I got an email today from a company that sells bags (slings, satchels, backpacks, and the like) and the title in the email was “Going Small”. The focus of this particular marketing campaign was on the smaller bags in their collection, but it brought mobilism to mind. Many things bring mobilism to my mind these days.

As someone who identifies as a mobilist, I think the term can be applied more broadly than it is when you first think of it. Initially it conjures images of people on the go, commuters on trains, writers in coffee shops. And those people certainly are mobilists, but I think about it a little more broadly.

Someone who doesn’t have an office I think of as a mobilist. Someone who works in a lot of different places can be thought of as a mobilist. And that makes me think of people like college professors who go from classroom to classroom and have to connect to all kinds of equipment and be prepared for all sorts of contingencies from projectors that don’t work to laptops that won’t connect to Wi-Fi networks.

Mobilists have to be prepared for all sorts of things, but so do the people who support them! They need all the appropriate adapters, power supplies, and laser pointers, they need fresh batteries, and mostly, they need to be prepared for when those adapters fail, the batteries die, and the connections aren’t there.

As their support professional, I need to be prepared for all of those contingencies as well, and I need to be prepared for when my customers are not. That means having a “go bag”, sling, satchel, backpack, or the like ready with all the things that I might need when I get called into action.

I’ll have more to say about that in later posts, but I wanted to bring preparedness to mind, for when the rubber meets the road.

There’s a lot going on in our world today and a lot of it is pretty messed up. There are also a lot of opinions about what to do about what’s going on in our world today. Depending on the issue and depending on who you’re listening to, it can be pretty confusing.

And while I’ve got my thoughts and opinions, those aren’t really important to anyone but me. I’m an IT guy, not a politician. I can’t do anything about anything! What I can do, and my encouragement to each of you is to vote. Do your homework on the issues that are important to you, figure out who speaks most reasonably to you on your particular issues, then get out and vote.

It’s important. Really.

There is a lot of discussion today about returning to work and not being able to work from home anymore. In a lot of those cases I feel like Management is not trusting people who work from home to do the right thing or worries that they don’t have the right equipment so they won’t be as efficient or effective as they once were or could be.

To be honest, that’s a fair concern. There’s a lot of people who don’t work with the diligence that they do in the office, and I think that’s a shame, and I also think it’s like one rotten apple spoiling the whole barrel. I think there are many more workers who work perhaps more diligently when they’re at home than they do in the office. I’ve heard of people working two and three full time jobs because they can roll out of bed and sit down at the computer in bathrobes and bunny slippers, and they’ll sit there till 10:00 at night. I’m not sure that’s quite the right balance either but you hear the stories.

For me personally, I’m not an advocate for working remotely in my current role. I have had roles where I’ve worked remotely, my current role just isn’t one of them, but I’m getting away from what I wanted to share in this post.

It is vitally important when you’re working remotely to have a setup that’s going to motivate you and keep you engaged. A place that’s going to work for you ergonomically and functionally and every other way.

I believe the setup that many users try to use when they’re working from home is to their detriment and what makes them unproductive. I saw a social media post from one person who had and old monitor that they had laying around sitting on top of a stack of books that was on a TV tray and they were sitting in a folding metal chair. You don’t have to guess how that worked out.

The photo that leads this blog post is my WFH setup and also where I play, study when I’m taking classes and do work for others if I’m building a website. It’s actually more comfortable than my office at work, and I’m more productive when I work here, but the nature of the work I do from 9:00 to 5:00 doesn’t lend itself especially well to that.

I should preface by saying that I’m not really a sports guy, but I think if you’ll read to the end you’ll get what I’m saying and you’ll find out you don’t necessarily have to be a sports fan to get where I’m going.

A number of years ago I was having a conversation with a boss of mine who was wondering what it would take to come up with a Super Bowl winning support team.

In a very broad sense, when you speak of a Super Bowl winning team, it’s worth considering that within a football team, there are other “little teams”, like defense, offense, and special teams.  Following this analogy, consider tier 1 the defense.  They’re the ones who meet the end users when they (the users) are on offense, calling, and demanding.

Having a great defensive line that can effectively deal with what’s being thrown at it is essential.  They allow the other teams to do what they need to do with considerably more precision.  If the defense isn’t doing it’s job, pressure is put on the offense to step up and get more aggressive and do more to win instead of being able to carry out their game as planned.  They get forced into a reactive mode, having to make sure they score because the defense isn’t preventing the opponent from scoring.

An effective defense, or a good tier 1 team is the communication pipeline between IT and the organization. Whether systems are being upgraded, or there are unplanned outages, to have a Super Bowl winning team it’s essential to have a world class tier 1 team that can shield the rest of the IT team from the end users, and allow them to do their jobs.  When customers are being communicated with, and expectations are being set, that relationship is much easier to manage.

