A conversation I had on campus

admin February 12, 2009 leadership 6 Comments

Person: How was the Apple thing?

Me: It was great, a nice change of pace. It reminded me how we need to focus on what’s important and not just give all our attention to what’s immediate.

Person: But what’s immediate is so screwed up!

Me: But it’s always screwed up. That’s not to say we won’t fix what’s broken, but it’s never going to be perfect. If we focus on the immediate at the expense of the important then nothing will be fundamentally changed or improved.

Person: But your team has some big problems!

Me: Look, our website hasn’t crashed in months, our mail has been stable, we’ve had no significant unplanned outages, believe me, it could be a lot worse.

Person: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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6 Responses to “A conversation I had on campus”

  1. Laura said:

    Feb 13, 09 at 5:18 am

    Ugh. That is so frustrating. I’ve never understood why, when it comes to IT departments, people always focus on the negative.

  2. admin said:

    Feb 13, 09 at 5:43 pm

    I think we’re a culturally acceptable scapegoat. If you blame it on IT, few disagree and it validates a shared feeling of bewilderment/desire not to learn more.

  3. rufusb said:

    Feb 16, 09 at 7:09 am

    Hear hear! In my organization the actual culprit is lack of any clear governance. Aka- No alignment between IT efforts and organizational goals. (Yes, I’ve been reading the book and taking ITIL classes, which rock btw). Also, I attribute some of the problem to people not understanding the complexity of IT because so much energy is put into making computers seem like “magic shiny box turn on” by manufacturers and software companies.

  4. admin said:

    Feb 16, 09 at 10:14 am

    Right, Rufus. We should get office maxx or whoever it is to put out a “hard” button instead of that “easy” one. But, to brighten your day, check out the “You suck at Photoshop, lesson 1” clip from Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_X5uR7VC4M if you haven’t seen it already.

  5. rufusb said:

    Feb 16, 09 at 11:45 am

    HA HA HA! that was awesome! “If the van’s a rockin’ my wife’s being nailed by some guy named Ricky”. That made my WEEK!

  6. admin said:

    Feb 17, 09 at 6:27 pm

    yes, we in IT are easy to please 🙂

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