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Do You Speak “IT”?
I was reading an article on CIO.com and watching the video clip that accompanied it entitled Enterprise IT’s Top Enemy: Its Own Arrogance this morning and after watching the video, I had a minor epiphany. Minor only because it is not a new concept. I hear it from our customers all the time, but the video really brings it home.
We all hate it when someone who knows something we don’t lords it over us.
Yes, and more-so, we hate the embarrassed feeling we get when someone speaks over our head and makes us feel dumb for not understanding.
It is a trap we all fall into, myself included. At the end of the day, what IT has to keep in mind is that you have needs, but they are not technical needs. Technology is the tool by which your need will be fulfilled, but you should not have to do the translating, nor should you have to sit and listen to all the translations, unless you want to. The job of IT is to interpret business needs and translate them into technology solutions, then communicate back, in plain English, how you will experience your new solution as a user. You really do have the right to not care about the technical terms.
This is something I talk about a lot with my teams – the concept of being an invisible provider, when that is what the customer desires. Our importance is defined by our success in keeping employees productive and supported, not in our ability to mystify and impress with techno jargon. I often think that IT, at its best, needs to behave like the electric company. Our users don’t thank us when things work (I know I did not call the electric company this morning to thank them for my lights turning on). Nor do our users usually want to understand all the difficult technical ’stuff’ we have to do to make it all work (yeah, I know something goes on beyond that little outlet in my house, I just don’t care what). And when something goes wrong, they just want it fixed quickly and efficiently without having to understand all the details. Fix it, and do what you can to assure me it will have as little downtime in the future as possible.
So take note – I get it. We get it. While the desire to explain the work we take such pride in can be overwhelming at times, we understand that you reserve the right to not hear all the details. Whomever you work with in IT, tell them how you want to be communicated with. Just be honest and let your IT know what you do and don’t want to know. After all, it is the job of IT to work to meet your needs; technical, business, and communications.
After all, you just want the stuff to work, right? If you wanted to understand it all, you’d likely be doing what we do!
Happy Computing!
Richard Brunke
