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Speak Human! Should IT Workers Learn to Speak to the Layperson?

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As an IT professional, you are one of the busiest employees at any organization.  Not only do you multitask problem solving for issues that come in at unpredictable rates, but you must find time to maintain current technology while planning for the future.  There is not a lot of time to develop professional skills outside of the tech part of the job, but excellent communication skills seem to be a requirement for most IT positions.  Should IT workers be expected to develop their communication skills to accommodate users on top of all of the other tasks they face each day?

The fact is that most IT professionals have the best intentions when it comes to clear communication, but these intentions are not always applied to day-to-day interactions with users.  A great way to make sure your contact with users is professional as well as productive is to make sure you learn to speak language that a layperson can easily understand.

There are many reasons why better communication benefits not only users but also IT professionals themselves.  You may not be the stereotypical IT worker who dismisses user concerns and refuses to explain solutions in easy-to-understand language, but you still may need to work on your communication skills.  Learning to speak to the layperson can cut down on your work, improve your business relationships, help you with strategy, and contribute to professionalism in the industry.

Cut Down on Your Workload

It is easy to get irritated with users who enter tickets or call with the same issues over and over.  Dealing with repetitive requests starts a vicious cycle of resentment on your part that the client may perceive as irritation.  The client responds with frustration, and this creates the wrong environment for someone to learn how to use a technology or solve a problem on their own.

What if some of these repeated calls are not due to the user’s inability or refusal to learn?  That may be the case on occasion, but consider the possibility that many users could handle issues on their own if they understood what you are doing and what you are trying to say to them.  Using language a layperson can understand will help many users learn to help themselves.  Fewer repeated requests will leave you time to handle the maintenance and planning portions of your work.

Note that clients who understand what steps they need to take to ensure security will result in systems better protected from threats.

Get Better Responses From End Users

End-user developers and business system analysts need to gather user requirements and translate them into tasks for development.  If users cannot fully comprehend what they are being asked, accurate requirements will not be possible.  When users clearly comprehend the software concept that will develop into a tool for them to use, they will be able to imagine all of the features the tool should have to be effective.

You can only get useful requirements from users if you are speaking their language.  This is not just true for end-user developers and analysts.  System administrators, help desk professionals, and other IT workers need to get feedback from users.  If you work in any of these capacities, communicating in a way that a layperson can understand could help users:

  • Choose the best options for software bundles
  • Share pathways that need testing and improvement
  • Report on load times and other Ethernet issues
  • Shed light on issues appearing on system logs

There are a variety of ways that clients who understand your goals can help you achieve those goals.  You can develop users with this understanding by learning to communicate what you are trying to achieve.

Get the Resources You Need 

Your job is not isolated to end users only.  IT professionals have to work with management and financial offices to acquire new hardware or development tools.  If you want a new server, you might have to get approval from a variety of managers who know nothing about the technology side of your organization.  Budgets often are tight, and companies do not want to approve spending unless they understand how the expenditure will benefit business.  You cannot convince management that the cost is worthwhile without effectively communicating the benefits to the organization.

Good communications skills will benefit you for more than purchase approval.  Financial decision makers will need to understand your point of view regarding many costs that you control, such as:

  • Hiring new team members
  • Projects, troubleshooting, or build releases that result in overtime
  • Excessive energy costs associated with a data center
  • Outsourcing work to tech vendors

You need to be able to use language a layperson understands to explain why a series of hot fixes following last week’s sprint release caused team member overtime…without using many of those words.

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Professionalism in the Industry 

It is obvious that users who are disappointed by their experiences with you could cause you to lose clients or your job.  Professionalism, including good communication skills, affects your reviews as well as your employment status.  However, concern about loss of income should not be the only reason you strive toward better communication with your clients.  By showing users that they can trust you to communicate clearly and effectively, you are counteracting the stereotype of the difficult IT professional.

How Do IT Professionals Sharpen Communication Skills?

You don’t need to sign up for a class on how to speak to a layperson, if you could even find such a thing.  A good way to get started sharpening your communication skills is to look at instructional videos or textbooks that cover your work.  You already know how to manage updates, but you may not remember how it was communicated to you initially.  Find out how new IT professionals are learning the trade, and incorporate that beginner language into your client interactions.

