Slashdot Mirror
Sharing IT Problems with Executives?
dicey asks: "Later this week all of the IT department at my company (50-80 people) is having a dinner with the company President and VP/CIO. One major reason for this is so that they can get a better understanding of what is going on in IT and how it impacts the company overall. Ideally, with the ideas and sharing, these guys will have a better appreciation for us, adjust our budgets appropriately, and help us in our business.
However, many of us are wary to speak about what is going on because it will inevitably reveal problems with the company. We are worried about what we discuss coming back to our directors ultimately to bite us. I am curious what my fellow Slashdot readers have done in similar circumstances, where there is a great chance to let someone high up in your company know of problems so that they can be rectified, but whereby revealing them you may get hurt in the process."
that sounds like a nice little pickle ur in
Our IT department did something similar to this last year, and had the same concerns. We decided to make it a themed costume party, and we all dressed as our favorite sci-fi characters. We gave management the earful they wanted, and the next day we all got an email saying "R2D2 is sooo fired!" but they never figured out who it was.
Dilbert!
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
If your company is having problems and you don't feel safe doing your duty and informing the higher ups, you need to start looking for a new job. In the meantime, don't rock the boat.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
at least you have a job, you insensitive clod!
Talk about the good things first, then air your complaints as suggestions.
--
In London? Need a Physics Tutor?
American Weblog in London
1) Talk about how awesome you are.
2) Talk about how much more you could do with "just a few more dollars".
3) Talk about how other departments suck.
4) Despite other departments sucking, you improvised, adapted, and overcame.
5) In conclusion, we're awesome, and should beg for the chance to spend money on us.
Just rememeber to show them how reset their computers with the Dilbert "shake" method and tell them that IT is going GREAT and that with all the money your department saves you deserve a raise. And whatever you do do NOT mention anything about the "token rings" being lost in the "ether".
You may be tempted to get everything (problems) out at dinner, but usually this will harm you in the long run. Be extremely careful on what you say, and what you do.
YOU'RE FIRED!
Slashdot Eds Link Anonymous Posts With Logged Posts
They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
Isn't that what managers are for? It's not your job to inform CxOs that there are problems. Alternatively .. if you're looking to get into management, this could be your chance.
There is probably no good way of doing this at the company dinner. The size (50-80) makes it even more difficult as probably everybody will know (recognize) everybody else. You do not want to be the whistle blower of any kind. Sort of a catch-22 if you will.
A better way that I've seen happen at my place is an anonymous ballot kind of thing. If the executives are interested, they will read the ballot. If not, well, then you live and learn.
My 0.02$
Free XBox, PS2
You have to be able to bring an error to some ones attention... If no one is willing to pickout and notify of errors you get something like Windows.. So as an IT pro, you must be willing to do that for the sake of the product. Thats just my thought..
At a large company that I worked for in the past, we had the opportunity to give criticism to the higher ups about all the things that we'd like improved etc. You know that manager of yours that in one way or another always blames his director for the hardships bestowed on your group? Well, we mentioned that during the surveys and meetings that we had. "If only the director would do this.. or that.." Well, one member of our group who'd been around for 6+ years at the company warned us that this was all a sham; not to criticize anything. Well, it did. About a week later the manager called us all into a meeting and while even shedding a tear, he told us that we were all ungreatful and that we'd get no more perks from him with him pulling his weight to get us things. 3 people quit shortly after. Tread VERY lightly and don't place blame on any singular management entity.
You can't very well hide the problems from them. I have found the best method is saying how what we have works, but this is how it could be much better for a small cost. Emphasize how what you are doing is best with what you have, and be sure to explain the cons of the other options. As long as the think you know what your talking about, I think you should be fine.
:)
But then again, don't scream at me when there is someone from India doing your job from SSH.
A carefully considered, previously agreed-upon statement would be fine, but I would cringe at anyone who would speak "off the cuff" to management. If you can approach them in the right way, you may well end up with what you need. Or at least what they think you need. Anyone in your department who has a deep-seated need to impress the brass should be given the wrong location and time for the dinner. Best of luck!
"Never pet a burning dog."
Upper management should always have feedback from managers about what's going on in IT.
In your managers aren't letting their managers know what's important, and why, then they aren't doing their job.
You shouldn't have to end run to directors to get the information up there
Shaun Nelson - Bastard Operator (From Hell / For Hire)
I think if you're management isn't addressing the questions you have, you should be upfront and honest to the executives in the company about the problems you are facing. However, what issues you are dealing with? Is your IT spending up, is there talk of layoffs, what are your actual problems with your company's IT infrastructure?
It's good that your president/CIO are having these discussions with you, as it shows they are concerned and want to know how to drive profit in their industry. They are concerned with the bottom line, so be honest and try to address the problems with the bottom line in mind. Will adding 1 million to the IT budget save 10 million? If you have concerns, or better, if you have ideas, share them, but only if you think they will help. Don't say you need 2million in new computers without explaining why that would drive profit up.
If the executives are really taking the time to try to understand the issues that IT is having, maybe it's time to drop the defensiveness and be frank with your department's issues. There's no need to be accusative or plaintive. You just need to say that A, B, and C are the problems and that X, Y, and Z are the best solutions that IT believes exist.
Management does not want to know what your problems are. They want to know what your solutions are. Prepare to give them solutions to your problems.
I have been pwned because my
I think that phrasing of the company's shortcomings is important. For example, if you say that the company has problems X, Y, and Z that need money to be fixed, that's negative.
/. page should be: "Confessions may be good for the soul, but they are bad for the reputation. -- Lord Thomas Dewar"
However, if you phrase the statement such that you need funds allocated to meet challenges X, Y, and Z, then you're spinning it into a positive.
It's rather humorous that the random quote at the bottom of the
Have you seen the movie "office space" ? If not rent it and see it before going there.
- People who believe other people have no right to live, got no right to live ...
but I have to agree with what a lot of other people said.
Be *extremely* careful. Even valid and obvious complaints can get you in a lot of trouble.
My advice? Keep your mouth shut.
Talk in terms of ROI, TCO and other clear business benefits, otherwise they wont care.
It would seem to me that problems within the IT group should be brought to your manager / director or whoever is just above you in the chain of command before it would go to the CIO or VP. If the director sees fit to bring it to the executive level, then they should. Only if your direct supervisor is neglecting to fix problems / bring severe problems to their boss, should you have to go above their head to the executive level. I know that sounds like the Office Space problem of having 8 bosses, and that might not make sense in a business of 50-60 people as described - but it makes more sense in much larger organizations.
It seems as it would help you more rather than hurt you. I run a small business and we often bring all the employees in to talk about the business and how it is going and which direction we need to head. It's your departments opportunity to right some wrongs and to help get the compay steered in the right direction. By doing so it will only make the company stronger which in turn make your jobs more secure. Whne you have a problem, it's always 100% better to confront it head on than to try and cover it up. It sounds like someone is reaching out for your help and information. Take the opportunity to grab it by the balls.
Just smile, nod and enjoy the free food. Sure, it would be nice to try and let the executives know the problems you are facing, but as the Dispair poster says, "Sometimes the best way to increse moral is to fire all the unhappy people." You aren't unhappy are you?
Seriously, you, and a large portion of the staff should discuss the idea of all suggestions being given to the exec anoymously. Try to find someway to disassociate the idea from the person. Granted this isn't perfect, but it might help some.
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Perform your duties as enumerated in your job description. No more, no less. Don't try to make things better, because you'll only piss people off who can make your life hell.
Anything you say to the higher-ups will eventually trickle down to your immediate supervisor(s). If it makes them look bad, you'll eat shit until you quit or are otherwise drummed out of the company.
Take it from someone who's been there... if you're an IT geek, when it comes to corporate politics, your kung fu is weak. Period. Accept it.
Keep your head down, do only what you're supposed to, and keep your resume polished anyway, because you never know when your job will move overseas no matter how good you are at doing it.
Realistically, how much can anyone learn from a dinner with 80 people, the vast majority of whom are going to be complete strangers? This is going to be a chance for the executives to mouth platitudes, for the IT "leadership" to get their knees and noses dirty, and for the peons to get a dinner that will come out of the Christmas bonus, ultimately.
I advise you chat up the bartender, and try to get a six-pack or two into your laptop bag.
First, a large forum will yield nothing productive. Who is the top IT guy who talks with the other sr. people? Is that you? If so, it's your fault, or the fault of whoever is in charge of IT, that your company has to have a meeting.
That said, money talks. You need to go in with spreadsheets, dollars and cents, and lots of research behind any assumptions you make. Any executive likes making money. IT exists only to make the company more money and for no other reason.
I've never had a problem convicing my boss to spend money on IT where I've followed the above advice.
We are worried about what we discuss coming back to our directors ultimately to bite us.
Depends on what stage of ossification your company is in: early, middle, or late.
From the tone of IT concerns, you are in late stages, so shut up. When there are vested interests, the messenger always get shot.
Campaign finance reform is national security.
If the answers are that he genuinely wants to improve things, is a no-BS type of person, and seems to be able to take criticism, then by all means take this gift and use it! Be specific, but try to not assign blame. Approach every issue from the perspective that it isn't a huge problem but rather an opportunity for improvement.
Good luck!
I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
The right thing to do:
Be open and honest with the PHBs. Don't sugar-coat anything that much, and if your honest assesment of a problem doesn't please them, then you may want to start looking for another job.
The normal thing to do:
Suck up to them and blame the problems on others. That way you'll get a pay raise and your co-workers will not be held in as high regard.
I would like to think I'd do the right thing in a situation similar to yours, but I honestly don't know if I could risk my job because of an execs stupidity.
Karma: Meh (Mostly from meh.)
If you say something, the work environment may be worse off. Don't say anything, and it definitely will.
This is where the rubber hits the road. If the boss honestly wants to hear what's going on so that he/she can help, not telling him/her means a missed opportunity to make everyone's life (including yours) better. If the boss is looking for ways to trick you or is not competant enough to help once given all of the info, chances are that you're screwed anyway.
Most bosses never ask. They just wait until something goes horribly wrong. Yours has taken some initiative.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
Yeah, here's some advice for you, if you want to keep your job:
1) Learn to speak Hindi
2) Develop a taste for curry
Booze, Booze, and more Booze.
Frink: Nice try floyd, but you were designed for scrubbing, and scrubbing is what you shall do.
Don't complain to them, and don't present only the problems. It makes you sound whiney. Instead, prepare brief descriptions of the problems, proposed solutions, timelines and estimated costs to fix. The best way to get their attention is with an ROI analysis that shows how your recommendations will save money.
Whenever you pose a problem, follow it up with a solution. That way it doesn't sound like you're complaining. Having solutions shows you actually care about your job and the company. Then you just need the go ahead to fix the problems.
Guess what? There are other jobs out there. Better ones than you have now, probably. No sense cowering in a hole somewhere because of what *might* occur.
Best to use this opportunity to differentiate yourself from the rest of the smelly IT bozos in your division. Jed, your cubemate, is not going to further your career. The execs you have an opportunity to talk with, can.
If it comes back and bites you in the ass, start looking for a new job. Don't quit. When you find the new job, resign with a notice, and explain the necessity of this delay to your potential employers.
Your company would likely drop you like a bad habit if they felt that you were more problem than you were worth. ESPECIALLY if you're nervous about bringing up issues in the company. Feeling loyalty toward them is ludicrous. Do what you know is right, if you cannot there, then go elsewhere where you can.
"Give away the stone, let the oceans take and transmutate this cold and faded anchor." - Maynard James Keenan
Upper management doesn't want to be bothered with petty bickering in the lower echelons, they have their own backstabbing to worry about. They want to hear what overall strategies would lead to greater efficiency throughout the organization. That is how your ideas should be framed.
Keep telling your colleagues about all the problems you wish to tell them about. Then keep very quiet in the meeting, they'll come out. ;-)
Worked for me.
Doggy dogg world!
There's the usual "ill news is an ill guest" concern, but I believe for a company to properly progress problems should be put on display for executive analysis. Isn't it their jobs to be fixing the kinds of issues that crop up when IT can't quite do its job?
Having worked at a family company (and being part of the family), there's always a certain amount of leeway I get, when I need to bring up issues in the company. But being a younger family member, the only reason I get listened to is because I try and give an fair, honest and balanced (no relation to Fox news "balanced") response to issues that arise.
No company is without problems. But a good executive shows his quality by listening to his employees when they say something important.
what's the other evil? if the problem involves IT, then the solution may involve changes to your work environment, which might be less than appealling. different responsabilities; lower budget; no job..
I'd say if the matter is important enough, but it directly affects you, then it's a choice between the company's best interests and your best interests.
click-clack, front and back. I'm not moving this car otherwise.
In meetings such as this...keep it short and sweet, and I do mean sweet.
Did I mention short?
I had a dinner with my department, once, and ended up sitting on the table of the head of dept. Now this man can drink like a fiend, and so, more the fool, I tried to keep up.
... to his face ...
One should remember that the boss is NOT one of the boys.
As it turned out by the next day, most of what I had told him in my drunken stupor had circulated, and the phrase I'd used to describe him
not so good
Whatever you do, remember, they may be friendly, but treating them as a casual friend is unwise.
Send out an email to your IT staff, avoiding the managers. Let them know that a box will be made available at some accessable point, where anonymously _typed_ papers can be dropped off.
Encourage folks to not only write down the bad stuff, but write up good things as well. And always give examples and suggestions with the bad. But make sure that the examples focus on the issues, not specific people.
Deliver the box to the VP/manager/PHB and tell him it was done this way to prevent personal bias influencing the issues.
Support FSF: Stop thinking with your wallet, and think with your imagination. (cc/non-commercial)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Confessions may be good for the soul, but they are bad for the reputation. -- Lord Thomas Dewar
ok but how do they OUTsource onsite IT? Or am I missing something?
From what I've seen, people in managerial roles do NOT want to hear, "such and such is lagging behind in terms of technology; we need to purchase more technology; I need this new gadget", etc.
... they frankly don't care.
What you need to do is encapsulate every statement with an administrative-backing. For example, people are surfing porn...solution? don't recommend installing an enterprise-level filter like websense, instead tell them to implement strict internet surfing policies with near-zero-tolerance at the HR level. If the porn surfing doesn't decrease to an appropriate level, then you have a technical solution (if it comes to that).
Also, ASK for their input and come down to their level. They don't know technology, but they know what they want the technology to do for them. Don't start spewing "open source r0x0rz" or "windoze sux0rz", or vice versa
Remember to NOT think of this as a chance for you to vent YOUR frustrations at THEM, especially since it's probably the reverse. Let them have their say, then respond with low-cost, easily understandable solutions.
You will do no good by ranting and raving when you get the chance to talk to the higher-ups.
You also should refrain from bad-mouthing any particular individuals (unless absolutely and obviously necessary), or you will appear to have an axe to grind.
Phrase concerns in terms of the organization or department.
I went through this several years ago. Over the course of 90 minutes I laid out my concerns and [what I saw as] impediments to the organization and its future. The chief exec at the end of the table listened carefully and seemed to appreciate the candor (e.g. we have ~22 people on staff and 8 of them are designated as the 'managemenet team'; 7 people on staff were actually billable most of the time (supporting the rest), etc.).
Nutshel version: be concise, be respectful, and don't point fingers.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
1] Keep it high level. Executives are dumb and detail confuses and scares them. That's counterproductive.
2] Keep it positive. Bitching makes them wonder if the problem is actually you.
3] Explain problems in terms of cause and effect. "If we don't upgrade the mail server, then in 3-6 months it won't be able to keep up and you won't get your mail."
4] Think about what issues you're going to raise ahead of time, and have reasons ready for raising them. Issues that seem half-baked won't be heard.
5] If you're married to dealing with a particular problem, at least don't be married to a particular solution. Have alternatives handy. Execs like to feel that they have a choice. If you don't offer them more than one, they may treat "ignore the problem" as one of them.
Lots more, but these are a good start.
Don't say anything negative. Never. NOT ever. This is twice as true in regards to other dept or managers. This is thrice as true, if someone starts talking about how it's ok to open up and talk as equals.
Everything should be phrased in the manner of how things could be better if "Thing A" was able to happen.
If the whole thing turns sour, be sure to have your resume up-to-date, since the effects will be targeted along the lines of: "Were they at the dinner?"
The company I work for was suffering from a very high amount of counter-culture and distrust seemed to be everywhere so the managment institutued a self nominated group that could bring issues straight to them. It is entirely self nominating (elected yearly) and employee driven; the agenda in each monthly meeting is developed by the employees and topics are discussed in a very open manner, all management is required to attend every meeting. In the couple of months that I have been on the commitee, I've found that the management is very receptive to ideas, criticisms, and open discussion.
I think it really boils down to what your management is like. Sometimes management is truly interested in making the company a good place to work and it has helped us in the sense that decisions that management has made were explained more in depth as to why those decisions were made. I'd lay out what you think needs to change, why, and how it can be changed. If you bring real world examples to them along with ideas on how to make it better I think they will be very receptive to those ideas. If you approach them with a list of complaints and no forward though on how to correct them then I would not say anything.
Just my 2 cents....
First off I don't know that a dinner (formal, informal?) is the appropriate setting for a whistleblowing and/or gripe session. Seems like more of an opportunity for schmoozing, selling some otherwise hard to budget ideas, laying groundwork for later proposals, etc.
:)
That said, if you feel you must forge ahead and divulge all of your departments glaring drawbacks to the higherups, remember to have your facts straight and well-documented. What avenues have been tried previously to rectify the problems? Does the fault lie in the process or in a person? Has the boss been made aware of this already? Which brings me to the last point: Unless the disposition of the offending supervisor (e.g. vindictive) prohibits, have a one-on-one with him/her *before* giving the goods the the VP.
Oh and remember to use a lot of passive sentence structures
I went to the city because I wished to live without deliberation.
I'd treat this event as a getting-to-know-you opportunity, and stop there. Be your best, most professional, likeable, and qualified version of yourself, to establish yourself to the suits as someone who cares about the company. If there are things they need to hear, you'll then have a better chance of them being taken seriously later, in a less hazardous context.
I'm not your average anti-social geeks, but I stick with jokes, sports, current events and light chit chat at these types of events. Use this time to develop a purely social relationship with the person you seek to influence. You can make arrangements to speak business for some later time.
One of the functions of Management it to be aware of any issues in their department , deal with them if possible and escalate them to Senior Management if necessary.
An event like this is recognition that Management is fundamentally failing to do their job, and than Senior Management doesn't have the skills/enthusiasm/determination to do anything constructive about it (ie fire/re-educate Management).
If you *ever* find yourself in this situation, basically you're screwed.
Functionally identical to your girlfriend/wife/SO asking "does this make me look fat?"
For you, the employee, this is a no win situation. At best, enjoy the fine dinner but say nothing even vaguely negative.
Spend your personal time updating your resume and job-hunting.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
a) when someone talks company information comes out--specially after some drinks. We are all human after all.
b) their ego will be satisfied since they can tell what the "vision" is
c) you will avoid the real quesions like who and what is fucking up the workplace
But anyway, consider this to be a good time for resume update.
- People who believe other people have no right to live, got no right to live ...
If the brass in your company are skipping over your immediate management to find out what's going on in the trenches, then I would strongly suggest the whole point of the dinner is for them to find out how good a job your managers are doing. If you are generally happy with your immediate management, be sure to praise them highly to the brass. You'll still need to be honest about what the biggest issues are, but be sure to accompany this information with further praise.
Though the idea of having your resume ready is good.
One thing you should try to have with your managers is trust. Think of this as a test of your trust with your manager, whether it be good or bad. If it is bad, at least you'll have your resume ready.
However, DO NOT just give problems to them, that's not productive, being at the bottom line you should have some ideas on how to solve them even if / especially if you do not have the power to do them yourself but the upper management would.
For example, if I had to deal with a bad co-worker that I cannot resolve on my own (e.g. the guy is obnoxious and pulls rank) I go to the project manager and let him deal with the issues since they are the stake holders too. I also show them that I have done what I can and provided solutions and alternatives should he also fail to deal with the co-worker.
Trusting management is hard, but if you have a trusting relationship you would reap more benefits. Just don't abuse it or use it as a kiss up tool, because your peers won't respect you and they'll do the same things to push you down.
Archie - CIO-for-hire
I've had some experience at this, working as a software engineering in a company with a few too many managerial levels. It's a tempting option to unload on the execs and tell it like it is, but I strongly recommend not doing this until you've voiced the same concerns to your manager and seen how far is goes up the chain to the exec level. Most managers will say the have an open door policy and want to hear the good with the bad, but if the bad news your delivering is going to make one of your managers look like an idiot, chances are they are going to have it in for you, on way or the other. They might not be able to fire you, but you could end up with all the crap work.
