When The Metrics Don't Measure Our Pain

When IT Problems Defy Logic

There are days when a knotty IT issue becomes every bit a Gordian knot. Every which way you try to untie it, your efforts face a dilemma that seems insoluble, bordering on totally impossible.

The limits of your expertise are tested by situations that usually defy logic or comprehension. You could almost hear yourself wondering whether your analysis stands the test of cogency and a proper understanding of the issue.

Finding Compromises

I offered to help two colleagues with some intractable problems. In one case, we found a useful compromise, having identified the bottlenecks and eliminated the drag created by unreachable links embedded in an active document.

The other was a tougher proposition, not made easier by a user who was a serial tinkerer, effecting unauthorised changes to his device. Then, with shadow identities resulting from a poorly implemented user lifecycle process, everything that could go wrong did. This contrasted sharply with the better setup and possibly more docile cohort of our wider user community.

Grasping at Straws

Each time we thought we had something that explained the problem, the apparent lifeline turned into clutching at straws for dear life. A walk out in the cold did not progress matters. I have now shared the conundrum with a wider technical group, and they are probably just scratching their heads without offering the succour of knowing our pain.

The Metrics Game

It is in the midst of this that the management team expects us to close incidents to fulfil a numbers metric, without any notion of the background effort that goes into issues we simply cannot resolve promptly, conclusively, and confidently. Tomorrow is another day.

A Lighter Note

Meanwhile, I have been thinking along with Brian about suitable collective nouns that anyone can remember and make good sense of. We started with a Bambi of deer and quite likely a Nemo of clownfish. I also fancy a Shaun of sheep.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Understanding the power of communication matters

It is Babel out there

It would usually happen, technologies that overlap, strong expertise in the separate technologies that seep into egotistical posturing, then exacerbated by a very political setting that engenders silos of indifference whilst all working for the same organisation.

What you get is a tinderbox of conflict and reverberation played out in emails with escalating intransigence as more and more people who already have enough trouble to deal with are drawn into it with the hope that one would prevail and other is vanquished.

Yet, I do not indulge in these power plays and that is what it sometimes demonstrates to gain any particular benefit than to see that what in my reasonable professional opinion gets done. This is where communication, clarity, persuasion, courtesy, and evidence matter. I will not propose without the supporting documentation and references to buttress the point.

The compelling urge to respond

Then, I rely on the reasonableness of my argument to eventually persuade those who can engage to facilitate the necessary. After a number of exchanges, a response came back that left me quite exasperated. Having conceded that the viewpoint was acceptable the rest bordered on infantile invective.

I could have immediately replied, but I could see no further need to conduct that conversation, I left it to my managers to take to the next level and that is what I asked them to do. Generally, I am no fan of needless meetings that yield no progress. I would rather just give my managers the information they need to thrash out the essential compromises and we can get on with what we need to do.

Just let it work

As the email cooled off for a few days and over the weekend, I had begun to craft an adequate response in my head that I began to write on Tuesday, I was not convinced of the need to send it, so, it lay in my Drafts folder.

A meeting scheduled for yesterday was postponed to today and it was my intention to maintain silence until when prompted. I could not have anticipated the developments when concessions were fully made with even more support than we anticipated. All this arrived at on the review of their systems and realising that our request was as reasonable as it could ever be.

At their behest we now have ample opportunity that probably would never have been possible without instigation, that first went completely contrary and sour to cooperation and acquiescence. That’s why I do what I do, I am a geek of sorts but it takes a different kind of political communication strategy to get radical change to a point where it gets the full support of competing interests and eventual implementation.

Coexisting with generational shifts by adaptation

Inspired from Facebook

On the usual scans of my Facebook timeline, I came across a post by a good friend of mine about the issue of developing emotional attachments between generations. Much of what he had to say I could very well agree with, but I also had an additional viewpoint which I have extracted from my comment into this blog. [Facebook]

I started with this, “Much as I can agree with you, this part I have thought about for a long time.”

Time and environment

I needed to address this particular statement, “You young people need to be kinder to your parents. They are the products of their time and environment.”

It is a good getaway clause, but in my 50s I have learnt I can't use generational exculpation to excuse myself from the responsibilities of emotional engagement with relations across the full spectrum of existence.

I have my generation and the times in which I grew up along with the environments that have helped cultivate my outlook and worldview, yet, I have to coexist with those before me; from when I was a child had parents, grandparents and a great-grandmother along with extended family and other relations,  and those after me; two generations now, of nieces and nephews and their children, along with the extended family that has grown out of the relationships they have cultivated, not only to be relevant but to also have a sense of belonging.

Generational shifts we belong in

My parents have by fate or fortune had to deal with issues they would never have countenanced in their core generation, from the 1960s into the 1980s, but have had to find accommodations for in the three growing generations after them, of children, of grandchildren and possibly great-grandchildren. My father was 80 on Saturday.

We have had our differences, we still do, but slowly he began to recognise that he can't always have his way as the opinions of his middle-aged children begin to dominate and determine the direction of issues. It was hard-won, but education on all sides. I have to learn that difference does not have to exacerbate conflict. Where I am infuriated, I need to find the necessary communication of persuasion, amelioration and compromise, to an extent.

Have a voice that can be heard

Yes, we probably should do more to engender better communion with our parents who are still with us, but if we fail to use our voices at the critical and crucial times, where there are many occasions for it, we would never have a say when it really matters, or when we do, they would be too deaf to hear or heed. Then, it becomes impossible and differences would become irreconcilable. Sadly, the end of this is regret for could have, should have or would have been done give a new opportunity.

We all must coexist with generations, we met here and those we would eventually leave behind, that is the process of our growth it was the process of growth from time immemorial, no one gets excuses to be an island of immunity and impunity, parent, child or grandchild alike. That we must seize the moments and find ways to cherish them would matter for a lifetime.

Make love, not war

My friend ends with this useful, thoughtful and necessary advice, “Your parents wanting an emotional connection may be coming late, but it is what you always wanted, so embrace it now. Seize the moment. Make new memories. Make love, not war. And do not forget to take lots of selfies. Sooner or later, they will be gone.”

I guess we need to decide on what memories we want to have of our parents when there is a reckoning of the lives we have shared.