Storm Stories

Occasionally I stumble upon companies who in my opinion could use the IT equivalent of a defibrillator.  I walk out of these meetings glad that I work with a team of creative innovators and wishing that I had used the prior meeting to present the Who Moved My Cheese seminar content rather than wasting my breath discussing new technologies.

The #1 priority of certain IT teams seems to be maintaining the status quo rather than using technology to innovate and improve the business.  I always believed that the role of CIOs and the IT team was to leverage technical advances to improve the business in some aspect, be it more efficient operations, improved customer service, or the ability to offer new product offerings.  So I become baffled when I encounter an organization that despite having 75 physical servers running at 2% utilization, dismisses virtualizing their servers because it means change to their environment.  I sometimes talk to companies who burn through thousands of dollars in backup tapes every week.  Yet these customers refuse to consider alternate solutions, instead opting to play the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” card.

Two things really irk me about this type of meeting.  First, as an IT employee it seems irresponsible to your employer to stop innovating.  If there are technologies out there that can make your competitive, somebody needs to be looking out for them.  Otherwise, a savvy competitor will soon have operational or strategic advantages.  If I was a CEO and my IT team was in maintenance only mode, I would be looking for the largest IT defibrillator I could find - maybe a consulting company that could provide some new life and handle production support as an outsourced service.  The second thing that gets my blood boiling is the warped sense of reality that some IT workers have.  We all know that technologies change at light speed, so why would any IT professional want to keep working with the same technologies day in and day out?  Meanwhile, their peers at other companies are learning about new solutions and acquiring valuable hands-on experience by embracing new ideas.  Sure, the innovators probably deal with more headaches than the maintenance mode folks, but by innovating they ensure that their skills are keeping up with the ever changing market.  The IT game is a constant fight against becoming a commodity.  One surefire losing strategy in that game is to stop innovating and hunker down in a support mode.

Good reasons for not considering new technologies include lousy products, lousy services, and annoying sales people who don’t listen to your needs and/or cannot relate the value of the technology to your business.  A desire to get home every night for the 5:00 news by avoiding new projects is a terrible reason.  While the status quo-ers  continue to support their legacy environments, I will be working with innovators at their competitors to leverage technology to dominate the market space.  The maintain-ers should keep sleep with one eye open lest they miss the traveling Who Moved My Cheese road show coming through town.

My company hosted an event last night in New York City that was a technology discussion/demonstration combined with wine tasting.  It was a nice evening and everything ran smoothly.  Leading up to the event, we focused most of our time and energy inviting new prospects instead of existing customers.  Our rational was that existing customers already understand the technology and would not see value in the content portion of the event.   I guess we worried that they would be bored.  What I found interesting was that the handful of customers we did invite were happy to be there and very anxious to share their experiences with the prospective customers.  In fact, they did a far better job of positioning the technology (and our company) than we did.  When talking to a prospect, our existing customers have the ability to share their prior experience, openly discuss our strengths and weaknesses, and even talk about the personalities of the individuals on our team.   Provided you have a good team and generally do right by your customers, those discussions should all be honest and positive.  The next time I buy a car, I want the dealership to bring in 3 or 4 people who have purchased the same vehicle within the past few months so I can talk privately with them prior to making my decision.  For any future events, I am going to focus on getting a 50/50 mix of existing customers and new prospects.  During the event I can then focus all of my energy on a thorough exploration of the various wines and let my customers do the talking.

