At 09:55 AM 30/07/02 +1000, Ann Moffatt wrote: >of course you are right jan but in my experience most of the techo men are >out to impress rather than making the effort to find out what is really >needed in an explanation. i've often been criticized-once by my boss-for >demystifying the ict process for business people. the comment made then was >"if you make it sound that simple they'll think they can do it themselves >and we'll be out of a job!!".
had to laugh at this one. we were discussing over the weekend clients who think that after you have set something up for them that they can go take a course, say Access, and then 'maintain' it all themselves. It's usually a disaster, but the consultant that was telling me this pointed out that it just made them into a cash cow for him to come back and fix up their messes. not an excuse for technobabble, though, and the smoke and mirrors and marketing bluff that generally is presented to the suits. Your point below supports that. >jan said > >"Proposals for low cost pilot projects are good. Getting to know who the >early adopters are in a school or department helps, and then getting them >on side." > >i think, to gain cred with non techo, execs, its equally important to show >some 'failures' and what has been learned from those failures. techos often >only 'push' success stories & that often leads non believers to suspect they >are not being told the whole truth. execs know from experience that there >are usually 'failures' with all new things, its part of the learning >experience. Excellent point, Ann. The reality of most situations is that failure is seldom discussed. Things can go wrong. It's difficult to think about failures when you're trying to get something to happen that may be foreign to the person in the first place, and therefore scary. I guess it's judging the person's tolerance levels for fuzziness and risk and being as honest as is required to be realistic and not frighten them into inaction. Jan JLWhitaker Associates Melbourne, Victoria, Australia [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- http://www.primenet.com/~jwhit/whitentr.htm -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
