Dear Dr. G.: I love my job 90 percent of the time, but just when the department seems to be running smoothly, some new problem or emergency project pops up, and I must scramble to get everything back on an even keel. For example, last week for no apparent reason a major international provider of Internet services began to reject all of our corporate e-mail. It took a few days of activity to resolve the problem. Do you have any suggestions on how to avoid emergency situations?
—Harried in Hartford
Dear Harried: You have stumbled across one of the great dilemmas in our chosen field. This dilemma divides the players from the plodders. And you, my friend, are a plodder. And therein lies the dilemma. From a corporate perspective, an IT department that runs smoothly—perhaps even invisibly—is a great IT department. From a professional point of view, watching a smoothly running IT ship is about as exciting as watching NASCAR on television. Actually, watching any sport puzzles Dr. G. Surely it is more satisfying to participate oneself. No?
The players and the plodders are divided further by their motivations for getting into the information technology field in the first place. When I was in college, I fell in love with computers—those great hulking behemoths in the basement of the chemistry or physics building. It was easy to get computer time in the middle of the night, but there was little we could do that was fun. Running batch COBOL or FORTRAN programs from thousands of punch cards was boring. There are only so many interesting graphics you can draw using a line printer. Writing and running assembly-level routines to solve fourth-level derivatives was fun but not part of the program. All the “computer” jobs available then were about the COBOL stuff, so I steered clear of the data processing world until it became interesting again.
The plodders were perfectly happy with a clean-running COBOL payroll program or an RPG report. It gave them more time to pursue their true interest—climbing the corporate ladder through politics and properly working the system. The PC revolution shook things up a bit and made it a little tougher for those guys. The smoothly running ships ran into a few rocks and shoals as they had to navigate through desktop productivity software, networking, client-server applications, middleware, the Internet, distributed software, e-mail, SPAM, and enterprise CRM systems.
The players, however, were excited by the challenges—and the good ones rose to the occasion and displaced the plodders.
Problem solving and solution finding are what make information technology fun. It is called using your brain. It’s a little like the difference between a nice, calm sail on a tranquil lake on a quiet Sunday afternoon and sailing around Cape Horn—one is a pastime; the other is an avocation.
There certainly is a place for both types of individuals in the world of information technology—in fact, there is a need for both. The problem is it is just about impossible to find individuals who can fill both roles equally well. Creative thinkers and problem solvers generally are not well suited to playing the political games necessary to achieve distinction in the corporate world.
Allow me one more analogy, once again back to my college days. The engineering students took different calculus courses than we did in the math department. They had to learn how to plug numbers into formulas to solve integral or differential equations. We had to prove the formulas. Now, from my perspective, I always want the guy who can prove the formula. Anybody can plug in the numbers.
So, I suppose a truly great IT department would consist of the right mix of players and plodders. Just make sure each is plugged into the proper place. I know no CIO in his right mind who actually looks forward to the next crisis—but I know the best ones secretly relish the challenge and rise to the occasion.
Dr. G. will be leaving on sabbatical for an indeterminate period of time as he ponders the mysteries of quarks—why do they come in only six flavors?