Digital Distractions

In a recent meeting, I looked around the table and noticed many of the attendees typing on laptops or thumbing through emails on a Smart Phone. The thought crossed my mind wether these people where diligent multi-taskers’ dedicated to productivity or whether they simply had nothing to contribute to the topic at hand. Perhaps the organizer of the meeting had invited them and they had simply came out of either politeness or a sense of obligation due to the organizers rank on the company org chart. Perhaps they really did need to be there and where totally missing critical information about the current topic as they dazed into glowing LCD screens. Regardless, conducting a meaningful meeting with a room full of folks armed with digital distractions can be a daunting task. The easiest way to overcome digital distractions is to simply ban them from the meeting room. No laptops allowed, no checking email on smart phones, all phone ringers set to vibrate. If this is not possible however, here are a few tricks of the trade that may help minimize digital distraction.

Make sure follow-up items don’t become immediate tasks

When access is immediate though laptops, it becomes easy to let items tagged for follow-up become immediate action items. For example, someone may be assigned a task of sending someone else a copy of a system configuration as a follow up item. The assigned team member immediately jumps on and starts trying to grab the configuration. Problems occur when a small issue arises getting the configuration, the team member whispers to a colleague sitting next to him and they both start working on the issue. Before you know it, you have two separate streams of work and thought going on. Explicitly state which items are follow-up items and inform attendees not to work on these items now while the meeting is still focusing on the task at hand.

Let someone else "drive"

It is common for work to get done during meetings with one person projecting up a spreadsheet, word document or Visio diagram, filling in content with the input of meeting attendees. It is also common for the organizer or the most senior person at the meeting to "drive" the work by being the one projecting up the document and typing in the content. I have found it useful to let someone drive during working sessions. You will often know who the folks are most likely to be distracted by working on side items during meetings, let them drive. By having your most easily digitally distracted team members project heir desktops on the screen while work is getting done you can help them and the meeting stay on task.

Call people out

I often get to the end of a meeting or even a section of the meeting, turn to the person who I have noticed working on other tasks during the meeting and ask them to summarize for the group what we have just covered. This is not meant to embarrass anyone and I never push it if the person obviously does not have an answer. It is an effective tool if used consistently as team members will come to expect this and will be more likely to at least home in enough on the current discussion to be able to articulate the current tasks in a short summary.

Have an agenda and roll for everyone

This point is more of a general meeting principal than it is a way to overcome digital distractions. You will find though that if you follow this consistently, people will likely start to see your meetings (and even the fact that you are calling a meeting) as more relevant. Know who really needs to be there and only invite people who will play an active role in the task the meeting is meant to accomplish. Be clear at the start of the meeting why everyone is there, what you want from everyone during the meeting and what the end goal for the meeting is. Foster cooperation and interaction to keep people from falling into a digital distraction.

New Year’s Resolutions of a Technology Director

As we enter into 2010, my mind is pulled in two seemingly disparate yet interrelated directions. After all the project planning, goal setting for staff members and financial budgeting in preparation for 2010, it is time to focus on two guiding principles: Staying Above the Frey and Sweating the Small Stuff.

Staying Above the Frey

Anyone in an IT leadership position knows how easy it is to get caught up in the plethora of daily issues confronting a typical technology department. There is never a shortage of small tweaks that need to be made, patches that need to applied, configurations that could be better, infrastructure upgrades that need to made etc... Each of these things is of critical concern to someone. It is very easy to find yourself engaged in never ending meetings arranged to address small fires. These types of issues are important and no doubt contribute to the overall stability of your operation. They also represent the types of issues for which you as a leader should hold your people accountable and insist on execution without your immediate involvement. Continuously jumping into daily operations is a huge distracter from your ability to set the broader course of technology operations. As a leader, focus on the overall program of projects your different teams are involved in. Just like the Director of a symphony, ensure that each team is working separately yet towards a common goal that you have defined. Make sure your team understands the overall vision for your organizations technology operations, give them the tools, training and support they need to execute and stay out of the way. Keep an ear to the ground and an eye to the sky making sure the teams are not straying from the goal, that energy is being spent in the correct areas and that progress is being made. Be flexible in your vision, making sure that you understand your organizations business objectives and adjust course when necessary. All sounds great in theory, just like the resolution to lose 50 pounds by summer. Sticking with it on a daily basis when temptations arise is harder than it seems.