The tier 2 team would be like the offense.  They’re the ones who go out to where the users are, away from the IT caves and the server rooms and score the points by solving problems.  Whether it’s a new installation or something that’s broken and needs fixed, this is the “face” of the support team.  If tier 1 is the communications conduit, tier 2 is what the users see of the support  organization.

Tiers 3 and 4 would be like special teams, doing the punts, and kick off returns that aren’t necessarily part of the everyday routine.  They’re solving problems that are out of the ordinary scope, and planning for things that need special execution.

With that as background…

Each of these little teams is critical to the function of the team as a whole.  You can have the best defense in the NFL but by itself, that won’t make you a Super Bowl winning team.  Similarly, the function of the individuals who make up the smaller units is equally important.

As the smaller teams have different roles within the larger framework of the team, so the individuals have different roles within their little teams. 

Not every offensive player is well suited to be a quarterback, but the quarterback can’t do well if he doesn’t have good receivers and guys that block him from the opposing team’s blitz.  There are tasks that are specialized, and some people are better suited then others for a given task.  Sometimes that’s a natural fit, and sometimes it’s because of training that they’ve experienced over the years, by the time a team gets to play in the Super Bowl, there’s been considerable professional development, and people are sure of their role, and know it backwards and forwards.  They’ve trained for it and received special instruction.  They also know what to expect from their team mates, and how they’re going to react.  This intimate knowledge of the other members of the team is because they’ve worked together, and know each other, and know what to expect from one another.  

If each of the players was to try to get equal time in every role, professional development suffers.  The quarterback for example, only gets to spend a small portion of time working on passing.  During the time he’s learning other roles, he’s blocking, tackling, kicking, running, and doing other things besides passing, but not developing his primary role so he can continue to improve on throwing.  Beyond that however, people aren’t just picking jobs and doing them, they’re doing things that interest them, that they have a passion about, and that they’ve trained for.  Probably when a ball player was in high school or college, he had the opportunity to try different positions and do different things, but he had an aptitude or a passion for doing one thing or the other and so that skill developed.

These individuals aren’t the only ones on the team who can do their jobs, there is always a backup quarterback for example who is learning and growing into the role, being mentored by the lead quarterback and so forth.  So when that lead player can’t fulfill his task, there is someone there who can.  It would be silly of a team to go into the Super Bowl with only one quarterback, regardless of how good he is.  So there needs to be some sort of cross training or a backup plan.

There is a certain amount of pride in accomplishment when someone specializes in their role that they may miss out on if they generalize and spread themselves to thin.  When people specialize in a role there greater responsibility.  If there were a different quarterback in every time the team had the ball, it would be easy for one of them to not feel as committed, and let the others pick up the slack when it’s their turn.

So there isn’t a secret sauce or a magic bullet to having a Super Bowl winning team. It’s about practice, dedication to the team, devotion to your role, trust in your teammates and faith in your management. If you’re on offense, you don’t need to worry about how the defense is doing what they’re doing. You just need to know how to score points and let the other people do their job.

In my experience things seem to work when there’s a degree of specialization and everyone knows their role and does their job and let’s everyone else do the same!!

I am a support professional. I have been for most of my 30+ years working in IT. My job is to enable my customers to do their jobs, not tell them how to work or what they need to do their jobs. Don’t get me wrong, I certainly can function as a solutions provider, and I have, but when I hire a contractor to do some work in my home, I trust he has the skills and the knowledge to know what tools he wants to use to get his job done. It isn’t my place to tell him that he should use this tool or that for accomplishing the task at hand.

But supporting customers is at the heart of me. It’s what I enjoy and what I do well. I know my customers. I understand generally what they do and have a good idea of their work styles, so when they need something I can get them what they need because I’ve anticipated their need.

If I worked in hospitality, would be a concierge. A good concierge can have an incredible impact on the people they serve and I can too.

I know a lot of people who think of support roles like mine as entry level or who think I lack ambition because I’ve not gotten into networking or system administration which are often seen as the natural progression from support roles. I make a significant impact on my customers every day, and would miss them if I were not customer facing. And here’s the thing, I’ve been in those other roles. I’ve built servers and authored white papers for IBM, I’ve architected solutions when none existed, I’ve been that engineer on call at 2:00 AM when the mission critical piece of equipment fails, and in none of that do I find the satisfaction of being able to help someone complete a task that they need to complete.

So, if I’m entry level, or if I lack ambition let it be my customers who benefit from that. I’m right where I like to be.