Welcome to Dave Rice's Live Space

At some point in my life, I would like to write a book about my 'reverse fast lane theory'.  For example, why when traffic is not too bad, the fastest lane is usually the slow lane? 

Every person thinks they are right and that everyone else is wrong.  They think that they should be able to do whatever they want... it is a free country.  Therefore, if there is a way to show their authority in the world without violating the law or being overtly mean, they will.  Therefore if the fast lane is open, people choose to drive into it even if they do not have plans to drive faster.  Because they can.

This weekend I was thinking about a different application of this theory.  The IT Administrator vs. the User.  Who is more important?

Lets discuss a fictitious company which has 100 users supported by one full time administrator to make the number easy.  For every IT activity which takes each user a minute, that costs the company 100 minutes.  Assuming that the average user cost may be a little less than the average IT administrator cost, 1 minute of a user time may not equal one minute of an administrator.  But, does 100 combined minutes exceed one hour of an IT Administrator?

For example, the IT administrator wants to have security on the network and systems.  Therefore, user names and passwords are asked for individually at each system.  The IT Administrator does not have time to create a single login for each of the systems since they were created at different times and are not integrated.  Therefore each user has to spend a minute (or more) to sign into each system every day.  If there are an average of three systems logged into by each user each day... that is 300 minutes a day or 75,000 minutes per year.

Assuming an average employee cost with benefits of 75K or 63 cents per minute... $47,250 is spent annually so people can log into systems.  If there was just one log-in vs. 3, the cost would be reduced to $15,750 saving $31,500 per year.

Don't have time or the resources to make it easier for the users?  Then you are wasting money every day.

Please ask the IT Administrator to pull out of the fast lane, they may be holding up traffic (business). 

This is the third time typing this into windows live...  If it had not crashed twice, it would be longer... ugh.

In 1994 when I graduated from college (www.snc.edu) I had no idea what I wanted to do.  I ended up taking a 100% commission recruiting job and started reading through paper files and calling people.  When I asked about what people were doing and what they wanted to do, I identified one piece of the puzzle.  When I called on companies (usually HR) and asked what were the specific needs and wants (sometimes with some variance), I envisioned another puzzle piece.  I was more motivated by putting together the puzzle pieces and solving the puzzle than money which helped me be very successful.

Many people see the puzzle pieces differently than I do.  HR typically views people as a simple puzzle piece of skills, salary expectations and # of years of experience.  Though these are important, they do not exclusively define whether a person will be successful at a given company or role.  This is a major problem.  HR is usually in charge of providing the supply of brainpower for a company.  Is there no more important future asset?

I see both the applicant and the company as much more complex puzzles.

People
Every person is unique.  Event identical twins will perform differently given different tasks, cultures and stress levels.  If this was not the case, then why even talk to people?  With applicant tracking systems, skills, experience and buzzwords are the screening criteria, not personality, perspective and collaboration skills.  This is a sign of how disconnected from reality HR (and recruiting) can be.  This is a major issue and the companies who care about the uniqueness of people will do better than companies looking at hiring as a task.

Company
Anyone who has tried to deliver a fixed bid project to a company will also understand that the puzzle piece on the company side is also complex.  What are the requirements?  Simple... here are 10 bullet points.  Now deliver.  Oh, wait, that was not what I wanted... etc.  Many times the person actually making the decision and will have to manage the person only has 15 minutes to get to know them.  With salaries and benefits today combined with a typical employment period of 2-3 years, the manager is making a $250,000+ decision in a few minutes.  If more people would look at it this way, maybe things would be different.

When the unique puzzle pieces are matched together, it is a beautiful thing combining mutual happiness, work performance and innovation.  If you have ever been on a team where everything clicked, a ball was never dropped due to a support structure and information and decisions were collaborative, you have seen the puzzle put together properly.  Policy can't force a puzzle to fit together, it needs the right pieces in the right places.