Edited: You can see me talk on ILTA TV (broadcast live from ILTA ’09). I talk about Twitter in a one-on-one interview, and then I talk about E2.0 along with John Alber and Gerard Neiditsch.
Category: about
On Wars and Battles
Over the past few weeks, I’ve found myself using the phrase, “Right war, wrong battle.” As a principled leader, I’ve fought wrong battles many times without realizing that fighting those battles may have cost me the wars I was trying to win. As a geek, I’ve found myself doing the same thing. I’ve been so concerned with doing things right that I miss out on my chance to do what might be far more effective in achieving the right result.
Think of it this way: if you use all of your ammunition in winning a single battle, you won’t be able to fight in subsequent battles, which will cost you the war. Whether your ammunition is political capital, human resources, trust, or budget, this analogy holds.
I’m resolving to ask myself the following questions:
- What war am I trying to fight?
- Is this situation simply a skirmish?
- Will winning this battle cost me the war?
- Is there a better battle for me to fight?
- What is my ammunition? What resources am I burning to fight this battle?
Surrendering a battle isn’t my nature. I am passionate about achieving effective, efficient results for my company, and my default behavior is to fight for that in every situation. I’m hoping, however, that by prioritizing the war over each battle, I will become a more effective leader.
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On Burnout
This isn’t actually a blog post. This is just letting everyone know that between my grandfather’s passing 2 weeks ago and the (totally awesome) ILTA Conference, I’ve been a little out of action.
Wait, maybe it’s a blog post after all. Turns out that I just can’t keep my mouth shut when I have a thought.
Except that this thought is, “I’m burned out”. Not such a surprise, after presenting some obscene number of times last week (6 if you count the regional meeting and the vendor presentation. More if you count two quick ILTA TV spots (that I’ll link to when the links become available)). Here are my observations on being burned out:
- I repeat my thoughts to myself more than usual.
- I repeat my thoughts to others more than usual.
- It is much harder to put together a complete sentence.
- I have to write more things down.
- Unfortunately, I find it difficult to read my handwriting.
- People keep telling me I look tired.
- Rote tasks are actually easier.
- I keep habitually working long hours, but don’t get as much done.
- I feel stupid.
When I’m less burned out, I should be able to apply the above to leading my geeks. Right now, though, I’m just glad that we have a long weekend coming…
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On Triage
Those of you who follow me on Twitter or Facebook might have noticed that I had a bout with food poisoning on Thursday night that landed me in the Emergency Room. I’m feeling much better now, but had an unfortunate experience with triage in the ER.
We had elected not to call an ambulance; my husband drove me to the hospital (with me in the fetal position in the front seat). I walked myself into the ER and told them I was in excruciating stomach pain. They handed me a pager and told me to sit down. By the time my husband parked and walked in, I was back in that fetal position and sobbing from pain. (I don’t cry much; this really freaked him out.)
Somehow, my sobbing from the pain (where everyone else in the waiting room looked much, much healthier) didn’t change my order in the triage queue. The patients were all staring at me and wondering what was going on, but this didn’t seem to phase the nurses.
What happened? Well, I got pushed to a “normal” place in the queue, I believe, for the following reasons:
- I didn’t arrive in an ambulance.
- I walked in on my own two feet.
- I was able to articulate what was wrong with me.
- I occasionally made jokes, despite the pain (this is how I deal with pain. Weird, yes. I think it’s to make everyone around me feel better).
The Help Desk is one of my departments at work, and I realized that they have to triage as well. It’s very easy for them to mentally dismiss anything stated to them calmly, even though the situation might be much more severe than it looks at first glance. Had I needed my stomach pumped emergently or it was something other than food poisoning, the way I was triaged would have ended with serious health consequences for me. In customer support, you always have to treat the problem as it deserves, rather than according to the way you perceive the person to act. That’s the only way to properly triage anything.
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How I Planned My Summer Vacation (or Social Networking ROI)
Blogging about social networking as always seemed so dreadfully meta to me that I’ve avoided doing it until now. Sure, I’ve written articles and given webinars about social networking, but if you’re already reading my blog, shouldn’t you already “get it” to some extent? My perceived redundancy aside, I recently experienced a very powerful positive effect of social networking that I wanted to share with (inflict on?) all of you.
In an article that will appear in an upcoming issue of ILTA’s Peer to Peer magazine, I make the argument that social networking saves me time and makes me more efficient. While I experience that daily at work, my recent trip to Seattle for (gasp) vacation brought that home in a much more tangible way.
