The One Lesson that is SO HARD to Learn

I've spent a good deal of my working life in I.T..

And if there's one thing that has helped me maintain my sanity and enthusiasm, it's that I try not to take criticism personally. I've developed a thick skin.

And I really never had a choice.

Because the alternative, is not very productive. It leads to an "us vs. them", mentality - describing internal customers as "stupid users" and mentally excusing ourselves from addressing the issue at hand.

Hey - they should RTFM (Read the F**king Manual) if they want the answer! Or I covered that question in training! What are they? Stupid? This is an easy attitude to adopt and unchecked, it can spread quickly, kill morale and poison the department's reputation within the company.

The I.T. leadership challenge is in redefining success. Success ISN'T, turning the system on. Training success ISN'T completing the user manual.

Success is reaching the company's business performance objectives - enabling your fellow employees to effectively use your systems to achieve process excellence. If they can't do that at present, YOUR JOB IS NOT YET DONE.

Seth Godin nails this concept in todays blog entry.

If you can change the discussion from us vs. them, to "How can we (I.T. AND our internal customers) execute better?", the entire dynamic changes, for the better.

It forces you to think more creatively. If no one reads the user manual, it won't be an effective training tool. Okay, perhaps we should spend out time figuring out a type of training that people will want to use. How about trying video? Let's show people what the process looks like. Let's show people how to do the transactions. Let's show people the critical steps in each process.
Let's post the videos on our intanet so new employees can learn the same lessons. Let's ask for training delivery feedback from our employees. Let's adapt.

Let's make our infrastrucutre more bulletproof and self-healing. Instead of telling users to backup their systems, why don't we have their systems do it automatically? Instead of expecting our users to remember 20 different system passwords and to change them monthly, why don't we implement single signon?

When we are told of an application error or a hardware glitch, let's make sure we not only solve the problem, but address the source of the problem, so over time, we don't have to fix the same issue over and over again.

The I.T. journey from internal adversary to corporate partner begins with a thick skin and a refocused definition of what our jobs are really about.

The sad truth is: If your internal customers tell you that you suck, they're generally right.