One of the things I love most about working in IT is that there is always something else to learn. The pace of innovation is so fast and the breadth of the field is so wide that no one can possibly wrap their arms around the whole thing. There isn’t a week that goes by that I don’t learn something about my own environment that I’ve been working with for twenty years!
Pictured: a stunningly simple environment that anyone can know everything about and manage all by themselves!
From my perspective this makes IT a fun and exciting career. However, this vast body of knowledge presents two distinct challenges that we as IT professionals need to solve. The good news is that I believe there is one tool that solves them both at the same time. First, let’s detail the two challenges.
The first challenge I see is one I’ll call the “specialist problem.” often is that in most environments, you end up with lots of individuals that specialize in small sections or segments of the environment. Because there’s so much to know and act on, you rapidly end up having people on a team who are the “go-to” person for specific tasks, technologies, or processes. These people develop deep expertise in a specific – and often essential – function. This usually starts as an informal specialty, then becomes a defined addition to their regular duties, and sometimes ends up as their primary responsibility.
The challenge in this situation is two-sided. First, for the individual it can leave them pigeon-holed as the person who does “that thing.” I’ve been around IT long enough to know that “that thing” always ends up being discontinued at some point. The software is upgraded, or the process is deprecated, or the business decides they want something else done. No matter how you slice it, “that thing” ends up being “that thing we used to do.” If you are the person who did “that thing” and you got rusty in core skills, you can end up being “that person who used to work here.” You don’t want to be the person who can only do the one thing that isn’t needed anymore.
The other side of the coin is for the company or management. The person doing “that thing” can leave the company and then you don’t have anyone who can do “that thing” anymore. We’ve all been in a company where a key role player has left. Most of us have been in the subsequent meeting where everyone looks around and the only real question is “what now?” These changes can be disruptive to a team and sometimes to an organization. No one wants to be the person that gets assigned to figure out “that thing” when someone leaves – especially if it’s unexpectedly or without any transition. I’ve been in that position before, and it’s not one where you feel like you have a strong chance of success.
The second distinct challenge is one I’ll call the “focus problem.” With IT being such a broad and deep field, you end up with the majority of the team – if not the entire team – focused on their areas and becoming myopic in that they only see and think about their own area of expertise or responsibility. The problem with this – if it even needs being said – is that no organization runs on any one product, solution, or piece of infrastructure. So you end up with a cultural problem where every workgroup is focused on their own slice of the infrastructure or code instead of thinking about how each group’s work is interrelated and stitches together to make the company more successful. In effect, you end up with an IT organization that can’t meet the needs of the business because they’re too focused on the network, storage, apps, compute, etc. as discrete things instead of a larger fabric to enable innovation and efficiency in the company that has purchased all of those things to achieve a unified goal.
Generally, I prefer to learn more informally in someone’s cube, but if they’re willing to break out the markers and whiteboard, I’m game for that.
The good news is that both the specialist and focus problems can be solved by a very simple action if you do it intentionally. You can prevent either of these situations from being problematic by having a defined cross-training initiative. The simple act of making sure that you are constantly staying apprised of – and learning the details of – what your colleages are doing will ensure that you can not just help if someone departs - but also that if you are the person who does “the thing” that you will be able to slide into something different right away should “the thing” no longer be needed. So, at worst you end up being a valuable member of the team that can perform several roles, and at best you get to be the hero who can ensure continuity if someone else who does their thing leaves the company. I see it as win-win. From the employer side, ensuring that your teams are cross-training each other means that you never have to worry about what happens if someone leaves your company aside from needing to find a way to hold the overall load until you can get a backfill. But you won’t have to scramble to make sure that you aren’t losing essential or irreplaceable institutional knowledge. No one wants to be in the position of needing to pay a former employee to “consult” after they leave.
I know that cross-training isn’t the trendiest buzzword sweeping across Silicon Valley, but not everything can be solved by Kubernetes. Sometimes, it’s the basics of running an IT shop that get forgotten as we run down the path of making sure we can support the latest and greatest technology, or stretch to make sure we hit the goals of the newest (or most urgent) project that IT is focused on delivering. I think that’s how a lot of IT teams end up in hot water – they forget to make sure the very basics of technology management are covered and focus their time on the (admittedly more fun) high-flying complex new technologies. However, I’ve found that the most successful IT groups remember that the ultimate goal is to make the organization they serve more competitive or effective. Cross-training is an easy way to ensure continuity.
