Leading Geeks through Disasters

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Some of you have read this blog for a while might already know that I have some experience with technology disasters. Specifically, two back-to-back disasters involving many gallons of water and a server room, thereby earning me the nickname “Waterfall Girl” a few years back. (Which didn’t really stick, luckily.)

Here are some lessons I’ve learned:

  • Geeks surprise you. You never know what they’ll do in high-stress situations.
  • Communication is key. No change? Tell people that. During stressful situations, people just want INFORMATION (dammit!), and sometimes telling them that there’s been no change and you’re still working on it still actually helps them.
  • Apologies help. Folks know the disaster isn’t your fault, but apologizing anyhow somehow helps them. I’m going to guess that it’s because it addresses how they feel and demonstrates that you realize the crisis has caused them no small inconvenience.
  • You can’t please everyone. Did you make an announcement via the PA system? Well, some people would really rather have email. Did you send email? Well, prepare for responses vilifying you for not walking the floors or making an announcement Did you and your team walk the floors? Well, they’re not doing it fast enough. All you can do is your best.
  • You can’t do everything right. Maybe you didn’t communicate fast enough. Maybe you didn’t figure out the problem in time to prevent a cascade event (or maybe the cascading events were inevitable). Maybe you estimated that things would be back in two hours but it took two days. You’re not infallible, and you will probably make even more mistakes in crisis situations. Forgive yourself, pick up the pieces, apologize, and move on.
  • Acknowledge emotion. If you’ve already worked 70 hours by Thursday, you will be a bit, uh, grumpier than usual. Once when I took a post-disaster phone call, I said something to the effect of, “I realize that I haven’t slept and that you’re very stressed as well because of the disaster. My goal is to get through this conversation without either of us getting too testy or angry.” The caller laughed (as people will when you do or say something unexpected), and we got through a 12-minute conversation without excess grumpiness. Realize that your geeks will feel stress and get upset easily as well.

I’m sure there are more things to add. What have your experiences been?
Photo courtesy of Maciej Szczepaniak

Customer Service vs. Accuracy

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Customer service vs. accuracyI recently had two customer service experiences with a company that sent me a defective DVD and then sent me the wrong disk as replacement.  The discussions were nearly identical (both took place via online chat), but they left me feeling very different.  During the first discussion, I was confident that I had done everything I needed to do.  During the second one, I was unsure.

That uncertainty led me to examine the conversations in order to see the differences.  Interestingly, there was no real difference in what the service rep said would happen next.  Instead, what I found was that the first rep put it this way:

We will absolutely take care of that for you.  I’ll escalate it now, and you’ll get the replacement DVD.

But the second rep put it this way:

I don’t have the authority to replace DVDs.  I’ll escalate this to support and they will be in touch with you.

Which one was more accurate?  Probably the second.  Which one made me feel better?  The first.

I personally have the tendency to be overly accurate and not reassuring enough–something that I’ll now be working on.  And as I think about it, the geeks I’ve worked with who excel at customer service tend to leave some of the exact details out (like the first rep above did) in the interest of making the user/customer/client feel like they have been both heard and taken care of.

So what do you think?  Which do you value more–customer service or accuracy?

Photo courtesy of Roman Pinzon-Soto.

What do you do with needy geeks?

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Most geeks tend to fall into one of two categories: The “leave me alone.  I can figure this out by myself” geek, and the “I need to understand ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING about this situation before I can be expected to even think about doing it” geek.  I find the former type fairly easy to manage; just swing by for regular check-ins, make sure you know what they’re doing, and let them go.  The latter, however, can be very difficult for a busy manager to handle.

The needy geek (as I will call her) also tends to fall into one of two categories: the “tell me everything” geek, and the “tell me stuff and I will take it away and over-analyze it and pepper you with questions” geek.  I have to be honest–both of these geeks drive me absolutely nuts.  When I have to deal with either of these geeks, my thoughts go something like this:

  • Why can’t you just figure this out?  Part of the project is to figure it out.
  • Sigh.  I hate repeating myself.
  • Go away.
  • Can’t you just figure this out yourself?
  • Please go away?
  • If I already knew everything about it, I would just do the damn thing myself.
  • Now go away.