Remember that you are not just benefitting users when you learn to speak their language.  You will save future work and become a better professional.  End users most likely believe that IT workers should learn to speak to the layperson.  By improving your communication skills, you benefit the end user as well as yourself.

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IT Pro: Missing Pieces in the Human Element

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Internet is all about the articles on Information Technologies, the most regarded ones are the how-tos and breaking tech news for the system administrators. Then comes the product announcements, support forums, downloadable tools, career pages. But what about the IT pro?

Throughout my life in IT, whether as an IT pro, IT user or as an enthusiast I have seen stereotypical people in IT: people who are inclined to say “this will be like this because this is the way it is” or people who write sloppy e-mails because they are “too busy to care about the writing” or better, people who cuts the conversation with an authoritative, non-descriptive answer. Can these be perceived as charismatic? I doubt so. We are humans and we need to analyze and upgrade ourselves. The first step is realizing the human element.

Realizing the Human Element

No matter what you say, we are humans and we are working for humans. You are deploying this server because some other humans will continue to work, not because you are a hardware enthusiast. You are patching that Exchange server because other humans can receive e-mails on their mobile phones, not because you want to satisfy yourself that you have the latest patches available. You are installing that integration applications because you want to ease the work on humans, not to take geekery pleasure from the two applications running in harmony.

Conversations

It is very easy to isolate each other, especially in the corporate environment. By introducing the human element more in ourselves we can turn isolation to a more pleasant human experience.

In everything we, IT pros do, we need to consider the human side: be it a server, a project or any thing that we are doing. We are enabling people to do their work, if we fail to understand the human element, we fail to understand our very existence. If this accounting guy is not able to fire up this Excel because the terminal server is experiencing problems, and if you say that “the server performance is in acceptable limits” without questioning what’s wrong, then there is something seriously wrong with you. You are there because the accounting guy has to record the transactions. Forget the human element today and then be forgotten tomorrow.

Listen and Speak, Read and Write

As we accept the human side of everything that we do as an IT pro, we have to show our human side as well. We cannot just say “that is the way it is” or cut the conversation because we are highly analytical. It is simply not human. First of all we need to listen to understand what is wrong. Not because the other person is frustrated, angry, emotional but because there is something that needs to be fixed. We need to understand why on earth the other side has left her work and showing her emotions. Except a sociopath, nobody comes to work to leave her work aside and hit at people. Therefore we have listen first.

Second, we need to be able to read and write. We have to read this e-mail because someone else has taken her time to explain something to us, not because she has found some free time to talk about IT stuff – and believe me, users are not a single bit interested in IT stuff, they just need to get things done. And we need to write. We cannot reply to someone’s e-mail saying that “FYI: Issue is fixed.” At the very least, we need to call the person, explain what is wrong in simple terms – something like “we had a misbehaving application on the terminal server, which was giving you and us the headache” – and explain simply that you worked on it and sort it out. Personally, I go off the limits and I explain them precisely what is wrong: company policies, application incompatibility, backward compatibility issues, why we cannot update or upgrade or even that we, the IT Pros, as the other humans, are sometimes helpless too. And once you explain them, you can send them an e-mail like this: “Dear Ms. Brown, As I explained you on the phone, we have been able to fix this issue. Thank you very much for your patience and assistance.” And without a sloppy language. All e-mail clients offer some kind a spell checking. Use it dammit! Nobody, including you wants to receive an e-mail with a sloppy writing!

Openness

This is making everyone know how you work, what you do and what do you experience. I am not talking about visiting every desk and telling them your story. What I am telling is not to hide yourself, not to hide what you are doing and not to cover things up. One of the deadliest mistakes that you can do is to think that the more you reveal, the more you will be questioned. It is always just the opposite. The less you conceal, the less you are questioned. Since people know what you are doing, that you are explaining things to them and that they can receive answers when they ask, the less they are curious and they are much more respectful to your job and to yourself. If you are self confident you provide visibility, if not you conceal. It is as simple as that.

Collaboration

Although you may argue that this should go without saying, I believe it worths mentioning. Yes, as IT pros we collaborate with each other; just look at the wealth of information on the Internet and compare it to any other profession. But we fail to collaborate with our users. Thinking that they are the ones experiencing issues and isolating them from the problem or the solution will not work: from a different point of view, it is isolating yourself. Letting the users working on the solution, providing information, discussing ways to solve problems will make them part of the problem. More, it will change their views on your job and think about you as a colleague, not an isolated person who is paid to fix stuff. When we solve the problems, we have to get in contact and tell them what we have gone through. At the end we become people that are working together, not isolated units pushing each other.

