We’ve all heard it said. Frankly, the phrase makes us cringe and acts as an early adrenaline rush to our pride and instantly puts us in a fight or flight mindset.
“If only IT would…..”
So, you should ask yourselves,
What is IT doing to feed into this misrepresented bias that impacts both the budget and the IT reputation in the workplace?
For some of us, we’re stuck in roles that exist to serve the break/fix environment. We put in many hours solving desktop issues, managing firmware updates, or finding a way to stop the printer from squeaking. This reactionary mindset slows down productivity and puts the focus on our response time, and not on the additional value we bring to our organizations. For others, we’ve found ourselves in a state of complacency. This is a dangerous place to be. We aren’t learning, we aren’t networking, we’re just taking support tickets, punching our time cards, and trying to get through the day.
By only being visible and verbal when problems exist, we correlate our value to the organization, only when problems arise.
This feeds the assumption that IT is the common culprit whenever productivity stops and is a detriment in organization’s growth. We all know that is far from the truth.
Reshaping the Reputation of IT
By addressing our faults and focusing on the path forward, we can change the reputation of IT within our organization.
1. Treat the cause, not just the condition.
2. Develop, follow and preach a systematic approach
Systems are easier to follow than a list of loosely followed steps that change with every person that approaches the same problem. Create systems. Refine those systems., And (please) avoid reinventing the wheel at every turn. I cannot stress enough the value of having predefined drop down options on any support portal to provide standardized fields for trends and workflows. As your organization grows, your past experiences can help reduce the future support requests you experience. Consider implementing and maintaining an organizational Wiki or FAQ area. This defacto hub for answers gives your co-workers an outlet to find answers and your IT team an additional resource in which to focus more development focused tasks.
3. Seek 85% utilization at 100% of the time
The balancing act between work and learning is difficult to accomplish. The value of finding this balance will bring greater insights into where your team spends the greatest amount of their time (troubleshooting) and will provide efficiencies that will help your team be more strategic over time. For example: through the usage of timecards/timelogs, you can implement a mantra to have 85% of your tech’s time utilized for investigating, training, learning, or handling projects. This has been a long standing belief at CentraComm and is the foundation for the experience and knowledge our engineering team has acquired over the years.
4. Train our IT staff to Think Differently
Problems are bound to occur, but by asking the right questions we can reduce the meantime-to-resolution. You need to be as equally investigative as your team is technical. When someone is experiencing issues, ask them:
- What has changed since yesterday?
- Has anyone else experienced this?
- What is different about today?
Ask these same questions of your IT staff when outage problems occur. Most of the time these questions will jog someone’s memory of an update or refresh that occurred recently.
“By only being visible and verbal when problems exist, we correlate our value to the organization, only when problems arise.” #reshapingIT
— CentraComm (@CentraComm) December 7, 2016
Get out of the silo and into the fold
IT doesn’t exist in a silo anymore. IT has become the common vein within every organization that helps drive productivity, success and ultimately revenue generation. By addressing the challenges and shortcomings on every IT Manager’s plate and setting small goals to achieve, you can change the tone within your organization and provide the thought leadership that is needed for secure growth.