- Whether to mention a pregnancy in a job interview
- A possible meeting protocol
- What are an end-user's responsibilities?
- Another take on opening PCs, or not
- Getting some process going
- Selling a more open environment to management
- Running an effective meeting
- Licensing rules for virtual machines
- The ROI of metrics
- Legal challenges to virtual machines
November 02, 2006 | Comments: (0)
More about spare PCs
The question of keeping spare PCs on the shelf, which I mentioned in a recent post ("Budgeting when there aren't any budgets,") Advice Line 10/31/2006) seems to be more controversial than I'd expected. Especially, some readers expressed concern that they'd be chewed out by the CEO for having them.
This brings up the issue of persuasion - how do you present your decisions in ways most likely to get them accepted. There's no magic formula for this. There are some guidelines, though. Two are: (1) Always work within your audiences' experiential framework, not your own; and (2) explanations that are simple and direct work better than those that are complex and subtle.
Here, these guidelines lead to a simple solution: Include the spares in your business continuity plan. Business continuity plans aren't always about losing an entire building and the surrounding city block. They're also about how to handle an unexpected snowstorm.
And the loss of a single PC or server.
If you include your spares in your business continuity plan you'll find they turn into a rounding error that's of no interest at all to your CEO, except to the extent that they identify you as a pragmatist who knows how to deal with real-world situations in a practical way.
- Bob
Posted by Bob Lewis on November 2, 2006 04:22 AM
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Keeping spare PCs on the shelf is as necessary as it is unacceptable by some. You are right Bob; it is a matter of how you present your ideas to your superiors. Fortunately, when I included the scenario of loosing a server into our business continuity plan a few months ago and my superiors saw the consequences of such loss, they changed their common mind. So sometimes it only takes a good look into future with worst scenarios possible.
Roman
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Three books. Three ways to change the world, your life, or at least Bob Lewis' bank account. Leading IT: The Toughest Job in the World distills the world of IT leadership into eight learnable skills and gives you concrete, practical techniques for each one of them. Bare Bones Project Management: What you can't not do makes project management manageable, even for first-time project managers with no formal training in the discipline. ManagementSpeak: What managers say/What they mean … well, it won't help your career, and won't make you a better manager. Mostly, it will make you chuckle, guffaw, and maybe even chortle. Make friends - it's the perfect gift for anyone who has ever suffered through one of those meetings. Order your copies today! |
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