You: Roundtable

Stress

Network World, 7/26/99

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The participants:
Russ Davis
Ass't. director, network services, Ernst & Young in New York

Mike Hinkle-Morrison
Former CIO at Pier One Imports and CTO at TGI Friday's restaurant chain

Gene Rindels
CIO of Respironics, Inc., Pittsburgh

Brook Smith
Mgr., network engineering, Forum Financial Group, Portland, Maine

George Sullivan
Sr. network architect,Northrup Grumman, Bethpage, NY

George Yeager
Mgr., architecture and design, Columbia Energy Group Service, Columbus, Ohio
This is more of a personal question regarding stress. I think anyone would agree that your jobs are fairly stressful. What would you say are the keys to handling that stress, and keeping your head?

Davis: Problems cause stress. And problems surface many times because of poor planning. And over here at E&Y, we generally plan, we plan, we plan, and then we execute one single time. And, overall, that seems to help.

Yeager: I agree. What I've done is just try to make sure I'm not the person who is always in the position of being the tactical expert. I try to rely on the staff as much as I can to configure and test, and keep my head out of the dust cloud so I can see where we're going. We try to make sure that we don't just have one resource to manage critical enterprise systems and we try to manage vendors rather than technology wherever we can. And from an architectural perspective, we try to keep things simple, modular, and standards-based, even at some increased cost.

Rindels: Did I mention Key Largo?

I agree with Russ. Basically, we try to keep our people in a planning mode, communicating effectively with the executive sponsorship of the initiative they're on, and allow them to be prepared for what lies ahead, keep them informed as much as possible what the business strategy is and what our strategy in support of that larger focus would be so that they stay informed and are prepared for the challenges that face them day in and day out.

Hinkle-Morrison: As a result of Y2K, we've simplified, so there's less stress. And, in some cases, we've outsourced many major components of the network. So that stress has now been put on someone else. And talking with some peers that I work with, many of us have outsourced major components of our network to companies that, during the feast times and the famine times, will have the staff needed to support the network.

Don't you still have to worry about the outsourcers doing a good job?
Hinkle-Morrison: Yes, you do. You make sure you have some good metrics in place and watch after them. But there's some good people out there. At least I've had good success.

Are there any things that you folks do to keep the stress level down among your staff - have parties, go on outings, anything like that?
Rindels: Certainly. We take the approach that there's no one-size-fits-all. We've got a very diverse group. We do try to do team building activities as a good stress release, such as a softball game or volleyball game, or something like that. Or just a chance to sit down and relax in an informal dining setting where we can share some of our experiences and stories from the road about the things that have been accomplished. I think it helps considerably.

Hinkle-Morrison: When I was at Friday's, we actually had beer machines in the break room. So that usually worked after 5:00.

What work-related issue worries you the most?
Davis: I would just say the vast amount of technical attention to detail that's required to keep large scale networks operating. You know, any single defect, either design, configuration, it's going to have a devastating impact on the network operation and translate directly back to the business.

Smith: I'd agree completely with that. The biggest issue I think we have at Forum is just dealing with the complexity that's there, even though our network isn't half as complex as some others. Knowing that there are single points of failure out there, and knowing that try as you might, you might not have identified them all. Those are the ones that keep me up at night wondering, 'OK, where is that beast that's out there looking for me?'

Hinkle-Morrison: The biggest work-related issue is just [dealing with] the amount of change and noise that's going on and making sure your strategy holds true and you don't take your eye off the ball. What you want to do is make sure you stay true to your direction, but make sure you take into account the right things as they evolve over time. Also, eliminate the noise out there. There's just so much information, it can overwhelm you if you take your eye off the ball.

Rindels: I think the classic used to be the alignment of the IT strategy with the business strategies. And although that's still critical, I think it's becoming more fundamental, and certainly not any less complex. I would place something I refer to as IT synchronization with business velocity at the top. Timing is everything. And this really refers to the well-timed execution of aligned business and network strategies. The evolution of technology is what makes this one of the more challenging attributes of the job.

Sullivan: I think I agree with that. One of the things that bothers me a lot is that the vendors, certainly the major ones, and the trade magazines, are probably overly optimistic in terms of how quickly these things can be rolled out.

Rindels: Absolutely.

Sullivan: Now, we've all been reading about voice over IP, as an example, for two years. And, yet, what I've heard is [companies are in] a similar position to our company, and we're piloting it. It's not ready for rollout yet. Going back two years ago, they were talking about voice over IP infrastructure by the year 2000, but it's just going to be beginning.

Rindalls: Our systems are becoming so complex today with the advances in technologies, it's somewhat analogous to the folks at NASA launching a space shuttle and people starting to act like that's a routine event when it's a phenomenal technology achievement. And whether we're implementing a vast, global ERP system or a commerce system, sometimes those achievements can be as significant as watching this little rocket go up off of Cape Canaveral. And sometimes it's starting to become an expected event. But it's not always that easy.

Hinkle-Morrison: Overall systems management is an issue, the fact that the black and white is now very gray between systems and network management, and how that overall [network and systems management] strategy should work in the future. If you look at how we're going to manage our systems in the future, it's not going to be network management. It will be at a systems level. And that's a big change that's going on in the organizations I'm dealing with.

Yeager: I agree. Often, there are fragmented processes in IT management. A lot of the processes and organizations are still based on legacy computing environments. In general, we're doing better in this area, but there's a lot of room for improvement.

Other sections of the roundtable:

Intro
Putting this discussion into context.

The press and e-commerce
What happens when non-technical execs read about the latest technology in the general media? And what impact has e-commerce had on your company in general and the network group in particular?

Convergence
If you could only focus on one network initiative for the next year, and Y2K is off the table, which one would it be?

A look ahead
What would you say are the most important steps you can take today to prepare your network for the years ahead?

Staffing and advice to vendors
What are your secrets for keeping and hiring the best people? If you could make the CEO of one vendor take your advice, which CEO would it be and what advice would you give?

The whole thing
The entire roundtable transcript.

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