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I was giving a presentation on “ the Value of Recognition” to the office workers of a large Canadian City. The City Commissioner ended his welcome to those present with these words, “ I have an open door policy so I want to encourage you to come and talk to me when you have a concern.” When he left I heard a couple of people in the front row say with a hint of sarcasm, “ Yeah sure. He has an open door policy as long as what you have to say is flattering and doesn’t rock the boat.” We all have known leaders like this and we all have had similar reactions to them. It is quite apparent that many managers and supervisors don’t listen well and are easily threatened when a challenge or criticism is made by someone over whom they have authority. I recall having a supervisor ask me to schedule an appointment to see him. He wanted to tap my brain. I should have been suspicious right from the start because in over 20 years he had never once asked my opinion on anything. In spite of this I prepared thoroughly and was eager to finally have the chance to share my wisdom and experience. Maybe he was turning over a new leaf. When the interview began the supervisor fell asleep within minutes. Is that all the time it took to “Tap my mind?” Since I pride myself on being a rather dynamic and energetic speaker I was really taken aback by this. What a blow!! It was a relief to find out later that he suffered from sleeping sickness and had a difficult time staying awake at the best of times. I dismissed myself from the meeting saying that perhaps I could return when he was feeling better. ( I won’t tell you what I really wanted to say.) Along with proclaiming to have an open door policy I think we would all benefit from people in leadership positions declaring that they had an open mind policy as well. Managers with an open mind listen attentively to the thoughts, ideas and opinions of others without becoming upset or threatened when a contrary or critical position or opinion is presented. No one person, no matter what their position or level of expertise, has a monopoly on wisdom, insight or correct thinking. Wisdom resides in the collective and not in any one individual. The following story illustrate what I mean by this. It seems that a rather prestigious country club was having a problem with disappearing bottles of shampoo in the mens’ shower room. No matter what the management did the bottles kept disappearing. Signs were posted and meetings were held encouraging the members to leave the shampoo bottles where they found them. Nothing worked. One day the manager of the club was inspecting the shower room while a custodian was mopping the floor. When the manager saw that another shampoo bottle had disappeared he expressed his anger and frustration to the custodian, “ We’ve tried everything. Nothing works. What more can we do?” The custodian stopped mopping, looked up at the manager and said, “ Why don’t you take the top off each new bottle of shampoo and throw it away? Nobody will take a shampoo bottle without a top.” When the manager asked him why he hadn’t offered this great solution before, the caretaker replied, “ Nobody ever asks my opinion. Nobody gets my opinion.” This is the sad reality in far too many businesses and organizations. If you want a happy, healthy and more productive workplace access the wisdom and experience of the group. Cultivate a genuine “Open Door Policy” and combine it with a genuine “ Open Mind Policy” and watch great things start to happen in your workplace. By the way it works effectively in your family as well.. “ Boat rockers should be considered cherished resources not pains in the neck.” M. Moore This is a guest blog post written by Dave Kawula, a Senior Consultant with 1E. Dave was the guest on our January episode of the AlignIT Manager Tech Talk where we talked about how IT managers can take the risk out of their Windows 7 deployment projects. Below Dave details cost savings that can be claimed by implementing automation and self service as part of your deployment project. Read Dave’s other guest post on rationalizing your apps prior to a Windows 7 deployment >>
Imagine that you have finally completed the following phases of your project:Core Architecture, Gold Image Build and Test, Application Rationalization, Testing, Testing, and more Testing Now you need to get your images deployed to end users…well this is a problem because most organizations lack the forethought to automate this process. So when it comes to deploying Microsoft’s operating systems there are really two choices that we are normally presented with: Lite Touch and Zero Touch. Let’s take a moment and define both of these:
Now do either of the above work… the answer is yes absolutely. The issue is that all of this requires Careful coordination and communication to end users. This process normally involves hiring project managers, business analysts, corporation communication specialists, and costly IT Engineering time. My question is this: We are in a world where we can get applications delivered to all of our phones by simply clicking in a portal and having them magically installed. We can change devices and simply re-deploy these applications from the same portal. WHAT IF… you could do the same thing for your Windows 7 deployment. Just treat the Windows 7 deployment as nothing more than a complex application. Allowing end users to click on a Windows 7 upgrade icon in a portal. Then have them them schedule their own upgrade for a time that works for them. Check out this product from 1E Software called yes you guessed it, 1E Shopping:
Does this mean death to the manual spreadsheets… well probably not – we always seem to return to what we know and love. I have personally deployed this product and have seen the impact it has on the classical approach to operating system and software delivery. The only requirement for Shopping is that a customer must already own and have configured System Center Configuration Manager. The best part of this application is that it can be easily be installed and configured in less than five consulting days. So I want to wrap up this post with a little bit of simple math for everyone:
Now…here is a look at the old way! Deploy 1000 Desktops x $3,000 each = $300,000 in resource costs
How about the new way!!! Take the opportunity to incorporate this organizational change into your Windows 7 projects. From my previous post on application rationalization:
Add in savings from using automation and self service:
Assume your budget for this Windows 7 project was around $500,000. I will leave you pondering those numbers. Now of course remember there is an acquisition cost of new software that would save money. The nice thing about 1E is that all of their software pretty much pays for itself very quickly. I hope you have enjoyed this post and I welcome any feedback or if you want to share your experiences with your Windows 7 projects thus far. About Dave Kawula
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