At medium and large size companies, the best action to take is no action at all. If an executive wishes to solicit your input, they'll ask for it in a meeting, all hands or at a social event. Not respecting the "chain of command" and bypassing your manager and director causes ruffled feathers. If you're trying to expose something illegal or something that is very harmful to the company, try HR. Going above your manager and director's heads will only alienate them towards you.
I'm actually at a place where it is perfectly acceptable to bring critical questions to senior management. If you can't do it informally, there is a system for formally doing it where reprisals are absolutely not tolerated. (Well, if you can prove it.)
Our VP just got through soliciting a round of employee questions (many quite critical and stinging) via a collaborate intranet site. But this is highly dependant on the corporate culture.
Unfortunately, I'm not all the convinced my VP is buying into it. The answers so far a very weak. Something you'd except from a CEO trying to dodge tough questions (by being very specific with words, not directly answering questions, etc etc).
In your case, though, if it is ultimately going to come back to your directors, maybe the questions should be saved for the directors themsevles. Generally, at the VP level, you get a boolean response. A fluff-off, or a hail storm. Neither one of those are what you want.
As others have posted, this can be a very tricky situation to be placed in. My old company had something similar for a few non-IS departments, and it resulted in "restructuring" whereby the ones who raised issues were "restructured" out of their jobs.
My advice would be to place the ball firmly in the CXXs' courts. If the corporate-level people are committed to change, digging out the worst problems and solving them, they shouldn't balk at the suggestion that this be an ongoing arrangement.
In other words, if someone were to stand up at this meeting and say, "Hey, I think this is a great opportunity to solve some issues that impede our progress. Will there be some way for us to get you suggestions beyond this meeting?"
If the Cxx answers, "No, this is pretty much how we want to handle it - one meeting," I'd say their motives aren't what they want you to believe they are. If they like the suggestion, however, and suggest that there could be some informal gathering or way of identifying such issues, I'd be more trusting of their motives.
Just don't allow them to leave it at a "planned" stage without followthrough. Ask for specific dates, times, etc., to identify responsible parties, and ask how these sessions will be structured.
When the second or the third such meeting rolls around, and it looks like things are getting attention and respect, *then* I'd feel better about speaking up.
- Jack
So I guess I'd question whether or not the whole event will turn out exactly as you're thinking it might in the first place.
Do you think that the President and CIO really want detailed feedback from an intimate dinner of 50 - 80 people?
No.
Ideally, with the ideas and sharing, these guys will have a better appreciation for us, adjust our budgets appropriately, and help us in our business.
Now, they may want to get the pulse of the group, an overall feeling. They may want to put some faces to email addresses. They may want you to know how your work affects the other groups (or get a feeling for how much dependencies you feel with other groups). But they aren't interested in "I need a new 30-inch Cinema Display." They aren't even interested in "My boss is an idiot," (unless EVERYONE thinks that ALL 6 managers in your department are idiots.)
Keep it very high level -- we don't have sufficient visibility on upcoming projects, we're having problems prioritizing between demands from the CxO and the CyO.
Also, try to phrase things so the manager is on your side -- "my manager is having trouble saying no to the CxO, and we all could use a little support here." You may not really beleive he's on your side, or not want him on your side, but at least when your comments get back to him, you can claim you were looking out for everyone's best interests.
I deal with the Executives so the IT people dont have to, I have people skills, cant you understand that, what the hell is wrong with you people.
Nothing. Will. Happen. ....
positive or negative, when meetings like this happen and anything changes, it's FAR from the norm, IMHO.
If no-one talks, then don't expect any problems to get solved.
Do the following:
1)List all of the issues you would like to raise.
2)Go back through the list and pick the few that you think are most important.
3)For each issue script a clear description, and most importantly, script a solution to the problem. If you don't have a workable solution, then never escalate the problem. Without a proposed solution, the manager will feel that s/he needs to find a solution, which is not always ideal.
4)Bring up only the 1 or 2 most important issues at the dinner. In that environment, any more than that stuff will be forgotten.
Bring up issues that will matter to upper management. Don't bring up crap like "The IT Director wants all of us to partition our drives a certain way, but that is not always optimal". Bring up stuff that effect finances and/or employee morale.
Finally, don't single out people for criticism ("My boss is an idiot!!"), but don't always hold back because you are afraid of the consequences. If your choose your actions based on fear of being trampled upon, then be prepared to always be trampled upon.
Keep in mind that upper management sometimes does care about the company. If they don't know about problems, they can't fix them.
Had a dinner with our CIO and CEO. Prior to the meeting, we got an email from the CIO telling us to 'be prepared to tell the CxOs where our dirty bathrooms are.' Well, long story short, I was the only one of the group that actually took those directions seriously, and got fired 6 months later.
Everyone else used the opportunity to suck up and eat free food, and last I knew they were still employed. Moral of the story: CxOs don't like to hear about problems, particularly when they are the ones causing them.
It's important not to cast blame on a person - odds are the management knows who the deadwood is (if they don't, it might be time to polish off the resume), but they may not know about kinks in the IT process; whether it's a lack of testing, convoluted approval processes, or simply inaccessible documentation.
I think the best advice is to grab yourself a copy of something like the Pragmatic Programmer, or (if you go in for tradition) the Mythical Man-Month, and look for pathological behaviours in those which match your own company. You can then suggest remedies for the problems, cite some kind of authority, and generally know what you're talking about rather than just carping like some unpatriotic malcontent. It's important to point out, explicitly, that any problems are no-one's fault - they simply arise, unintended, from the processes that have been adopted. It's inevitable because there's no perfect system.
Besides not being seen as a squealer, odds are that you're emphasising problems that are more endemic than simply having a bad manager. Bad managers, if handled delicately, are temporary. Institutional problems have much more inertia, and will aggravate you for much longer.
I'm Batman.
This is something I've dealt with for a long time, and have had a bit of success. After getting entrenched in a company, becoming very familiar with the politics of the place, it is always hard to take a step back, and present yourself objectively.
This gap in communications between tech people and company execs is obvious. Clearly we're made from different molds.
1. I put on my "game face" and pretend to be happy, even if I'm not.
2. I always keep a "can do" attitude, even if I believe the future is filled with doom.
3. They hate only hearing about problems. If I bring up a problem, they want to hear a solution.
4. If I have no solution, I say, "I think this is something we could all work on to come up with a solution on". They eat up the "teamwork" angle.
Usually, I feel like a whore afterwards, but shoot, I get better results.
Well, they need to know. It takes some experience with how to let them know what needs to be addresses, what if anything can be done about it, and what the consequences are.
Example: I was consulted to help a lab at a university set up a data server (about a terabyte capasity). I talked to their IT and was told that they have two firewalls (department and univeristy wide). Two years later (after the lab was breached on 3 different occasions, I find that there is *no* firwarll on any of the building except the one housing computer science. If I had known I would have installed a firewall and a gateway router. It became a problem once the building was wired... Well, since I moved on it is not my problem, but information is needed to pass informed decisions up the chain. Without it you are in deep dodo.
Example 2: The head of another department comes in and says that someone told one of the congressmen that the server would do XYZ (which it was never designed to do). What will it take to develop this? [twitch, jump out of my chair, sit down, twitch acouple of more times -- I literally did this] Well, a year and a half of development time, and I *will not* be the one to tackle this job! Ok... take a deep breath and calm down. What can we do? Well, give me a day or two to look into it and try a couple of hacks. I will tell you what I find. After crawling around in 80,000 lines of code I came up with a discusting hack that worked... After working 100 hours in 5 days I got the stuff out for the dog-and-poney-show. Next I told them what they needed to do to get it done right. They were all smiles. BIG GENUINE SMILES. Even glad to commit the resources. Then I mentioned I just got a phone call from someone offering me a dream job. We need to find me a replacement. I can give you 3 months full time and cunsulting after that... [I have never watched a smile go to brittle glass before]
The hard part is making constructive suggestions. You have to be very careful you're not stepping on someone else's toes. You may have a great idea for improving the company - with a completely positive presentation. However, if that particular idea, or type of idea, is the within the domain of someone else or some department other than yours, you can also damage your career. If it's AVP Jane Smith's organizational role to save $ in a certain area. You come along from AVP John Doe's group and make her folks look like slackers with that great idea that should have originated in hers, you may find yourself marked. Should Mr. Doe take leave for some reason, beware the wrath of Ms. Smith once he's gone.
I AM, therefore I THINK!
It is always a nerve-racking thing to have to tell someone high up on the org chart that there is something wrong with their company, but it is something that is usually valued - especially if there is a barrier, such as a budget or a technology, that is causing the problems. You are always opening yourself up to risk when you speak up where others might not, but one of the few things that I remember from my college finance classes is that risk usually= reward
Management types love to focus on attitude, because deep down they're just as big of a tender-hearted goof as you are. If you've ever been in a meeting where someone was fired in committee, you'll hear the debate centering on attitude, focussing on the clearly evident fact the Mr Soon-to-be-unemployed behaves like he doesn't really want to work here. Attitude.
#1 in the Atitude department is A Positive Outlook. You can demonstrate a positive outlook by NEVER CRITICISING SOMEONE OR SOMETHING UNLESS YOU HAVE A PROVEN ALTERNATIVE, and you focus on that alternative, rather than the problem. For example: "Sir, employee theft of office supplies is the single biggest cause of our double-digit drops in profit for three quarters in a row, but this online office supply store has prices that are 45% less than our current supplier, and they have those cool neon-colored PostIt notes in stock 24-7!" That might sound silly, but trust me, a positive attitude can get you through the night. I just got an 11% raise out of it.
Since some may wish to get in to management, this dinner/review party could be a good chance to backstab your boss(es) and therefore open a clear road to the top.
don't let your backstabbing peers get there first either, make sure you name them as culprits in corporate ineffeciency and the reason your IT dept is so messed up, before they name you.
-s
(p.s. At dinner, don't talk about golf with these people unless you know your stuff. I found this out the hardway once, just wow them with archane references to programming languages which aren't in use any more, they'll think you're a god).
Think about it, why are these big important people trying to talk to the people who do stuff in a semi social setting?
Lots of people will think they're all out to get you, but really don't you think the company president wants to develop a pruned team of yes men. Most of them have better things to do with their evenings.
I think they probaly want to understand what people are thinking, and where the group sees itself going.
That being said, be open, honest, explain what you see as being valuable and important and value added, what you feel wastes your time. Ask how those confusing bits of your day fit into the big picture, get an understanding of where you fit in the big picture, learn what other areas do.
You don't have to lie and say everything is wonderful, and you wouldn't change a thing. Nor should you sit in front of your boss and complain about how much of an idiot he is. Neither one will benefit the company, and neither one will show you as a capable intelligent thinker, if you aren't, why keep you around?
Trust me on this - no one wants to know the truth. They want to look as if they want it. They want to look as if they tried to find it.
But if they *do* find it, it's shoot the messenger time. I've seen this scenario way too many times. It hardly varies at all.
If there is a real problem that's important to you AND that can be solved with reasonable money, etc. then you might identify it along with an explanation that the issue is complex and you would like to work with to make a really good business case for it. That way you don't dodge the question but you emphasize that you respect and value the chain of command.
In the early nineties, I wrote a memo describing the Engineering Department's lack of backup and the company risk it represented. They had no data backup, ten CAD stations and a full flat file of legacy drawings, all in one room.
The memo was given to my boss who passed it up through the chain of command, with endorsement. When it found its way to corporate HQ in Laguna Niguel, all hell broke out. A sacrificial head was demanded by corporate and guess who looked good for it? Right, the messenger.
You might say that I should have left such a lousy job. The time was the early nineties recession and I had a wife, five year old daughter and a new baby. Jobs were scarce and pay from a shitty job is better than no pay when you have loved ones to feed, clothe and house.
Keep your mouth shut unless you have another job waiting!
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
Yeah, they did that with our company too.
Two weeks later we were all outsourced.
If you have problems getting things done in your work, or feel that something would better enable you to do your job, your manager(s) should have heard it by now.
Now your manager may have passed along problems and suggestions already. If so, then you will just be repeating what the manager said. This is not a bad thing at all. This will not get you into trouble, and will help emphasize the suggestions.
If your manager has not passed along problems and suggestions well, he or she may have their own reasons for this, since other things need to be taken into consideration. Hopefully your manager has explained to you the reason why some problems went unaddressed. If your manager is not doing a good job of communicating the company's decisions, that is a problem between you and your manager. This can get you into trouble.
If your manager has taken your suggestions and been unable to get them implemented due to other parts of the company saying no, then this is your chance to use your own arguments for "the cause".
If you see that there are major problems that are going unaddressed, then you might be blunt at the beginning of the conversation about possible repercussions to you speaking up. Be honest - if the executives truly want to hear what is wrong and what can be improved, they want the employees they are meeting with to speak openly, and without fear of being retaliated against.
Ask what sort of reassurances the executives can make in case you find yourself in that situation. Also ask if you would be able to meet with them if that situation arises.
Of course, if problems run that deeply in your company (especially in your department), it might be time to start looking for another job anyway.
One big bit of advice is to stick to your department and job. If you are in IT, do not talk about problems you see in the accounting department, unless it is directly related to your job in IT.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
Up until a couple months ago I was a tech at Best Buy. Every 6 months or so we had this survey we had to fill out to gage employee satisfaction. My store ended up near the bottom of the rankings company wide, so naturally, our managers wanted to know why. So they called us in for group meetings.
:).
:)
Anyhow, during the meeting we brought up several concerns and issues we had, not the least of which that we had 2 phillips head screw drivers and one flathead in our tool box... and that was pretty much it, everything else had been 'borrowed' (read: stolen) by the other employees. There were also a whole host of other issues that were brought up, schedules not being published until the day before it went into effect and so on... and all of our issues were met with either 'There is nothing we can do about that' or 'We'll rectify that immediately'. Just before the end, my supervisor, seeing that we wern't getting anywhere, mentioned something about people not cleaning up after themseleves in the break room.
When the end of the meeting came about, we were told to fill out a whole new survey and to write down our store's 'Action Plan'. I don't remember the exact wording, but it was something to the effect of 'Employees will clean up after themselves in the break room and this will help to boost store morale'. I put in my notice about a week later, and now, almost 3 months after that meeting, nothing has changed (I still have several friends there).
The moral of the story? I've no idea, just relating my experience of talking to management and the dismal results. But in your situation, I'd wager you've got a better shot of management actually listening and being responsive. Just one thing I would recommend, try and keep things positive, like say: 'Yes, these servers are working ok for now, but I think we could increase such and such by upgrading them'. Sounds a lot better than 'These servers suck, we need new ones'... and it's less likely to come back and bite you
Good luck
"Trusting every aspect of our lives to a giant computer was the smartest thing we ever did.." Homer Simpson
Suppose you give a great idea. What do you get? Will the people reward you, or will it just be one of 5 suggestions from that great night which was the CIO's initiative in the first place? You stuck your neck out for what, something you should have mentioned to your manager before? Something you've should have implemented on small scale locally?
If it does get back to you, why didn't your manager say this before? Isn't he suppose to be on top of this stuff? Shouldn't he have seen your wisdom and intelligence before? Why do we keep him around?
Suppose its a bad idea. Do you think your manager is going to be happy that you went off on a 15 minute OpenSource rant with liberal doses of "BILL GATES = EVIL!!!"? Who do you think will stick out like a sore thumb next time layoffs come around?
Not all of these things can happen in one year but this year I suggest keep quiet. Next year, see what happen last year to see what you are willing to do.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
i think sharing problems with the guys up there isn't so bad as long as you go there with the attitude:
"this is what is happening. here's a good plan to tackle the problem. this is how we can avoid such problem from happening in the future. this is how... etc etc."
tuco
If your company is having problems and you don't feel safe doing your duty and informing the higher ups, you need to start looking for a new job.
In case you haven't heard: the IT economy ain't doing so hot. Getting a new job isn't quite as easy as you are implying.
i bet you the author of this ask slashdot works for sco.
never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever point the finger or put blame on any one person or group of people...it will bite you in the ass one way or another!
dude.
Ding ding ding. How about telling the execs the above?
Sample, off the top of my head: "Well, to be honest, we do have some problems, but we don't really feel comfortable going over our bosses heads, and we think that it would strain relations, interfere with teamwork, and hurt productivity. If you assure us you'll work with our bosses in a positive way, instead of coming down on them for the problems we name, we'll be happy to give you some of our views."
Anyway, I've done this, sorta. At my last job, I asked our president and CEO(Cathi Raffaeli) at an employee meeting(after nearly a minute of silence after she asked for feedback) the following: "It's been over a year since we merged and brought in these other companies. We've still got two completely seperate networks, and people can't print to printers sitting next to them, or share files with employees from the other company, because the networks are still seperate. It's causing a lot of aggrivation for us on the support side, and a lot of frustration and lost productivity for end-users. When will this be solved?" Yes, it was a loaded question- but it was intended to be a loaded question for someone else.
She deferred to my bosses's boss(Jerry Lepore- the someone else)- who was supposed to be on the speakerphone, as he worked out of the other office down in Georgia. Well, good ol' Jerry wasn't there anymore- he had hung up on the MANDATORY meeting quite a while ago. She was left standing going "Uhhhh...". It was like those commercials where they play tape recordings of conversations with CEOs and ask them a general question about their IT and they just stammer. She had no clue. Probably because she was a banking exec in charge of a software company.
Even though she's a wicked nasty little bitch- I've never met such a stuck up, I-want-my-latte-and-I-want-it-an-hour-ago executive(she once called US and had US running around to figure out why she was stuck on Route 95 in lower CT- which gridlocks every morning without fail...and she went through THREE executive assistants in under a year) I felt bad, and stopped by her office after the meeting an apologized for putting her into the situation. That probably smoothed things over a little, but I did hear later that Jerry was absolutely ripshit- but couldn't do anything, because it would have been recognized immediately as revenge. The guy may have only been a high school science teacher(I shit you not- VP of technology, whose only work experience was high school science), but at least he wasn't THAT stupid.
I tell you- it was, however, entirely worth it when a fellow employee bumped into me in the lunchroom while my boss was having lunch, and said "Gee, you really stuck it to Cathi with that question!" He nearly choked... :-)
Please help metamoderate.
doesn't foster a comfortabe atmosphere towards internal issues, then let the VP/CEO know the problem anonymously.
When you state the problems, also explain why you are uncomfortable just sending an email or discussing the issues. From the brief post, it sounds like the top managment wants to here those problem, but the director level people are vindictive.
Ever VP/CIO/CTO/CEO I have worked with appreciated candid discussion. Perferable with solutions attached.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
A lot of people are making portends of doom if you actually pipe up and say anything yourself.
I would suggest that, rather that going alone on the limb of trying to air your own issues, you take another, safer route where your own management is concerned:
Find out what your -manager- has issues with. If your managers have been having problems with trying to get a resolution from his own superiors, then make the focus about those particular issues. If they see that the issues your manager has been telling them about are the same ones that the employees themselves are complaining about, then something is much more likely to be done about it. You also are much less likely to see any repercussions against yourself - how can your manager fire you for saying the same thing he is? (Of course, they might just get rid of both levels, but hey)
More than likely, the high-ups in the company are doing this more as a morale booster than an actual problem-fixing situation. Let them use it as such, and try to get the department's major (at least in your manager's eyes) issues addressed. They probably don't want to hear about all of your minutae, just the major things that they might actually be able to feel like they're doing something useful for on a business level, not a lower-level management level.
It also sounds like there are issues with the department that you are afraid would come back to bite you, or you wouldn't be so worried about the issue in the first place. I would take the normal approach with these problems. Go to your manager, or if there's a problem with him, go to his manager. State the problem anonymously, if nesccessary, and if you need to follow up later, perhaps phrase it as a "someone mentioned that there was this issue... do you know if anything was done about it?"
Conclusion: make a department wide concensus as to what issues need to actually be aired to the president of the company.
Let them know what you do, in a general sense, and how it helps the company, if you have to talk to them directly. If you are forced to answer 'what issues are you having?' take the route of reiterating the agreed upon issue, or use anecdotes of some simple problems that you have had and that have been solved. Something in the normal line of work... so they can understand more of what you do, but realize that you are capable and can get the job done, regardless.
My unemployed-self suggestion.
Good luck.
but let Milton burn the place down, and I'll be able to do the construction work I've always dreamed of.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
the executive was really talking to the garbage can all night. This is why alcohol should not be served at company functions.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
When executive management has this type of meeting with the entire department it means they do not have confidence in their manager's ability to manage otherwise they wouldn't have (or need) the meeting. It's a sure sign of more serious problems within the company.
