IT Customer Service Skills (or the Lack Thereof) I was walking down the hallway with Lou, the chief engineer. We were discussing the need for a patch panel. The one from the professional supply house was about $300. The one from the musician’s store was less than half that. Out of curiosity, I asked, “Why […]

If only they had spoken up… In 2017, Equifax was hacked, exposing sensitive personal and financial information for nearly 148,000,000 Americans, plus large numbers of people in the UK and Canada. A series of breakdowns made the hack possible, but the core problem was that people didn’t speak up when they saw an issue. You

My friend is a best-selling business book author. She and I toured the manufacturing plant because we’d heard what a great place it was to work and how successful it had been. Our guide was a junior executive we’ll call Jerry. Jerry showed a serious streak of arrogance as he walked us around the plant.

Understanding the Nature of Difficult Conversations in IT Have you ever dreaded an upcoming conversation? A difficult conversation in IT is likely to be high-stakes and could see emotions run rampant. It could be a conversation between two people with conflicting views. It could also be a setting for delivery of unwelcome news. Maybe you

There’s an old saying, “If you want a job done right, do it yourself.” That saying belongs in the Museum of Bad Advice, especially for leaders. In fact, it’s a sign of a bad leader. Good leadership is educating, motivating, and empowering teams to accomplish shared goals. Leadership is building trust. Leadership is lifting others

The Tech Problem Wasn’t the Real Problem A few years ago, I watched an IT technician spend nearly an hour restoring access to a network share. The user had reported that she couldn’t open a file she needed, so the technician did exactly what he had been trained to do. He checked permissions, verified network

How Not to Apologize Have you ever noticed that some corporate apologies don’t actually apologize for anything? I especially notice this with airlines when there are problems with a flight. “We apologize for any inconvenience.” “We regret that some customers experienced service interruptions.” “Your feedback is important to us.” They all sound polished. They all

How to Admit You Don’t Know Without Losing Credibility in IT One of the quickest ways to damage your credibility in IT is to confidently give someone an answer that turns out to be wrong. Yet, we do it more often than we might like to admit, sometimes because three simple words can be surprisingly

The Dunning-Kruger Effect in IT: Confidence Exceeding Competence One wrong command is all it takes. One confident administrator types a command into the wrong terminal window. A database disappears. A firewall rule locks thousands of users out of the network. A software update rolls into production without testing. A ransomware attack succeeds because someone assumes