ARRRRGGGGHHHHHHH!

So, there has not been a post on this blog for several weeks now, and you may be (but probably not) asking "What's going on?" If you are asking, here you go....

1) Life got in the way.
It has been a weird few months for me and my family. Between school, jobs, scouts, hospitalization, and general illnesses, the blog has been the last thing on my mind.

2) The help quit
I have not received the help with this blog that I was hoping for and that's okay. I need to make this about my thoughts and ideas.

3) Writer's block
I've been a little stuck on where I want to take this blog...Is it about tech or about management or about me or about all of those things? Not sure that I know yet.


What I learned:

1) Life is going to get in the way...can't change that fact...stuff is going to happen. How you deal with the changes in your life is critical to your health and happiness. Learn how to be happy regardless of what occurs. I'm not saying that you have to find happiness in events like funerals or serious medical issues or that you have to be happy all the time. Simply find ways to grab a hold of silver linings. You only get lemonade when you squeeze the lemons.

2) Blogs are interesting animals. If you listen to and believe some of the pundits, personal blogging is over. Of course, I remember about 20 or so years ago, with the advent of the internet, many of the same pundits said that it as the end of libraries, books, and newspapers. While those items are much different than they were 20 years ago, they are still around and most likely will continue to be in existence. The problem I had with the help is that I did not set the expectations and did not get the commitment. I am not upset by this because the help had life get in the way as well. I had an expectation of what should happen, but I didn't share it, discuss it, or confer with the help in any way. To that person, I'm sorry.

3) It is not a good idea to start a blog if you don't know what you are going to talk about. I got caught up in the "technology" and "coolness" of doing a blog. I didn't plan out what I was going to talk/blog about, I didn't capture any ideas for the blog, and I got fluster/frustrated on what to do, so I took the obvious option, I did nothing. Kinda a lousy way to run a blog.

Here's what is going to happen. I'm going to retool the blog a bit. A) I'm seeking help from other blogger on how to do this better; B) I'm trying to make sure that I have some method of capturing ideas (paper and pen work best so far); C) I'm making goal for what I want to achieve with this blog.

Hang in there with me. Comments always welcome!

Stand or Fall

If you grew up in the '80s, you probably remember the band 'The Fixx'. I'm not a huge fan but I did enjoy several of their songs. Probably my favorite is the song "Stand or Fall". My interpretation of the song, a war is occurring, morale is low,nothing is being done (by management) to improve the situation, and we are being encouraged to make our stand to declare our need for peace.

So what does this have to do with support? Simple, are your support teams at "war"?

I've witnessed some very interesting finger-pointing in the last few weeks. What is crazy is I get the distinct feeling that the front line staff feels that if they don't "protect their turf" they will lose their "advantage". Some staff gave me the impression they always have to prove they are "right". The kicker was today when we had a meeting scheduled for 1 hour to review an issue. That turned into a 4 hour fact finding mission which brought out that our customer's issue was still not fixed after we told the customer 2 days earlier that we had a "resolution in place".

What concerns me the most is the impression of service we gave. Yes, we did service recovery. Yes, we know that we can do better. We say this way too often. Just like we say "We're sorry for the (fill in the blank)" way too often.

Why didn't we do it right the first time? How did we miss all the warnings signs? Why didn't someone(anyone?) call NO GO before we made the change? Are we afraid to make a "mistake"? If so, why? We cannot learn if we don't make mistakes. The key is that WE HAVE TO LEARN!!!!!

Service is a Stand or Fall issue. It's hard to train people to be service oriented (especially when they already think they have achieved the highest level of service they can). It always amazes me that true service thinking people always are looking for and working to achieve a new level of personal service. Service oriented people always provide exceptional service and rise to meet every service challenge. All I know is that my service isn't always what is needs to be and that I have the choice to improve. It doesn't matter how, it doesn't matter when, just commit to being the best service person you can be.

Service. Stand or Fall.

Bring me to life

I got a really good laugh a few days ago when I read a post regarding some "enterprising" individuals who hacked an interstate message board. The hackers determined how to break into the road signs, used the default passwords, and changed the messages to some attention getting messages like the one to the left.

Aside from the obvious security issues this hack raises(come on DOT - the default password?!), it also raised concerns about motorist safety and how messages like this could easily distract a driver from safely navigating their vehicle. Trust me, looking for zombies on the highway is not worth it if you are going to end up in the local Level 1 trauma center.

We all have hacked road signs and zombies in our work life (admit it, you're already naming the zombies in your head). Both distract us from being the best leaders and team mates that we can be and can stop us from meeting our mission goals. As leaders, we have the responsibility to make sure our road signs are sending the right messages. Spend a little time thinking and developing your communications plan. Find ways to standardize your communications so your team knows what the road signs should say and to minimize the distractions.

We also have to find ways to wake up our zombies, including those who have titles which are higher in the org chart. Not an easy task. Not for the weak or faint of heart. Yes, you will be out of your comfort zone.

Leadership is no place for distractions, hacked road signs, or zombies. As you drive down your leadership road, keep focused on your mission and vision, make sure your road signs have the right messages, and bring your zombies to life!

Knowledge is power. Are you sharing so that others can add value?

As a security analyst I find that the mantra of only providing access to information on a need to know basis has a negative effect on my ability to add value to business processes. I have encountered project managers, directors and others with the best of intentions pursuing tasks without communicating their mission thoroughly.

Our teams tend to operate independently. Act first and communicate later is not a mature approach. Communications between management, project teams or support teams is sometimes restricted to a need to know basis. It seems like the only way we get a chance to add value is if a direct request for services is made.

Next comes the game of 20 questions until I get the information I need to gain the insight and details behind the request. The 'ahh' moments from those requesting services never ceases to amaze me. Once the sharing of information starts, I can add value in the form of perspective, actions, expertise or simply directing them to the correct resources.

Would you find the opportunity to add value rewarding? How do your teams communicate activities? Are you using social networking, wiki's or an internal blog?

They call me the fireman...

My apologies to George Strait, but the call me the fireman. Why? I and my team spend the days of our lives fixing crisis. We're good at it...too good. People have come to expect that we will respond to any crisis with passion, commitment, speed, and caring. While its great we can do this, it is truly a bad thing.

We had one of the worst events that you can have in a hospital last week, a small 2 second blip in power. Short enough to just be noticed, not long enough for generators to kick in. Because we have an aging facility and lots of construction going on, we have become somewhat accustom to power issues, not to mention the squirrels that have sacrificed themselves on a transformer. We have developed a rapid response plan to deal with theses blips.

Last week, the team executed the plan almost flawlessly. The only problem they had was me getting in the way of the process (sorry guys!). The team quickly and efficiently went through the floors, verified operations, and rapidly started repairs/hot swaps on anything that did not recover. We found we had some training opportunities and needed to tweak our process just a tad.

What is bad about about this? We do it so well that staff want it to be the "standard". The problem: We can do that, but what/how does it help the IT team be more productive in the future? How much do we increase cost with this model? How can we provide the same perception of service in our "normal" operations?

Not always easy questions to answer, and in some cases, not easy changes to make. But when is change ever easy?

I don't like being known as the fireman. You only call a fireman when you think something is terribly wrong. I would rather be know as Smokey the Bear (...only you can prevent...). We need to fix our processes so that we watchfully tend our fires or, better yet, we don't have them at all. Sure, fixing our processes to prevent fires will be just as tough, but isn't that better than (my apologies to the Talking Heads) burnin' down the house?

We're setting up!

We're getting setup and will start blogging soon. Please check back soon!