Obviously, not a good train of thoughts for a manager.  I personally don’t like wishing that any of my reports would go away–I try to be more of a help and resource than that.  Honestly, my lack of patience with “needy” geeks probably reveals some of my own shortcomings.  I tend to lack patience.  I tend to under-explain projects.  I tend to expect everyone to understand everything I say the first time I say it.  So I had to train myself.  What works for me  is:

  • Take a deep breath
  • Realize that people need varying levels of resources to complete tasks
  • Try to gently suggest to the geek whatever path I want him to take
  • Be honest about my expectations–do I expect her to figure it out herself?  Tell her that.
  • Be more detailed about projects in the future

So what works for you?  How do you handle needy geeks?

Image courtesy of Tony Unruh.

Work-Home-Life Balance (Balance in the IT World)

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Go to work…

Work…

Get home, work some more…

Try to sleep, worry about work…

Wake up…

Repeat…

Sound like you?

We all attempt to achieve the allusive work-life balance, and in some professions balance is especially difficult. Working in IT is a demanding profession. Mostly, you’ll find it’s demanding of your time, all of the time, anytime. An IT professional is expected to work at home, at night, and on weekends. These hours are considered (by sane people) as home time, therefore it should (and in many cases is) acceptable to handle some personal tasks during what is generally considered work time.

To be fair, the odd hours we keep are necessary, and in most cases unavoidable. The users and companies we work for get twitchy if the system(s) are maintained during the day. The good news is that most IT managers recognize that the job forces us to keep an unorthodox schedule.

This schedule is, however, less accepted at home. Be prepared to field comments such as; “Are you working again!” or “Why are they calling you on your day off”. Children are particularly sensitive this odd work schedule. “Daddy, are working today?”

Officially we work nine to five, forty hours a week. Most of us know this is a fantasy, we work 9-5, then logon from home and work again from 8-11. This is assuming everything is stable. User requests can (and do) come at any time, requiring prompt attention. During an upgrade, or outage all bets are off. We will be working (as we should) around the clock until the issue is resolved. Employers don’t usually have an officially policy to handle these odd working requirements. The “policy” is to turn a blind eye and let the department deal with it internally.

This schedule can cause undue stress at home. Spouses become frustrated with the excessive attention devoted to work, and lack of attention directed to home and your relationship. Children don’t understand why daddy’s always busy. Lastly let’s not forget about the toll it takes on you. It’s unhealthy to live a monolithic life focused solely on your job. Are you living to work, or working to live? Don’t let your career consume you. While your job is certainly a part of who you are, it should not be your defining property.

The only way (I see) to balance work, home and life is by disregarding the traditional work / home boundaries. What does this mean? It essentially means to try working a very flexible schedule. If know you’re going to be working at home tonight, go home early, and pick up the kids at school. If you’ll be working late tonight, meet your spouse someplace nice for a two hour lunch.

Now for the hard part, following my own advice.

Editor’s note: Mark, when he worked for me, worked insane hours.  He pulled all-nighters multiple times, and we would spell each other when we were into a long slog (he’d take the midnight hours, usually), including that one time I pulled 5 all-nighters in 8 days.  I’ve never encountered such a dedicated work ethic, and I’d LOVE to see him take his own advice!

Does Management REALLY Mean Death by Meeting?

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Image Courtesy of Richard Rutter

 

I’ve been trying to figure out best practices for, well, just getting stuff done with other people.  Somehow, it seems like we use email when we should use a meeting, a meeting when we should use a quick face-to-face, and a quick face-to-face when we should use email.  I’m constantly left feeling somewhat, uh, unsatisfied with the way we get things done, and I’m using this post to try to figure it out.  Any and all insight would be appreciated!

Email Errors

Last week, a coworker & I went out for lunch, grabbed a beer, and took 30 minutes to figure out a transition process.  (A transition process that we and others were actually pretty darn happy with, actually.)  Had we tried to do this via email, it would have taken eight thousand years, and I’m not sure we would ever have gotten it done. Yes, we did some prep work via email and drop-bys (and I am a Salesforce data geek, as we found out), but we got it done much more efficiently in a quick meeting than we ever could have done it via email.

I was also part of an email chain last week where we could have cut through it with a couple of cubicle drop-bys.  In fact, I got so sick of the email chain that I started walking around the office and talking to the people involved just so we could get the darn thing done.