As head of an IT department, it's my job to communicate the problems/concerns my staff bring to my attention that I can not address at my level. It is equally important for the staff to understand that, unless they are working for a charity, the object of the game is profit and they are there to make the company money (or at least not cost it as much). The value of a good management team is that this type of communication is natural and automatic.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=impact
As soon as your directors gain "an understanding of what is going on in IT", then they can put that information in their new offshore outsourcing RFP.
You can be damned sure they don't care about your welfare.
Meeting in a group isn't going to help. If your CEO wants to know what's going on, he's got to talk with you guys in a setting where you're not censoring yourselves.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I didn't want anyone to wast their mod points on that. Is there any other way to get modded down automaticlly.
Maybe it's experiment time. Wait for an article on a subject you know fairly well. Prepare a long, we'll articulated post. Include quotes from industry experts, and a few useful links. Even double check your grammar and spelling. Choose your best +5 material. When your post is ready, set the subject to something like: "Taco sucks asian boy wanker".
That company doesn't sound very stable.
Think about it, someone works to correct a problem, and they fire them?
Either the story is incomplete. There might have been something else going on that even the poster isn't aware of.
The management is truely incompetent.
Not backing up data like that is quite bad, suggesting that it be done isn't an excuse to get fired, unless you blew your budget on something stupid, then asked for more money.
Something like this happens about every month or so where I work. There's a group of representatives from each department, they all bang-heads about what drives them nuts at work. Then they send reps. to meet with the Mid-Higher-Ups (Executives and such). Basically, the Dept. Managers and the Dept. Pres & VP are left out of the loop. It only took one person questioning our Dept. Pres' 60% pay raise to land the whole thing in hot water. Although it was quite entertaining when the Dept. Pres. (and avid book-thumping rules-lawyer) called in said inquirer and "politely requested" that from now on, he be informed of such issues prior to bringing them up to the Mid-Higher-Ups. Then the inquirer proceeded to show him the signed, set-in-stone policy regarding Dept. Managers and PHBs from interfering with this process. The only thing sweeter was the various shades of red and purple the Dept. Pres. kept turning during the conversation...
"When I am king, you will be first against the wall..."
If a firecracker explodes on your open palm, you'll get burned, but you'll probably recover. If you close your hand around it, the explosion will more than likely mangle your hand.
It's similar when it comes to dealing with situations where you're dealing with senior managers. I don't know if your company is 50-80 people or your IT department is 50-80 people, but I assume you are anticipating some "face time" at this event. You're correct in assuming that the issues you bring up are going to be communicated back to your bosses. You'd be stupid to think otherwise. But a little tact goes a long way when it comes to speaking to your boss's boss. (or your boss's boss's boss)
First, don't turn the conversation into a bitch session. The last thing you want is for the higher-ups in your company to think that all you can do is mope and complain. They'll remember it when the next round of downsizing comes along, and you'll be doing your moping and complaining on the unemployment line. Instead, maintain a generally positive attitude. If you can't do that, you work for the wrong company and need to move on, anyway.
Second, frame the issues you wish to bring up in terms of opportunity instead of attacking individuals. Suppose your boss is a terrible communicator, and sends out project requests in short emails instead of discussing them with you and detailing specifications and requirements. Instead of:
That's making a fist around a firecracker. Frank, regardless of how poor his communication skills might be, is going to be rightfully upset when that gem gets back to him through the grapevine. Instead, say:
I hope you see the difference. The issue is framed as one of communication, as opposed to a defect in Frank's personality. Similarly, instead of:
Try:
You might undergo some pain, especially if you are assigned the project of upgrading, replacing the email server, but nothing compared to what you'd experience if Bob felt like you were badmouthing him to his boss.
Finally, speak about things you know. If you're the network admin, bring up issues related to the network. If you're a web monkey, bring up the web site. Don't just blast things you really have no business commenting on. You might feel like your company's sales team is a bunch of lying, egg-sucking weasels. Most sales teams are. But it's not related to your sphere of expertise, therefore it's not appropriate to address. Starting a war with another department is DEFINITELY grabbing a lit firecracker. And it may be more akin to lighting the firecracker and popping it in your mouth. Only, instead of a firecracker, you swallow a lit stick of dynamite. (Now, THAT is taking an analogy too far!)
All too often, geeks take business issues personally, when there are often simple, business-related explanations. Bob isn't tormenting you with the crappy mailserver because he doesn't like you, he can't replace it until next year because the company spent $1 million bucks on yet another ERP/CRM upgrade. When you take things down a notch, and address the issues instead of the personalities, then it almost inevitably breeds a more positive tone. Frank may be a dickhead, or he may just be a techie who hasn't learned much about managing people.
Third, don't try to solve all the world's problems in one night. You won't have the time. Pick some important issues, frame them as opportunities for improvem
Blogging Weight Loss, Distance Education, and more at verlin.com
necessary for corporate expansion (i know there's a joke here somewhere), but not discussed in mixed company (boardmembers, clients, etc). okay, maybe i'm stretching the analogy, but IT is important, and a smart managment group will recognize this.
IMHO you shouldn't go into the meeting airing departmental dirty laundry, and don't use the opportunity to settle any political scores. do realize that the IT department is an important corporate entity, leverage that fact, and don't be afraid to be a little political.
maybe the group of you should all meet before hand and come up with a list of things you've accomplished as a dept, things you'd like to accomplish in the next year(2 or 3 years even), and list the reasons how these improvements can help save/make money for the company.
if you play your cards right, you might even find yourself being the big swinging dicks of your company...
three can keep a secret, if two are dead - benjamin franklin
This happened to my department around six months ago.
I detailed it in my blog if you'd care for a look.
Some of the changes are more than interesting.
Thanks.
-- CSLib
If you're going to bring up anything, be prepared to back it up with a PowerPoint briefing and detailed documentation in the future-in short, if you can't use this to make a star out of yourself, just keep quiet.
What's up with all the paranoia? Fears of Burns-esque palm-rubbing executives sitting around dark smoke-filled rooms, discussing who is "not with the program" and should be fired?
Let the guys hosting the dinner set the tone. If they ask you direct operational questions, answer them the best you can. Avoid griping as a matter of course -- it never sounds good to someone on the outside. Be direct, friendly, and basically get the point across that you're doing the best you can with what you have to keep the company going forward. You may not get the additional things you need, but at least they'll feel that you have the company's best interests at heart.
"...the truth shall set you free..."
Now you could do it in style as this story suggests?
Making the whole discussing into a "bitch" session will only turn the upper-management off. No one wants to be bitched at and the negative feelins will make any real issues harder to deal with.
Sorry for the AC post, but I don't want any attribution (or was that retribution?) for this. I'm a director at a Fortune 50 company, currently running a nice sized appdev shop. I spend a lot of time at both the exec level and front line level. That'll change with my next promotion, so this is probably my last chace to weigh in on this.
* In social situations like the one discussed here, I tend to focus more on reading the overall mood and attitude of the group. I can learn a lot about the shape a team/group/dept is while watching them at a party. Are they tense, ill at ease and afraid to say anything? Do they act like they've never spent a minute outside the office with each other? Are there tight, unmoving cliques or loose interchanging groups? Are all the mgrs off by themselves - and is it by choice or exclusion? What's the laugh quotient? Is there a lot of bitterness, frustration and dejection? Is the group pumped up, knowing they're at the top of their game and ready for any challenge?
* Most incompetent people will generally hang themselves given enough rope. So, instead of spending your time pointing out what is probably obvious to everyone else and looking like a big whiner or getting a bad reputation, why not make sure they get more rope at every opportunity? "Um, sure Bob, taking down the production servers in the middle of the day _would_ keep you from having to come in tonight...I, um, hadn't quite looked at it that way before - nice perspective!"
* Never, ever give negative feedback about anyone to anyone in management except your direct boss. Anything else is a quick way to commit political suicide. If you're really pushed into a corner, try damning with faint praise: "Yes, it's been an interesting year working for Chuck but I think he's really starting to get the hang of things now. I'm glad to see he's found his niche."
Be bold and tell them who's screwing up. Chew out people for not getting things done.
:)
By the way, where do you work. I'm unemployed and I have a feeling there will be a job opening in your company after the dinner
In times like these, it is helpful to remember that there have always been times like these. - Paul Harvey
Chances are, they already have heard about the problems through various rumblings in the office. They aren't totally cut off in their ivory tower. They know at least one person's side of the story and may be fishing for another. You're usually the last to find out if someone is stabbing you in the back (or blaming you).
I don't know your particular problems, but like someone mentioned you should have solutions as well as complaints. Pointing blame puts you on the wrong level in their mind. If you have a solution that doesn't put someone's ass in a sling, go with that.
If they really want get to the bottom of it or do an audit, then you can start covering your ass.
Just a theory.
I hate to say it but in my experience very few managers can see beyond their direct reports. Whatever problem you bring up to your director will be explained away completely by the manager the next day.
Cynical
Suggest that there be periodic meetings (say monthly or quarterly) with a few representatives of the non-management user population (such secretaries or customer relations or whatever) to learn about how IT can help them better. Management loves that sort of thing. Management loves focus groups. Management loves task forces. You don't need to make any concrete suggestions here, no need to walk on dangerous ground. Just propose another bureaucratic process that someone can add to their list of achievements.
Every year we (IT) buy the head boss a new palm pilot, seems to do the trick. Quite simple really.
This Dilbert comic which ran in the paper recently.
1) Start with the positives.
2) Point out problems. Have Potential Solutions (yes, that's plural) to the problems with pros and cons of each.
3) Return to the positives.
The art of selling change is to present it in a manner that they feel they've made the final decision, even though you did it for them in how you presented more than one solution, but the one you prefer obviously has the most pros and least cons.
Linux - Because Mommy taught me to Share.
I hate to be a dick about it, but this sounds eerily like what has been going on with the Finance community. Not reporting correctly. This just sounds like deceit plain and simple. People in the financial world are going to jail for not reporting correctly. Granted, your situation may not be as serious, but it certainly could be and not being honest and up front isn't going to help things one bit when a poorly built house of cards comes tumbling down. It's a bitter pill to swallow, but in the long run, honesty really is the best policy. A lot of cliches? yeah, but they are cliches for a reason.
Another poster wrote "get your resume ready". I agree. Hiding things won't make them any less of an issue later. In fact, I think these things have a way of getting bigger and worse.
Co-founder and designer at Music Nearby: http://musicnearby.com
"One major reason for this is so that they can get a better understanding of what is going on in IT and how it impacts the company overall." In other words, "we want to justify the relocation of the IT department to India. So we'll get a few I.T. guys drunk and they'll justify for us in spades...." If I were you, i wouldnt have the dinner - just have a regular normal meeting , sober, and within a meeting room on the company premises. The dinner aspect is a well known wheeze to butter you up and lower your defences - its a classic power play.
If you are not politically deft enough to have a preexisting relationship with the people above your management then I'd say that you should steer clear of any major criticism. If you do have a relationship with the upper crust, then by all means try to blast your immediate manager as much as possible. Any chance you have "outside" the office to talk to the higher ups should be used to springboard yourself up the ladder. That's how they do it, that's how you should do it.
... don't go over anybody's helmet.
"Derp de derp."
As Admiral Ackbar would say 'It's a trap!'. Unless, your company's senior management is unusually perceptive, virtuous, abounding with integrity, overflowing with empathy ... etc., I would advise enjoying the meal in silence. If not, here's the scenario I would expect (and I've SEEN this at several companies):
... and we have many other problems including ...
...
Low ranking engineer (LRE):
Senior Manager: (turns to mid-level manager): Did YOU know about this?!
Mid-Level Manager (with 'deer-in-headlights' look. Thinks - if I say 'no', then I'm not properly tracking and handling issues. If I say 'yes' - then he'll ask why I didn't inform senior management and act to correct it): Yes! As a matter of fact, we are forming a committee to study this issue. I haven't spoken to (LRE) yet, but he's chairing the committee.
Senior Manager: Good, I want a full report on Monday
LRE: Gulp!
Don't come to me with problems; come to me with solutions.
Provide the proper context. Move the conversation forward. Focus on the positives Network first When it comes down to it though, you know your company and coworkers better that we do, and must act accordingly. Some tactics may work at one company, but would be totaly inapproprate at another."terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
Call me paranoid, but unless they're willing to supersize that meal, it's a bad deal for you. I'm going to guess that something big, like an outsourcing deal, will be announced that night.
The CB App. What's your 20?
Keep your resume updated and do at least one interview every quarter. Even if there is nothing wrong with the company you're at. You need to know what you are worth and what the market is like.
It helped with my last job. The job was great. My boss was great. But then we hired a new VP of IT and he started adding his own people from the last company he was at.
In my experience Management believe that throwing money at hardware or software will fix their problems. Or better yet we will outsource. The basic things they seem to forget or have not learned are:
Most management decisions are made out of ignorance and head burying so the existing problems are not known in the hope all symptoms will remain hidden.
The weathers here - Wish you were beautiful
Just a couple things:
1) Don't suggest anything as a problem unless it impacts profit (be prepared to explain how)
2) Any problem you suggest have a solution for. Don't be closed minded to just technical solutions all problems can be solved with "people process or technology".
3) If at all possible don't use this forum. You know they are interested. If you really have some big hitters drop a hint and schedule a personal meeting with the CIO.
4) My personal feelings a real team player doesn't place the blame on anyone. If it happens in your area weather it is your direct duties or not you know about it so you could of changed it. If you haven't had the chance this is it!
I have a professor (who is quite excellent) who usedto work for a large telecommunications company as an executive prior to his retirement. I've spent a large amount of time talking to him, and I think I'm fairly certain I know what he would recommend, or at least something similar to what he himself would have done in such a situation. :) He currently works as a business efficiency expert for contract.
:)
If you're going to say anything at all, don't waste your breath being petty or mentioning minor instances of complaints. Cut right to the thick of the matter, and give him your assessment and the logic behind your assessment. Preferably, have a writeup/short report (one or two pages) to hand him for later peruseal with well-outlined points. Don't mention names, but point him in the right direction so that he doesn't feel like he's bringing the axe down on your recommendations, but on his 'own' decision - which he somehow reached after your carefully worded suggestion.
If there is a sizeable group of people, break the concerns up amongst you. Get together at a bar or somewhere a couple days prior to the dinner, get a list, and then distribute the list amongst willing contributors, so that no one person gets the heat. It would be incredibly stupid for anyone short of the president to try and pull down heat on a group of that size.
If you catch heat from middle management afterwards, guess what? That just means that they're pissed tha the president is making changes based on your apt suggestions. If he revokes priviledges/perks or fires you, write off a little letter to the president letting hiim know what happened. that middle management will likely be looking for a job soon, too. Then see if you can't get the president to be a job reference.
The ability to see and try to solve real (as opposed to created)problems is a valueable ability to have, and a very valueable asset for any company; if they ignore that asset, you're best off looking for a job, because truely, your position there isn't secure in the least - the company isn't likely terribly secure, if they punish real problem solving.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
...but if you bring up issues as opportunities to avoid problems, then that should go over better.
Also, avoid making the event confrontational at all costs. This is, after all, a dinner they invited you to, isn't it?
I would focus on dropping hints that I am not getting heard and when they say something like: "don't be afraid to let us know about anything that may bother you", I'll take that as they being receptive to a "problem report" with resolution suggestions I will e-mail them the next day.
That, or I'll show them the bug tracking system (you can use most of them for IT issues) and how there are either too many issues going unresolved because we're understaffed, don't have the money to make them happen, etc.
Good luck.
If they wanted to find out what was going on , they'd come talk to you at your desk, right where you're working on the problems themselves. Having a "dinner" is symbolic to those types, much more so than actually rolling their sleeves up and getting down into the trenches to see what's going on. Kind of like "doing lunch", except bigger. Don't expect anything effective to come of this.
If you let them know the concerns of what you are about to tell them (as you just told this forum) they will take into consideration how their decisions will affect you if they decide that they want to really know what's going on. They will know that by letting them in on your "secrets" that they should be tactful in how the situation is handled in order to be mindful of you and also to facilitate these talks in the future and to show you that by handling the situation appropriatley that future problems won't be swept under the rug and hidden from them.
Here's your chance to improve your company's fortunes. Either drop a little botulinim toxin (botox) in the management staff's meals. Alternatively, add extra ethanol to their drinks and when they are drunk enough, extract the company's and their personal dark secrets from them. The beauty of it is, they won't remember a thing.
Muhahahaha!
What is the inverse of the Matrix?
Wake up and get real. "IT" IS a service.
First you say A lot of the problem has been that upper management has treated the IT department more like a service department than a productive part of the company.
Then This is after we stepped up and saved them an assload of money by building a project in-house instead of buying a similiar service.
So which is it, a service or not?
OK, a valuable serice, but a service none the less. Nobody "buys" you company's "IT", they buy it's products or services. NOT your "IT." Everyone, and I mean everyone, is "support" to getting that product (or service) out the door.
I want to say first that it depends upon the culture of your company. You also don't say at what sort of level you work in the company, so I'm assuming at least several levels down from the management.
If you are peopled by weasels (is that possible?) then the best advice is always to watch your back.
If your company is hugely political then politics is valued and it's best to approach it like that.
On the other hand, the fact that your management is meeting you at all suggests that you are working in a well-balanced company. If that's the case you should speak the truth when asked, without dumping anyone in the muck; that's a good way to make enemies. You should be polite and only discuss major points.
Your management has a different view on the company from you. They have to take the whole company into account, and you are naturally most interested in your corner. Having a bitch about the cubicles in the IT area won't win bonus points, but if you talk about how the sales people don't have good enough kit for their jobs you will. So - focus on what are problems for other people, and how to solve them.
Don't expect your management to do everything you suggest - and don't get despondent if they don't do the things that you think are most important. They have to prioritise across the whole company and should be giving weight to those areas that will bring the biggest benefit to the whole company. This doesn't mean that they didn't hear what you said, and didn't want to do anything. It may simply mean that there are higher priorities at the moment.
Do talk to your management as if they are people and not uber-gods. Try to avoid geek-speak. Do dress smartly - even if you wouldn't normally - it will reinforce your point of view. Don't drink much - you don't think as well - even though you are convinced that you do.
Hope that's some help.
Jeff
I'm working at a major Canadian telecom, an we have tech problems. Half of the applications we have to use are buggy, and the bugs are obvious. Work arounds are passed by word of mouth. Most are in house apps, but no development appears to be happening with them. The lowest rung workers complain all the time, but the managers don't breath a word of critism because they we will be black marked for it. What can a person do? The right thing is to complain to the right person and risk the retiliation that might happen. Band together, if everyone complains, they can't fire you all right?
If you work for a company that can not take constructive feedback and improve the business, you need to find another job. Some of the stories posted here are great examples of how to tell you are working for the WRONG company!
I have been a CIO and a CEO of businesses, and we always need to hear what is going on in any business unit - including IT. But management that can not digest constructive feedback is not worth working for.
There is some good advice here, especially the advice about being relevant and being solution oriented. Also keep in mind that the CEO of a business needs to "abstract" problems from lower levels of the organization. If you say "our computers are slow and crappy" then he (or she) might think "we need to re-examine the capital equipment purchase cycle." This does not mean you were not heard - it just means the message was processed from a different level of abstraction.
Go and have a good time. Try to understand them, and look for signs they are (at least) trying to understand you. If you make a little progress, great! If nothing else, make them pick up the tab!
You'll never be able to conttrol what happens between management's ears...
:)
But you are in complete control over what commes out of your mouth.
(Hopefully there isn't a better quote expressing this notion somewhere else!
IT loses money (unless you sell IT). The rest of the company (except for HR and Accounting) make money for the company and you spend it.
It is very important to socialize with the people above you and help them understand how much you're actually saving the company by the things you're doing.
Remember, there are other people who will be happy to smooze the higher ups if it means they can replace you. Out-sourcing is an example of this. And those people will have no problem telling big lies about how much money they will save the company.
It's a sad fact of the business world, but social contacts count as much as technical skills in most companies.
Do the drinks and dinner scene.
If all the IT people in the business get together and say: "We'll help but first we want more managerial authority and higher paychecks," you will have them right where you want them.
If you don't like that, do this.
Just remember to always act cool.
I'm not with you on this one. As an IT freelancer, I would be convincing your BOSSES how effective and cost worthy it is to replace their IT staffs with people like me.
But then, my schedules are all tied up nowadays that I would have to start a company to do this. I would suggest you either do what I do, or, send your bosses some "How I Love My Boss" cards.
