Sooner or later, if it's gonna scale, the IT guys will have to get engaged, right?
And, if your IT organization is like ours, they're great guys, but they may not be 100% comfortable with a big, hairy, collaborative environment that has unclear requirements and business sponsorship.
Let me share with you how I'm getting our guys engaged in the discussion.
First, They Get It
Many people at EMC think our IT guys don't get it, but they do. They just see things through an IT lens, which -- of course -- is to be expected.
They know this whole blog/wiki/forum/presence thing is coming at them. And they know that they'll have to deliver desktop services and platforms to support this new phase of business processing.
But knowing and doing are different things.
The IT Filter At EMC
Our IT guys are concerned with the same sorts of things that IT guys everywhere are concerned with. Little things like security. Scalability. Reliability and recoverability. Implementation effort. Management effort. Using IT resources efficiently.
If you might believe that none of these things matter -- trust me, they do. And you're being irresponsible if you simple ignore any of these things. Yes, it takes some additional work, but if you're going to be a good corporate citizen (and you are, aren't you?) better take some of this stuff seriously.
I do.
Their preferred model is to align with a business user, work out a solution, and progress at a relatively thoughtful and measured pace.
But that's a problem in this case.
Approaching IT
First, I had to make the case that I spoke for the business, and not just a single business unit. As I mentioned before, I'm currently in an unofficial role, but I think there's enough credibility that I can rightfully assume this role.
This was a key step, because it's one thing to ask IT to interface with dozens of individual requests for SM stuff, and it's another to say that you'll act as an intermediary for all (or most) of those requests.
Second, I had to acknowledge their concerns. Not in a made-up way, but in an authentic, it's-influenced-my-thinking kind of way. Fortunately, I have worked in IT before, and have been marketing and selling to IT organizations for over two decades. This was not a new world to me, and it shouldn't be to you either.
Third, I had to create a win-win where we could get what we wanted, and IT could get what they wanted.
Security was a big concern. For a number of reasons (including IT concerns) I made the decision early on to start this journey behind the firewall, where only authorized EMC employees could access it. All of the sudden, security wasn't an immediate issue.
Tool and content proliferation was a big concern as well. We had made the mistake of turning our entire population loose on eRooms a while back, and most of them had turned into ad-hoc repositories of stuff -- 20 TB of stuff -- with little demonstrated business value.
We had to acknowledge this problem, and offer an organized, thoughtful methodology for showing people how to use the tool in a positive way, rather than a less-than-positive way.
They were worried about administration of the environment -- adding users, configuring things, etc. We conceptually split this into two tranches -- the basic adminstration of the environment (running, performant, backed up occasionally, etc.) -- which they would do -- and the user-facing administration (adding new users, providing tool support, training, etc.) which we would hire someone to do.
Then there was the up-front costs. We needed to get a server, some supporting software and the tool itself. We also very much wanted single-sign-on integration -- that means that if someone was already signed on to the EMC network (fully authenticated) they could get to the tool/server without another signon.
Although now that I think of that, this feature isn't critical path to our first implementation ...
I got the cost-center stuff approved, and now we're waiting on them to provide a program manager, etc.
But how to create a sense of urgency?
Creating a Sense of Urgency
Honestly speaking, there's a sense of urgency here. These damn tools are so easy to get and set up that anyone who's got a bit of motivation, time and a server resource can set up a social media site -- either behind the firewall, or -- occasionally - not.
With every passing week, another few people want to do something in this space. And we can't hold them at bay for ever.
The IT guys have seen this movie before. They know that things start in the user community, get big and hairy, and eventually thrown over the wall in their direction.
They have a legitimate self-interest in getting involved early, participating in the evolution, and making sure that their concerns are incorporated.
But the longer they wait, the hairier the problem is going to be. And I think that's the primary sense-of-urgency motivator here -- either we get ahead of this together, or there's going to be hell to pay later on.
Can't say if it's working yet -- I'll let you know.
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