Sweat the Small Stuff

A more accurate depiction of this goal is probably sweating the correct small stuff. Toping this list is focusing on customer service and support levels with respect to technology operations. The perceptions of users will drive our realities in technology operations. Pursue a relentless commitment to customer service. Take every opportunity to help an end user that you can get, listen to them, talk to them, and embrace their criticisms. Conversations your end users have regarding their satisfaction with your organizations technology operations can serve as your canary in the coal mine. Make every effort to stay in tune with the general feeling of your user base. Try as much as possible to interact with end users and help them through their day. Going the extra mile and doing the small things for the users will buy you much, much more than it costs so invest heavily.

Give Me One Good Reason To Go To Winodws 7

If you are like most IT managers in a midsized shop, you probably skipped Windows Vista. Winodws XP probably still serves your needs well. While it is true at some point you may start hitting compatibility issues wherein software updates for XP will cease, but that is likely a while away given the massive install base of XP. While your end users likely demand new features in Office, driving an upgrade to Office 2007, users care less about the underlying operating system, as long as it is stable. So, give me one good reason to move my enterprise to Windows 7, right? OK, I will give you four.

BranchCache

OK, one of the first things to realize when talking about new features in Winodws 7 is that most of them depend on new features in Windows Server 2008. BranchCache is a great branch caching tool to speed up access to content to field sites. It can work in two modes, distributed or hosted. But don't believe me, watch the video.




DirectAccess

DIrectAccess allows mobile users to connect to business resources without VPN connections. This is similar to the functionality provided by RPC over https for Outlook or an edge server for Office Communicator. This is driven by a certificate architecture and is heavily dependent on new features avaiable in Server 2008. Check it out.



BitLocker to Go

BitLocker was introduced in Winodws Vista and improved on in Windows 7. BitLocker allowed you to do full disk encryption on laptop or desktop drives. BitLocker to Go introduces the ability to encrypt USB drives and even lets you enforce your USB encryption policy through the use of group policies. Very cool.



Enterprise Federated Search

Winodws 7 enhances the desktop search capability to incorporate searches for unstructured data across and outside the enterprise. Prebuilt connectors to SharePoint 2007 make this a really cool feature.




There are many other improvements and new features in Winows 7. Here is a one page chart that compares Windows 7 features to those in both Vista and XP. It seems clear to me that Windows 7 offers enough benefit to make the change in the enterprise. Keep in mind however that many of the new "Windows 7 features" really become available once you implement Winodws server 2008 so, start planning....

Growth of the CCIE Population

I have always thought that one of the things that propelled Cisco to its prominence was its focus on training. After all, train more engineers and they will recommend your product. Its interesting to see how the number of CCIE's have grown over the years.
















Here is a cool Network World Blog with a more detailed analysis of the numbers.

Network World Blog

Tool for Calculating Computer Room Power Requirements

Have you ever been asked to calculate how much power you will need for a computer room? Maybe you are opening a new field site, standing up a call center or planning for a data center. I have always found it time consuming to chase down the power requirements of the specific gear I plan to install in order to come up with a reasonable estimate. APC offers a great web based tool for estimating critical IT loads. The tool has the power needs of a plethora of commonly used gear. You can build a solution that will give you your overall power needs. The end result is a recommended APC UPS system (of course) but the power requirements are also handy for estimating generator needs etc. The tool is available at

APC Calculation Tool

Hey Intermec, show us your back side...

Any IT manager who works for a distribution, trucking or delivery company no doubt deals with ruggedized mobile devices. A big part of daily operations for mobile field workers is the ability to print at customer locations. This is generally accomplished by mounting some type of ruggedized printer inside a vehicle in a secure and safe fashion. So, as an I.T. manager then, it is important that you know exactly how new printer models are built to mount in truck cabs and check-in rooms. Logical then that Interemc (one of the leader’s in ruggedized devices and printers) would make this type of information clear on their product web site. Wouldn’t you think there would be clear photo’s of the rear panel of printer’s clearly showing how specifications have changed? Apparently, Intermec doesn’t think so. I recently had to RMA over $100K of fixed mount printers because the rear mounting panel in the new model had been altered. Had this been clear on the web site this could have been avoided. Hey, Interemc, we mount your printers and really need to see how new model’s will impact our current mounting solutions. So, here is a tip for your web site, show us your rear!

Motivating Skilled I.T. Profffesionals

As an I.T. manager, you no doubt struggle with how to keep your skilled employee's motivated. I have always thought it was a fallacy to assume that high pay in and of itself would keep highly skilled people around. Pay serves as a "dis-motivator", not a motivator. That is, if people are not paid fairly at market rates, they will start to look elsewhere. Fair market rate pay however in and of itself is not enough to keep good talent. So what does it take? I recently came across this video by David Pink that I thought does a pretty good job at outlining some things to consider when managing (although he would not like that term) a creative workforce.