Cheerios
it's quite easy to see that all the techies - all 80 of y'all - are going to meet 2 people from management, and nothing's gonna happen. i see it as just a way to "show" that they care bout the IT deptt more than they really do.
i would just go eat and come back (if u really want to go, i.e)
it woulda made sense to ask for suggestions/ideas from the tech deptt (im sure they know not all 80 will respond). management meeting with techies doesnt take much time as it is.
The advice I always got given was called a positive sandwich - you deliver the negative in between two positives. That way you don't look like a negative fucker, but you still get to say what you don't like. It works too, it's really non confrontational.
This my not be as scarey or negative as people think. Most of us IT types tend to take a negative spin on things.
A company I previously worked for, did the same thing, although on a much smaller scale. These meetings happened once every 3 months and it seemed to be pretty pointless.
Managment fobbed off any minor problems with the usual respons of "deal with it", and the major ones made slow progress, if any. After about the third meeting, the geeks got together and decided it was time to plan an attack. The plan was to only present problems which could be fixed without placing blame, and that could be fixed or at least "see progress" within 3 months.
Otherwise, in the words of my father: choose your battles. Even though there may be a many problems, its best that your department stick to something acheivable, and get EVERYONE to sing the same tune, to the one or two things.
By having everyone talk about the same thing to different levels on the same night, the problem will be attacked on many levels, and in my situation, I was surprised how successful the outcome was.
"Ideally, with the ideas and sharing, these guys will have a better appreciation for us, adjust our budgets appropriately, and help us in our business."
Perhaps you're looking at it the wrong way. Perhaps with ideas and sharing, you guys will have a better appreciate for them, adjust your budget expectations, and help them run *their* business.
So many IT people work in a void whereby the IT is more important to them than the business. So many IT people don't understand the business they work in, and nor do they have any real desire to.
How does this not scream of to your manager?;
"You have horrible personal management skills, you are so clueless that you didn't even know that we did this project and we think you are biased. PS - we wasted time on this when we told you were were doing something else."
Sometimes the medium is more important than the message.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
I always love the showdown betweel IT and operations! Its the only chance you'll get to intimidate them fully( forget it if your thinking about any good coming out of this). They usually just shake their heads n promise to buy you new CD's.. is that all IT is worth? NEW CD's?? :-)
Lord of the Binges.
The next guy to jump ship should just tell it like it is. I've worked in at least one place where a particular individual ruined the morale of an entire shop, thirty to forty individuals.
This fine fellow was a daytime supervisor and found it his calling to belittle and berate anybody and everybody. In a personal way and to such a point I'm surprised that nobody sued the company.
Since I worked a different shift, I didn't consider him 'my boss'. There was 45 minute to an hour of overlap between shifts, so I did on occasion interact with him. If he gave it, he got it back from me. I tried to address the issue (and others) in a constructive way with no success. It got really bad and the CEO brought in a morale consultant that made us all do calisthenics together (I wish I was kidding).
Finally I found a different job with a jump up in pay. When the plant manager asked me why I was leaving, I figured I had nothing to lose and I laid it out for him over the course of 15 minutes.
The PM took it personally, invited me to leave a week early and was visibly angry, but a couple hours later he came back out of the office and decided to be my buddy before he went home. He couldn't (and didn't) refute anything I'd said.
After I left, I found out that eventually the 'problem' supervisior was transferred to the office (where he became YOUR boss, lol) and replaced by more reasonable soul. I always figured they did it that way to best protect against current and future legal liability from his harassment of others.
Sometimes it takes a bit of shaking up to change the channel on the upper management TV. Have somebody do it that isn't in a position to suffer the consequences.
Many of the comments in this thread provide good advice but many qualify the advice with "if you have good management ..." or something similar. The question is how do you know the likely outcome. I am a CIO and live through this situation on a regular basis. You can determine the likely outcome with the following question:
Will the CIO or CEO be surprised by any statements made in the meeting. If so, you might have a problem.
Management rule #1: No Surprises.
If there has been an open line of communications,with forums to discuss problems and channels to vet the problems and communciate them effectively up the organization, there shouldn't be problems. If this method doesn't exist, there will be surprises.
Open forums are not the place to air new problems. The bigger the problems is aired, the more embarassment to CIO and CEO and someone will get hurt.
An effective CIO will keep the flow of information flowing up so he can brief the CEO about problem areas (no surprises). If this is anything but a social event, confirming to the CEO that the CIO is in command of his/her organization, the CIO could jeopardize his position.
I could write a chapter on this topic but the above is the essence of the situation (in my point of view).
It's true. With so many layers of management in corporate America it's highly likely that whatever concerns you and your fellow workers have may not be known to upper management. It's good to tell them these things, however there are some rules of protocol that should be acknowledged before anyone opens their mouths to make this work.
1: NEVER blame anyone directly, especially in the open. If they want more information on the issue from you they'll get back with you in a more private setting to get more detail.
2: Never make your boss look bad by name, even if he deserves it.
3: Be prepared to present a solution to any problem you bring up. Saying "X, Y, and Z suck and need to be fixed" and waiting for the CIO and President to come up with resolutions is not only asking for trouble, since they likely play little to no role in your daily duties and could come up with a solution that only makes the problem worse, but also shows no initiative on your part. You should have at least one good answer to any problem you bring up, and at least one alternate solution in case the first answer doesn't work. This shows that you aren't just a complainer, and management loves this. This is also a way to get your foot in the door to management if you so desire, or at least make yourself visible. Just complaining about things makes them think you're nothing more than a whiner.
4: Do not kiss ass, but don't be rude either. If you have a hard time speaking to non-tech people, then you might want to either find someone else to speak for you or present your ideas in writing.
5: Establish constant lines of communication by checking to see if they have an open door policy on important issues. More often than not they'll be interested in hearing about what you have to say about problems in the workplace, especially if they can show to be wasting money and resources, yet most employees never approach them directly.
Good luck!
Remember the Alamo, and God Bless Texas...
Who wouldn't want to make love to Chewbacca?
www.wookielove.net
One tacful way you could get your problems across is to have custom fortune cookies made and then have the waiters pass them out. You could play one of those silly fortune cookie games:
... between the sheets".
"James Screwup, VP Operations is working against our IT initiatives
This will go over really well, generate some laughs, and expose the key problems.
If you can afford to lose your job go ahead and speak frankly about the problems of the company. Want a tangible example rent the movie Jerry McWire.
Read this clear, N O B O D Y wants the truth because N O B O D Y can handle the truth, do you think the crappy costumer relations and bad quality products has came just a coincidence you have been living in wonderland too long.
Don't be stupid and think you can change the company and you will improve with it.
Even management need reasureness it doesn't matter what the state of things are, if they are wrong they don't want to know, read the Book the Dilbert principle.
On the other hand if your are comfortable giving your ideas for free to others take credit, go ahead, later in your career you'll see what consulting is about and how to make big bucks out of it.
Stop living in a world of fantasies if you want to pay your car and your house.
Software developers, IT Staff, and Engineers, have this failing in common: They tend to think that all problems are technical problems, things that require a larger and more well funded IT department to solve. Whatever the problem is, we can solve it, we just need more2 people/money/tools/toys.
In trying to communicate what you feel the problem is, you would be best served by keeping these two things in mind:
(1) OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS: Effective criticisms should state the problem clearly, or state that there is an "opportunity to do a better job than we are doing right now", if that's how you have to put it. Whatever you do, avoid pointless involvement of negative emotions. Assigning blame on a person or a part of a company, will doom your idea forever. You should frame the problem in such a way that it can be solved without anyone having to admit any wrongdoing or failure on their part. In one book on consulting that I read, the author suggests that a 10% improvement can be promised, without anyone losing face. It then becomes your job to make sure that if you ever make an improvement that improves more than that, you make sure that this is never noticed.
(2) LEARN THE LANGUAGE: You need to know someone in the management team that speaks your language (unlikely, indeed), or that you have senior technical people, who also speak management language, communicate on behalf of the IT people.
Because larger meetings are useless at best, destructive at worst, solve problems with the smallest possible groups, and do your background research one on one wherever possible. Meetings grow increasingly counter-productive, as the number of people in the meeting grows. Any more than eight people, and it's not a meeting at all, it's a dog and pony show. Two people means two axes of communication. Three people means six axes of communication. Five people means 20 axes of communication. If you want to see this in action, draw a meeting table, and the people around the table, then draw a line from every person, to every other person in one direction, and another line the other direction. Those are the lines of communication. One key person, most likely a senior technical person, or even a senior management person with excellent technical skills, needs to be the communications gatekeeper between the technical/engineering/IT staff (whatever discipline) and the management. I have had excellent managers who have not lost their technical chops, someone who still remembers what it's like to be in the IT trenches. That kind of person, a bi-lingual bi-cultural person, is capable of dealing with both worlds, as management people know and respect them, and technical people know and respect them. These people can move with agility between management and IT language and ideas, and can arbitrate between the worlds. A wise IT staffer, and a wise manager, will identify these people, and co-operate with these gatekeepers.
W.Postma
There is no absolute answer to this question. It is totally dependent on the company the poster works for. If it's a small business he has a chance to get some real input and feedback. However, it doesn't sound small to me. Therefore, I'd shut the fuck up, and not piss anyone off.
Oh wait, I'd blatantly point out all the company short comings and screw any future opportunity with the bunch of sorry asshole's I work for. Tell me again why I'm laid off?
If you don't want to be an entrepreneur then you should always play the game. The only way to succeed in business is to keep your head down and avoid the bullets flying over your head.
One question that MUST be asked to the IT group (by the spokesperson) is "DO YOU AGREE?" and "CAN ANYBODY ADD TO THAT?"
One more thing: everybody get together ahead of time and produce a written list of problems and corrections that can be handed to the VPs.
Remember that the whole tone of the bitch session MUST be how to improve the company.
Assuming A/C is male:
<rant>
Why do homosexuals even have testicles? The wedding tackle is really meant to propogate the species, not generate hydraulic fluid for an ultimately useless cylinder.
This buggery is really an articulate form of suicide. While you can certainly love your fellow man, sexual relations therewith (lesbianism, too) has got to be the least meaningful thing this side of the Fox news charnel.
Reality check: people wouldn't waste their time in this fashion if it didn't feel good. Right. Heroin, too, must feel good, or people wouldn't be wasting themselves in that slightly faster fashion. Shall we therefore treat our flesh as dartboards? Hardly.
It's pretty easy, people:
focus => meaning
avoid => stupidity
Granted, it can get confusing at times, but homosexual fantasies about fictional creatures are not the way to go.
</rant>
-1 Flamebait
Just show them The IBM / Linux ad
(No, I don't work for IBM)
many of us are wary to speak about what is going on because it will inevitably reveal problems with the company.
You should always take a solution to a manager not a problem. If you know what the 'problems' are you should also have a good idea what the solution is. Present the solution in the way a none IT manager can understand. I.e "We can [reduce costs|improve customer care|be more responsive to business demands] by applying X solution.
First of all, having a dinner meeting with 80 people and trying to actually understand the problems of the department is really stupid. It is so stupid, in fact, that I don't really believe that the managers expect to learn anything new.
So my advice for this dinner is to just try to have fun and eat as much free food as possible.
Secondly, I'm Swedish, but I've lived in Texas for about 5 years now. So I find the culture differences that show in this thread to be interesting.
Job security is much higher in Sweden. And that is very obvious in this thread. Many people hear advice you to take a very cautious approach. Or it may come back and bite you. In Sweden the attitude is, hide nothing from your managers. You aren't supposed to point fingers, but you describe the problems when asked.
And ultimately, I feel that that is much better. You have no right to say that the PHBs are clueless unless you tell them what you want them to know. The one thing I've found in common though, between Sweden and the U.S. is, don't stab anyone in the back.
Anyway, I know that people here warn you to be very cautious about what you tell your manager, but I decided to continue being who I am. I have earned a reputation of not being afraid of saying what I think and I have earned a lot of respect because of that. Managers regularly ask me for my opinion, because I will tell it like it is. My golden rule though, is to never say anything that I couldn't say with a few of my co-workers in the same room. I always think, is there anyone here at this company that I don't want in this room saying this and if I can think of someone, then I try to rephrase myself.
Here's another tip though, never bypass your manager, with something that is within his/hers responsibility, unless it is really necessary, or unless the problem isn't within your managers power to fix it without the help of his boss.
The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
MMMmmmmmm Gollum! May I suck his cock 'til the end of time!!! *slurp* *slurp* *slurp* *gag* *slurp* *slurp* *slurp* *gag* *gulp* ...
That's exactly right. The reason it's risky to raise IT issues with the management is because there's not routine communication, so problems pile up and it becomes a big deal. Also, in situations where there isn't enough communication to start with, management generally perceive IT as unresponsive. If you tell them anything, tell them that you'd like to see them establish a weekly hour to thrash out IT/business problems. Until then, things will be too highly charged and you're putting yourself at risk of being on the receiving end of "shoot the messenger."
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
This may ruin my streak of karma-generating posts (only post early about stuff I have specific knowledge of), but here goes:
I work as an analyst at an engineering company. I've had interactions with my management all the way from my boss to the CEO of my compant (~3000 employees). Here's one "trick" that works really well: be completely honest, don't be defensive, and state facts as facts and make clear when you're giving your opinion on a subject.
Executives are often demonized and ridiculed, but in general they are very smart, perceptive and adaptive. They can apply critical thinking skills, and often they do see solutions that you didn't, or couldn't (due to not knowing the problem). Granted, IT is a different creature, and maybe this is a trick. If that's the case and they want to cut heads, they'll do it anyways.
Realistically, if they want to find stuff out, they will ask questions. Answer these questions truthfully, and don't state opinion as fact.
For example, if the CEO asks, "What went wrong with the network last week," I suggest you answer, "The D-Link 'NeverDown' router went down and our backup was off-line.'" Do not answer, "We don't get enough money, so the tech who was supposed to prepare the back-up router had to cover for someone else and it wasn't ready. Plus, we were too cheap to buy Cisco and this is why that was a bad idea...." The CEO is smart. He'll ask why the backup was off-line, if you would have been better off with a different brand, etc. Have faith that you're not dealing with idiots and things will turn out OK.
This may ruin my streak of karma-generating posts (only post early about stuff I have specific knowledge of), but here it goes:
I work as an analyst at an engineering company. I've had interactions with my management all the way from my boss to the CEO of my compant (~3000 employees). Here's one "trick" that works really well: be completely honest, don't be defensive, and state facts as facts and make clear when you're giving your opinion on a subject.
Executives are often demonized and ridiculed, but in general they are very smart, perceptive and adaptive. They can apply critical thinking skills, and often they do see solutions that you didn't, or couldn't (due to not knowing the problem). Granted, IT is a different creature, and maybe this is a trick. If that's the case and they want to cut heads, they'll do it anyways.
Realistically, if they want to find stuff out, they will ask questions. Answer these questions truthfully, and don't state opinion as fact.
For example, if the CEO asks, "What went wrong with the network last week," I suggest you answer, "The D-Link 'NeverDown' router went down and our backup was off-line.'" Do not answer, "We don't get enough money, so the tech who was supposed to prepare the back-up router had to cover for someone else and it wasn't ready. Plus, we were too cheap to buy Cisco and this is why that was a bad idea...." The CEO is smart. He'll ask why the backup was off-line, if you would have been better off with a different brand, etc. Have faith that you're not dealing with idiots and things will turn out OK.
And why?
.
That's the important question. If they saved your dying kid or something that's one thing.
But if you feel loyalty because they write your paycheck you've got a 'coon up a tree that's going to jump off a branch and scratch your eyes out someday.
They bought all that computer equipment they threw out last year too. Didn't feel a bit of loyalty to the poor little Pentium Pro who never did them any harm and saved them an assload of money.
Which brings up another question. Why do you consider it "your" company? Given the scenario you put forward you don't own any significant part of it, otherwise you'd be upstairs already.
You work there. You get payed to work there. If you do a good job there's a good chance you're even underpaid for the work you do. There's a thousand guys standing at the door waiting to take your job and managment has no particular compunction about letting them have it.
You have friends there; and you like working with them?
Perhaps. Maybe one or two. If they're really your friends though they don't care where you work. You have friends that work at other companies, no? The rest are really just acquaintences of circumstance. They'll forget you, you'll forget them when you leave. Really. I don't have a clue about your age, but if you're young and school is your basic social model this idea might be a bit of beyond. You'll learn the hard way I'm afraid.
In any case, CYA. I don't mean just about that meeting either. Save your money. Don't get into debt unresolvable if you lose your job, because you are going to lose it someday.
It may well be worth it to you to shoot straight and from the hip for moral and ethical reasons, and I have no quarrel with you if you do that. .
So long as those ethics aren't based on some romantic idea of company loyalty.
Tell 'em what you need. Tell 'em why. Then shut up. Don't discuss management issues unless you are payed to manage. They'll only resent it, because that's what they are payed to do, no?
All else failing make a bunch of pirate copies of "Up the Orginization" (after reading it first yourself) and leave them scattered about the Executive lunchroom/washroom.
KFG
In this horrendous economy you should be glad you have a job in IT and not spending your time surfing Careerpath.com, Monster and DICE.
Keep your mouth shut, do your job to your best of your ability, follow orders and do not concern yourself with making a "difference" in corporate IT. In the 15 years I've consulted and worked in MIS and IT, I've learned that being the confrontational "lets make a difference" guy means that you get identified as the Squeaky Wheel. Even if they brought you in as a consultant to help "fix" the problems, chances are they like to talk the talk, but not walk the walk.
IT departments on the whole are considered expenses, not integral to business at many companies. While this is a dysfunctional and unproductive attitude for businesses to have, its now the norm.
If you want to make a "differnce" become self-employed and start your own company. Even CIO's and MIS directors these days have to listen to the Man. They're just paid more than you are.
When times are good, IT is a tool for improving business. When times are bad, its maintenance mode.
As I said, be happy you're working. Many skilled IT types aren't. Collect your paycheck and be happy, at least until you can move on and call the shots.
Not that you have to follow the "company line," if you feel strongly that its wrong (and are willing to take the consequences). But you need to know what it is, so that you don't cross it on accident.
And if your boss won't give you any guidance, here, that's a bad thing. It either means (s)he is completely clueless...or what you might say is completely meaningless.
He decided to just watch the government, and kind of scale it down to size, and run his life that way. --Laurie Anderson
...many people in management are out to manage appearances far more than reality and have no desire to hear the truth and certainly never want it exposure out of their control. No good deed goes unpunished.
Then discuss the results. We recently did this. Whether anything good will come out of it is a different story
It does not matter what you say. Geek table manners alone will send them running for the hills. Most non-geeks would rather listen to loud opera in reverse than eat with geeks.
Table-ized A.I.
You need to understand that these folks deal with fundamentally different problems - share price, "alignment", "governance", etc. You also need to understand that they do not expect to find great insight into any of these issues from you, otherwise they'd be talking to you more often, wouldn't they?
As the poster above said, this is your bonus you're eating through, so enjoy!
Jan
I find the biggest problems we have in IT tend to be related to lack of business understanding of the underlying technology, as opposed to the day to day use of technology.
A good example would be lack of Redundancy for a key unix system. The board asks the question "Do you have a DR Plan" and the answer is yes.
What they should be doing is saying "Application X is really important to me, and we can't afford to be without it for Time frame Y". This step is often conducted in Business Continuity Planning, and is called Business Impact Analysis. "What does the loss of this application/service mean to our customers?" is another way of helping the business to understand the importance of a system.
Once this importance is establsihed you can communicate the current situation. This can be operational performance, DR capability, stability and reliability issues, capacity planning etc. When you are then explaining all of the issues, you then explain them in the context of the business impact analysis, and what it means to their customers. Prioritise the problems around the maximum impact to customers, and they very quickly decide to take action. If found the great part about going through this process with people from within the business was: as they started to see what was critical to delivering service to customers, they were seeing the IT department go... we can provide that, but it will cost X, or if we don't provide it and the potential impact is Y.
If you use a template like this (get the business people to fill it in) and replace process with "Service Delivered to Client" and replace time to impact with "How Long Can I live Without It?", and then compare it to your list of problems, I think you will help both the Business an IT see what is important and needs fixing.
lounge around on the blue couch
(1) Talk as little as possible.
(2) Be creative. Assume that anybody who is higher up the command chain is irrelevant.
(3) When doing reports on what's going on, claim abysmal failure due to bad strategy.
(4) Deliver the results anyway and mention in passing that you've been managing yourself.
(5) Rub it in in private and pretend to be deferential in public.
This works especially well if you know what you're doing and your manager is younger and/or less experienced than you (it does happen).
3. DO NOT discuss technical details, even if they ask.
"even if they ask."