Face-to-face Follies

That’s not to say that everything can or should be done face-to-face.  We have a bunch of consultants and salesfolk here who are almost impossible to get in front of–they’re on the phone constantly.  As such, email is absolutely vital for communication.  I’ve also been known to wander the office for many minutes looking for the person with whom I want a quick chat, only to forget about it after I got back to my desk.  Email can be vital for in-the-moment communication, so that nothing gets lost or forgotten.  Email can also include lots of parties and save people from having to wait for three weeks in order to put a meeting on everyone’s calendars.

At the very least, it’s a good idea to chat with someone face-to-face, return to your computer, and send a follow-up email to make sure everyone both remembers the conversation and is on the same page.  You can also loop in folks who weren’t part of the conversation but should be aware of its occurrence.

Meeting Madness

As you can see from above, I definitely think that quick meetings have their times and places, but should be minimized overall.  If you have one-way “vital” information, an informal “pull someone into the conference room” can often do the trick.  (As I write this, I realize that I’ve scheduled several meetings already today–all of which involved multiple people or really needed the 1:1 sit-down function of a meeting.  No, really!)  I think it’s entirely too easy to decide to schedule a meeting rather than communicate more openly and constantly.    But overall, I’m still trying to figure out the threshold for holding a meeting vs. one of the other communication efforts above.

Does anyone have any ideas?  Do you have any specific “I hold a meeting when…” criteria?  Please share!

What Does “All Set” Mean, Anyhow?

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There are very few phrases in the English language that I despise more than “all set”.  And there are very few phrases that I have found support geeks to use more than “all set”.  What bugs me the most about it is that it’s just about impossible to know what “all set” means–even from context!  For example:

  • You’re eating at a restaurant.  A server comes by & asks how it’s going.  You say, “All set!”  Which does this mean?
    • You are happy eating your food and don’t need anything else.
    • You are finished with your dish & want the dessert menu.
    • You are finished with your meal & want the check.
  • You are having trouble with a Word document.  You call the Help Desk.  They’re quiet for a moment, and then say, “You’re all set!”  Which does this mean?
    • Your document has been nuked, but your Word isn’t in trouble any more.
    • Your document is fine, you can continue typing.
    • Your document is fine, but you have to close & reopen it before typing.
  • You are managing some geeks and ask about the user with the Word document problems.  The geek says, “She’s all set!”  Which does this mean?
    • There are zero further problems, there was no training issue, and she will start writing love letters to the Help Desk.
    • The user’s immediate problem was fixed, and there is no indication of chronic problems like hers.
    • The user’s problem was fixed, but the larger ongoing Word document issue that you’ve been seeing hasn’t been addressed.
    • The geek did something to help the user that seemed to have worked, but she didn’t truly confirm it.  The hate letters to the Help Desk will be quickly forthcoming.

Perhaps it’s obvious that I’ve lived through the last situation more than once…

That phrase drives me nuts due to its non-specificity.  Can anyone convince me that there is ever ANY reason to tell me something is “all set” rather than just telling me what the heck you did or what the heck is going on?

Post-Traumatic IT Stress Disorder

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Post-traumatic IT stressMy last job was a circus of IT disasters.  I arrived at the company just in time to have system after system crash and various others need to be replaced (having the windows open RIGHT BEHIND the blade servers was just FUN during blizzards, I tell you…).  It seemed that nothing had been configured according to best practices, and sleep was a very scarce resource–I once pulled 5 all-nighters in 8 days, and my staff was doing the same.  Every time my phone would ring, I would flinch, my heart would start pounding, and my hands and feet would get numb.

So I changed careers.

Flash forward a while until Saturday.  My husband’s company was having some trouble with their servers.  He mentioned that things might hit the fan as a result.  Next thing I knew, I flinched, my heart started pounding, and my hands and feet got numb.  In other word, I had the same stress reaction that I used to have to IT disasters when I worked in IT.

