having a lot of time to "manage" my interactions on a minute-by-minute basis, I was beginning to continually receiving notifications which previously were only from those individuals in my friends list, not from people inviting me to various groups. I live in North New Jersey, which is far enough from NYC to be comfortable, but too far to take advantage of the various events and societies emerging in the city daily. As a result, I was beginning to see content that was primarily focused on NYC which I do not benefit from directly. In factoring in the signal-to-noise ratio unfortunately, your service lost out.

I began to loose the sense of MY community. To be fair, I am still struggling with the true value in each of these services. For example, with FourSquare I am beginning to see some "return of time invested" via various partnerships with sponsors who have a local presence, in offering deals, specials or discounts to loyal users of the product.

Gowalla on the other hand, is a product that I have used since the beginning and enjoy the "scavenger hunt" features of collecting items and checking in at landmarks for the collection of what I consider to be some of the best graphics out there. Also, I have started leveraging their Trips feature to explore areas of interest when I have time to explore my surrounding communities.

Then there are the community service focused social sites like twitter, where I have a discovered a number of individuals with common interests and built very strong relationships with. Like others, they also offers the geo-location services. Of course personally, there is FaceBook, but that is personal and seperate from my general social experience in the inter-realm.

So why so many services? I still haven't found that single service that gives me a consolidated welcoming experience, incorporating most if not all of the above, without overwhelming me with functions and features. I work in Technology, IT Service Management, to be more specific and it seems like many of these services have either lost sight of the customer experience or simply haven't figured out what will makes their services "stick" with users.

For me, personally, I am all about the experience and am often turned off by over the top feature loads. I simply want a service with a simple, well designed interface, that has a logical flow that requires almost no thought to utilize. I want geo-location for sponsored check-ins, friend meet-ups and in some instances a record of previously visited locations. I also want the simplistic, visually elegant interface to support my work-flow (for lack of a better term.) Lastly a service which allows me to build an interactive community experience.

I think in the future, the Post + Comment method of community building will need to evolve and become more dynamic and interactive. What I don't want is a "Push" service, where information is blasted to me all of the time. I want to choose what I see, when I see it and from whom. This will be more difficult to manage as things like sponsorship and advertising come into play or economic pressures drive users to bring in, or seek out new members to invite or connect with. Most of this should be organic and driven by the user, not by the service. How that interaction is supported or introduced to the users driving them to become engaged will be key.

It has nothing to do with your service personally, many of the services mentioned above have some of these issues as well. Few have been successful at giving the user a simple, enjoyable experience, then getting out of the way and allowing the user to drive innovation through usage. Many of these services are scrambling to add features already included in other services just to keep up, instead of finding new ways to innovate and push the experience to the next level.

Using my personal computing experience as an analogy; I don't want another Microsoft, HP, Dell or Toshiba, I am looking for what an Apple is going to give me next that more than likely don't know I need yet, giving me that "warm-fuzzy" or "Ah-Ha!" moment. I am pretty passionate about Technology and the user experience in my own career, which has followed me on-line as I continue to explore as an early adopter of Social Media focused on capturing what it is the user wants to experience. Unfortunately in its infantcy, I have been met with primarily an experience where new features and market share are still the driving the force, instead of a well-tuned user experience allowing growth to be driven organically.