UF Postings Past: Technology is Not the Problem
June 1, 2008 – 9:06 amFor the techies out there (and I’m one of you), consider this… how many times in your career have you been faced with a truly incredible technical challenge? Not many, I bet. What you consider to be the great challenges of your career are, in fact, challenges to get things done within a tight schedule, not to invent some amazing new technology. The typical company does not take a massive amount of risks, and incredible technical challenges equals amazing technical risks. While every company will take a few for the sake of competitive advantage, companies that roll the dice too often are few and far between.
On the other hand, how many communications and training challenges have you faced? How many meetings have you had with business folks trying to convince them that a fairly simple technical change is not going to go wrong and wreck their business, or worse, if they don’t embrace it, their business will go down the tubes?
Technology is becoming more and more of a commodity every day. If the people that you have on staff can’t do something, you can always find a sea of consultants that can help. Communication, on the other hand, remains an art in the workplace.
I have posted on this before and cannot emphasize this enough- the ability to communicate, influence, develop and use credibility effectively are vital skills and possibly the most vital skills in IT today. Remember this when you choose what skills to work on. Remember it as well when you make your hiring and promotion decisions. How useful is the best technical specialist you know if he can’t communicate what he knows to anyone? What if, worse, he hacks off users with his rudeness and poor attitude? Make your choices carefully, both as a manager and as a techie deciding how to better your career. Your opinions on Microsoft versus linux may be fascinating lunch conversation for your and other techies, but the end users are not interested- they’re interested in doing their job, and you doing yours. Their jobs often involve specialized knowledge that you do not have. Your job is usually to supply specialized knowledge that they do not have. In the long run, you are both commodities to the company. Your communications skills, tact, judgement, reliability, leadership, ability to take ownership of problems and find solutions for them rather than passing them along the chain… these are the things that make a difference. Remember these skills. Develop them. Use them.
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2 Responses to “UF Postings Past: Technology is Not the Problem”
Great article Stacey!
Having strong technical chops, by itself, is definitely not enough. You have to be able to apply them to the right problems (communication) and then you have to make sure they’re adopted (more communication).
Reminds me of my MechE days, when someone said “It’s a great design, but we can’t build it!” Well then, not such a great design, huh?
Keep it up,
Scott
By Scott Sehlhorst on Jun 2, 2008
Thanks Scott!
This is one of the things I’ve been working on teaching my own team since I got onboard. There’s two hard lessons that kept coming up in the past for them:
1) If you build it, but they don’t know what it is, they won’t come.
2) If you do something, but you don’t tell anyone, it’s the same as if you didn’t do it.
Since we’ve got the communication going, they’re seeing a big difference. People want to play with the new toys they build
By Stacey Douglas on Jun 8, 2008