Mistakes go a long way in throwing off an organization. For those working in enterprise tech, they can be debilitating.
It is unnatural to assume that no one makes mistake, and exactly the opposite is true when we look at organizations with large hierarchical structures and advanced technical knowledge. Making mistakes is a part of learning on the job. What happens, however, when your mistake could be the difference in a profit of a few thousand dollars. Sometimes, your mistakes are not instantly obvious either, or can be harder to predict. In the world of enterprise tech, the risks are much higher and the fallout from mistakes can be significant. Here we highlight a few, and possible solutions to these mistakes.
1. Vendor Lock In: Vendor mismanagement can often lead to workers losing their jobs. Every vendor on the market is trying to lure larger organizations into their customers with lucrative promises of low prices and promises. By making products that take over the environment, vendors often take significant control of IT assets and leverage pricing. While there are benefits to the possible integration and security benefits this can provide, there are risks and an assessment must be made prudently. Furthermore, when it’s time to make the change, be aware that the vendors have no interest in helping you. You will have to take on a significant burden of the new onboarding process. Becoming too dependent on a single vendor is not ideal.
2. Don’t store data only on the cloud: Many IT experts take stock in privately owned servers by organizations such as AWS. In the event such a server dies, you lose your data as well. Do not rely on one server to keep going. Adapt your efforts so that in such an event your data is retained and solutions are easy to access.
3. Work the person, not the case: More often that not CIOs and their teams over engineer business cases and statistics in a bid to land that crucial job or secure funding. More often than not, they should be focused on networking and leveraging their capabilities rather than a case that might be rejected at a perfunctory glance.
4. Hiring the wrong professional: It only takes one incompetent or unsociable employee to ruin an entire team’s operations. Many IT managers egos often keep them from picking someone who might be more talented than them. In reality, this is never a bad thing, top players are what often drive performance across the board. So put your ego aside, and pick the right man for the job.
5. Promoting the wrong person: Generally speaking, promoting from within the company is an excellent policy, but is often done for the wrong reasons. Promoting someone to reward them for loyalty, or to prevent them from leaving is a stupid strategy, and often leads to taking people away from what they love to do.
6. Applying agile methodology to core systems: By applying agile development systems to the wrong systems, CIOs can often lose their job. Services such as email, ERP, etc. need not be transacted in such a fashion, and agile methodology must be used prudently
7. Saying yes too often: Saying no to innovation is not always smart. Saying yes all the time is almost always foolish. As an IT manager, being the first line of access means you hold great responsibility. As such, being able to say no and avoiding too many exception requests will prevent the creation of new holes and blind spots in the organization and many vulnerabilities too.
8. Hiding problems: When a project begins to go downhill, many IT managers try to bury the problem, hoping to be able to fix it before the boss notices. Instead of taking this risk and losing credibility, it is far better to expose bad news as soon as possible. Bad news never gets better by itself and the sooner people will deal with it, the faster the project will be back on track.
The article first appeared on CIO.com