First, let me introduce myself as a Sales Rep in the IT infrastructure space with a technical background obtained primarily from 6 torturous years working for a “Big Five” consulting company.  Most of my customers now are mid-size enterprises needing help with Storage, Network, Server, and Core Application (e.g. SQL, Email, File) solutions.  Last night I saw a DVR’d episode of The Office, which historically has been one of my favorite shows.  As a side note, I think this show may have finally jumped the shark due to NBC’s propaganda machine constantly displaying pop-up messages trying to sell me Office tee shirts and steering me to Dwight’s blog (isn’t he fictional?) throughout the episode.  Nonetheless, in this episode, Michael and Dwight turn their backs on the company’s effort to modernize their business model via technology and instead rely on their relationships to solicit business from prior customers.   Michael and Dwight inevitably find that while the customers are willing to meet with them (this alone can be challenging in sales), the relationship with Dunder Mifflin is not strong enough to outweigh the value that their modernized competitors are offering.  This reinforced a belief I have that a relationship is only worth about a 5% premium.  That is to say that all things being equal, it is reasonable to expect that a customer will pay a 5% premium to do business with you if you have a good relationship with that individual or company.  The 5% may be a premium on price, convenience, speed, or a combination of factors.   Perhaps your offering is a bit more costly than a startup competitor looking to grab market share.   Maybe your ordering system was written in straight HTML ten years go and is not as easy to use a recent competitive web site.  Or your corporate office may be a few time zones away which slows order processing .   While you certainly don’t want to be drastically lagging in all of these areas, a good relationship will probably allow you to overcome a 5% deficiency.  After all, technology has made barriers to entry so low that it is nearly impossible to stay ahead of competition in all areas of your business at all times.   However, asking your customer to pay more than a 5% premium for an apples-to-apples offering is simply abuse of that relationship.  I would pay $21,000 to buy a $20,000 car from a friend rather than a stranger but would start to feel abused after that.  Now, if that friend were to offer me a $22,000 car that was highly differentiated, from the $20,000 car, then I would really be interested…that will be fodder for a future post.

It seems the creative folks over at NJ Transit are at it again.  This time they have come up with a unique solution for the middle seat problem (ie, the problem where 3 average size people are forced  to occupy  a space that makes Continental’s coach seats look roomy).  The solution is rather simple:  you find old, poorly maintained cars and make sure they leak when it rains.  Water drips down the gaps in the ceiling, right onto the middle seat.  The results are incredible.  My train ride has been most enjoyable despite a large pool of water next to me.  And I’m sure the people in the other 3 seats where this is happening within my field of vision are equally happy.

NEC #3712, the 7:36 am departure from Jersey Avenue is operating 15 minutes late.

There are two organizations that come to mind when I think of winners and losers.  The New England Patriots (i’ve been a fan for 25 years) have systematically put together a winning organization over the last 10 years having won 3 superbowls.  What makes them a winning team is the common goal shared by everyone in the organization (winning) and the crystal clear understanding of roles and responsibilitles.  Each person in the organization believes that if they complete their daily tasks and execute to perfection, the common goal will be achieved.  Personal glory plays no role in the organization and the drive to succeed (i.e. win) overrides any personal accomplishments.  All within the organization would rather succeed than earn individual accomplishments.  This is not because players, coaches, front office, etc do not want individual accolades, but they understand that achieving the team goal will ultimately deliver more compensation, glory, and attention than they could achieve individually.  This is a winning organization.

 New Jersey Transit is the first organization that comes to mind when I think of a “loser” organization.  The lack of accountability, obvious poor leadership, absence of any sort of plan for success, and general apathy of all those associated with the organization are key indicators of a loser.  For example, I’m standing on the platform waiting for my train last Wednesday.  I’m already disgusted because I’ve been waiting for over 30 minutes as the previous train was cancelled (which happens on a regular basis).   The train finally pulls into the station and the anxious passengers pile up like sheep and wait for the sheppard to open the doors to the train.   However, the train simply pulls away without opening its doors.  The loudspeaker kicks in and the woman states the following:  “New Jersey Transit Train 666 has been cancelled.  We apologize for the inconvenience as the conductors forgot to open the doors before the train pulled away.  Again, New Jersey Transit train 666 has been cancelled due to the conductors not opening the doors before the train pulled away from the station.  The next train is scheduled to depart in 30 minutes”. 

 Of course my train this morning was cancelled.  At least the conductors opened the doors when the next train pulled in.  Give that man a pension!!

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