I live in a crazy world when the CEO asks me for information, I give it to him. what exactly do you suggest, mr. upper management sir?
Read what I wrote to a CEO about his disinterest in what goes on in the server room. The names have been changed to protect the... innocent? Otherwise, this is a verbatim excerpt from the document I delivered to the CEO and his VP. This company conducts about 2 Billion a year in business. After reading this, their attitude changed and I went on to consult with this company, and that consultancy continues to this day. They really appreciated my candidness. I hope this helps.
============
Back in December of 2002, I performed an Information Security assessment of the ABC Corp Network. At that time, I determined that the overall security posture was dangerously relaxed, and as a result the network was extremely insecure. Based upon my findings I gave ABC Corp a failing grade.
Given the nature and sensitivity of the information ABC Corp uses to conduct its business; ABC Corp should have a posture of Moderate-Restrictive.
Network security is fundamentally a management problem, not an information technology problem. The IT workers are not trying to build an insecure network, they are simply responding to the needs of the business. If executives fail to dictate the needs and requirements to the IT department, then the IT department is left to react to the changing business needs. The unfortunate result is a network that is lashed together with the proverbial chewing gum and baling wire. Therefore the IT staff is computer security janitors who clean up messes instead of preventing them.
This reactionary system is more common than not in small businesses. The Information Technology infrastructure of most companies grows out of necessity rather than a master plan. As a result, things get added, the network grows, and pretty soon nobody in the company knows what they have going on in the server room. When I came in to perform the initial security audit, this is exactly what I found. The ABC Corp network grew out of necessity. It appeared that management failed to realize how much the network had grown in complexity. "After all, if we can still perform our work, access the internet and get our email, what could be wrong with the network?"
This apparent failure of management to realize the value of their company's information assets can jeopardize the future growth of the company. They fail to realize that their entire business hinges on the stability and integrity of what has been built up in that server room.
What further complicates issues is that the IT department is run without a set budget. This means that the IT staff must constantly approach management with every single expense request. The perception then becomes that IT always wants to spend money, and failing to see the value of the expenditure, management will axe the purchase of a requested item. Combine this with technicians that are constantly reacting to problems and management that fails to provide clear direction - It is easy to see that this is a recipe for disaster.
When I audited the network, it was clear that there was no set management structure guiding the design of the ABC Corp Network. This lack of management oversight created an environment where IT workers performed their jobs by their own initiative. Some of the IT workers either lacked that initiative, necessary skills, or management direction and oversight. As a result, nothing was ever done on a proactive basis.
I would have to say that if there is blame to be placed for the current state of the information technology infrastructure, that blame lies squarely at the feet of the senior management of ABC Corp. Management and oversight of the IT architecture needs to be done from the top down rather than the bottom up.
Good security is based upon reality and common sense. Common sense is a function of having common knowledge.
I was expecting a nice, juicy sex story at the end...dammit!
The IT market is very soft (so unless you've got a parachute handy...)
This is the same scenario as your wife asking, "Does this dress make me look fat?"
Seriously. No matter how much of your opinion they want, this is not the time or place to give it. But don't worry - there are going to be some people there who are more than willing to open their yaps and ensure those who are politically savvy enough to keep their mouths shut aren't noticed as silent. There will be plenty of people who argue otherwise, claiming you should have the ability to speak freely and if not, that you should leave, but...that's them and it's not their neck on the chopping block. There are lots of political situations where you have to be aware: never speak openly when requested (there are times, but not this one - i.e., during a review); never outdrink the boss (in fact, drink no more than one or two drinks); be mindful of exit interviews - they serve two purposes: to help you blow off steam before you're out the door so you won't do something silly like air dirty laundry; and to ask for feedback about how they could have done things differently. If they wanted to know about differently, they would have solicited it, but in safe forums, not like the open forum described by the original poster.
The bottom line is this: it's a political dinner, no matter what else is said. And when politics are involved, err on the side of caution. And if you are unfamiliar with what to do, watch those who are knowledgeable about such matters. (this is when it's good to have a mentor)
-
In truth, the problems your department is facing may be due to the personnel in the department. Actually, you know this; ergo, your question. You also know that the lack of accountability in your department cannot continue yet are afraid of the changes that will occur as a result of returning your department to a heathly status.
-
If you are referring to problems your department sees from others parties in the company, tread lightly but be honest. IT has a unique position to be exposed to the operation of a company as a whole. Since the problems you see are not in your domain, you may be speaking out of school to directly criticize others; phrasing your observations with disclaimers may be appropriate here.
I gave two answers to your question because it's not clear what your situation is from your question. I suspect the first answer is more appropriate.This is like a diabetic's toe becoming injured, infected and gangrenous before the head realizes there is a problem: amputation is required to deliver the body of the putrid, deadly member.
Sorry, but I have little, well, honestly, no sympathy for your position. You *must* connect with these company leaders and you *must* make them aware of the real situation. How you handle yourself may determine your status once the situation is exposed, but don't expect to be rewarded for your honesty. You may lose co-workers, you may lose your job. The work environment may become strained and less enjoyable, but I doubt it is very much enjoyable now.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
(1) Agree to stay more sober than the other team.
(2) Consider carrying tape recorders.
Bosses are idiots. I got hired at a company 2 years ago and put in charge of a Windows 2k server which had never had a single update in its entire life and was sitting naked on the net. I went to my boss and demanded that the following be put in place if I were to still work there:
Long story short I was back in the unemployed line within 24 hours, and I was told a few months later that the companys servers got hit on a catstrophic level when I bumped into a guy who worked in the office across the hall.
Keep it simple. Don't overwhelm them with technical details. If you see their eyes glaze over, you're providing them too much detail. Keep the answers short and concise. Give the suits the summary of the summary of the Cliff Notes for Dummies of the summary on the back of the paperback edition #2. I mean you have to eliminate almost all detail. Make them ask you for more detail BUT don't abuse it with too much detail when you do give them more. This is like the first date. Scratch that. This is you making the phone call that arranges the date. Scratch that. This is the wink that gets you the number to call. You can't give them too much detail or 1) you're scare them away, and 2) they'll already know everything about you (the project) and won't need you anymore. KISS-FSP. Keep It Simple Stupid, For Stupid People.
Don't be afraid to share problems. If you're in a job that you feel you can't share a problem with management then you're in the wrong job. Pack up and move out. Believe me, it's not worth the grief. You shouldn't have to watch your back for the next inbound sharpened object. Grow a set and lay it on the line.
Anyhow, that's my $.02 before taxes. Best of luck.
Seriously. This is not a legitimate way for management to find out what's going on within the company. This is, however, a great way to get yourself placed on a list of who's to be terminated. Smile, be pleasant, keep your mouth shut.
Boycott everything - they're all trying to fuck you one way or another
Tell the execs that the company's ethernet connections are failing due to a lack of ether. Ask them for money to install a new, larger, tank of ether.
If they swallow that one, you're set. Think of some reason why you MUST have the lastest graphics cards on the IT machines, and 23" flat-panel monitors. The suckers....
Food poisoning
-- I care not for your foolish signatures.
Simple effective advice.. Unless you are
one of those directors... Keep you mouth shut
and eat your dinner. It is your directors
job to bring issues up with the VP. If you
do it.. then the director will begin to have
issues with you.
Just because you see it as a problem, does not mean that the company will see it as a priority to rectify. Working in IS myself, I've seen many people take the standpoint that "If IS wants it, then IS should get it" and find themselves in some real hot water because of it, possibly without a job. The fact of the matter is, although you might know what's best in IS, the management knows what's best for the COMPANY. Voice your ideas, and your concerns, and say what you'd like to see change, but in a way that isn't "we must do this" and instead "from our standpoint this would be a good way to go". Make sure that they understand it best they can, but don't force it on them.
... they are trusted to make those decisions. The second you start presupposing that you know better, and they are making the wrong decisions, that's when you get in trouble.
Just keep in mind that management makes decisions based on your advice. If they want things done a certain way, and you've given alternatives that they've turned down, then they obviously made what they feel is the best choice. And although management doesn't always make the right choices, they are in that position for a reason
For example, if you feel that you need to spend a bunch of funds to reinforce the firewall, because there has been some attempted hacks and they could be a trouble in the future, propose this to management. But have another plan that's less effective but cheaper. Don't get your panties in a ruffle when they say no to the expensive route. Obviously they found it to not be worth the money, and that's partially your fault for either A) finding an overpriced solution or B) not adequately explaining the risk involved.
I have worked in a very large company for over 15 years and have always found it works best to be honest and to air your concerns. Try to make your concerns general and not an attack on any individual. The other thing that I have found to be helpfull is to propose a solution to the problems that I have raised. Acknowledge that you understand that some of the problems are not easy to solve. But then tell the management how you would solve or at least reduce the negative of a problem. Make sure you let others talk as well and do not talk over or argue with the managers, Be polite, but honest, and with solutions.
The execs have nothing to lose and everything to gain from this type of meeting. They can hear geeks talking about IT this and IT that and see how the company (and their whole little world) revolves around their IT centric viewpoint. They can hear the smarter IT guys providing constructive criticism and feedback, or maybe even about methods they've researched that may save some budget $$s. I think the really smart IT guys are going to talk less and listen more.
So many times I've worked (in a consultative capacity) with different IT shops. One thing I always run into is a totally IT centric viewpoint of the company. I can't blame a lot of well meaning techs for this, but at the same time you should never forget that you work for a cost center, not one of the core departments generating revenue for the company. To make the most of a meeting like this, I (as an IT guy) would focus on learning more about the *business* that is paying my paycheck, and then try to translate that knowledge into a better understanding of how IT can make the business more successful.
I once had a consulting gig in the IT department of a large contruction company. At lunch one day their new CIO boasted that he is now working for an information technology company that just happens to design and manage large construction projects as well.
That CIO did not last long at that company.
First things first: the typical techie knows less than zero about managers, let alone executives. But for reasons that have more to do with psychology than business practices, most of them also prefer to confront this unknown the way a caveman would approach a beowulf cluster, grunting, shaking their spears in mock threat, and retreating to the safety of their caves.
And this is pretty surprising because a life in engineering is supposed to be about -- wait for it -- figuring things out. Not getting the response you want from your boss or your boss' boss? Well maybe you need to spend a little time figuring out how the "boss machine" works so that you can program it a little better!
With that spirit in mind, here are a few hints to start you down the path.
Managers (usually) find numbers more believable than generalizations.
While engineers can often be convinced by citations of general principles ("That's so inelegant!"), managers need numbers. And the best numbers of all are the ones that tell them about profit and loss. They really do not care -- nor should they -- about whether the IT environment is the most super neato that it can be. But show them that your proposed change will lower costs or increase profits and you'll get their attention. Don't like doing the math that it takes to prove that case? Then tough, you won't get what you want. Some engineers cop out at this point in the discussion by saying the data doesn't exist. Well, guess what, it does. The studies have been done; the authorities have investigated your problem, whatever it is. Use google to find them, that's what it's there for.
Be a repairman, not a mailman.
A typical manager spends their entire day hearing complaints from every person they encounter. If you think you can imagine what that's like, trust me, you're wrong. If you want your gripe to get put on the same pile as all of those others and ignored, then by all means deliver a complaint and leave it at that. But if you want to see your problem fixed then never state a problem without offering a solution. At the absolute minimum you must say something like: "I have recognized this problem, and though I haven't figured out what we ought to do about it, I am working on a solution. I'd like to meet with you when I have the solution ready so that we can talk about it. Can we do that?" Trust me, asking a manager for permission to bring them an answer to a problem is like asking Charlie Sheen if you can bring him another hooker. Your manager will shake his head so vigorously you'll think it's going to fall off.
Never make your boss look bad.
Your boss keeps her job as long as her colleagues believe that she is competent and hardworking. If you undermine that perception, you are threatening the bread that she feeds to her children. If you are so foolish as to do such a thing by implying that a manager is incompetent or unworthy of basic respect, then you should expect to be immediately and viciously punished. In some rare cases, a boss might do or threaten to do something that is illegal, immoral, or disastrous for the company. Then, obviously, you have to tell someone to try to do what you can to minimize the damage. But a run of the mill disagreement with your boss is not a good enough reason to threaten their job. It's the same as if some other engineer started badmouthing your coding skills to your coworkers. Just don't do it.
Always follow up.
People get busy. Managers and executives especially. (Please, no whining about how awful your workload is since the "big layoffs." Trust me, your boss' workload is worse.) Take a minute every so often to remind your boss of the solutions you've proposed and how they're going. It's not enough to do good things for people. You must remind them of what you've done for them early and often. And don't forget to use numbers. ("Hey, Chris. I just wanted to let you know about how happy I am about that new order processing
I imagine that being treated like a service department rather than a productive part of the company has been a very common experience within corporate IT departments over the years. What is so unusual (but good!) about yours is that you've managed to begin to reverse that trend, while so many others' relationships with their managment have only gotten worse.
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
What is wrong with IT? May be systemic.
This event may have two agendas:
1.) To pacify and identify dissention (troublemakers) within the staff - Moral boost strategy.
2.) To identify and prioritize issues which are causing problems for the execs.
Be assured it will likely be both. I speak from experience; having been a part of a few of these sessions, I have found it can be an opportunity for those courageous enough to stand for those issues which offer a genuine solution to the problems of the executives.
Often the issues are centered on the inability for the executives to provide quality IT services to the business at a justifiable cost.
This is a complex issue. Fundamentally it has to do with a lot of different factors; communication, process control, modeling and understanding of infrastructure, moral, culture, justification of changes or projects, and many more.
A suggestion of looking at IT departmental problems from a systemic viewpoint and attempting to view and deal with those issues on a holistic standpoint can change a conversation focused on many problems to one vision for the department which is aligned to provide quality IT products and support to the business.
"How do we work together better to do the job we all want to do?" - Asking this question can have excellent although slow results. The answers will come and nobody will be sore for the asking.
It looks to me like executive management is trying to undercut middle/upper management.
There's no recognizable reason any executive should be asking you for information they should be receiving from IT Manager/Director's.
Be clear and concise in any statements you make. Don't complain and don't mention anything you don't think your IT Director/Manager has brought to the attention of executive management. In fact, it would be very wise to consult your manager to find out just what your manager would like you to discuss at this dinner/meeting.
Beleive it or not, these 'gatherings' can be excellent for your career. You don't get into executive level positions because of your job skills - rather more for your social skills and how you present yourself and your work.
Make a strong impression, one that shows strength and conviction. But at the same time, make sure you are supporting your own managers. In reality that is what is best for you, your future in the company, and your company as a whole.
These are the people who are going to promote you when the time comes, and I gurantee promotions are given more based on personal impressions then they are on performance.
Always remember, a lazy laborer makes a great manager! *laughs*
* Tell the truth, but do it with tact and possible solutions
* Keep your head down and mouth closed.
I think it would be a good idea to add that you should, if attempting to discuss issues, that you should try and be (and demonstrate) an awareness of the core business of the company (if, like many, you are part of an IT Dept for a company that actually makes money of something else).
There is no point highlighting problems (even if they have solutions) if the problems don't really affect the service the IT Dept provides to the rest of the business. (Its different though if the IT Service is the product, eg S/W house, outsourcer, etc).
I was let go for "blabbing". I'm still looking for a job but I know I did the right thing.
Think of this: would you want your group/department/company to be eliminated because none of the problems were discussed? Then you'll be jobless knowing you did nothing to stop the ax from falling.
Of course saying anything like, "Bob doesn't do this or that, and I don't think we need Cindy" is a personal attack. Stay away from talking like that. Use the O'Reilly (the publisher) method: present the problem, offer a solution, then be ready to discuss. Have that ready to go, be kind and humble, and hope for the best. That's all you can do and still stay constructive.
Let's stop talking about shutting our mouths though, please. When companies want their employees to keep their mouths shut they'll hire people offshore (and we don't want to encourage that, do we?).
Cheers and Best of Luck
Think about what the problems are. Then narrow that list to things which management can fix. Now write down the reasons why they should take those actions, in terms of how it benefits them ("doing this will improve productivity, which will improve profits" ... they can take it from there to "which will improve the stock price, which will make you rich").
Basically, you just have to think about how to frame the message for them - too often we explain things from our own POV, and given the differences between management and engineering that leads to, well, disaster. If you briefly explain the problems in terms they'll understand (productivity and morale, for example), give them a reasonable and actionable list of solutions, and justify those solutions, you'll be golden.
If you think they're coming to dinner so you can complain about how much life sucks, start preparing your resume now.
This works when sharing company problems with those in charge, or for conflicts in general. 1) Never challenge. Don't tell someone that if they do (do not) do something, then you will do (not do) something. 2) Never condescend. Don't try to make people think that you know more than they do. What you'll end up doing is making yourself look like a smart-ass who will soon need a job. 3) Never condemn. Avoid using words like "always" and "never." These words leave a sense of finality with people, and they feel as if you're not giving them a chance.
After reading several of these posts I see a pattern emerging where people seem to be afraid of getting fired and other sorts of retribution for their desire to make things better.
Now I realize that the economy isn't great and I am not married and don't have kids so I realize that I'm in a much different position than lots of people.
That being said, I have a question: If you work in such a place where things are bad, there are serious problems and you are afraid of getting fired or punished for voicing your opinions, then why are you staying there? If I worked in a place where I didn't feel free to voice my opinions I know i wouldn't want to work there. So besides the reasons mentioned above (which I know are very valid reasons) what reasons are there?
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
My advice? Keep your mouth shut.
Of course be careful. But there are many ways to play this. A conservative strategy is of course the safest, but it isn't necessarily the best. You have to decide what you want out of the encounter. Do you really want to spend life pussyfooting around because you might offend somebody powerful? That's no way to win respect, certainly not of senior management.
This is a chance to get noticed, and it could also be a chance to kick your career up a notch, if you are interested in that. If you just want to get through with this, then don't get noticed. If you want to change things then do get noticed.
The key in any kind of encounter like this is to understand what the other person would like to get out the encounter. Management has two functions: providing direction and removing obstacles. Basically, management ideally should be 90% shitwork and 10% leadership. Most managers know this but being human would rather spend 90% of their time doing leadership and 10% the other stuff. In other words most managers are lousy. It follows that any shitwork you can take off the boss's plate automatically makes your life easier. I'm preaching the gospen of win-win here: You should not be thinking how management can make IT's life easier, how to you each help each other get what you want?
So, what to do if you are sitting next the CEO and he starts chatting you up? It's not about what the CEO can do for you, it's what you can do for the CEO. That means knowing him probably better than you do and, harder yet, taking him (or her) more seriously than you probably do now. What are his pet issues? Conversely, what tare the things that he's spending his time dealing with he'd rather not be?
On the other hand, you can't ignore the leadership side of the equation either. What are easy ways this guy can become a hero to IT? How can he kick himself up a notch against his peers when it comes to bragging rights? What is is vision for the company and how to you fit in? That means, study the business plan, yes, even take the mission statement for a few minutes if you can manage it. If there have been press releases or if he's been quoted in the trade press know what he's about. Study the company wide internal memos. If the boss is fixated on stuff that seems superficial, remember he has to sell the company to the world, and the world is fixated on superficial stuff too. Reorient your perspective for a moment and put yourself on his side.
Of course, you may not get the chance, given the numbers, but it pays to be prepared, and have a plan. This really is too much advice to put into effect in a brief encounter. It's a lot like a job interview -- you might get lucky and get everything you need out the first encounter, but what you want to ensure is that you get asked back. That means studying the opportunity, having a rough plan of where you want to go, but being flexible to follow the boss's lead.
Or you could run like hell, which is perfectly legitimate if you'd rather keep the status quo.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Anything you say can and will be used against you, unless you're solving problems that you can't pinpoint a person or group as the creator.
Sigh. Been there. Hard life experience teaches me that you should keep your mouth shut and speak pleasant platitudes.
:-)
If someone wants YOUR opinion they will sit down with you in private and solicit it. A "dinner" is just a trap for fools and the unwary. Be pleasant. Be intelligent. Be utterly banal.
Unless you already know that your opinion has strong support and an advocate in a position of power, you don't even bring it up even in a meeting, particularly when you are not in a power position.
I agree wholeheartedly that if you can't pass concerns to your immediate superior, OR if the high level management is fishing around at the lower levels for intelligence about its IT department, then it has middle management problems, and they won't be rectified by anything you say at dinner.
Food is a trap, and you are the prey. Whether you'll get kiled by your boss, or by his boss, is an open question, but if you speak, prepare to die.
It's actually a good sign when upper management wants to talk. You really can take the opportunity to work through issues that affect the department and the business. The best IT groups form a partnership with their user base and use it to work on issues together.