Everything is for the humans: bridges, railways, hospitals, natural wonders and information technologies. Thinking about this in every part of our job and putting in the humanity will make work easier and more enjoyable for everyone, including ourselves. And for the ultimate selfish in yourself, think that the person you are not speaking to may become the CIO in the future.

What do you think? What is the missing human element in the IT pros in your organization? What would you prefer they did? Hit the comments below.

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To Err is Human: Cloud Computing

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Although cloud computing is one of the biggest, if not the biggest thing in IT, we cannot say that there are no concerns and all is OK when you decide to migrate to the cloud. In fact there are too many concerns that hold companies back from migrating to the cloud. We cannot say that these concerns are not valid but we have to analyze them to see if they are real barriers to migrate or just perceptions.

Owned Things are Valued More

It is not about the ownership of the data but rather the “things” they have in the cloud. Suppose that you have purchased a new rack server that you have successfully deployed. After some time you see that it is not utilized fully; in fact the energy it consumes compared to the services it provides makes it an economic “loss.” You can consider to shut it down, but most probably you will not take it off the cabinet. It is in fact more valuable to you than it actually is: although it is an economic loss, the ownership makes you perceive it more valuable than it actually is. But don’t worry, this is all about being human: on average people value things they own 30% more than they actually are according to the studies by Prof. Dan ARIELY.

But this behavior will inevitably trap you in the cloud space. Imagine the same scenario we have just talked, but not in your datacenter but in the cloud. You have faced a

Bugs in human beings

As human beings we have our own bugs. Of all, these two can have significant effects in your cloud adventure.

high demand, deployed another server to meet the demand and now the demand came back to normal levels. If you fall into the trap of ownership and keep the resource – the additional server – you will end up paying for something that have no value other than satisfying your feelings.

It is your company who owns the data, but it is somebody else who owns the resources. Pay to keep the data but let go of the resources when you don’t need  them anymore.

“Every Time We do It This Way”

According to financial researches, businesses centralize, decentralize and then recentralize, which is a cycle of approximately 8 – 10 years. From an IT perspective, in the centralization stage companies want to control everything in one place. Later on they decide to decentralize and they deploy servers in the other offices and employ IT staff there. Next, they see that the costs associated with decentralization is high and they return to their starting point, which is centralization.

But cloud computing is none of those. Since the cloud inherently is abstraction of the systems from the underlying hardware, it becomes distributed. The server is no longer tied to server, cabinet, building or even a geographic location. Rather it is distributed geographically to avoid single point of failure.

This brings us to a new way of thinking. We cannot design systems in the cloud as we have designed them in conventional or highly virtualized datacenters. This is not only about avoiding the possible performance issues but also about taking advantage of the high available and scalable solutions. Otherwise it will just be “the same ol’ way of doing stuff.”

It’s Now All About You, Not the Provider

Until now, in the articles I have spoken about the cloud providers in general and have an article specifically about choosing a cloud provider. This time, I flipped the other side of the coin and wanted to make you aware of the two traps that are neither technical nor financial, but just about being human.

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Does Your Web Site Have Intelligent Human Interactions?

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Is your site humanized? Is it warm, welcoming, a fun and helpful user experience? Are search and feedback mechanisms built in and easy to use or is the entire site a monolith of worship to your company without thought or compassion for the visitor who is damned for clicking upon it? Too often, when planning a web site, marketing to the message is clouded by sales figures and non-creative thoughts that fail to consider the user experience. That is the first and biggest mistake of many companies.

When planning the development of your web site or any redesign, you must consider several important steps.

Ease of use

If navigation is difficult, if the viewer cannot find their interests quickly and easily and they have to work hard to find what they want or order from your site, they will go on to your competition.

Wealth of consumer-friendly information

Whatever you are selling through your site, the consumer wants ALL of the information immediately!

Not speaking AT the viewer but talking WITH them

Although digital, it’s still sales and your web site is a digital salesperson.

Content that creates a fan base and assures return visits to drive sales

That sentence speaks for itself. If you think putting up your information and then sitting back for the next decade or even month and sometimes week, you are missing out on return customers.

