Without fail, at least once a week I hear someone who is not in an Information Technology role complain that the IT people they work with (or worse yet, have hired) don’t “get it”. When I ask what they mean by that, they tell me that the IT people they deal with are uncooperative, obstructionists, have a bad attitude, or take way too long to deliver results.
Aside from the fact that there’s an obvious leadership problem in those organizations, there are also a few issues with the Information Technology people themselves.
If Information Technology is to truly serve the business, then the people in the IT group (and their managers) have to make it their business to treat everyone outside of IT as a respected client. Some colleagues don’t agree with me when I say that Information Technology’s mandate should be 100% customer satisfaction 100% of the time.
When I get push-back on this, I simply ask if 50% customer satisfaction 100% of the time (or some other variant) would be better. Come on, gang. It’s pretty simple. Without the client, there’s no Information Technology group. They can and do go outside the Information Technology department to get things done.
A majority of the complaints could be solved if Information Technology groups and their leaders stopped working like the government and actually tried to solve some problems and deliver results. Here are a few suggestions.
Hire smart, capable leaders and team members. When you’re staffing up, hire people who think like you do. Customer driven, solution oriented folks who have the ability to listen well and think (and work) outside the lines. You might also want to consider hiring a generalist or two. And do yourself and your team a favor – if you’ve made a hiring mistake, get rid of the dead wood as fast as possible.
Shoot for 100% every time. Sure, 100% customer satisfaction is a high bar to hit, but if you hit 95% everyone in the organization would be thrilled, I promise. Excellent (team and individual) effort produces excellent results, every time. Conversely, poor effort produces poor results. But you knew that already.
Communicate. You can’t lead from your chair. Get up, get out, and interact with your team and the business units throughout the organization. They need to see and talk with you and if you want to keep your job, you need to find out what they want and need, then deliver it.
What else can we do, as Information Technology professionals, to deliver the results the people and organizations we serve expect and deserve? We’d love to hear your thoughts.
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I especially agree with the last point. Communicate. One other suggestion I would add is build relationships with the customers. By building relationship you achieve better communication, increased satisfaction, and greater understanding of what the customer wants. Part of my IT Org has a group of BRMs (Business Relationship Managers) to mange those relationships.
Thanks again for a great article.
Jeff