My advice:
1, Confront the real issues. On both sides. There is no point in trying to dance around major problems if they are affecting the organisation.
2, Be honest. The old cliche about it being the best policy is actually pretty true. It is the best policy. Face the brutal truth and it sets you free in a funny kinda way. Once you do this, you can set about fixing the problem.
3, Be tactful. Ranting, raving and whining get you nowhere, particularly with management. I have found that airing concerns, but couched in a way that show the impact on the organisation as a whole works well. Upper level managers can relate to it that way.
4, Actually show concern about the direction of the business. This goes along with the whole partnership deal. It engenders a bit of trust, which can be a huge help to you later when you ask them to take a chance on a big risky project you want money/time/people for.
5, Listen to what they have to say. This is obvious, I know, but it's amazing how much you learn when actively listen to where their pain is. They'll love you forever if you can show exactly how to ease it.
6, Have a game plan. Think of what you want to talk about first, even if it's in broad terms. You don't waste people's time that way.
I would treat this as a golden opportunity to make progress on issues and generally gain a better understanding of their business and them of yours. You may never get a better chance, particularly in an informal situation like dinner. If at the end of the day nothing changes, you at least gave it a shot.
I agree with your points, but you are forgetting exactly how much management subordinates/discredits/undervalues/detests/fears us.
"IT provides a service. We know that the service must be worth something, but we understand nothing about it. If we cannot understand it, then it cannot be important, but everybody has an IT department so we better have one. But it is filled with inexperienced children who have not spent their life climbing the corporate ladder, so they cannot understand the "complexity" of the business and how it needs to improve. But we have to have them, and they make almost as much as we do so we better smile when they are around. Please, please don't let them say anything because I will feel stupid because they know all this jargon that I do not. But they do not understand business as well as management and we set the rules so we are on top and my life is worthwhile. Just do not let them speak."
The big issue is that all computer technology is just magic to management. Computers seem to help the business, but the effects usually cannot be quantified until after they are deployed. So why do it? Because all the management magazines tell them that some other company used software for something and is now saving tons of money.
We save them when they have lost that important file, but they know they would not have lost it if it was on paper. Almost everything with computers means they have to learn something new, and they hate that.
The other side is that we are often closely involved with many parts of the business. We hear the complaints from the whole company. We may not know the big picture, but most working IT people could quickly pick 5 tasks that could be cheaply improved by technology in completely non-IT departments, because they know what is frustrating the employees.
I posted a story about trying to sell a business process improvement. I believe I did it on their terms. I reminded them how many people were required to fix the bad data. I demonstrated how this system was better. I talked about how the related processes would be integrated to improve accuracy and reduce the cost across the enterprise. I did not talk about technology other than to say the current hardware could easily handle it. I got some excitement from them, but lost because THEY CANNOT JUDGE GOOD SOFTWARE FROM BAD SOFTWARE even after they use it.
I am in a special position here. They are not my only client, but I worked almost 1000 hours last year FOR THEM, and they spent more for my services than for the 60-hours-every-week IT manager (including all compensation.) I probably cost them as much as his boss, the decision-maker. I am the high-priced outside expert who has an unbroken record of delivering better than they require before any deadlines and always staying under the budget. I do business strategy consulting at other companies. They should greatly respect my opinions, but I am still "just an IT guy."
And it does not help that I look young. The white hair keeps going away when I do not work. I almost wish it would all turn white so I would look older. The "decision-maker" is only 10 years older, but has a full head of white hair. Maybe I should dye (bleach?) mine.
If you really want to get a suggestion to management, have a salesperson from another company contact them and tell them that this idea is incredible and all the other companies are doing it and they need it too. He will get much more respect than any employee, and has much more credibility than any nerd.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
No, Seriously, I did.
I mailed our CFO and our ISS head. The ISS head blew me off with a quick, "someone else will answer it". The CFO wrote me back a longer note, CC'd in the ISS head, and another administrative contact stating "If they don't answer you in a week, let me know".
Now, as to whether or not he'll follow thru remains to be seen. But I've met him and personally find him an agreeable suit.
Now as for the IT problem? They claim it costs the company 0.40$ for a 10 meg file to be stored in email. And all I want to do is look at formulas used to reach it. Pretty simple, no?
I'll keep ya'll posted- I know you are in suspense.
I'm dumbfounded at the poor advice on this topic.
Have a series of short stories about incredible problems your team has faced in the last few months or year and how the problem was found and solved. Spread credit widely within your department.
Leave management with the impression that you and your team are both busy and competent, and with a taste of the notion that IT problems come as surprises.
When you've developed some confidence from your management of your abilities (through multiple meetings like this) THEN start to aim forwards with suggestions for change.
Meanwhile, you'll see your requisitions have a vastly better chance of approval.
No one likes complainers. Everyone likes a horror story with heros and a happy outcome. Just don't make yourself the hero. Heroism is better as a reflected light.
In some cultures it is considered improper to offer your guest an executive when sharing IT problems.
For example, if your guest is a vegetarian, he will probably just push the executive off to the side and focus on the parts of the problem which he can digest.
It sort of depends on what your skills are. I've been brutally honest with management in the past without repercussions. However, I also have no qualms about working as a contract worker if they dislike what I've said. :-)
Regardless, honesty is the best policy IMHO.
A bit dated, but as always, contemporary and relevant.
Excuse me? "Ideally, with the ideas and sharing, these guys will have a better appreciation for us, adjust our budgets appropriately, and help us in our business."
Whose business?
You will never get anywhere if you think that IT is the business of the company. You must understand that the IT division exists to help the company, not the other way around.
Place them in a letter and cunningly sneak it on the CEO/CFO plate(s.. fat bastards).
Address it from Anonymous Coward.
Why would management care about the IT staff when they know that:
(1) They can take the whole thing to India for a fraction of the cost now and only later worry about the massive budget shortfall
(2) They have stock options and IT staff get squat
(3) They can make IT staff work 16 hours a day with no remorse
Wait until management gets outsourced to India...
Jeez, this sounds almost just like microsoft's great plains product.
Especially about the part about the user rights...but people just get funny looks on their face when I say, yeah, anyone can login a view or change data in any table in the database.
With no logging. Application security is setup, but when they can just login using query analyzer what good is it???
Steven V.
I patented screwing your mom. But it got revoked for "prior art."
Screw being positive! If the CxO is being fucked, he wants to know about it. Now if you're super negative about everything he will write you off. But don't sugar coat any problems that could end up costing the company big money down the road. Any company that short circuits this feedback loop is doing itself a great disservice.
Your manager
thats all it is unless you have some non exec types as your vp's, other wise i'd take it as a free meal and keep my yap shut.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Just a thought...in my experience 'suggestion boxes' usually get little response from upper management. I, personally, don't like them because I want to acknowledge the person making the recommendation for improvement. Other than that, 'suggestion boxes' usually turn out to be an anonymous method for co-workers to shit on each other; which is what I don't want in a team environment.
[SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
That is the quickest way to never get promoted. I want my business to succeed. If people who work for me are committed to that success than I am happy when they come up with new ideas to better the company. As an IT geek your job is to improve the company. If you do it and work hard you will succeed regardless of your corporate kung fu.
I would like to salute the ashes of american flags, and all the fallen leaves filling up shopping bags.
Know what your goals are in being employed at this company. Are you trying to get promoted? Are you trying to hold onto your job amidst layoffs? Are you over your head in work? Are you trying to improve a relationship with your boss or your boss's boss? Are you trying to improve your skill set? Is being right very important to you, even more important than your job? (For some, it is.) Is the respect of your coworkers crucial to you? (For some, it is not.) Assess what it is that keeps you there.
Look at the other people who work for your company who do what you want to do (if that includes you, awesome!). Think about their motives and expertise. How did they get to do what they do? Do they regularly question authority, or do they keep their mouths shut? Do they snipe at their coworkers? Are they good team players? What do they do to win praise and positive attention from decision-makers?
Figure out what the true purpose of the meeting is. Are the officers looking to air out problems? Is this just a social chit-chat? Are they trying to improve morale? Are these new guys on the block, or have they been around for awhile? Are they looking to spot potential promotion candidates? Are they looking for layoff candidates? Are they looking for solutions to pressing needs? Are they assessing the usefulness of middle management? Do they mind taking on risk for potential gain? Do they want to hear success stories? Use your company network and your past experience to get some good guesses as to the real purpose for this meeting. Your best info might come from an informal chat with the officers; if you rub shoulders in the cafeteria, you might want to ping them about the meeting and evaluate their response.
Combine the answers to the above questions, and answer this question: How can you use the meeting to help you reach your goals?
What image are you trying to project? Remember to dress and act the part of that image. Think of five good topics to discuss, and be ready to sound intelligent. You might not have much time to talk, so get to the point.
Good luck!
Make up stuff that will make you look good, be indispensable at any cost, ruthlessly manage their expectations. If they fuck with you, take out the network.
That might be an entirely reasonable figure based on a few factors such as whether you use SAN or local disks on the servers, what backup systems you use and the number of tapes you have to purchase and store offline, etc.
I wonder what would happen if you could get some upper management folks to act as apprentices to top level IT folks for a week or two. At best, they might actually learn what is going on with their own IT departments, and how to really help. At worst, they might come down with Stolkholm Syndrome. :-)
I think of this because I used to work in the chemical industry, in a facility that was totally automated. But the systems were initially programmed horribly (I wasn't the programmer). The operators all complained, and the programmer just would say they were lazy. Until upper upper management told him to work on a shift using his own programs for a month. By the end of the second month, the programs to run the plant were so much better.
As they say in Missouri: show me.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
The term Corporate America is just another tired Slashdot bogeyman. I've worked in several companies in Europe and Asia (locals, not overseas offices of US companies), and I assure you that people are a lot more willing to complain publicly in US companies.
In both the UK and Japan, if it weren't for the practice of going out as a work team and drinking together several nights a week, you'd have no idea what some people were thinking.
And I've never seen the kind of silent hatred for bosses in the US that I've seen overseas. I'm not saying it doesn't exist in some industries, but in my experience, if you hate your boss that much in the US, you either leave or get thrown out. Overseas, it's a lot riskier to leave and a lot harder for them to throw you out, so you stay and smolder silently while your boss, who can't throw you out, works on ruining your life, which he can do as long as you don't leave.
You've never seen office politics unless you've worked somewhere where the people are virtually trapped together for a lifetime. Corporate America, where the jerks come and go relatively quickly, is a picnic in comparison. (Think of a US university faculty and you'll get more of the feeling.)
"Those who have never entered upon scientific pursuits know not a tithe of the poetry by which they are surrounded."
Your corporate people are looking for changes to make. Why not converse with them and see what they are? Prople will normally tell you what they want if you can resist the terrible temptation to interrupt them with vital news about yourself. It wouldn't hurt if you had a good suggestion for improving something which did not contain negative comments on what (or who) was the evil party responsible. It always helps to look cool.
Standard advice for managers.
The employee corollary would be: praise in public, criticize in private. And then, only if you can make your criticism sound like an opportunity.
Sorry for not being entirely clear in my suggestion. I have a nasty habit of skipping the whole B->Y part and jumping straight from A to Z.
Having just gone through a round of "what did we do right, what did we do wrong" questions, I was able to see the way people reacted to it. I'm not a manager, I'm an alternate team-leader. And what I saw was that most people are afraid to speak out due to their fear of reprecussions.
A method of anonymously giving feedback to upper management through a mid-tier can be helpful. The mid-tier's job in this instance is to go through the 'suggestion box' and weed out the inter-personell strife and bring the constructive criticisms to the table.
Good managers understand the importance of team building and conflict resolution. But it's the employees that have to learn whether their manager is good or not -- and that is generally not worth risking a job over, hence the anonymous forum.
Support FSF: Stop thinking with your wallet, and think with your imagination. (cc/non-commercial)
been there done that. to be honest ya wanna know what happens when this takes place? the VP looses his job, his replacement comes in on a "clean-slate" basis and replaces all of upper management siting that "our current staff can not adapt to our technology needs". in the end you end up loosing all your good connections in the company getting replaced by green-horns with MCSE's and no real world experience trying to convert your "legacy" (about to move to linux) network to the *latest tech* windows system. FUCKING TRUST ME I'VE BEEN THERE 4 DAMN TIMES!!!
is a damn plague where I live. PLEASE IT GUYS do not enlighten your exec's to your job. it works SOO much better when they only know enough to quote laptop prices and say "hey, can I use XP?"
I speak from YEARS of experience here. please no -1 troll mod. I really am serious (although a bit jaded due to my loosing 2 jobs on this subject, but bailing from another 2 because of the patternistic behavior).
you're better off backing your IT manager in a corner and trully explaining to him/her how things are and letting them talk to the exec's than hearing it from the geeks. if you do it I swear unless you hold a Ph.D in bullshit you will only end up making things worse. as the poster said it shows the minor problems with a company that can seem massive to an exec but are a daily routine for an IT professional. it's just not wise to report such things to mangement.
On the real, your IT director/manager is there for you. if you look bad he does. and in most situations your manager is newer than you so image is a big thing. make him look good by explaining to him the problems and time lines for repair/completion and use his purported skills to improve your image. thats why there is a layer between IT and management (although we all know we are like -1 link behind the CEO as we _ALL_ do massive favors for them).
trust me guys/gals, been there done that. I hope someone can back me up on this.
I know all situations will not be like this but trust me on this one, experience is a mutha. . . seen it soo many times I wanted to puke when reading this article just from bad memories. Remember PHB's will always be PHB's. You can teach them untill your blue in the face and they'll still ask 'why did my computer lock up after opening that attachment from that person that said "ILOVEYOU"?'
You need an ITIL Problem Managment/Incident Management process. In our organization, we sit in the CIO/VP office during SEV 1 or SEV 2 problems. The CIO is very well informed about the issues that plague ISD and can make the necessary decisions based on facts, not employee agendas.
We currently keep all reoccurring problems logged and at the CIO request, we provide the information.
This process has been shaped and reshaped many times, but has provided our organization a great return.
When everyone in IT knows about the problems, they can be fixed. Then the resources can be busy with projects to advance the business outcomes of the organization. Not fire fight all day.
If there is an IT department out there that says they do not have any problems. They are lying, or just not a business unit.
This by the way is an open fair process. It does not single out any IT support groups' failure. It highlights where the $$$ need to be allocated.
Employees fear the CIO/VP, that why if you assemble a team to discuss the problems and areas of improvement. The staff can be busy fixing the problems. Not worrying about their jobs.
Man, it has been very successful in our organization.
Every year during my review as a manager, the same question comes up, what have I done to improve customer satisfaction. So anything you discuss that is negative, must result in decreased profits or decreased customer satisfaction. Thats the only two things that upper management understand. Efficiency, productivity, employee moral, means nothing to them. If you show a problem is affecting the bottom dollar or affecting the customers in a negative manner, they will listen.
One way to prevent the crap rolling down the hill is try to point out the catch 22.Show that both you and your managers are caught and that someone at the higher level is going to have to give the OK to take more drastic action to resolve the catch 22. So many times the bigger problem in resolving issues is that the responsibility lies in our hands but the authority lies in someone elses hands. Thats what creates a stress full situation.
Last, never get emotional about an issue. People who show calm in any situation will get more attention in the long run because they show control and confidence. Emotion is a negative thing in communications.
Otherwise, your screwed.
"Your having a bad day when the voices in your head put you on hold"
The first question is, what's the objective of the CEO? Is s/he considering firing the CEO? Or is it a message to your department, that s/he actually cares about you?
The best trick is to turn the situation around. Encourage the CEO to speak about his vision and about his pet peeves. Listen very carefully for items, which have not been mentioned in other public forums or publications. Those are the nuggets!
Encourage your CIO to share their vision, too. If s/he is any good, it will be an opportunity to shine. If not, it will turn out to be the public political suicide, you might like to see.
Ask intelligent followup questions - in business terms!
Give an idea, of what is easy to accomplish, and what is more difficult and mention the barriers to success. Be incredibly tactful, while hinting at the truth. Keep all your language in business terms specific to your company (avoid MBA b.s.), and use your CEO's terminology without overdoing it (it's a fine line!)
Avoid coming across as someone, whom the company owes. Come across as someone, who is enjoying the challenges, and who is prepared to work hard at meeting them.
Always remember - this is a political event. Use it as such. In case of doubt, be a nice person without sucking up.
>usually turn out to be an anonymous method for co-workers to shit on each other;
That sounds like fun
who gets to be top first?
You say "One major reason for this is so that they can get a better understanding of what is going on in IT and how it impacts the company overall." I think you should start with asking the senior execs, "what do you need from IT in order to further the company's interests?" Once that question is answered, you can tell them what your department needs in order to meet the goals. Since the goals come straight from the execs, they can't argue with them.
It's hard to believe that so many of you believe the best policy is to "keep your f*cking mouth shut" or to play some sort of game by "relating it all to money" or brown-nosing.
Be respectful, think of others first, stop seeing the leadership of your company as "them" and start working on how well you articulate your thoughts and ideas. Years ago I got tired of hearing sentences start with "Well, technical people tend to..." then it trailed off into some description of an IT person with a real lack of communication skills, or was a bad follower, or couldn't communicate well. Who wants that person on their team? I worked hard to become better at interacting better with more than my computer and got better jobs, with better pay, at better companies.
Consider the fact that if you work for a company where the only way to keep your job is to be quiet and do your 40, no more no less and speaking up means you get fired, maybe you should stop whining and find another job!
If there asking for your advice then don't give it. Just tow the company line. Also you might want to get your resume ready, Having higher ups interfere with the lower levels of the company generally means that something is wrong. If everything was fine they wouldn't bother poking around.
No one ever needed a Grat Big Dinner Party to figure out the general status of ANY department. Dinner Parties, Golf Tournaments, Picnics - they are all shams: designed to meet specific, unmentioned agenda's, not the company's agenda (i.e., betterment of the company). Seriously, if Coorporate Communications was sooooo important, Managers and Execs would do the following: 1. Hire people who can actually read, write and speak English 2. Have work-day meetings which are actually productive and where people are encouraged to speak 3. Create a climate where ther is no fear of retribution. Already, there is a climate of Fear and Retribution in your workplace, ot you wouldn't have started this thread. A simple company dinner will solve nothing. Here's what to do. Show up early and look real "Purrty" for the management: dress nice, comb your hair and brush your teeth. Most of all, take a bath. Then, go around to each "Big Shot" and thank him for inviting you, but you must leave now because your mother is in the hospital recovering from a Golfing Accident and you want to be by her side (all managers love it if when they think you Golf). If they try to solicit info from you before you leave, tell them that you would be glad to have a discussion with them, and an appoitment with them would be the preffered method (don't worry, they'll forget). Then get the hell out of there as fast as you can!!!!
If they really wanted to know what was wrong they would go and find out. A dinner is not the place to do it. Don't trust them. They only way to get ahead is to just go along. And anyway, executive pay had nothing to do with performance so why should they care. And all you are going to do by telling them what is wrong is embarass them. They don't like that nor do they like work. Think of executives as our kings. Would you tell a king what was wrong?
Work smarter not harder.
There is no "I" in team.
Be part of the solution, not part of the problem.
Seriously though, if a company has to organise special dinners just to open communications, it already has a problem way beyond IT bugets and infrastructure.
Odds are that this is an attempt by upper management to find an excuse to trim the fat in the IT department. I've worked in IT for a decade, and spent the last couple freelancing. Companies generally have bloated, inefficient IT departments that exist simply to buy more crap and then fail to maintain it. Most of the time, upper management ignores the bloat as the cost of having technology be a part of their business - but if they wanted to get a feel for how much bloat and wasted time there really was, scheduling a 'speak frankly to the CIO' dinner would be a great way to do it.
I once had the opportunity to showcase my department's prototype at the executive Christmas dinner - I set up the demonstration, dropped a sheet over it and helped myself to a glass of wine from the open bar. As the executives mingled, I mingled with them, simply introducing myself as being 'with the blah-blah department'. Amazingly, everyone treated me as an equal, freely discussed various upcoming projects and plans with me and listened to my thoughts on our own and competitor's products and market positions. Because it was an exclusive event, they all assumed that I was as important as they were (because if I wasn't, it would have reduced their own importance, perhaps!).
So if you want to really make a difference, try to arrange to be at an exclusive corporate event for whatever reason you can come up with. Dress appropriately, know the names of everyone there, and don't be afraid of the people you talk to - they're just as human as you are, and one time most of them were nobodies too.
-Elentar
The wheel it turns, around and around, with an ancient rumbling sound.