Social media

It’s not just the share function and RSS feed that allows you to let visitors do some important marketing for you but your social media outreach that ties people into your site and company.

A Closer Look at the Basics

When looking at ease of use, think in terms of priorities. For instance, you want people to buy your newest product or service. That is number one. You also want people to see your other products and services. That is number two. Then, you want them to be able to access those products and services easily. That’s number three. This is your tree of basic needs – your triad of success, so to speak.

Branching off of the trunk of the tree are things like company information (about us), a blog of important new information, useful tips for consumers, news items, etc. and any other page of useful information. Above all, people have most probably found your site by searching out their need for your product or service so you want them to be able to see what they want, make an informed and firm decision and be able to purchase it easily and quickly.

That firm decision will be easier when there’s a wealth of consumer-friendly information. If you’re selling a product, then have large and plentiful photos. All of the product information should be present and easy to read. Returns for goods that are not represented correctly or in their entirety are costly not only monetarily but also bad for your brand and a negative consumer experience. If it brings bad online reviews of your company, that is bad public relations you will find hard to correct and it will affect sales from possible new customers. Transparency in sales and service is the utmost in user experience with web sales (or any type of sales, for that matter!).

A big mistake companies make with their web content is the copy. How you communicate with the customer is the basic of sales. A face-to-face salesperson that rambles on and doesn’t acknowledge the customer isn’t going to make the sale. Copy that speaks in natural and easy language will answer questions before they arise and sell the product or service quickly and with more appreciation from the user for the experience.

Having the mechanisms for questions is also important. Most sites have an interactive FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page, some with multiple functions, to answer questions. Some sites have live chat, which is the pinnacle of user experience for sales and service. Immediacy is the name of the web and consumers don’t want to wait for answers if it gets in the way of a firm decision. Lost time losses a sale and return visitors and more sales.

Changing content brings back customers who want more. Have you ever heard of the “1,000 True Fan Rule?” Simply stated:

A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author – in other words, anyone producing works of art – needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.

A True Fan is defined as someone who will purchase anything and everything you produce. They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issued hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up. They come to your openings.

They have you sign their copies. They buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat. They can’t wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.

Naturally, this works for any company that wants to drive sales to a strong consumer base. A guaranteed income base with continued growth from the occasional buyer still means growth for any business, large or small.

As with other important points referred to in this article, contact is important:

The key challenge is that you have to maintain direct contact with your 1,000 True Fans. They are giving you their support directly. Maybe they come to your house concerts, or they are buying your DVDs from your website, or they order your prints from Pictopia. As much as possible you retain the full amount of their support. You also benefit from the direct feedback and love.

The technologies of connection and small-time manufacturing make this circle possible. Blogs and RSS feeds trickle out news, and upcoming appearances or new works. Web sites host galleries of your past work, archives of biographical information, and catalogs of paraphernalia. Diskmakers, Blurb, rapid prototyping shops, Myspace, Facebook, and the entire digital domain all conspire to make duplication and dissemination in small quantities fast, cheap and easy. You don’t need a million fans to justify producing something new. A mere one thousand is sufficient.

Changing content, introducing new items and services, highlighting specials and other consumer-interest material will build a growing fan base and keep them coming back on a regular basis. Changing content will also help your SEO and keep you high on Google searches, which make you easier to find when a consumer wants your product or services.

Part of content is not only the copy and visuals; it is also the use of technology to help visitors while on your site. Have you ever seen a walk-on video on a site you’ve viewed? Walk-ons are when a spokesperson walks into the frame of the site and speaks to the viewer. It might just be a sales pitch, an announcement of a special or feature or be a video tutorial that helps you navigate the site or help with ordering. It’s effective but if done incorrectly, it can be annoying as hell. When using this technology, keep in mind that the professionals who provide this technology have done it for dozens or hundreds of companies and they know what they are doing. Don’t try to control the outcome. Give them all the information you want to put forth on your site and let them work their magic. If you insist you want your eight year-old niece to be the spokesperson or to have your dog bark out instructions to visitors, you are outsmarting yourself.

There is always evolving and new technology which will take your web presence to the next level. The important thing to remember is to always use and trust professionals. A web site that hasn’t been updated in the past two years is hopelessly outdated – that’s how fast the technology changes. Work updating your web presence into your business budget.

