Ten Things I Wish We Did Better As An Industry

As the economy starts to revive, and IT spending starts to pick up a bit, I've noticed some optimism return to our industry.

Yes, it's great to see some positive earnings reports in the press.  Nothing wrong with that.

But as our collective fortunes improve, I'm concerned that we'll all lose the motivation to take a hard look at ourselves, and work to become better as an industry.

I thought I'd share with you my pet peeves for your consideration.  I'm not singling out EMC, or any other vendor -- just commenting on behaviors we all exhibit that aren't helping matters get any better.

#1 -- Helping IT Talk To The Business

So much of what we pitch is aimed at directly at IT organizations.  Ostensibly, that makes sense, since they're the people who tend to buy our stuff.

But if you've spent any time talking to larger IT organizations, one of the perennial themes you'll hear is that IT can struggle in talking to the business in many cases. 

For example, a good IT organization is typically focused on lowering costs, improving service levels and being more responsive.  Nothing wrong with that.

But, speaking from the other side of the table, I would consider that's just table stakes from any IT organization.  I would assume that any function within a large organization is always looking to be faster / better / cheaper in what they do.

But the bar has been raised, as far as I can see.

Where's your new thinking?  Where's your investment in understanding my business?  What can you bring to me to help me create new value?  What should I be thinking about now that can get me into trouble (or create new opportunities) down the road?

I'm tickled pink when I can get that sort of dialogue happening within other functions in my organization -- and that includes my colleagues in IT.

We as vendors have a key role to play.  We can choose to focus on our products, and how we think we're better than our competitors.  Or we can change our focus, and realize that IT wants to be a relevant contributor to the overall success of the organization, and start to position our capabilities along those lines.

Or we can just keep with our better / faster / cheaper mantra ...

#2 -- Learning To Speak In Plain Language

I frequently get accused of over-simplifying topics, or not getting deep enough.

Trust me, I can babble in techno-gibberish with the best of them.  It's just that I don't see it as a useful skill going forward. 

The simpler your story, the more people understand it -- and the easier it is to repeat.

Ideas and concepts come in form factors.  The more convenient the form factor, the more it will be used.  And there's always time for drill-down later when needed.

Marketing people understand this concept -- sometimes too well. Over-promising benefits as a side effect of simplification is not a good thing, generally speaking.

#3 -- Learning To Be Transparent

We know that every product has its strengths and weaknesses.  We know that every company has its strengths and weaknesses.

Have you ever met a character at a party who professed to be good at everything, well liked by all, and had no flaws whatsoever?  I bet you found that annoying.

Well, dealing with IT vendor companies is no different.  In addition to highlighting your strengths, how about being really open and honest about the stuff you're not good at?

Many years ago, I started getting more comfortable with being transparent regarding both sides of EMC -- the good and the not-so-good.  I think many people find it refreshing, but I still occasionally horrify certain EMC people when I start doing this in front of customers or the press.

Transparency also applies to honest perspectives on roadmap, competitors' strengths and weaknesses, customer services, pricing, what customers are saying and doing -- it's a very useful thing for all of us to get comfortable with.

#4 -- No Force Fits, Please

Every vendor on the planet is guilty of the occasional "force fit".  Some more than others.

Many of us on the vendor side can be incredibly optimistic about our new shiny toys.  Many customers who are desperate for a solution may not look closely and give something new a try.

Sure, that's one way that progress can be made in our industry -- by watching stuff break in customer environments, and trying like hell to fix it.  It's also incredibly stressful on IT organizations and vendors alike.

If we're not sure that something will work, we should say so.  If it's one of the first times we're trying something out in a particular use case, we should say so.

And when the customer seems willing to take unnecessary risks (as is the case sometimes), we as vendors should do the right thing and say "let's understand the risks here".  And, in a world where customers are always right, it's hard when you need to point out that they just might be wrong.

#5 -- Get Serious About Usable Standards

This topic frustrates me. 

As a representative of a large tech company, usable standards are very good for our business model -- they dramatically increase the size of the target market, and they dramatically lower "friction costs" in making technologies work together.

People assume that large tech companies generally don't like usable standards.  Actually, the opposite is usually the case.

EMC invests an inordinate amount in the standards process -- not in a press-release-glamorous kind of way, but more as a serious investment in growing the market and lowering our costs. 

In addition to participating in lord-knows-how-many standards bodies, we also reach out to selected technology partners (some of them our competitors) to accelerate this process.

But it's not enough.  Not nearly enough.

In my humble world view, investment in standards setting for most tech companies has more to do with nice powerpoint, and less to do with accelerating the evolution of the IT industry.

And I don't have an easy answer for this one.

#6 -- Show People A Journey, Not A Point Product

IT vendors build and sell stuff.  By comparisons, IT organizations are on a journey from where they are to where they'd like to be.  The same can be said for the smart people who work in IT organizations.

You can see the inherent mismatch in expectations, can't you?

To the extent that we can share each customers' view of their journey, and position our offerings as helping in the journey, we'd all be far better off.

However, you'd be surprised on just how few IT organizations have a clearly articulated picture of where they'd like to be in a few years, and how they'd like to get there. 