Are you sure they are even Upper Management and not Consultants...gasp...named Bob and Bob
But it is filled with inexperienced children who have not spent their life climbing the corporate ladder, so they cannot understand the "complexity" of the business and how it needs to improve.
Your response proved just how correct "they" are in their assessment. IT folks have RARELY "climbed the corporate ladder" but since they've conquered minor technological feats noboby else knows about they act as if they themselves put the man on the moon.
I work with/in/around IT, design websites for advanced functionality, and primarily produce highly technical and difficult scientific content. And I'm in B to B sales to Fortune 50 companies, working with their marketing teams to develop solutions to their needs.
Believe me, they "get it" more than you imagine. They drop major dollars annually to develop novel technologies across the board. Integrating systems, driving sales, delivering content, aggregating data, they do it all as part of their daily lives. And they deal with internal "childlike" IT departments who cop 'tudes and don't deliver on anything that they don't want to. Marketing teams with ultimate culpability to their management, who's heads can roll on a dime, don't appreciate the 'tude from the IT bozo down the hall who refuses to post a presentation to the intranet site and whines that nobody appreciates their skill at hiding prOn on the team servers and p2p trading all day at work. Realize that most of the time, IT support leads with one word... No. Marketing teams have enough barriers in their day, and the bullshit barriers of corporate IT departments result in... hiring consultants who will do it. Or be fired. Just like your marketing team members.
I deal with these "IT children" daily. They never realize that I can out-geek them, and when they whine that "it can't be done (read... I'm too busy reading the Onion)" I throw my laptop on the screen and do it right there in front of them and their manager.
As far as your putting together a program "on their terms" and not gaining acceptance... quit your whining. Too many IT folks are judged by a jury of 1 or 2 of their friends on the "coolness" of their solution. You haven't done it on their terms until you've faced 1000 rejections and finally provided them with what they want. I do this day in and day out. Proposal, proposal, proposal. A 25% sale rate on proposed solutions is exceptional for the best out there. Don't forget, you're proposing in a competitive environment. Deal with the fact that someone else will have a better idea, or a cheaper development process, or whatever, than you, and you will not win them all. Far from it. Proposing one thing and not hitting on it is like buying a lottery ticket and crying that you aren't a millionaire.
So you consult. Do you propose the solutions day in and day out, or is there a sales person sitting above you, proposing the ideas to the client? Do you understand what the content will be for the widgets you design? How the client will use them? What legal trouble they can get in if you put something stupid in the functionality (every company has some regulatory group to deal with). When you client asks for a "dashboard", do you cringe? Or rise to the challenge?
And when it comes to IT, your customers know what they want... they want the elegant solution. Even the 60 year old manager in a Fortune 50 company is now tech saavy enough to know what a crappy solution looks like. Functionality should be so elegant that it disappears into the background and moves the user on to their next task immediately.
So stop whining, stop insulting your perceived audience, and start perservering. Understand what an entrpreneurial spirit is like, refine your ideas with the understanding that you're not as brilliant as you think, and start understanding that human communication and interface underlies all programming solutions... so start dealing with people and understand teamwork. You'll possibly find a voice with your management that doesn't make you sound like sour grapes or run the risk of getting fired for shooting off a damn fool mouth.
That is the most important thing. No matter what. As well, some russian caviar and champagne is not bad as a starter.
"IT provides a service. We know that the service must be worth something, but we understand nothing about it. If we cannot understand it, then it cannot be important, but everybody has an IT department so we better have one. But it is filled with inexperienced children who have not spent their life climbing the corporate ladder, so they cannot understand the "complexity" of the business and how it needs to improve. But we have to have them, and they make almost as much as we do so we better smile when they are around. Please, please don't let them say anything because I will feel stupid because they know all this jargon that I do not. But they do not understand business as well as management and we set the rules so we are on top and my life is worthwhile. Just do not let them speak."
Substitute "janitorial" for "IT", and observe the differences money makes.
"I was fired three weeks later, for some dumb bullshit that you wouldn't get fired for unless you pissed off your boss."
...like reading Slashdot on company time.
" Try to find someway to disassociate the idea from the person. Granted this isn't perfect, but it might help some."
I recommend skywriting them above the restaurant.
Thats right, it's not your company. Let the directors take a fall.
Unless you have sufficient ammunition, team support, and solutions, don't expect to work there much longer. Actually, if you had the above, there wouldn't be a problem would there.
Trust your manager and work it out with him. That's why he's the manager and your the IT geek.
Peace!
"There's no point in making yourself out to be a whiner. "
Well there goes the Fine Whine business.
"Also, make sure you've got a few positive suggestions up your sleeve, so when someone asks "Bob, what could we have done better last quarter?" you've got something constructive to say."
Firing the entire department, and sending the work to India comes highly recommended.
Had a nice chat with my manager once... to set the stage, I worked IT at smallish printing company with aspirations of being the next iPrint (and we all know how well THAT turned out).
One of my tasks was to take all the customer jobs (our bread and butter) and put them online so Joe Q. Nobody could surf in, look at his stuff, reorder, etc etc. That system barely worked but thank God, customer satisfaction was not my responsibility. My !@#$ worked.
The customer jobs were all tiff scans, big files, with a suitably large database, so it meant we kept running out of space on the server. This was a huge headache. Drives were not cheap then.
Anyway, so one day me and my boss are offsite visiting a client and his cellphone rings. It's his son, who is sort of the assistant manager. While we have been away at the client, Son has been playing with the server and found out what's taking up all the space! Tiffs! And they're in the process of being deleted even now! Our problems are solved! Boss presents this to me smirking like an idiot. Yeah, what do I pay you for?
Then I told him, the Tiffs are all his precious customer jobs -and then I had to very carefully explain the entire scanning and archiving process including where tiffs fit in because the jerk didn't believe me. Like the time he didn't believe me when I told him the new genius he just hired was surfing kiddie porn at work. Finally, he got the hang of "tiff" and went through about four shades of white before calling back to shop to see how much damage Son had done.
Son was still trying to figure out how to use the server and hadn't gotten around to deleting anything.
I quit a month later and vowed never again discuss technical stuff with a manager or interfere when said manager is about to do something dumb like delete all the client data.
I was not put on this earth to keep dumb people from doing dumb things, and neither were you. Next time you feel like you have to get involved... DON'T DO IT!!!
About 6 or 7 years ago I was working on a high-pressure project involving an audit of a school district. The district had (unintentionally) been reporting inaccurate HR information to the state, and as a result had been receiving too much money for a number of years. There was a possibility that the state would withhold the excess all at once, and everybody was waiting in fear to find out how much it was going to be.
The person who knew the most about the way things were reported and were supposed to be reported was the HR director, who was about to retire after years of service. I think it meant a lot to him personally to get things straightened out so he could leave with a clean slate. He had a reputation for being short tempered, and was somewhat feared by his subordinates and generally disliked by the IT staff.
Over the course of working with him I began to appreciate his intelligence and came to think of his abruptness as sort of a geeky trait. Lots of programmers I've worked with have had far less social skills. He just took some getting used to. He had an math and accounting background and was a very logical thinker. As we unravelled the inner workings of the system together I actually started to enjoy working with him and even felt a sense of camaraderie.
That was when I made my big mistake. We were in the final stages of polishing up this massive algorithm that was embodied in a series of SQL procedures and temporary tables. I was tweaking code and producing reports, he was looking them over and spotting small problems, I was tweaking more. Things were almost right but not quite.
All during this time I had also been working on improving the overall processing. It was one of those old style jobs that had been set up to be run on a certain day of the year, or at least within a date range. Data entry was always frozen for a few days while they ran it. It was always a big scramble for the HR clerks to get the information entered on time. Data that was reported late or for whatever reason showed up after the annual run had to be accounted for separately in a different way.
The process itself had to be tweaked every year because the state's rules changed. They would run the job, fix problems and rerun it until the results looked right. It was a mess. My big improvement was to add date-checking to the SQL, so the job would produce a snapshot as of any specified date. Nothing would have to be frozen. If data was entered late or had to be corrected, the process could simply be rerun at any time. Plus, my version ran in about 10 minutes, compared to 2 or 3 hours for the old version. I was going to be a hero.
Then I made my big mistake. I forgot that this HR manager was a non-technical person. He was so sharp and so good at mental shorthand, I started treating him like a fellow programmer or analyst. We were two guys staying at work late, hacking this problem together. At some point I stopped checking the reports before showing them to him, and went into "Okay, try it now" mode.
BIG.
FREAKIN.
MISTAKE.
I made a trivial coding error. Some of the results we had already gone over were suddenly wrong. He looked at the report before I did, spotted the problem and went COMPLETELY ballistic. What the hell was I doing, he demanded, changing something that was already working? He had been under the impression that as we got each step of the process working, the results were locked in someway. This guy had an accounting background, and accountants tend to think like that. They "post" things.
Suddenly his confidence in me was completely shattered. He refused to take my word for anything, or to believe that the system was going to behave consistently from one run to the next as long as I was involved. A concept that to me was obvious -- that once a process is stable it will produce the same results every time, given the same data -- was just not part of his world or his way of thinking. With one typo I had ruined our professional relationship and become, in h
Diversified companies were the fashion of the 50's and 60's, throwing together businesses with no noticeable linkages. Trimming those megacorps back down to a "we make 'x'" model was the fashion of the 90's.
Incidentally, the CAT scanner company still exists as Sensaura.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Blame-Something that there's plenty of, but no one wants seconds.
I've seen that happen. In fact, I've read some of the management crap that says to do exactly that.
When you come into a new job, you must be "an agent for change".
You must solve the problems they're having.
If they aren't having any real problems, you must "find" a "problem" to "solve". Which usually means putting some new people in. These people will be more loyal to you because you brought them in. The old people, well, they may not be so loyal. Use the word "legacy" a lot. Claim that the existing systems are not suitable for some reason.
Poor live at home with my parents and go to school full time now to major in biochemistry.
I do not know about you all but I could not dedicate my life and be underappriciated or deal with politics.
IT management has to be one of the worst jobs out there. No offense to real IT managers who are reading this. I admire you. I would be cranky and go nuts with your job.
Why are all of you still in IT? Most of you are nerds and alot have wives and families so leaving is not much of an option. But IT no longer pays well, managment treats you like dirt and can outsource you in a whim, and smart geeks also have intelligence in other technical area's like chemistry and biology.
The medical field is dieing for people. The pay is good and you do not have to deal with this BS. Of course there is always politics but that is life. At least now you are valued there much like IT 15 years ago.
You can also find cures for cancer and help save people's lives instead of sacrificing ones soul to a CEO who gives no rats ass about you.
http://saveie6.com/
I do this quite often--it's part of my job. First off, consider that at a dinner party, you may not even want to talk too much shop, but rather set the ground work for some other time. More on that later.
This isn't really IT-specific, but when dealing with management, always remember two words: Risk and Cost.
These people are most likely not technical--they've been trained by generations of PWC and McKinsey consultants to expect to be able to boil the most complex problems down to several binary points on a powerpoint slide. Don't be afraid to explain, but be prepared to wade into dangerous water the moment you start with "yes, but..."
Speak clearly, succinctly, never hem and haw, never be afraid to say "I don't know but I'll find out", never bullshit. For right or wrong, you're most likely on their turf (when they're on mine and yours, they tend to get googley-eyed--try taking your boss' boss into a big server room sometime for some fun) and they make the rules.
Don't waste time, don't beat around the bush, be open, make eye contact, don't fidget, don't talk to the whiteboard, don't read off your points, yada yada. Nothing goes over preparation. Use positive words (can, will, etc.)
For non-technical management, technical problems are just another business task. There's nothing special about it--they may even be slightly intimidated by the topic, and thus pay closer attention to individual words of yours (so be prepared to carefully formulate your sentences to not leave any openings.) Ask if there are questions from time to time.
Likewise, there is nothing wrong with being friendly. Think about it this way--who would you rather have describe an accounting problem to you, your boss' boss' boss or your beer-drinking gamer buddy Bert with a finance degree? Same thing applies. Make friends--it's amazing how few technical people understand the importance of getting to know people, socializing, whatnot.
I know these are all general things, but they've helped me tremendously.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
When I started working for my organization, as a support tech, I let my youthful exuberance get the better of me, and started proposing (really good) solutions to problems that had bedevilled the department for years. Needless to say, I quickly earned a reputation as a "Loose Canon", a "Hothead", and an "Asshole". I was turned down for several moves/promotions I deserved otherwise. I've determined I will not rise here, and am looking for a new position.
Our European owned Bonds company has just been bought by an American bank. Mr Important Boss comes over, speaks to everyone in the office except IT. He then stands and gives a speech about how wonderful it is to be trading electronically, and how our systems put us at the forefront of blah blah... He says 'Are there any questions?' I ask 'Why is noone in your bank talking to us about our planned systems migration?' He says 'Who are you?' I say 'I'm one of the guys who makes this amazing electronic trading possible' He says 'From a management perspective, I can't say what will happen over the next 3 months with you guys' I say 'In that case, we cannot guarantee that your systems will be working in 3 months...that's not a threat, it's something we said to you 2 months ago in a report we wrote' He says 'Next question....' Basically, they don't give a shit. Most are so old school or elitist that IT is nothing to them....how can we understand their business as well as they do? We're an overhead after all...a cost centre. Having contracted at other City firms, I can say that it's the same for many IT departments.
It has one entire chapter dedicated to this concrete subject.
Long story short, they shouldn't "kill the messenger". It is also something that has an entire chapter in the book of Bill Gates. Bad news exist. Management should not take aggresive measures on that, nor kill the messenger, but _know_ about it, because if they dont, they lack feedback, and consecuences get usually worse.
That is how things should be.
Usually, upper management are a bunch of uneducated bastards that only know about business meals and profit margin.
So, even when you know that you should speak with them, and even if you knew what things they should know (which do not involve anything extremely technical), telling it will probably not make a difference.
Your team should use the opportunity to road show an internal CCM system - not just for IT, but for procedures and operations. You will need to sell the idea. But then the Management will see you as pro-active rather than reactive.
It's worth a shot.
This comment was written with the intention to opt out of advertising.
I see a lot of people suggesting Dilbert and Office Space. I think that's wrong. D and OS are about middle management. Pencil pushers. Presidents and Vice-Presidents are NOT pencil pushers. These guys negotiate tough contracts, stare down other companies threatening to sue and deal with enormous pressure from investors.
Why does the Pres and VP want to have a talk with some lowly engineers? It's not to hear about your concerns. They want something. I'll repeat that: they want something from you.
Let them drive the conversation. Figure out what they want and deliver it. Silence is not an option. You have a duty to perform. You work for them, not the other way around. Forget about what you want from the dinner.
And forget all that stupid advice about being positive and double-speaking, etc. Replacing all your "x is bad" sentences with "not x is good" isn't going to fool Presidents and Vice-Presidents. It just makes you look like a wannabe middle manager.
THEN ask for more money :-)
Gav
"There's no such thing as data that can't be manipulated"
I'll give you a small bit of background about me so my comments can be taken in context. I'm one of those Techs that eventually became a board member, but due to the nature of of companies work I also deal a lot with MD's of other companies (I think their called CEO over the other site of the water). MD's are just normal people they are generally not evil malevolent individual's determined to get you. This means when dealing with them normal social rules apply, such as be friendly, don't insult their intelligence by patronizing's them, however don't blind them with science. The reason they are there is to find I what you all think, so mix the problems/solutions with friendly chit-chat.
Management today is useless, I have seen it in the past three companies I have associated myself with. We now have young managers with .COM type management experience, read .NONE. You would not believe some of the things that happen today, our group has totally given up and we are whores only there to collect the paycheck and wait till the economy gets better so that we can shit on our desks and leave.
Master Powerpoint, the native CEO language...
The last time this happened to me, my (former) company higher-ups and we techies got together, had fun, then they fired us all the next day. Watch your back is all I'm saying :)
-KS2k3
If you want to create the appearance of effectiveness, you have to talk about every "problem" as an "inefficiency" and discuss your plan to mitigate it. Executives see everything in terms of "cost" and "risk." IT is a cost center, and an area of high risk. So, you've got the short end of both sticks.
Say that your department has problem "X." At said dinner, your dialog will go something like this:
"I have an idea for increasing the efficiency of our department. Right now, we are doing this 'X' way, but I think we can reduce risk and labor cost by doing it 'Y' way."
They don't want to hear that X is a problem, but they DO like to hear that Y is cheaper and less risky than X. Telling them that X is a problem is the same thing as telling them they did something wrong. Making a suggestion to improve upon X is a much better approach.
Also, if they don't agree with you, which is better, having told them their business process is flawed, or offering your suggestion to improve an already accepted process?
Just food for thought...
You, sir, are worse than Hitler. I realise that you just claimed to be upper management, and I apologise for the redundancy.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Hey there, buddy! Everything is great! Don't outsource to India!
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
My first reaction to the question would be to say "yes, management want feedback so give it to them". I was kinda disappointed with the apparent lack of courage of the /. posters who advised not saying anything controversial.
But then I realised - a one-off event like this is not the appropriate time to be raising new issues, because you should be raising new issues continuously. The things wrong with your workplace should be already tabled and under discussion. If they're not raised by you in the course of your regular work then you are part of the problem, not the solution.
I just noticed that most advice is either don't say anything or if you say something, don't say it how you really want to.
So I propose you just let loose and let it all out. Stop hiding and undermine authority.
It will feel very good and who knows you might get lucky and achieve some respect.
You have to do exactly the opposite if you have ant ethics at all:
-Consider your colleagues your enablers and facilitators, not your competition.
-Ditto for management.
-Anything business critical should be shared with other people in pposition to keep things runnning and the respective manager.
-You should spread your knowledge as widely as possible.
In other words show your worth in a frame of ethical professionalism.
Only companies in which you don't want to be working this could possibly back fire in your detriment.
In the other hand, the alternative you suggest sooner or later will catch with you and you'll begin to build a reputation that will follow you elsewhere, rightly making more difficult to make a living in the small world of IT where reputation may be the only difference between having a job and flipping burgers.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You'll have to decide whether attending or skipping the meeting will allow you to blend in or to supply you with an alibi.
don't. It's not your job to tell them what is wrong with their company. You get paid to keep their stuff running. You *should* be worried about repercussions. You don't have any political power to insulate you from the repercussions. You are their *salaried* employee. They get to fire you anytime they want.
The right way (actually the only way business understands) to do this is for them go to a third party consultant who will do an IT audit/review. Since the company chooses the consultant and pays them for their opinion, it'll get listened to.
Businesses rarely take IT seriously. They depend on it. It's their business' lifeblood. Does that matter? Not in the least. As long as they're turning a buck, what do they care? If they shoot themselves in the foot... er, I mean... take a hit because of their incompetent IT people, they can always have a round of layoffs. You know, anything to shore up the CEO's Christmas bonus. (Do I sound bitter?)
Anyway... Don't paint a bullseye on your forhead. Don't *volunteer* to be a scapegoat. Remember, it's not your company. You just work there...
Write down the list of things you'd like to "discuss". Meet with your boss and discuss them with him. Find out his position and how he's been positioning those issues. Then BACK HIM UP. By presenting issues the same way your boss would you are not alienating your boss (key to keeping your job), you are reinforcing his position (it should be the same as yours - if you can't convince your boss of the need you won't be able to convince the higher ups, TRUST ME!!), you are making him and yourself look good.
Present the "issue" in four sentences, or less. Present the "solution" in four sentences, or less. Present both using business terms, not geek terms. Make sure you discuss the ROI (return on investment) potential, both financially and productivety.
Keep in mind this is dinner will make or break your career.
Are you a positive team player who understands (can speak) in business terms?
Are you ideas clear, consise, and relevant?
If you can't do the above, say nothing!!!!
It's a trap...get an axe.
Honestly, there *is* a very good reason managers exist. They're an abstraction layer between the working man and the PHB.
Remove that abstraction layer, espcially in the presence of alcohol...
Yikes.
What were you expecting?
If CEO's are smart enough to become CEO's, they're smarter than IT people and know better than them what's good for their company.
Why fight it? Let them believe they know what's going on because they aren't built to believe differently (even if it's the truth).
What is the relationship of IT to all the business units in your company? Where I work, I think we have an excellent arrangement and IT/business units work together very well.
Where I work, IT is critical to making the company work and keeping it all together. So start with the needs of the business units you serve, solve them in the best way, and your executive types should have big smiles on their faces. On the flip side, if you are making decisions that impact other parts of the business, and you base those decisions on anything other than the needs of those parts of the business, then it will look very questionable.
For a "good" example, IT here also recently built my business unit some custom databases that streamlined the work we have to do every day, and they are hero's for it.
