> Surprisingly, it isn't that difficult to learn as much as you need.
Yes, there's a lot about business you can learn, but you really don't
need to learn that much of it. I got an MBA several years ago, but
honestly, I could have read a basic accounting/financing textbook, a
basic management textbook, and a basic business law textbook and gotten
pretty much everything I've used since then. Most of what you need to
understand is the basics, the terminology, and some of the newer buzzwords.
Well now that you've put yourself out there ... which books would you
recommend?
I have read the Phoenix Project, and loved the book. Started reading The
Goal (the book that Phoenix Project based itself off of), and find
myself wanting more.
On Wed, Jun 17, 2015 at 1:51 AM, Stephen Potter <s...@unixsa.net
<mailto:s...@unixsa.net>> wrote:
Surprisingly, it isn't that difficult to learn as much as you need.
Yes, there's a lot about business you can learn, but you really
don't need to learn that much of it. I got an MBA several years
ago, but honestly, I could have read a basic accounting/financing
textbook, a basic management textbook, and a basic business law
textbook and gotten pretty much everything I've used since then.
Most of what you need to understand is the basics, the terminology,
and some of the newer buzzwords.
Once you've got that, you just need to be willing to listen to
people and ask a few questions. And, quite often, the questions you
have to ask are "what would it mean if...." or "how could you see
that happening" when someone tells you something; just turning their
question around on them to get more information. It is amazing how
people can see 90% of a solution, but miss the last step. And, if
you can provide the last step, you're a genius, even when it is
something really simple. I once - many years ago - got a $500 bonus
(from a director) because I was willing to ask him if I could move
an external disk from one machine in one town to another machine in
another town and explain to him how it related to his business (when
one system ran out of disk space, it killed one or more long running
jobs that cost several hundred dollars in lost productivity each). I
was in my early-20s then, and simply a contractor who didn't know
any better than to ask!
-spp
On 6/16/2015 2:50 PM, Atom Powers wrote:
+1 million. I wish I had the time to learn that skill.
On Tue, Jun 16, 2015, 11:13 Stephen Potter <s...@unixsa.net
<mailto:s...@unixsa.net>> wrote:
Several others have already mentioned that it sounds like there's
management problems at several levels and titles won't help.
Some have
mentioned the split management/technical track with management
roles
such as Lead, Supervising, Managing, etc and technical advancement
through Distinguished, Principal, Fellow, etc titles.
What I see as the underlying problem is that no one has been
able to
relate what IT does to the business goals and values to help the
executives really understand where IT fits. You mention that
IT falls
under the VP of Administration, which generally contains
groups like
real estate, facilities, logistics, HR, and perhaps regulatory
compliance. This is all just overhead and costs of doing
business.
None of these have anything to do with revenue and enabling
the business.
If you really want IT to start to get some respect, you need
to have
someone who can talk the language of the executives and tie
their goals
into what IT can provide. Business will talk about market share
(acquiring/retaining customers), competitive differentiation,
business
innovation, and profitability. You need someone who can take
those and
show how IT can help develop multichannel (buzzword: omni-channel)
services that provide competitive differentiation and attract new
customers. Someone needs to talk about continuous delivery of IT
services that enable other business units (R&D, sales, etc) to
change
the way they do business (mobility, supply chain management,
etc) and
speed up sales (buzzword: "inventory turn", "sales close
cycle") or even
enable entirely new products and services (buzzword: "time to
market",
"go-to-market strategy"). And, finally, you need to be able to
show how
IT can help reduce costs across the entire company (not just
reducing IT
costs), reducing SG&A (sales, general, and administration),
and how the
other things I've already mentioned can reduce unit costs
(development
cycle, manufacturing costs, etc).
A couple of examples I can think of, which wouldn't necessarily be
relevant to your specific company. One large fashion retailer
I worked
with used to ship store layout, discount information and sales
reports
to each of its several thousand stores weekly. They were spending
hundreds of thousands of dollars a month on FedEx shipping
alone. IT
was able to work with the store operations teams to figure out
how all
that information could be safely shared through remote access
across the
network. The savings to the company was millions per year.
Another company had dozens of desktops in their distribution
facility
where product pickers went to print off pick lists for
packaging and
shipping. The conditions in the DF were such that the
desktops and
printers crashed regularly, requiring pickers to search for a
working
desktop/printer combination, and slowing them down. IT had a
person
onsite in the DF full time, just to handle desktop/printer issues.
Orders were batched every couple of hours, so there were often
times
when the pickers had nothing to do. IT was able to work with
distribution to come up with a combination of thin-clients, touch
screens, and tablets that enabled more real time access to the
lists,
reduced errors, reduced outages (to the point they pulled the
IT guy
back to the office and redeployed him to do higher value
activities),
and reduced costs. It also enabled the distribution to collect
efficiency data, which subsequently led to re-arranging how
products
were stored in the DF.
In order for IT to get respect in many companies, there needs
to be a
strong leader who can tie IT to the business, rather than just
being
another SG&A cost.
-spp
On 6/9/2015 9:52 AM, Tim Kirby wrote:
> I'm not sure if this is actually a repeat of past threads, we
> spend a lot of time talking about this sort of thing within
> "IT organizations" but I'm not sure I've seen this one.
>
> $WORK is a computer system manufacturer. Thus it is largely
> technical with an R&D component building software and hardware.
> Within our IT organization we have two or three highly
> experienced sysadmin/devop/engineer types that could hold
> their own against any of the R&D "Principal Engineers" and
> do, at time, consult for R&D.
>
> The politics and handling of "IT" is every bit as dysfunctional
> as you might expect, however, and the job titles and "official
> status" of these IT guys make them almost indistinguishable
> from a front line help desk tech (no, I'm not dissing the help
> desk tech, don't go there).
>
> I am interested in hearing from anyone who works with or has
> worked with companies that have actually recognized such
> senior folks within their organizations. One term I've heard
> the term "IT Fellow", but I'm really not hung up on the name
> so much as the perceived role within the company and how such
> people might appear in the company ranks.
>
> I suppose I should add that the "VP of Administration" who is
> the ersatz CIO (in terms of corporate position) denies all
> CIO responsibility, indicating that the Director of IT, his
> immediate report, has all IT responsibility. There is an
> "Office if the CTO", I don't know if it would be possible to
> hang these highly senior IT people off that instead. I do
> realize that the de-emphasis of IT at the VP level probably
> means we're all screwed. Sigh.
>
> Thanks for any input...
>
> Tim
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