So we end up debating the pros and cons of different technologies, products and vendors -- largely context-free, I'd offer.

#7 -- Vendor Succeeds When Customer Succeeds

In an ideal world, every IT transaction would be a win-win all around.  Deliver the benefits you are promising as a vendor, and you'll make money.  Fail to do so, you won't.

Nice theory, but there are some inherent challenges.  First, as a vendor, we're usually just one piece in a much bigger initiative.  Some parts we control, some we don't.  At the logical conclusion of this argument, you're making a case for complete outsourcing, which is not where we usually want to go.

Occasionally, we're asked to consider risk-sharing or some other flavor of non-traditional scheme where our payment varies based on the results produced.  Characteristically, we tend to be open minded about these sorts of discussions, but -- like any investor -- we want to see the plan, meet the team, and get some confidence that the whole thing has been thought through.

Well, very often it hasn't.  Just like any other investment proposal that smells funny, we have to pass on many of these -- and I wish this wasn't the case.  Maybe there's a pony in the proposal, maybe not -- but often there's just not enough substance to make it look like a decent proposition.

Personal note:  I think this topic is not done any service by the spurious "guarantee" programs that some smaller vendors are offering.  Reminds me of a late night cable TV pitch, or worse.

#8 -- Tell Me Where It's Going

As IT vendors, we're expected to have a reasonably evolved point of view on big topics like where technology is going, the changing face of IT organizations, their evolving relationship with the business, new areas of value creation and/or risk mitigation in our world, and so on.

I don't think we are under any obligation to be 100% right in our predictions and prognostications -- just to put a serious amount of effort into these topics, present our case(s), and invite discussion and debate.

I use this as one of my litmus tests between serious strategic vendors and the more tactical ones.  I tend to respect any IT vendor who's willing to put their best thinking out there for all to see: warts and all.

#9 -- Be Accountable -- Even If It's Not Your Fault

One of the things that attracted me to EMC many, many years ago was the "guilty until proven innocent" mindset we had around our customers.  Our products tended to be used in multi-vendor environments where customers could easily get lost in a thicket of finger-pointing if there was a serious issue.

We built our initial customer service philosophy and capabilities around "owning the problem" rather than "fixing our little piece of it".  We're not 100% perfect at this, but it's definitely one of our defining characteristics.

I see this thinking permeating into other areas of our business: services, solutions, etc. 

The more we as vendors can feel personal responsibility for the customer's success -- regardless of how many vendors are involved -- the better we'll all be.

#10 -- Simplicity Really Matters

There's no limit to how simple we can make things if vendors really try. 

The larger you are as a vendor, the more important it is to invest in simplicity in all aspects of your business: easy to understand what you do, easy to understand where you fit, easy to acquire your stuff, easy to install it, easy to manage it and support it, and easy to migrate off at the end of the ride.

Sure, we all need the ability to dive deep into the complexity should the need or interest arise, but the default should be that we -- as vendors -- strive to make all aspects of our interactions with customers as simple as humanly possible -- and then make it even simpler.

Customers can help as well.  A clear understanding of requirements is helpful.  Organizing internally to present a single face to your vendor (or the project) is very helpful as well. 

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Well, that's my personal list.

What would you add?

Comments

[Barry Whyte]

Chuck,

Been a while since I posted here, hope you are well.

Can't agree more re #5. I personally think with the coming "network" consolidation - we need to get this one right first time.

#10 strikes a chord. With more and more time spent in the halcyon state of still being (and having influence) at the techy level, as well as hearing our mutual customers pain points, we all need to try and combine #5 and #10 together.

How as an industry can we, for example make a simple to use, effective SRM tool ? - we all want to do the same thing - a customer has an issue, they want to go to a tool that says "HERE" look at this thing... with more and more heterogeneous environments, TPC, CC, OV or whatever isn't cutting it - how about a vendor agnostic tool and API set that can help.

It feels like boiling the ocean, but why - surely we all have that common goal?

[twitter.com/fugitive247]

"You can see the inherent mismatch in expectations, can't you?" Concise and logical, this statement seems to be the overall bane of Cyberia at large. For non-IT specific relevance, if I were to use an alternate title for this article it would be: Ten Things I Wish We Did Better As A Society.

[Anders]

A great read, thanks. #2 is my personal favourite. There is a great difference in simplicity vs simplification. The idea of simplicity does not mean dumbing down your content, just limit yourself to what is REALLY important and realize that we as humans only rembember a fraction of the material presented.

Actually, simplicity is hard. I really enjoyed the article below that illustrates our reluctance to simplify technical content. (The Synergist, the journal of the American Industrial Hygiene Association)
http://psandman.com/col/simplify.htm

[Chuck Hollis]

Thanks for dropping by, and sharing that link.

I know a few people I'm going to share it with :-)

Thanks again

-- Chuck

[Pat Adams]

Chuck - This is a gem. If all we arm ourselves with is a glossy-brochure and sound bites versus an understanding of our clients business and an ability to simply state what it means to them, then we are lost. My clients respect me more and I believe buy from me because I am transparent. At least they know what they are getting themselves in to and why.