Just let them do their job

I came in this morning to discover our core switch was down, perhaps related to the air conditioning failing in our server room.  The room was quite hot (over 80 degrees). 

In every other role I’ve had, I’ve been the “go-to” guy. No matter what the problem was, no mater where on the osi chain, I knew enough to isolate the problem and find a solution.  As a director of technology, I have a team of incredibly competent technicians and network guys.

I’m finding it difficult to just stay out of their way. They know this network better than I (I’ve only been on the job for 24 days), they most likely have better skills than I do, and they are absolutely committed to our uptime.

I’ve several meetings today where I’ll be talking about how to better organize our data flow, how to better organize our services, and how to help our IT provide better services to our constituencies. I’m advocating for the needs of my department, and understanding the needs of other departments. I’m budgeting, clarifying, leading, managing, and evangelizing.

...but I’m not really fixing stuff anymore.

On 24 August 2010, Tom Hoffman inscribed the following thoughts about this post:

Do you report temperatures in Celsius or Fahrenheit now?