Hiring IT; Looking Up Help Is Good
May 8, 2009
A number of years ago I was looking to hire a junior tech staff member.
Once I reached the point where I had my short list of candidates, I set up a computer with a few common things “broken’.
Nothing really difficult or strange, but common things that often need troubleshooting on our SME computer networks.
After the interview questions process, the candidates were turned loose on that computer. I was not looking over their shoulder, but I was close enough to observe their behaviour.
Of that days candidates, one of them started using the Windows Help system to assist him in fixing some of those problems.
I hired that individual on the spot.
We cannot always know the answers. And I want people who will go out of their way to find the answers.
That candidate was with me for a couple of years and was later hired by a large organization as a senior tech staff member. Even working with different (UNIX) servers.
I knew he could do it!
I knew it because he was not afraid to dive and learn what he did not know.
Let me tell you people, folks like that are solid gold.
In IT, or any where else in your business.
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Book Review; Disrupting Class
December 29, 2008
Disrupting Class
Being a member of a family of past and present educators, I picked up Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns by Clayton M. Christensen, Curtis W. Johnson, and Michael B. Horn.
If you have any responsibility for learning, inside or outside of the education system, (i.e. Human Resources or training staff)this book is worth a read.
The text applies Mr. Christensens’ disruptive innovations theories to the (primarily Western) education system.
The book does not require familiarity with his previous books on disruption, but I found knowing them was beneficial in understanding – in depth, the disruptive innovation context that the authors are describing.
My only issue would be that major projects are often late and cost more than they should. So in the student centric timeline estimated by the authors, I would extend that timeline until all boomers are retired, and even the first waves of Gen-X retireing.
Maybe then we see the much needed context changes described by the authors.
The Late, Great, Peter Drucker
August 27, 2008
I recently finished reading Peter F. Druckers “The Practice Of Management”.
I have read several texts by, and about, Mr. Drucker but had not read this seminal work.
The hundreds, maybe even thousands, of person-years of research into organizational behaviour, social psychology and even governance.
Yet most of it is here in this text – in black and white;
And written in 1954.
The title is a quote from John Soat on Information Week (Canada), the quote continues
If you answered the former, congratulations, you are well on your way…
This people, process, then technology focus is a concept that I have attempted to articulate in many places on this blog.
In another article by Jack and Patti Phillips at Inc.com;
New projects, programs, or tools are implemented because some business measure is not doing so well. Maybe there are too many customer complaints, there are too many shipment errors, it’s taking too long to process an order, we have excessive absenteeism, or we have low productivity in a particular area. These are business issues and they are all defined by business measures.
The key takeaway here is that these issues are first and foremost process and business issues. As such they require business measurements,processes and metrics; not technology ones. Once the business measures are in place – technology implementations can assist in reducing the time to process that order, or to improve that productivity.
But it is critical to identify the business measures and processes first. This will enable you to find out why that order is taking too long, or why there are too many shipment errors.
If it takes too long to process your orders because a staffer cannot be bothered to follow the “rules” or there are no rules (or processes) then throwing technology at it will not help. However, if it takes too long to process your orders because there are too many orders to manually write, or the manual step of looking for the inventory to pack and ship is killing you – then automating parts of the process can help.
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Keep Learning
March 24, 2008
This little note is for the SMB Technology Guru’s.
A recent post by Merrill Dubrow President and CEO of MARC Research brought this to mind.
As written about on this site, In the IT space, your mantra must be to Keep Learning. Never stop. And that does not just mean the newest server or programming language of the day. Keeping up with the latest pure “technology” issues will lead you to be a great IT “electrician” but to be in the next wave of IT workers, we will have to be part data steward, part relationship manager, and add to that part business process expert.
As Merrill Dubrow states,
Read all the time! In fact never stop reading. Concentrate on things happening in your industry, companies and names in the news. Focus on best practices that can help you with your job!
In my opinion, you must learn your industry and your industries pressures. You must know as much of your industry dynamics as any one else in your organization. My employer is a managed training services provider with an extensive customer base in the automotive OEM industry.
You guessed it, the last year or so has been a crash course on learning theory, the automotive industry, and related issues.
Sales, Service, and Education
February 26, 2008
I liked this article at 1to1 Media Forrester Research is quoted as saying that 20 percent of High Definition Television (HDTV) sets sold at retail are returned – not because they are defective – but because the consumer had no idea that the set was not going to give the expected HD user experience unless both your cable provider has HDTV services, and that you are paying for those extra services.
I was happy to read this, because I am now aware that I am not alone. Over the years there has been more than one instance where I have purchased something that had a dependency that that would negate its usefulness unless I had that dependent part or piece. Even in speaking with sales people at the time of purchase – in these cases not one had said – by the way – for this to work, you need …
The end result for me is either a frustrating return to trip to the store to either return the item, or purchase its dependencies. Neither of which makes me a happy customer.
On the flip side, the opposite can be true. I purchased an Apple iPod accessory as a gift, the sales representative walked through the requirements of the model compatibility and the types of adapters each model would require. If I ever need another accessory for these things I know where I will go. (I am not an iPod fan, but that is another story)
Although the above article references retail, service businesses can be just as bad. I recently had a services company provide as estimate on some work that I want done. Not once was I told that the quotation was useless unless I already had another particular service performed first. It was only casually mentioned to me by someone else who had already had similar work done. Needless to say I still don’t have that particular work done.
In todays competitive, and very low loyalty market, it makes sense to educate your customers. At its simplest, they won’t be sticking you with returns costs, or just avoiding the product or service. If you are lucky enough to supply the dependency, it is also a cross sell opportunity.
Unless of course, you are one of the lucky ones who don’t need to worry if your customer ever comes back.