It all started with a single Tweet:
@jennsteele: I’m heading to Seattle soon; what are things I “can’t miss” in the city, on the San Juan islands, and in any of the surrounding area?
Suggestions started arriving immediately to go to this or that restaurant, see various attractions and neighborhoods, and I received two very long emails full of restaurant recommendations and sightseeing tips. These tweets and emails were my guide during my trip, and saved me countless hours of research that I would have done otherwise. For example, I found an amazing Japanese restaurant (Nishino, on the recommendation of @Donna_Payne from Payne Consulting), a great steak house (the Metropolitan Grill, on the recommendation of Beau Mersereau (@beaum) from Fish & Richardson), and the most amazing beer selection I’ve ever seen (the Taphouse Grill, thanks to Faith Drewry from EIM).
I have another nine or ten examples, but I think I’ve proven my point. Instead of spending my time researching, I spent it with my husband sightseeing, relaxing, and watching the Roddick/Federer match. (Side note: I found out about the craziness of that match from Twitter, prompting me to turn it on.) Twitter and Facebook saved me more time in this single week than I spend on the two tools in two months combined. ROI, indeed.
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On Caution
I’m not a particularly cautious person. I’m the person in the room who wants a quick decision and subsequent quick action. I get bored discussing alternatives after a decision is made, and a slow phasing-in of something sometimes feels like slow torture. This doesn’t mean that I don’t think through the problem in order to reach a good solution, this means that I tend to want to move into action immediately without rethinking things.
My lack of caution can be both a strength and a weakness. In crisis situations, my willingness to jump in and try possibly risky solutions has allowed me to solve the issues quickly. (Well, most of the time, anyhow.) There have been occasional times that my lack of caution costs a bit of time, but that has been the exception rather than the rule. In day-to-day life, though, I could probably benefit from having a few more second or third thoughts. I’d certainly get in less trouble with my mouth!
As a leader, it is my responsibility to balance caution and action. I’ve learned that I have to have at least one person around me who tends towards caution in order to best achieve that balance.
I first experienced this in my second IT job. I worked with a woman who I actually nicknamed “repercussions woman” for her ability to identify and voice her concerns about any project or action. At first, I found her constant raining on my parade quite frustrating. I’d already carefully considered things and formulated an action plan, so I didn’t want to hear anything that would change my implementation! As time went by, however, and she saved my bacon more than a few times, I learned to bring everything to her (often before formulating my action plan) in order to get her insight. Her talent for finding potential issues balanced my tendency to plow ahead, and our collaborative work product ended up being much stronger as a result.
I’ve led many geeks with similar talents for finding potential problems and “thinking things to death”. Their talents help me to be a better, stronger leader by bringing up consequences while my talent allows us to accomplish things quickly. The combination leads to a stronger department and better overall results.
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On the Meaning of Leadership
As some of you might know, I’m the point person on publising content for the ILTA ’09 Conference Blog. On Fridays, we publish a “Profile in Leadership” of one of the volunteer leaders of the International Legal Technology Association (ILTA). One of the primary questions we ask during the interview is, “What does leadership mean to you?” This, of course, got me thinking about how I define leadership.
To me, leadership means:
- People want to follow you
- You have somewhere to go
- You can be creative and flexible in defining your goal(s) and how to get there
- You use your followers’ diverse strengths
- You admit that you’re wrong when you are (as I always say, “I’m perfectly happy to admit that I’m wrong–after it’s been proven to me.”)
- You have self-confidence
- You can be humble
- You shine the spotlight on your followers
- You take responsibility when things go wrong
- You are primarily collaborative, but can be authoritative when the situation demands it
- You evolve
There are undoubtedly many other characteristics of a leader, but these are the ones to which I aspire. These, however, are the traits that come more naturally to me or that align with my personal values. Others define leadership according to their personalities and values, and may have a vastly different idea of what leadership means.
ILTA’s “Profiles in Leadership” fascinates me, as many of the people profiled are role models to me in my legal technology career. As I read them each week, my definition of leadership might change, thus fulfilling my last trait of leadership above–I will evolve.
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Dear Vendor:
Someone (a vendor, of course!) recently pointed out to me that I’m not so easy on vendors in my Tweets. So I figured it might be an interesting exercise to humorously dissect my relationships with vendors in the form of some “how to” letters to anonymous vendors.
Dear Vendor:
Thank you so much for calling to see if you can get my business. Unfortunately, your telephone signal was so unclear that I could neither understand your name nor number. Have a good life!