I have to assume I’m not the only geek who has experienced this.  So I started thinking about how you might notice this in your geeks.  I came up with the following:

  • Your geeks look like they’re overreacting.  Maybe it’s a simple system hiccup, but they’re running around with their hair on fire.  That’s your first clue that the hiccup probably isn’t the first they’ve survived, and they’re afraid of worsening hiccups to come.
  • Your geeks look like they’re underreacting. My first clue that my previous company’s systems were sub-optimal should have been that the staff would brush off any minor system problems.  I call this the “hard candy shell” syndrome, where they’ve been through so many disasters that they’ve had to build an emotional wall of uncaring in order to protect their sanity.
  • Your geeks are jumpy. I personally tend to jump & shriek at loud noises, but that’s not really normal behavior.  If your geeks wince or jump at every email or phone call, you might have geeks suffering from PTITSD (post-traumatic IT stress disorder).

There are probably other signs of PTITSD.  What are some you’ve seen?

Photo courtesy of r000pert.

How to Get A Geek To Speak English

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Office Person: Hey, IT guy, can you get my computer working?

Install Tech (IT) Guy: Well, what is the problem?

Office Person: I don’t know! It’s slow when I try to get to the internet.

IT Guy: (evil smile) It could be a few things…Have you cleaned out your RAM or checked to see if your cache is getting too full? Then again, it could just be that the bandwidth on your T1 connection is full and can’t handle the load of data. Run a diagnostic test, defrag your hard drive, and call me in the morning if it’s still slow…

If conversations with your IT department have gone something similar to this before then you know what is it like to be totally lost in a conversation. Geeks are geeks for a reason–they eat MBs and MHz for breakfast. Their language is full of acronyms that you and I will never fully understand. So, in a world where we all rely on IT to get through our busy schedules, what is the trick to getting geeks to speak plain English? Respect!!!

When I was working for a telecom company a few years back, I was just a young 21 yr old who was learning the ropes. The average sales rep age was over 38, so I felt a little out of place. They were talking about the old days when it all was so simple and one company did it all. Anyway, during one of those conversations a desk phone rang and the rep got a pissed look on his face. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “The $%@# IT Guy pissed off another one of my customers!” was his angry reply. We all got paid residual commissions on clients we had sold in the past. It was a great way to build a bigger paycheck. Unless, of course, there was a huge communication gap between your IT department and client.

When the install tech returned from the site visit the rep went up to him and just blasted him, calling him worthless and so on. The IT guy came back and explained how the rep had done his paperwork incorrectly, so the IT got caught between a rock and a hard place because he didn’t have the right equipment to fix the problem. The sales rep kept on blasting and the IT guy fired right back saying how lazy the sales reps were….blah, blah, blah, you can see where I’m going.

From this situation I learned a very important lesson: don’t bite the hand that feeds you (in this case the IT guy). He was responsible for keeping the service I sold up and working. The better the service, the better my paycheck. So what did I do?

During the slow period of the day I would go back to the IT room and just sit and talk and ask questions. I learned their names and personalities, and anytime a customer would call to say how nice the IT guy treated them I would always make a point to publicly praise them. After 3 months, all of my installations were done ahead of schedule and the customer was always happy. Thus, my paychecks made me VERY happy.

Geeks are people just like us. They know how to speak plain English, but if you piss them off they will be quick to drop some IT jargon on you and send you screaming.

Geeks & Gag Rules

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If you’re a geek leader, are you gagging your geeks?  (No, I don’t mean with your lack of showering.  That’s probably a different post.)

Geeks & Gag RulesWhat I’m asking is whether saying certain things is verboten in your department/team/company.  Are you so paranoid that a user or customer will hear someone venting and get offended–I used to work in law firms, so I’m quite familiar with the easily, ridiculously offended phenomenon–that your geeks can’t express themselves?

I ask because this creates a very unhealthy environment for customer-facing geeks.  Heck, it’s an unhealthy environment for customer-facing ANYBODY.  Why?

  • You’ll never know the score. You won’t ever know what’s actually happening with the users/customers because your geeks are so afraid of saying something negative that they clam up.
  • You have ticking time bombs. For folks in customer-facing positions, being able to blow off steam helps keep them sane and polite to the customers.  That horrible thing they were saying about the user they had to tell for the twelfth week in a row to press pound to save a voice mail message?  They’re saying it to you so that they won’t say that horrible thing to the user in week 13.
  • Morale? Meet toilet. When people feel frustrated & gagged in their jobs, they become unhappy.  This means that when they complain, they won’t just complain about the users–they’ll complain about you/the company and your stupid rules.

