A Sysadmin’s Guide to Navigating the Business World

IT doesn't exist for its own sake, but rather to serve the needs of some external entity. In the work sphere, this means serving some business need of the employing organization. Unfortunately, sysadmins and business leaders often have different perspectives. This can put a strain on IT's relationship with the rest of the organization. Mark Burgess and Carolyn Rowland's training on Tuesday morning was aimed at giving sysadmins the perspective and skills necessary to effectively communicate with business leaders.

Business is all about forming and cultivating relationships, but all too often sysadmins avoid engaging the business leadership until there is an active issue which needs attention. As a result, IT suffers from low trust and low status within the organization. Sysadmins can work to improve this situation by developing relationships with the business side. By building a history of reliability and dependability, and improving communication, IT's perception is improved.

The key to improving the relationship between business and IT is to understand and deliver what the business needs. Sysadmins are a lot like rocket scientists. They're smart, and they gravitate towards large, expensive, and risky projects. After all, those are the interesting ones, right? But business doesn't need a rocket, it needs a 747: (relatively) agile, reusable, and low risk. As exciting as rockets are, the ROI is better for jetliners.

Developing working relationships with business leaders requires knowing how to effectively communicate. Engaging the listener is key. Carolyn explained it in the context of network protocols: don't UDP to business leaders, TCP to them. Communication consists of many parts, and only 7% is the words that are spoken.

Business leaders, often even senior IT leadership, generally don't care for the specific details of technology. They care how it will provide value to the organization. As result, communication needs to be brief and address only the concerns of the target audience. This should not be mistaken for "communicate infrequently." IT must proactively approach the business side, before there are fires to fight.

It's also important for IT to develop a brand to compete for mindshare with external vendors. Brands don't have to be liked to be remembered, but it helps. Part of developing a brand is to offer consistent behavior. This includes having a ticketing system, and developing appropriate SOPs.

Cooperation is a result of comparing the benefits to the costs. IT can reduce the costs by fostering trust, knowledge, and a sense of autonomy to business customers. The ultimate goal is to have the business leaders want you on their team. This allows IT to get the resources needed to meet the organization's goals.

It's ironic that some of the target audience for this presentation will be the least receptive. Certainly, not all of the advice will be applicable, it must be adapted to the culture of your particular organization. In fact, Mark and Carolyn have some points of disagreement, which make this training course particularly fun to sit in on.