Being in IT is a funny job. I often get told I don’t have the personality of an “IT guy” whatever that means. I don’t know if those words are synonumous with “mouth breathing basement dweller” but I see myself more as the personable sales type than the nerdy tech-monkey that I get to play on TV (in my head). 

Along with this basement dweller persona, you also get a very different attitude. Much like “Nick Burns – Your Company’s Computer Guy” from SNL, the IT guy is usually the gatekeeper of what goes and doesn’t go in an organization. No youtube at work… his fault. No bandwidth for Final Four… his fault. Facebook… his fault, but his terminal will definitly work, for testing of course. 

It’s easy to fall into this trap as well as an admin too. I’ve caught myself doing it several times. On one side we have users who we percieve as troublesome kids that keep putting their fingers in electrical sockets (so tape up all the electrical sockets) and on the other side, we need to progress as organization to be more profitable and effecient. What I’m getting at is our users are sometimes limited by our ourselves, the IT department. 

This realization came to me a few months ago while listening to some podcasts and reading a book called Drive. What I’ve finally come up with is this… I want to work on the cool stuff. The things that challenge me as a professional and as a person. Locking down ports and traffic, checking productivity monitors, and figuring out a way to lock the cookies on the top shelf is not the best, or most fun, use of my time. I want to end everyday asking and answering “yes” to “was I better today than I was yesterday?” To me that means did I empower more people to do more things with IT or was I a hinderence today?

I would actually argue that if you find yourself spending too much time setting up controls, your company is not hiring the right kind of people. A company today needs to be a playground filled with the right kind of kids that are encouraged to explore. Set up the fences (expectations) and let them go. You will be pleasantly surprised to find what they can do when you hire the right people with the right motivators.