Genesis of Mr Grouch

"What we have here, is failure to communicate."
(http://youtu.be/SnO9Jyz82Ps)

You can't blame the SysAdmin for becoming grouchy in the above situation. A long parade of disrespectful interactions with other employees leaves little room for positive growth. I suspect this is an attitude perpetuated from the top-down, as is the case with most attitudes in business.

I find it very common for management to consider IT, and many business-administrative functions, as a "necessary evil" to their profitable operations. There are several ways to perceive such expenses, but "necessary evil" is not an appropriate one. The two common positive perceptions are the "efficiency expense" and the "internal business". In "efficiency expense" administrative functions are a way to make your profit producers more efficient, allowing them to produce more profit. In "internal business", administrative functions sell their efforts to the profit producers of the business; this makes for simpler accounting on each end of the relationship, but complicates the exact role of the admin function.

Both of these positive perspectives naturally lead to gainful comparisons of cost and benefit. When management and employees can see, in black and white, where the administrative function is directly to their benefit, the attitude changes.

This may not account for every grouch out there, some people are just happier -um- being unhappy. But such people are the exception, and should be dealt with as much.

I have followed your blog off and on for several years, because you have interesting observations and plenty of helpful tips.

When I worked at a university, we had a situation where the our system administration group had a very bad relationship with the Help Desk/Customer Support. Before I started there, two of the SysAds (bad apples) refused to work with the Help Desk and would berate and humiliate these people to an extent that the Help Desk would avoid help from any of the System Admins whenever possible. It took me and another System Administrator (we both had extensive customer service experience) two years to build up a proper working relationship with the Help Desk/Customer Support group, by working with them and getting them answers and help where and when they needed it, instead of refusing to answer our phones and ignoring their requests for help.

I understand the frustration of working on issues like you mentioned, because I deal with this all of the time.

I had worked in customer service positions since high school, and my father taught me from childhood to treat others as I would like to be treated. One of the most important things that I have learned is to train the Help Desk/Customer Support people with tips on what to look for and how to improve their troubleshooting, so they can resolve issues sooner.

I found that being approachable helped me isolate problems before they became system-wide explosions. Also, knowing what your users are doing through the first-line of support is useful for all kinds of projects and other solutions in the future, too.

My background in business (major corporations, non-profits, and small businesses)makes me look at everyone that needs my help as a customer, first, and looking at how I would like to be treated when I am working with them. If everyone looked at it this way in an organization, the focus would change on how everything was done and there would be a lot more accomplished.

Thanks,

Manfred