For a "bad" example, IT here recently did a huge software and hardware upgrade to a different database system that we use. However, they didn't work enough to make sure that the work done was based on business needs. Executives are furious at the time and money they spent on it, and the people that use the systems are not any better off after the "upgrade"
So if you were in IT in my company and an executive wanted to sit down and talk with you to find out what can be improved, you would want to prepare something that shows how you are affecting the connection of different groups in the company and how you are improving effectiveness within the groups. From that basis, you could move on to suggestions about incremental improvements, or total changes and what effects those would have on the groups involved.
In the end, if you do all that and your Execs just don't get it, then you might want to start looking for companies that understand the value of IT.
If you do, say what you believe. It may be hard on you, but it will probably be better on the company, and who knows, you might actually get recognized for taking a principled stand. It's been known to happen.
If you don't care about the company you work for, and it's just a job, I wouldn't give it a second thought. Enjoy the free food. Applaud when necessary and keep your head down and don't speak unless spoken to.
I care about the company I work for now, but that company happens to employ a grand total of two people, including my father. I foolishly cared about the major IT company I worked for previously and it came to nothing. No way a pissant tech like me was going to make anyone else start caring. Should've just ridden the party boat as long as I could.
And the world will come to you. Voice your concerns well, and no harm should come to you. However, if we "techno-babble" them to death, no-one will ever give an IS/IT guy the time of day.
One of the 187.
To help "streamline" IT. Afterall it is a costcenter not a profitcenter. I have an idea, lets streamline the mba types which are pretty much useless anyway!
Oooh it must strike horror into your worker souls to see those numbers. How come the level of staff is so uncertain? And do you expect to gain or lose 30 people in between now and the dinner? Or will the numbers actually fluctuate during the dinner, like in some impish game of chess played by those senior board fellas in their tuxedos? I am worried.
1) be unified
2) be honest
Why not turn it around and try to understand what the exec's issues are?
:-)
You may well find that you can help them with what they want fixed. If so, you'll get their support to implement it and with a little smarts you can maybe get a few of your wants done too.
Even if you don't, you'll have proved that you're interested in the business and *them* and that will get you air-time in future.
For God's sake don't just whinge. They'll smile at the time and (if you're lucky) you'll never see them again. If you're unlucky, they'll thank you for all your efforts and wish you well for the future
"it's a trick, get an axe"? Link.
Yeah... Groovy.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Don't want to start a malicious rumor or anything but a meeting like your describing sounds like to me after 20 years experience is that a massive downsizing or even total outsourcing is in the works... NO MATTER WHAT THEY TELL YOU!!. They are just feeling things out and seeing how they need to proceed so that no data or other network espionage takes place. I wouldn't be surprised if you see a IT Audit take place so that they can obtain all the detailed network documentation, passwords, etc. Elliot Davis Consultants for IT Outsourcing love to get in doors this way. I speak from experience. Be Paranoid, be very afraid... you should be in this day and age. Nobody is safe, no matter what your qualifications or experience. Companies don't care about there people at all anymore. It's all about the bottom line. If you want to say anything, stay positive and talk about some method of saving the department or company money without sacrifing productivity or gains. Other than that. LISTEN don't Talk!
Informing upper management of fly-shit in the pepper often backfires. Since I happen to know Hellraizr personally and was privy to the incidences to which he refers, I can vouch for the validity of his statements. However, this is an opportunity which can be exploited, if approached with the proper attitude. Instead of making this meeting a bitch session, I would use the time to explain the direction of IT, both universally as well as locally to the company. Try to explain how IT could be improved, remaining flexible and adaptable to growth with an adequate budget and provisions for upgrading infrastructure (personell, hardware, etc.) I would especially refrain from an inference to difficult issues and any incompetantcies. Anyone who has been in IT for more than a couple of years knows that management considers IT a necessary evil and not a contributor to the bottom line. We are simply tolerated and only appreciated when we play "Wizard" and make a problem go away. Kinda like being a cop....hours of boredom with the occasional moment of panic. Any reference to gross inadequacies will only bring on unwanted sweeping changes that often result in a leap backwards instead of a step forward. Put all your thoughts and ideas on paper and devise a well thought-out presentation. Don't let the meeting degenerate into a chaotic bantering of half-baked ideas and complaints. Keep it postive and well-focused and the opportunity will bear fruit.
or none of the above :P
Where do YOU work? Here in the US, you pretty much described the job environment for 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999% of all companies. It would be nice if it were true that going to another company would solve these problems, but they'll most likely exist there, as well. It's simple: the problems with most companies is management, and they don't want to hear that. It's human nature, everyone thinks they're doing a great job. No, the problems are always the economy, 9/11, or too many obese children. If you complain as such, you're an unappreciative whiner.
;-)
My advice to the Asker: suck up and deal, win the battles you can, and then come to my site and tell the world about those you didn't! LOL!
Sorry, didn't MEAN for this to become about my site.
Which is more painful? Going to work or gouging your eye out with a spoon? Find out!
http://www.workorspoon.com
Ethics anyone???
Maybe if I was out for my self, I'll tell him what he wanted to hear. But most of us have Ethics right?
Lots o' humor here, but if you're seriously looking for a guideline -
What are your company's business problems and competitive challenges? How can IT help the company kick butt in the marketplace? Apply that filter to what you want technology-wise and present it in that manner and suddenly you will find people listening. If you don't know the answers to the question, ask. Are the problems you see in the group business problems, i.e., do they cost the company revenue? Are the process problems you see perceived as process problems by your in-house clients? I love gadgets and toys and to make my databases fly, but the point at the end of the day is to help the business succeed (hopefully padding one's resume in the process). If you sound interested only in technology to management, you will be dismissed (not from your job, but not taken seriously).
Kiss ass! This isn't about bringing up your department's problems. This is about your department telling the VP about how wonderful he is doing! IF you really want to BS with the VP say things like this. IF you want to look at our molehill, our main problems are personal communciations difficulties, and internal disagreements on what direction the techonology world is heading. Don't give any facts. Just tell him that is about like Ford vs. Chevy vs. Honda that you'll be paying about the same for the same performace, and it'll come come down on from manager's personal decision as to which direction we head in. Then when the VP says that Honda are usually cheaper bring up IBM using Linux.
One way is to say that the company has these problems. People do not want to be surprised by problems, and bosses may try to get rid of the messenger instead of the problem.
The other way is to say that the company could do even better than it is now by making these positive changes. Bosses like to hear that the company can improve its performance and they may be inclined to really listen. It's the same message as before, but now you're *selling* what you want to do rather than complaining about something you want to stop doing.
While you're working out a positive approach, also try to cast your observations, suggestions, and logic in business terms. It helps to get the right kind of attention, and at least shows that you're not just some geek who doesn't understand or care about what *they* hold dear. Find some way to answer the question, "how does this help us end the day with more money than we would have had otherwise?"
I spoke my mind, every day, and every company meeting, and at every forum. Didn't really help the company, but it soothed the employees, because "someone" was asking the hard questions, and the CEO really appreciated it, believe it or not. We were at more than 300 people.
;)
I got a lot of respect, from everyone up and down the chain of command, and from many in the rank and file. And I sure could sleep well at night.
Telling the truth is going to make you enemies, but if you don't do it, it will eat at you, and you will lose any real desire to make a difference. You will just be collecting checks, then.
The strong do what they can, while the weak suffer what they must.
first of all, if they're really interested in identifying and solving problems, they will need to recognize that you guys are the ones that work around said problems all the time, and having them *not be there* is the best way to be working
second, never EVER bring up a problem for which you can't provide any solution whatsoever - then you're just griping...the first thing they're going to ask when you bring something up is "well, what do you think can be done about it, and how reasonably" - if you shrink into your seat and mumble "idunno" into your water, they'll be dismissive for the rest of the evening
third, walk into the meeting and treat them like you want to be treated. if you yell at them for their shortcomings (perceived or no), they may very well just kick you out of dinner/the company then. if you're calm, collected, and professional, a lot more should come out of it long-term (for the company and your work environment) and they'll think a lot more of you personally
You state:
;)
One major reason for this is so that they can get a better understanding of what is going on in IT and how it impacts the company overall.
That's backwards. The IT organization exists to support the goals of the organization. What "goes on" in IT should be well known, as it should be aimed at the business processes of the company. They don't need to know squat about the specifics of WEP vs. WPA, just how their needs for mobile users were met (or not met) by your deployment of WiFi throughout the campus. They don't need to know about SOAP or JSP or whatever. They just need to know that their customers, partners and employees are being served by their website.
So, the best thing you can do is try to get these people to clearly articulate their goals, so that IT knows what will be expected of them. Then be clever and figure out ways to meet those goals that save money, make people happy, and get you extra time off
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
I did that once, and I dumped core because I ran out of stack space.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Encourage other people to speak up and talk about all of the problems.
The more riled up you can get them before they start talking, the better.
It's best if you get them so pissed off about something that they will rant about it.
While the person is ranting, talk to others about what a bastard he is.
I have misplaced my pants.
How many more buzzwords are you going to throw out, before someone stands up and yells BINGO. I hope to God, you are a troll, and not for real.
I can already tell you're politically astute, which means you must be a real bitch to work for. I bet you're always there on someone's back when YOUR ass is on the line, and totally absent when someone it's someone else's. Most mgrs I've seen don't really want to hear bad news, and most of them don't want to know it when they're wrong. When you say "expect feedback, and require improvement", I hear, "you better suck up to me actively, and you better not let any bad news bubble up to me either".
I agree with the original poster, don't rock the boat, and if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. And remember the Law of Unintended Consequences - even if the top brass does want to hear about the problems, their "cure" might be worse than the current "disease". Maybe you've got intelligent mgrs, that don't totally f**** things up, but the odds are against you.
This is the kind of lunch/dinner that shouldn't be attended by grunts - let middle management snow the top brass, that's what middle managements' main function is anyway.
And if this is the type of company I think it is, go find somewhere else to work, if you can. Companies like this tend to only keep people who can barely find their out of the building each day.
someone speaks the truth!
I was not writing about the hostile managers. They are easy to spot. I was not talking about the ineffective or stupid ones; you can work around them. Most management will listen to MY ideas because they want to justify my cost. And I don't have A company; I've been "independent" for 5 years.
This article is about a group of techies mingling with a group of executives. The executives MAY really want the advice of the techies. But I was reminding the techies of what is going through the brains of non-IT management. I am not saying the techies cannot have input, and the parent to my post gave great advice about how to phrase the ideas, but there is still the management meme of "we are in control; we are better; and these people make us feel stupid" that needs to be remembered BY THE TECHIES so that the techies are properly subservient and remember not to talk about technology. I was trying to reinforce the message of the parent post.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
There is no Politics-Free company out there that always spends money on the right stuff, never spends money on the wrong stuff, runs Linux, and lets IT Drones play Quake all day.
I work at one that's damn close. My boss is technically savvy, lets me order what we need and lets me do what I want, provided I can prove we need it. We're a Windows site for the most part, but I've gotten two major apps running on Linux servers in the past year.
Yeah, it's academia. Yeah, the pay sucks. But I can also take vacation at the drop of a hat, I'm not on call, I can take the time to learn anything that's of interest to me (including going to any training course I can justify), and the first thing the boss asks me about in meetings is my son.
Keep looking. Stuff like this is out there.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
How odd. Dilbert doesn't have a mouth. Has he always not had a mouth?
I like your post. It is surprisingly insightful from an AC. You should get an account, as most of us tend to ignore the AC posts.
Yes, techies have that great feeling of superiority that comes from being able to do things that nobody else can do. They need to squash that for dealing with management.
The skills needed to be a good techie are very different from the skills needed to be a good manager. When I do management work, I feel that my brain shifts paradigms. At any moment, I can be a techie, or I can be a mannager, but the skills seem to come from different parts of the brains, and are mutually exclusive. I prefer to be a techie, and have income as great as I could get as a manager, so I have no need to "climb the corporate ladder." Obviously, that situation does not apply to all techies, but the stereotype is that we are happy with our jobs and feel little need to move up.
If your IT support staff is as bad as you describe, you should think about replacing them, their standards, and their management. IT should SUPPORT; if they are not doing it well, it hurts the whole company.
Yes, I know that big business spends much money on IT projects. That is why I only need to work a few months of the year.
You realize you ARE one of those "outside salespeople" that I suggested having present the ideas. If you have received 1000 rejections, then you must be a full-time salesperson, regardless of your self-admitted technical skills. You may want to consider focusing your target audience more, but I do not know your product and so cannot give good advice. If you are doing web design work, you may want to concentrate on a single industry or geographical region. Use your successes to directly produce more success in a limited market. Focusing on your knowledge of their business usually produces better than saying "we do web design".
I usually do not directly handle the sales, mostly because I do not like activities that have such a small chance for success. I almost did not do it this time; I had 2 salespeople ready to do the presentations, but neither of them had worked with the customer before. I expected that my personal relationship with the management would have a positive effect. I was wrong. Oops. I did discover I was in a "competitve environment" before I wrote my presentation. I originally thought I was suggesting an innovation, but discovered they were already considering a soution while discussing mine with the line people. I did have the advice of several managers and salespeople about what should be included in the presentation, and how it should be phrased. One of them wrote the Agenda, and another reviewed specific executive buzzwords that would get the ideas across on "their terms". I did my homework.
I consult. Yes, I understand everything, and I had the "elegant solution". I consistently make them happy regardless of their idea; that is why I am a success. Most of your thoughts do not apply to MY situation, but they are good advice for anybody who wants to consult. Remember management does not really understand computers, so if they ask for a "dashboard", find out what they expect to gain from it. The customer is always right, but it is our mission to guide them to achieve the business results by using technology to its best.
I spend my life entertaining my brain.
... 40 cents to *mail* a 10 megs. Doesn't matter how you get to that 10 megs, it costs the company 40 cents to do it.
Thats all, sorry for the confusion.
Why is your upper management talking directly to the IT staff instead of to the IT management?
How many reasons can there be? Maybe they don't trust IT management. Maybe they are looking for dirt to undermine IT management. Maybe they are looking for dirt to undermine the IT staff.
If they like and trust the IT management they would ask them what is wrong in IT.
My suggestion would be ask one question at the start of the meeting; What should IT be doing *for the company* that it is not currently doing?
Then take careful notes about the answer.
When upper management asks questions answer them truthfully, do not give excuses, do not place blame, state only facts, and give the shortest accurate anwser you can give.
If the truth is that it is in you plan for next year, say that. If the truth is that you don't have the budget to do what is asked, say that. If the truth is that what they want is not possible, say that too.
No bullshit, no personalities, no hedging, no technobabble.
I've been on both sides of this problem.
Stonewolf
The comments on this thread seem to vary widely from "lay it all out for them" to "put it into their terms (money/solutions/bottom-line)" to "keep your mouth shut." The problem here, is communication.
It'd be nice to say prescriptively "give them information X, Y, and Z organized in the following way" or "eat and say nothing, you're powerless." Following such a prescriptive solution allows us to place any blame for failure on the advice-giver instead of ourselves. However, any prescriptive solution is also likely to fail 80% of the time.
The situation is much more complex than just figuring out what to say and what will happen as a result. This meeting isn't an opportunity to lay it all out on the table. It's an opportunity to open dialogue with the executive(s) present. Before going into a diatribe over all the maladies in the organization or stuffing yourself so full of food that the blood all flows from the brain in the stomach, ask questions to the executive(s).
What are their organizational goals? What are the concerns and problems that are being perceived? What sparked the decision to have this meeting? On what level can you communicate with these people? Don't begin to offer your report until you understand their needs. In order to understand their needs, ask them. Clarify them and summarize them back so that you clearly understand. Then, based on your knoweldge, frame a response that feeds them your knowledge framed in terms of their need.
Stay safe and keep everything at a corporate level, making no assumptions about the positive or negative morals of the people you are talking to. Based on their needs, form your analyses based on a shared mutual interest (minimally you all want raises and advancement. maybe you also have stock options in common or other things). Maybe in the process, you can make a powerful friend.
Remember, for better or worse, this is the beginning of a process, not the end of one.
... is one of my favorites. I also like the shotgun /makeup applicator and the electric hammer.
"Homer, you've got it set to whore!"
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
"EMI and the CT Scanner (A) & (B)", case numbers 9-383-194 and 9-383-195, 26 pages, US$13 to purchase on line.
For you cheap bastards, like me, see MITOpenCourseWare (Made In India), and scroll down to lecture #8.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Will there be a big banner that says "Is this good for the company?"
The world is a-changin... the people who used to matter don't matter no more. They're just hanging on to whatever shreds of relevance they think they can muster...
Never, never go above your management to talk about problems if you value your job. Be aware that even though your company's "Open Door Policy" (by whatever name) may purport to protect you if you do, the policy is really there to protect the company - NOT employees. If things go wrong they can point to the policy and blame you for not coming forward. The company may not be able to fire you for going to upper management, but there is more than one way to skin a cat. When the retaliation starts the company will defend itself to the utmost because to admit that there was a violation of policy would open them to a lawsuit by you. Don't look for the upper management to protect you - they will never sacrifice a manager for a worker because it is easier to replace workers than managers.
I speak from experience here. Do not take what is right or efficient or smarter in your job to heart and make it so important that you feel you need to go to upper management. Do not make it a personal issue. Do not make it a moral issue. Do not think you will be rewarded for doing so - that only happens in movies. Your managers will defend themselves every way they can, and that will include finding a way to get rid of you.
Here are two rules you should NEVER violate that you can have free of charge from me:
1) When managment announces that they want open feedback in a meeting and that nothing said will have any repercussions, watch out! That is the time to keep your mouth shut!
2) Never take your job so seriously that you forget your own welfare. If you are perceived by your local management to have stabbed them in the back they WILL get even...and they have the power to do it.
This is no troll and I speak from experience and as a victim of a so-called Open Door Policy. If you criticize your manaement you will be punished...and if you object to the punishment you will be forced out of your job.
From your original post, this is the best advice you could have right now.
I can't second your post too strongly. I've been there too. You have to keep your mouth shut, say only what you are expected to say and nothing more. Never speak up and say what you really think when asked, particularly when they tell you to be frank.
No good will ever come to dicey and his colleagues from speaking up at that dinner "meeting". Sounds to me like they are being set up. If management really wanted to know what people thought they would ask each in private, and even then the smart ones would keep silent.
Here is a big news flash - Human Resources departments are NOT there to protect the employees. This is probably the biggest misconception among employees today, and one that the companies like to perpetuate because it keeps employees from getting independent help or advice. In reality, HR departments are there to protect the company and the company's management. HR departments are the company's advocate, not the employee's advocate although they will pretend they are.
The only person you can trust to be on your side in an employee/company issue is an attorney you hired yourself (or your union if that applies).
Here is some free advice from MY attorney that I pass on to people thinking of using an Open Door Policy:
Company Policies are NOT legal contracts. The company has NO legal obligation to follow their own policies, the employee has NO legal recourse if a company decides to not follow their policies when inconvenient. The only policies that are legally enforceable are those that mirror existing law. There are no Open Door laws except to prohibit retaliation for whistle-blowers reporting violations of Federal law (and perhaps some state laws).
Unfortunately I learned this after it was too late. Maybe some others can benefit from it in advance if they read it here.
Our company had terrific IT, with no complaints. In fact in my 20 years, it was probably the best IT dept I had worked for. Or in the top 3, and I used to be a field engineer and visited companies like Intel and Sun. So our companies solution was to outsource our IT department to IBM. Two-three months later, we lost our file server, and it was 2 weeks before half the company could get to there Unix home directories. We now have some nifty big black "HAL" looking like file server boxes, which I'm sure were much more economical than a Linux SCSI server tower that would have been implemented by the old IT team. (They warned about a potential catostropic failure, but to save money, the company took the risk and didn't invest in infastructure.)
I worked at an e-commerse company in 2000 and the tech group was asked to do a similar presentation of the "current situation". The situation was critical and we had really no way of avoiding to share the problems we we're experiencing with the company's e-commerse system. Those problems were mission critical to the company (the system was more or less the company) Afterwards I was told by the VP that the tech group must "stop this 'us against the world attitude'". A year later, the company went bankrupt. Another memorable situation was a budget presentation by the VP, in which he declared "Things are really looking great. All we have to do to break even next year, is to double our sales. Every month." Our recently abandonned "us against the world attitude" kept us from commenting on technicalities as 2^numMonth * sales... overflow error...
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room.
They aren't looking out for you. They never will. Fuck them. Take care of yourself. If that means keeping your mouth shut then so be it.
Maybe you flaming A's and raging geeks should ask these guys what thye need from you - after all - they have to get customers to buy their products so they can pay your salaries, despite the system crashes, viruses and slow network response.....