Obviously, I don’t think you should gag your geeks.  Letting them complain, laugh, and blow off steam makes for a healthier environment overall.  However, there are certainly some things to avoid:

  • A bitter culture. If ALL your geeks do is complain, you end up with a pretty miserable team of geeks.  Make sure you encourage positive, happy, and fun talk as well.  Keep in mind that a lot of culture starts at the top, and make sure you act & speak consistent with the culture you’re trying to create.
  • Putting things in writing. When I worked in a law firm & helped out with e-discovery projects, I was STUNNED to see what people sent to each other in email.  Encourage your geeks to vent verbally only.
  • Disrespect. Granted, your geeks won’t always respect every user or customer, but a basic respect for the people who help employ them is very important.  If there’s no baseline of respect, your users will know it during the phone calls even if the geek plays everything else by the book.  Again, this is something you can set from the top, by having a basic respect for them yourself.

This is a balancing act, so you HAVE to communicate well with your geeks and truly listen to what they’re saying.  But please trust me when I say that you don’t want to gag your geeks.

Photo courtesy of Bernardo Borghetti

Disney Characters and Dolls: Do they belong in a job interview?

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Disney characters, dolls, and job interviewsI am currently in the job market and I thought I would share some fun and interesting anecdotes about interviews I have had or others have shared with me.

Last week, I was sitting on the dock of the sailing club I belong to sharing my most recent interview with some fellow sailors.  The question I got was how you would describe a relational database to a 5 year old.  Now normally I would use a card catalog and a phone book to discuss the difference between a relational and flat file database, but the question was for a 5 year old.  This question was tough because 5 year olds do not know how to read or do basic math.  So I thought about my four year old niece and realized that I could use her collection of dolls as an example.  Dolls have various parts that can be categorized.  My niece has various uses for her dolls such as dolls that stay at home, dolls that travel and dolls that can go in the bath tub.  I then needed some place to store the dolls and their parts, so I included places like her doll trunk, her baby carriage and various other storage compartments.  I realized as I started breaking this all down that maybe my nephew’s train set might be a better example, but ultimately, can a 5-year-old really understand a relational database?  I am not sure of that answer, but I guess they wanted to see if I could explain things in a simplistic way.

As I was describing this rendition of my interview question, my fellow sailors agreed I did the best I could with what I had.  They then began telling me about interview questions they faced.  My favorite was, “If you were one of the 7 dwarfs, what dwarf would you be?”  I realized at this point I would have to try to remember the 7 dwarfs: Sleepy, Dopey, Happy, Doc, Bashful, Grumpy and Sneezy.  When we all sat there on a sunny afternoon we realized that many of the 7 dwarves do not portray qualities you want a potential hiring manager to think about.  So given the choices, what dwarf would you be?  And more importantly, what does this information tell you about a potential job candidate?   That they can remember the names of 7 Disney characters? And know that only two, Happy and Doc, and maybe a third, Bashful, display characteristics of a positive employee?

The next question we discussed was, “Where do you want to be in the next 5 years? “ Now of course this is a typical interview question, but the discussion on the dock went to the current economy and whether this is really a fair question?  Currently, many companies are laying off good people, or cutting salaries and budgets and a career path is something we as professionals all want to strive for, but is that a luxury that must be put on hold until our employers become more stable?  Can managers expect our current and future employees to expect to climb the corporate latter as the latter is continuously shrinking and as rungs are being knocked off the frame? I think we can, but I think we may need to redefine the latter.  Career paths will be changing over the next couple of years as companies struggle to make sense of this new economy and we as managers need to recognize a new way to motivate employees.

So what does make a good interview question?  My colleagues on the dock had a lot to say about this as well.  First there was some disagreement about how many interviews and how long they should last.  One person suggested, bring someone in for a whole day and let them meet with everyone all at once.  I like this idea in terms of commuting, but as we all know scheduling such an event can be tricky.  Another person suggested planning the interview process like a project.  I also like this idea, because you can as a team decide who will ask what and then come together to get the whole picture of the person.  Ultimately what we all agreed is that in this new economy the old questions and the old ways don’t necessarily make sense anymore and if you are blessed with the ability to hire someone new everyone agreed that some thought about the process and the questions needs to be considered.  Go ahead and think outside the box, come up with new questions, but try to make them relevant to the job, the team and the economy

Photo courtesy of Loren Javier.