The Business Card that Changed Our World

Over a decade ago, my team changed our world - with a business card.

We migrated a locally run, non-standard, international I.T. organization into a regional support model, running on a globally standardized infrastructure.

And it all began with a meeting, a business card and a philosophy of team empowerment.

Fortunately for each of us (in about 8 different countries), shared similar pain. Our systems were difficult to support, we didn't have any support depth at any single site.

It was difficult to share processes or learning, since the sites were so different from each other. And the other thing we all had in common? - universal user dissatisfaction with the support we were providing (or not providing) to our end users.

And so, it was under these circumstances we began the journey.

It started with the understanding that WE were a big part of the problem.

Once our team met, and understood that we all faced common challenges. It was relatively easy to identify the pathway to better systems and improved support. We had to get to "common" and we had to "watch each other's back", by sharing stories, identifying and adopting our best internal processes, learning from our mistakes and by standardizing on technologies, so we could develop expertise across multiple sites to back each other up.

And so it was that the 5 Rules were born.

We didn't specify up front what had to be implemented, only that we do it together and not make our problems any worse by adding to our computing complexity. (To be honest, many of the team had a shared vision about which technologies we should leverage, we just had to agree on hardware and service products and vendors.) And we had to talk to each other like never before.

Our 5 Rules were:

1. Common and Fewer (initiatives, platforms, processes)

2. Global and cross divisional teams vs. local initiatives

3. Package vs. Custom (software)

4. Need vs. Want ("concrete business benefit" trumps "cool to have")

5. Communicate, communicate, communicate!

The idea of putting our 5 Rules on business cards came from one of my Directors (thanks Dave) and the idea was to spread the word throughout I.T. (and the rest of the company) via the 5 Rules cards.

We mandated that any technology being considered or deployed, had to fall within the 5 Rules.

Any proposed exceptions had to be brought to my attention.

In this way, our entire team was empowered to make it happen. We avoided the typical "have everything approved by Corporate" because our team clearly understood the rules. And the rules could fit on a business card.

It took us three years, but in the end, the team built one of the best and well run computing platforms I've ever come across. Global vendors were consolidated. Data communications were globally monitored. All networks were visible around the world. Standard computing images were developed. Common routers, switches and firewalls deployed, 5 data centers consolidated into one, a DR center built, all mid range computers managed by just a couple of people, common email, KM applications and universal Internet access to Corporate applications, anytime, anywhere.

It was quite an accomplishment. I couldn't be more proud of that team.

And it all started with a business card.