Navigating the Business World for Sysadmins

Carolyn Rowland and Mark Burgess gave their tutorial on A Sysadmin’s Guide to Navigating the Business World this Tuesday morning. Sysadmins generally got into this gig because we like to improve the world through our mad technical skills, as you do, and that path doesn’t always include the completion certificate for “how to convince people that you know what you’re doing and you should be listened to.”

Mark and Carolyn gave a solid road-map for getting to that place. It takes people skills, and knowing the answers to a series of questions.

• How are IT decisions made?   
• Who makes decisions?   
• Who are your customers?
• How do you bring value to the organization?   
• What is the social status of IT in the organization?   
• How do business/end-users view IT?   
• What kind of business are you in?   
• What does business want from IT?   
• What regulation constrains your job? HIPPA, SOX, etc
• What is the relationship between sysadmin and value creators (dev)?

The answers to these questions will give you an idea of where to start. The big challenge IT groups face is proving their value to the overall organization. Once value is established, convincing the decision makers that your options should be considered is a lot easier.

Another method to help elevate the view of IT is to productize the group. Change the mindset of “Carrie the email admin” resolves problems, to “the Messaging group” resolves problems. This makes IT, not just exceptional individuals, known and taken into account. It also resolves overload issues as end-users stop mobbing the few highly visible IT workers who get a reputation for solid trouble-shooters.

But as a person, not a group, what can you do? Sysadmins are often not the managers of groups, which limits their ability to act at the higher decision-making levels.
                  
But sysadmins do have contact with other business users across the organization, both end users and work suppliers. They may not be the actual people who make the IT spending decisions, but they are people who compete for resources, or can act as advocates for IT initiatives. These contacts are worth grooming.

Get help in making those contacts. Your line-manager can get you an introduction to some of these potential allies, so ask. Or maybe ask that one person in the department you work with all the time.

Once you have that introduction, get to know what motivates them. What are their primary concerns? How much do they know about the topic? How engaged are they? Communicate at their level, don’t condescend to their level, and use approachable language.

Building these relationships improves IT’s overall social status in the organization, and it’s something you can do as a non-management worker.

Carolyn and Mark covered much more than this, though. What makes good communication. How to take Q/A. Strategies other than simple financial cost to convince upper management (hint: risk-management is a good thing to know).

There is a reason this class is offered a lot!