The Cranky Middle Manager Show #237 Why We Hate IT Susan Cramm

Posted on 07. May, 2010 by Wayne in Podcast

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Today Wayne Turmel takes a break from abusing HR and Sales and takes on the scariest department of all- IT. Susan Cramm from Valuedance is the author of 8 Things We Hate ABout IT- How to Move Beyond the Frustrations To Form a New Partnership With IT. We also look at the most Evil IT director ever and a quote from someone noone ever gets right. Ahhh, we do love to stir up trouble on this show.

Susan Cramm joins us to talk about hating IT.

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Show Notes

0:00 Welcome to one of the more fun shows we’ve had in a while. We’ll talk about why we hate IT. This is tricky since so many of our listeners are IT but if anyone knows about self-loathing it’s middle managers. We dedicate this episode to Dionyisus the Elder of Syracuse- the model for evil IT directors everyone. A little technical knowledge and a lot of power is not a good mix.

3:40 The quote of the week is from Marshall McLuhan. If you’re in IT are you intelligent AND lighthearted? Didn’t think so.

4:50 Welcome Susan Cramm of Valuedance. You gotta love a book called 8 Things we Hate About IT. How did she limit it to that few? Okay why do we hate IT? It has a lot to do with how much money we spend and how little value we see. Too little, too late, for too much money is not a recipe for creating great relationships.

9:20 The real owner of IT should be the department heads, not IT and that’s the core of a problem- a disconnect between accountability and authority. I tell a story from a prospect I actually spoke to. Does your company have this same problem? (Call me if you do!)

13:37 The first thing on her list is “you need service and IT needs control”.  Are you waiting on the IT breadline?

15:49 There are cheap consumer grade products out there that project teams can use but IT often stops them. IT needs to help set boundaries and then get out of the way. I’m a big fan of the Skunk Works concept. Come out of the innovation closet!

19:15 There’s a natural tension between tactics that managers need to implement and the strategic alignment which is IT’s job. It helps if everyone understands the end goal. It would also help if we spoke a lingua franca (which is ironically in a language no one understands). The best way to make sure we’re talking about the same thing is smallscale examples instead of big projects.

26:00 How can you succeed where others have failed miserably? Make sure you understand the impact of your project on your external customers and have something worth doing and then pass that on to others. Get them excited and ask for a little bit of money and time and prove your concept before going big.

28:00 We use less than 28% of the functionality of our IT products and systems. You have way more capability than you think. Oh, and IT shouldn’t necessarily be doing the training. Do you want your sales demos taught by the same guy who fixes your hard drive? Oh and if you want your people to use technology, you have to be one of the first to adopt.

Susan’s Resources

Check out her blog

Tags: Cranky Middle Manager, Hate, IT, management, Podcast, project management, Susan Cramm, teams, technology, wayne turmel