These our our thoughts about the IT field. This is the stuff we tell you not because we want your short-term business. We want your long-term trust.
Thoughts
Oops x 2
So you have an employee that really messed something up. Really Really badly.
The immediate gut reaction is to pull them back, and put someone else on the project to clean up the mess.
Careful! While satisfying, often times the person who screwed up may be the best person to fix the problem - they know what not to do, and they may be really motivated to make good on the problem and turn the situation around.
Three Layers Deep
If your company has more than three layers of employees - WATCH OUT.
Most company owners have never had to work in a large corporate environment and are caught unaware of the following truth: Bullshit works.
Simply, at some point in your companies growth there will develop a certain group of people that are more interested in keeping you happy, and less interested in doing a good job.
They lie, hide and scheme. It sounds silly - because you'd think that it would be impossible to get away with it.
Here's how they do it:
1) By limiting access to you
2) By never explaining things to you.
3) By never asking for help.
4) By bullying other people.
We've seen this tragic situation before: Honest people who try to go around these roadblocks often get fired or crushed. These are the people who don't waste time, don't waste resources and just want to get things done.
The problem is that people that are truly good don't put up with company politics for too long - they move on.
We're not sure that there's a magic bullet to fight this - but what we have seen that when the owners of the company listen to everybody and not just the people directly under them, then the BS stops quickly.
Service vs Infrastructure
A lot of service oriented things that a company outsources should be look at in an infrastructure model: You should judge your accountants, lawyers, IT support and phone support on how much you don't need them. If they put robust and easy to maintain solutions in place - they have done their job properly.
Examples:
A good accountant will setup the systems to make sure that your payroll taxes are done on time. A bad accountant will help you clean up the mess when the state starts fining you.
A good attorney will setup a standard contract for you to keep you out of trouble and set expectations from the beginning. A bad attorney will be more than happy to hold your hand when the lawsuits start.
A good IT technician will make sure that you're backed up. A bad technician will help you salvage the files that are left when your computer crashes.
The true hallmark of a good practitioner of his art: You should not constantly see them and have to pay for them.
As your company grows, it's tempting for middle managers to look important by bringing on more and more support people under them.
Beware! You need to give them clear direction that this is unacceptable.
Phone System Gotchas
When buying a phone system - make sure what you think you're getting is really what is in the contract:
CallerID - Make sure it includes the CNAME info and not just the number
Individual Voice Mail - Make sure the system just doesn't have a global voice mail
Music On Hold
IVR - Complex attendants and menus, including a directory.
After Hours System - does the system allowth you to change the logic based on the time.
Remote Voice Mail Retrieval - Can you call in and retrieve your voice mail.
Voice Mail To Email - Will the system email you your voice-mails.
Echo Canceling - hardware based. Software based systems are not good enough.
Self Management - do you have the software and manuals to do typical tasks yourself.
Intercom - can you intercom someone without them having to pick up the phone.
...
A lot of phone system vendors will imply that these things come with the system, but want to charge you later when you find out that they're missing.
All modern systems need to have a hardware based echo canceling system.
Pseudo Manager
Hallmarks of a bad IT Manager:
They want flashy systems to make their job look important.
They change things around in order to hide previous failures.
The never get a return on an investment before they tinker with things.
They spend more per user/workstation as the system gets larger.
They never outsource to a more capable and cost effective solution.
They never communicate to management what management needs to know.
Hallmarks of a good IT Manager:
Willing to listen to a lot of ideas before picking one that satisfies a true business need.
They understand that productivity is the best measurement of a system.
The choose appropriate things to outsource and appropriate things to do themselves.
Their budgets, per user, get smaller each year.
If something breaks, they have already thought of how to work around the problem.
They have another job to do in the company.
Not A Customer
With any business, you come to the realization that some customers are a bad fit. We provide inexpensive, robust and simple IT solutions to real business problems.
BUT.... some companies don't want that: They want impressive, expensive, and high labour solutions that soak up time and money.
Just as some people want a good well maintained Chevy with easy access to parts, some people want a finicky Italian car with a custom engine that nobody can find parts for.
For us, it's been hard to say no to the wrong customers, but as our business has grown it's become a necessity to align what we do best with customers that need us at our best.
Perhaps your company needs to go through the same exercise - it's been worth it for us.
Tell Me What I need To Know
The old phrase "Tell me what I need to know, NOT what I want to hear" is one of the most important phrases in business. It measures the character or both the person doing the talking and the person doing the listening - when this idea is appreciated by both people it can make all the difference in the world.
The unfortunate reality is that people are typical punished for telling the truth.
You need to make sure that you're aware of this - the person that constantly smiles and tells you "YES!" often isn't looking out for your own best interest. The grumpy but truthful person often will help you avoid disaster.
Learn to judge people on results, and not by how 'pleasant' they are, and little problems won't be allowed to escalate into business-killing disasters.
Google Email
Is it time to move your email to Google - and let the billion dollar geniuses handle the problem for backups and archiving for you?
Competition
A clever way business can keep their IT support honest and productive is to introduce some healthy competition.
Why are You Doing This?
You need IT to help reach your business goals, not the other way around. Do you know why you're spending money on IT?
How To Know If Your IT Support Sucks
How well is your IT support working for you? Read our checklist on the next page, If you can relate to any of the following statements , perhaps its time to re-evaluate their position.
Do You Know If You're Really Backed Up?
Backing up your system is something you do often and hope
you never need. You want to make sure all your important information is safe
and secure. You also want to make sure that if you ever need to recover the
information it is complete and free from errors.