One of the things I struggled with early on was getting the opportunities to get some informal on-the-job training from a colleague. I was worried that they would think I was trying to check their work for errors or wanted to try to steal their job. So, if you find yourself in a situation where you are struggling to cross-train, I want you to try something very simple that I have found will usually work. Find someone who does a process that you don’t know how to do, and then tell them that you know they perform that function, you’re interested in how it works, and then ask them if you can just watch them do it a few times. Like I said, I’ve personally done this - and I’ve seen people do it - and it usually works. In fact, just to improve my odds somewhat, I will virtually guarantee it will be successful if you try it out on three different people. At least one of them will say yes - and likely all three will.
My only suggestion if you are the one looking to learn is that you should try your best to think through who you want to ask. If you are the person who does “the thing” then ask people who you think do something different that is complimentary to what you know so you can build on it. If on the other hand, you want to make sure that you can also do “the thing” if someone moves on – you have a very easy choice about who to ask. As a pro-tip, make sure you’re telling your boss that you’re picking up some skills in a different discipline. They will almost certainly appreciate it, and having a boss who appreciates your initiative is generally a pretty good thing.
If you find yourself leading a team that you think would benefit from some cross-training, you can implement a very simple program by just being intentional that you want people to share knowledge and not hoard it. You can do this by either creating simple incentives for people who hold informal trainings, or by just making it an agenda item on team meetings – leave some time at the beginning of a group meeting for people to talk about what they have learned from or shared with another colleague. Now here’s the hard part – don’t breeze over it if no one talks. You can just sit in awkward silence for 5 minutes if no one has anything to share. Do that two or three times, and pretty much everyone will be getting to be cross-trained to avoid the awkwardness of 5 silent meeting minutes. The important point is to be intentional about it. Talk about how it’s important and role model it; if you are the systems admin team lead, then make time to learn about the WiFi infrastructure or how the ITSM workflows are coded. If your team sees you doing it, then they’re more likely to follow suit.
At the end of the day, the most important thing that we can provide our companies as IT professionals is our knowledge. It’s ultimately your job (with management’s help, hopefully) to ensure that your knowledge (or that of your team if you are a manager) is something that the company will value. An easy way to do that – even without any budget for training at all – is to try to learn from your peers who are already doing something that the organization values. The more of those things you have in your head, the more valuable you will be.
I’ll end with an admittedly extreme example of how powerful cross-training can be. Years ago, I used to work for a manufacturing company that made several different types of widgets – primarily out of copper. For the most part, each widget was made by a team of about 5-10 people, depending on the complexity of the widget. The company was obsessed with making sure that everyone on the group was trained for each role so that if someone was sick they could continue to produce the part. Additionally, entire teams were cross-trained, both as a way to overcome turnover, demand fluctuations, or absences, but also for career advancement – some teams had a more demanding or technical manufacturing process and so were viewed as more senior roles.
This is actually not a bad representation of our old manufacturing floor.
One employee had been on the manufacturing floor for some time and eventually applied to the customer service and order entry team and was accepted into the role. She did great there, and her knowledge of the product was really valuable to the customers she supported. That’s a great example of cross-training working in the customers’ best interest – but that’s not where this story ends. One day, a customer called with an order that was incredibly important to them; they were going to be able to make a huge sale if they had the right parts but they needed a few of our widgets to make those parts in time – and they were out of widgets. Our superstar customer service rep was happy to sell them some – but we were out, too. It turns out that because she had been trained on the floor to make these parts, she felt like she could do something to really make the customer’s day - so she waited until the day was over and the floor was empty and then went out and actually made the parts herself. She went through and did every single step, including boxing them up and getting them ready to ship in the morning.
The company earned a new customer who added a pretty nice amount to the annual revenue, she cemented herself as an incredibly valuable asset to the company (I think she ended up managing the department, if I remember correctly), and the customer got to make a huge sale. Everybody wins in this story, and it was all possible because of that company’s intentional act of cross-training. Your company is no different than my old manufacturing firm, and IT isn’t different in this respect than the order entry team – if you want to get known for making your customers happy and having or being a part of a really strong and resilient team, then cross-training needs to be a core value.
Some questions for you:
Are you someone who can or does do “that thing” for your company? Does anyone else know how to do it?
Does your company have a formal cross-training plan? If not, do you think they should?
Can you think of something that someone else knows that would be useful for your career? How can you ask them to help train you on that task or process?