There is a term commonly used, especially in the IT world, that has become our crutch for complacency:
“There just aren’t enough hours in the day”!
We are all guilty of using it as demands of the job, fear of what we don’t know and unsolved answers to everyday problems requires us to do more (problem solving) with less. This IT conservationism is leaving us stuck in a rut of endless break/fix scenarios and countless hours of doing the same repeatable tasks. When you become complacent at your job, you quickly find yourself in a darker place. Some call this IT Bias, we call this, “the IT Echo Chamber.”
When we, spend too much time in our day-to-day lives creating and completing task lists, we sometimes withhold ourselves from being curious, risk takers and ultimately, problem solvers.
You remember curiosity, right? The itch we all have to constantly scour Reddit, GitHub, or Stack Overflow to see what new tech or processes people are using to make their lives better? By removing curiosity from our lives, we are diminishing our ability to be educated and submitting ourselves to the IT echo chamber. Coming to this realization often requires a hitting a big bump in the road. Sometimes you realize it when disruptive technologies begin to disrupt day-to-day productivity. Other times you may realize it when a lingering problem catches the attention of leadership or worse, a network breach occurs; that there has to be a better way and setting the example to foster new ideas can lead to a greater, more strategic use of our time, elevating our organizational successes.
By identifying that we have an IT bias, we have taken the first step which also happens to be the hardest step.
4 Signs You May Be Stuck in an IT Echo Chamber:
1. Your Job is Losing Its Shine
Finding yourself getting too comfortable with the daily rhythm of your job will eventually wear you down. You start to believe that things aren’t as challenging as they once were, and you become complacent; a common problem in our industry. Admitting this and pressing forward can help reignite your drive.
Here are some quick steps you can take:
- Create a process around educating yourself and your team. The value in keeping up with the ever-changing IT landscape helps us grow as professionals.
- Bring new ideas to the table that focus on performance, efficiency and redundancy. Our team at CentraComm is constantly following discussions on Reddit, Quora, and more.
- Encourage an atmosphere where your team members can bring forth their ideas and try new things.
Taking these small steps can help bring the shine back into your role.
2. Getting Lost in Translation
It’s simple and easy to do. We get lost in the tech conversations with industry peers because we haven’t kept up to speed with technology. Let’s not put ourselves in a situation where we feel concern that somebody smarter, savvier, or hungrier will replace us.
- Subscribe to trend magazines such as CIO and Network World (Hint: Have them sent to your house so they don’t collect dust on your office shelf.)
- Join a peer group of like-minded individuals
- Get out to industry events, learn and network!
3. Hi, I’m Disruptive Technology. Have we met?
Back the truck up! Maybe it’s time to step backwards so we can finally move forward. Change is inevitable in our industry and at some point we will be forced to change or fall behind. It is crucial to start making ourselves comfortable with that change now.
We need to step out of the mindset of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” and begin to educate ourselves on emerging technologies.
Here are a couple of tips that should be on your radar.
- Keep your head in the Cloud – If we are trying to do more with less, the cloud may be a logical option when considering infrastructure or scalability projects. Have you read our myths associated with the cloud yet?
- Hyper convergence is coming – It feels like the circle of life in IT. We are now approaching a time to shift back to consolidated systems becoming a big driver to get resources back on one device.
4. Tactical is the Main Focus, not Strategic
We’ve become so consumed by the daily tasks of ongoing monitoring and troubleshooting that it feels like what we live and breath. If we were honest, we’d admit that upper management can have a knee jerk reaction on decisions that can send IT down a less strategic path. If we are in this situation, here is some guidance.
- Documentation – educate others to assist in shouldering the burdens that can consumer our days and get us of course. [Tip: If you don’t have time for documentation, start a conversation with us. We have a wealth of information and help IT departments get out from under the mountain of “to do’s”.]
- IT Education- Educate the management level of the organization on how IT functions; how does it work in your world and how do they fit into that world? With security being such an important topic, you can also help your C-level team better understand how the organization can be more secure and more efficient. With the volume of cybersecurity threats to organizations like ours, having leadership buy-in is critical to a secure environment.
So, what’s the take away?
Simply put: by acknowledging any of these key signs and taking the necessary steps to overcome these hurdles, you begin to escape the IT echo chamber and view your role and team in a whole new light.
Remember, if we start to become complacent we are doing a disservice to ourselves and those we work with. Find the balance between everyday tasks; nurture ideas that help drive strategic success within our organization. Take purposeful steps to avoid the IT echo chamber.