Social media for your business has become a must these days. It’s the new advertising in place of falling newspaper, magazine and other print media numbers. Likewise, satellite radio is killing commercial radio for advertising and unless you can afford TV advertising fees, using the internet for marketing is how companies, large and small get the word out about their product, specials and news.

You’ve no doubt heard of Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram and other social media channels. They not only provide free marketing and advertising but they led themselves to viral marketing where people will spread the word for you. One of the web tools you need to start is the share function on your site and a RSS feed so people can post your content elsewhere with a simple click.

Social media, however, is not just tweeting cold hard facts or 140 character sales pitches. SOCIAL has meaning and outreach has to not only inform but also entertain and intrigue. Take a look at these top social media campaigns spotlighted in an article in Forbes.com. They are not only smart uses of the medium but well-crafted and brilliant innovations.

As with web design and content writing, it’s important to have a seasoned social media expert handle your marketing outreach. Freelance people can handle your account better than handing over the duties to someone on staff who has no knowledge of how to write effective communications, protect the brand and control all social media channels. Another big mistake is to start and then drop your efforts. A blog or Twitter account that sits idle for several months will have prospective customers wondering what’s caused the lapse. Is business bad for you? Why? Is it your product or service? Social media is as important as any day-to-day operation of your business.

You don’t have to be everywhere on the web for effective social media and not every channel is right for every business. It’s better to start off small and keep that or those channels active than to have all of them open and only some updating on a regular basis.

Invest in Success!

Using all of this technology is not cheap but is your chief sales tool where you want to cut corners? Often businesses invest without thought into office equipment, computers, and other materials and then look for bargains when it comes to brand, identity and web development. This is a huge mistake. Having an art student design your logo or web site because they do it for free or next to free is… well, the old adage of you get what you pay for has stuck around for eons because it’s true. This isn’t to say you need to spend a hundred thousand dollars or close to that but you can’t expect that cheap will work. By all means shop around and find a freelance designer or firm that will serve you well as a trusted vendor as if they were an accountant or lawyer who will handle your business with your best interests at heart. A cheap source of design will collect a check and go off, expecting to never see you again, even if you promise further work (they will only expect requests for free or cheap work again and see no future with you or loyalty). A design source is just as important as a key employee who works in your office. Would you trust them if you made them work for free or $ 25 a week? What kind of work and loyalty would you expect?

Humanizing your website comes down to the interactions and the intentional planning and design you put into those interactions. Being intentional about user experience in those small details that are typically neglected, you can showcase the personality of your company or brand, as well as building loyalty among users. Taking cues from the best websites will help you look for ways to infuse your project with emotional intelligence and usability, hence, popularity.

You can create loyal user base with a willingness to sweat out the details and infuse projects with this emotional intelligence. The small things can really make a difference in the success of your website. Taking the time to create these well-crafted experiences is one of the most potent ways to create fans and bring your website to life, not just as a sales tool but also as an entity that works for you 24/7.

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Deus Ex Human Revolution REVIEW! Duke Nukem Reboot, Fable 4, and more!

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The first huge game of the fall is here, and we’ve got the full review. Jim Sterling joins Max and Tara as they break down Deus Ex Human Revolution. Can it live up to the hype, and resurrect one of the great gaming franchises of all time? Watch and find out! 01:02 Rumor: Fable IV out in 2013, probably not on rails www.destructoid.com 01:40 Rumor: Gearbox rebooting Duke Nukem in next game www.destructoid.com 02:37 Square Enix to debut new game from creator of Portal at PAX www.destructoid.com 04:06 RoboCop Avatar Gear for sale www.destructoid.com 05:40 Deus Ex Human Revolution Review www.destructoid.com Are you ready for PAX PRIME?! The huge gaming convention is happening this week, and the Destructoid show will be on the scene to cover the latest games, give hands on impressions, and bring you everything straight from the show floor. Watch the latest at www.youtube.com and www.revision3.com And don’t miss our live streams happening Thursday, Friday, AND Saturday night at 7:30 PM Pacific time at youtube.com/dtoid. Squarespace is a publishing system for anyone looking to build a blog, portfolio or any kind of website. Squarespace offers a uniquely flexible tool for just about anyone (no coding experience required) to build high end websites with that same functionality that you will find on some of the highest trafficked pages on the web. Squarespace also has amazing iPhone and iPad apps so you can easily update your blog and manage comments on the go. Go to www.squarespace …
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