InformationWeek

April 27, 1999

Your letters to my print column and this E-mail forum ask some serious questions about managing information technology in today's world. Since today's world is essentially absurd, my serious responses may sometimes sound a little whimsical, and my occasional whimsical ones, serious. In any case, if you want to participate, write to me at lovelace@home.com. I'll respond to those letters that I can. I reserve the right to edit for size and content. Just sign your E-mail the way you want it to appear online.

Dear Herb:
If we need to learn how to speak "business" as you say in "Align Yourself Today" but we hang around all the time with people who speak only "IT" and who value that much more than any "pidgin business" we may acquire, how will we learn to speak the language, and how will it help our value to our own tribe?

Bill

Dear Bill:
Alas, you have asked a question that requires a deeper knowledge of your business establishment and your lifestyle than I possess. The answers can range from sitting with different people in the company cafeteria to dating MBA students instead of computer professionals. It might even entail taking some courses at a night school. Unfortunately, I am reduced to providing you with generic comments.

A useful approach is to start on a program of talking to business types and reading business periodicals. Businesspeople are found everywhere, even within one's own family. For example, if you are able to find the time to go to domestic affairs such as Thanksgiving instead of having to do mail-server maintenance that holiday Thursday at the office, you will find around the table a few such people. Ask them how their business is going. You will still be listening to them as the last of the desserts are being served.

Pick up a copy of your company report and read it. When you get to the hieroglyphics in the back, which is the financial report, go to the public affairs office or call the CFO's office and ask who can explain it to you. Somewhere in your company lurks an accountant who will be thrilled that there is a human being in the enterprise who is actually interested in learning about that kind of stuff. Aside from getting an education, you will also have helped to vindicate another person's life.

Read the business section of the local newspaper. If you feel especially prosperous, spring for a subscription to the Wall Street Journal. Carry it with you everywhere. Your stature in the organization will increase just from the visual impact. Actually read it. Start with the great articles found in column four on the front page that tell you about all sorts of strange and interesting stuff. Creep up slowly on the financial news. It really isn't all that complicated or boring--especially if you read about your company being acquired by your biggest competitor.

The answer to your question as to why learning about business increases a person's value in the IT community is fairly straightforward. Anything that allows an IT person to better understand user needs--and knowledge of the company's business--increases the likelihood that he or she can improve the results delivered by the IT shop. Further, just as you are wondering where to get this business knowledge, so are your bosses wondering how to find people who relate better to the user community within the company--and if they are not, then let me share with you that the business executives in your organization are most definitely concerned about how to discover an IT person who understands their business problems so that they can finally get their important work done properly.

Dear Herb:
I enjoyed your article "Align Yourself Today." I am headed to the copier to make copies for every member of my IT staff as well as my president and CFO. How scary it will be to stand on our own knowledge and not have to memorize the latest Dilbertese comments that appear to make us more informed and smarter!

Thanks,
Christina

Dear Christina:
I am impressed. You must have a pretty good relationship with your president and CFO to be able to send them the stuff that I write. However, since they are likely to agree with "Align Yourself Today," have you thought of really testing that relationship by sending them copies of some of my more subversive (from senior management's standpoint) articles such as "The Useless Estimate," "It's Good To Be King", and "Mission Inversible"?

That little experiment on the effects of literary distribution should really tell you whether they have a sense of humor about the foibles of their own world and, parenthetically, whether you have destroyed your future within the organization.

Dear Herb:
I thought your article "Align Yourself Today" about speaking plain English was terrific. I hope people in the technology field take it to heart, but I'm not optimistic. Jargon is an oral disease in our country. Of course, when it comes to jargon the worst offenders are lawyers and doctors. I once had a doctor tell me that my shoulder problem was idiosyncratic. When I asked him what he meant, he said, "That means we don't know what the hell's the matter with you."

Yours truly,
Sanford E.

Dear Sanford:
Great! I love it.

Now I can tell everyone that "after careful investigation, we have determined beyond any doubt that there is an idiosyncratic problem causing the inability to take customer orders with our new multimillion dollar ERP system."

I wonder if we can get away with telling the customer-service people that we will be taking a sworn deposition of their complaints within the next few weeks and that in the interim they should take two microchips and call us in the morning?

Dear Herb:
What specific advice can you give me to help enlighten me on my job and career search? I am 27 years old and have a chance to really focus on what I can do now for my long-term successes in the high-tech industry. I received a bachelor's degree in marketing two years ago, and I am now working at an entry-level marketing job, but my skills are terribly underutilized in my current job.

Aside from getting a master's degree, which I plan on pursuing in about three years, what do you suggest I do to get an edge over my competition? I have the focus and the drive to do quite well, but it is so competitive today. I am just bombarded with too many possibilities.

If you had to do it all over again, and you were in my position, what would you do to get where you are today?

I would appreciate all and any advice you might offer.

Thank you for your column!
Evan

Dear Evan:
What makes you assume if I had it to do all over again, I'd want to be where I am today?

Let's see the pluses of the CIO job:

Now, the negatives:

However, if you take into account the old adage to be careful of what you wish for because you may get it, here's a few things on which to concentrate in your quest to get ahead:

There really is no magic formula to get ahead in a company. The most you can do (and it is actually the best preparation) is always be a person upon whom others can rely--an individual who is trustworthy and dependable and gets the job done. While these attributes are no guarantee of success, not having them eliminates a lot of people from consideration for promotions.

Dear Herb:
Please understand the following questions need to be asked on the very principle that it's usually a cold day in you-know-where when I get to speak to those at the CIO level.

Your opinion please: Is it generally the hardware or software manufacturer recommendation that grants an open-systems integrator the opportunity to talk "live" with you (be it from cold call or otherwise)?

What is the most creative method you've seen used by a sales guy either to get past your administrative assistant or elicit a return call from voice mail?

As you've probably guessed before reading this note, I am one of the aforementioned open-systems salespeople (in industry vernacular: the "account executive"--ha!). Please be clear: I'm not looking for sweeping generalizations to use as ammo; I seek your experience because it is very rare that I'm permitted to probe.

Thanks for your time in reading (or deleting) this message.

Jeff

Dear Jeff:
I speak to salespeople when I think that they have something to offer me. Unless I specifically indicate to my assistant that I have a desire to talk to them, she transfers such calls to the person most likely to be interested in their wares. Occasionally, I might want to speak to them directly as a result of references from my peers, magazine articles, or, infrequently, recommendations from other vendors.

As to the methods to get me to pick up the phone or return their calls myself? Oh, I have seen very many. They've told my assistant that they are my brother-in-law, or that they have information about my refund, or they are returning my call, and so on. It's always a worthless ploy, however, since if they pull that kind of stunt, I would no sooner see them or buy from them than I would purchase a "genuine Rolex watch" from a street vendor.

If all that these salespeople are interested in is filling out a call report saying they have telephoned me, I suppose they feel they are successful. But I wonder if they realize that maybe they are losing a potential sale that they might have gotten if only they had followed the methods we set up to find out what they can offer our company.

Herbert W. Lovelace is CIO at a multibillion-dollar international company. Herb practices his day job under an alias and has changed the names of colleagues to protect the guilty.