Dear Vendor:
Well, I assume you’re a vendor. You didn’t mention a company name, and your voice mail just said, “Please give me a call.” I didn’t find your name in the company directory or on my vendor contact list, so I assume you had the wrong number?
Dear Vendor:
That testy voice mail you left me whining about how you have been trying to get me and you hope I’m polite enough to call you back? Yeah; not so much.
Dear Vendor:
I think we got started wrong. I walked up to your booth wearing a suit and a convention name tag. Despite my utter lack of cleavage, you somehow thought I was a booth babe. Then you looked completely shocked when I happened to mention that I was the head of an IT department and might be in the market for your product. I’m wondering which forehead tattoo might have helped clear up the situation, and would really appreciate your help choosing one from the following list:
- NOT a booth babe.
- BS from MIT + MBA (highest honors) from Simmons
- IT Director
- Both a beauty AND a geek
- Brains inside!
Sincerely,
Jenn
But seriously, if you’re a vendor and want my business, be friendly, understand what my company does, and solve a problem for me. If I don’t have a problem for you to solve right now, accept it gracefully and let me know that you’d still like to build a relationship with me. That’s what works for me, and will probably work for most of my colleagues as well.
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On Letting Go
I’m not very good at letting things go. I have learned to forgive easily (I’m pretty much incapable of bearing a grudge), but if I know that someone is carrying around a misconception, it will literally keep me up at night. I want people to know and understand the RIGHT answers to their questions. I want people to thoroughly understand ALL my reasons for doing something (at least from a high level). I want my husband to know EVERYTHING he’s doing wrong.
Okay, I’ve grown out of that last one (mostly), but I still have trouble letting things go.
For example, some of the commenters on my post, “Why IT Goes Nuts Sometimes,” have the impression that I’m nuts because I have to deal with stuff coming to my predecessor instead of to me. (That doesn’t bug me at all; the non-support by the guy who emailed me was what drove me nuts.) Knowing that these commenters had the wrong impression has seriously bugged me until this moment, when I could correct it in this post.
Why do I need to let go of my lack of letting things go?
- Most people’s brains, attention spans, and patience cannot take a rapid-fire list of everything.
- Contrary to what I usually like to think, I am not always right.
- I don’t ever want to know every little detail of something. (And it actually drives me nuts when geeks do a deep-dive into the how-to or how something works in a 30-minute meeting.)
- Most people don’t really care about having the wrong impression of something trivial.
In my experience, many geeks have this same tendency (Edit: You know, like this comic.). This is why management gets bored with technical details or users get frustrated at lengthy explanations. Does my boss care about every high-level reason behind my strategy? Nope; just the most important business-related ones.
Just as I get frustrated with getting bogged down in details, others get frustrated by long lists of abstract reasons. Or worse, lists of their faults or mistakes as I see them. Now that I’m more cognizant of this, perhaps I can let it go.
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On Tactics
Like most heads of IT Departments, I have a long-term strategy in place. Granted, it’s vague (it has to be), but I look at industry trends, technology trends, and my firm’s history, shake them all up, and dump them out into a crystal ball. I gaze into the crystal ball and take a stab at where we’ll need to be in the next 3-5 years.
I also have a shorter-term strategy, where the next year’s goals are more concretely expressed. I determine the probable larger capital expenses and figure out generally where we’ll be in a year in the hardware, software, staffing, and user experience realms.
Tactics, however, are where I might depart from the “normal” way of doing things. See, my tactics are never truly solidified beyond the next step or two. Why? Because I plan my tactics according to the Theory of Constraints.
(Brief note to my Operations prof: See? I listened in class and even read The Goal!)
How does this play out? Well, I’m so glad you asked!
- I collect all of the various tactical components I need to have done in order to accomplish my short-term strategy.
- I determine which of said components are dependent (e.g., I have to move File/Print off of two blades before I can expand my Citrix farm onto the same blades).
- I determine which immediate actions will address the most user pain.
- I execute that set of actions. (Okay, so it’s actually mostly my geeks and various consultants who do the true execution here, but you already knew that.)
- I move to the next most painful item, and continue the process.
Someday, I hope to run out of user pain to address such that I can manage more proactively. In other words, I hope to find the “bottleneck” that will cause pain and address it before the users feel the pain.
On the one hand, this gives me a lot of freedom to be more agile in implementation. On the other hand, it can drive some of my linear thinkers insane…
Leading Geeks 