Well-run IT is like music to my ears

When I’m not wearing my CTO hat, I spend a lot of time thinking about music — listening to it, playing it, and reading about it — which causes me to see IT operations in distinctly musical terms. Managing IT often seems like managing the affairs of a rock band, with its curious mix of creative talent, volatile personalities, and lots of gear. When a sysadmin brags about the blazing throughput of the Linux server he just built, it feels a little like listening to Spinal Tap guitarist Nigel Tufnel proudly describing his amp that “goes to 11.”

The most useful IT/music analogy I can make is a reference to an old truism about what makes good musicians great. Good musicians deliver inspired performances while hitting the right notes and keeping time, but truly great musicians know when not to play. In IT, applying this philosophy means knowing when to remove yourself from a process, step out of the spotlight, and let someone else take the lead.

This philosophy of musicianship as applied to IT emerged in a conversation I had recently with Jon Williams, CTO of Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions. Jon is in his seventh week at Kaplan after previously serving as CTO of Grey Healthcare Group.

Our conversation was inspired by an e-mail Jon sent me about the need for CTOs to think more about deciding when a project wasn’t worth doing. In that e-mail, Jon told me about a project that had frustrated him in his previous position, a system that he desperately wanted to change despite clear end-user resistance.

Jon wrote, “I never succeeded in changing it after three attempts, and guess what happened? The system was changed two months after I left. Basically, the business user, who had in the past disagreed with me about it, had no one to argue with after I left and became open to change. I guess that made me the bug?”

Like Jon, I’ve moved on to new opportunities many times only to see my successor implement solutions I was trying to achieve before I left. As Jon and I discussed our common experience, we came up with a not-so-serious axiom of IT management: Sometimes you have to leave to get things done.

But neither of us was satisfied with such a drastic approach. We moved on to a serious discussion of ways to institute change without leaving. It all gets back to the musician’s concept of knowing when not to play. If you’re running project meetings with end-users and nothing is happening, ask someone else to run the meeting. Sometimes making yourself the focal point is an inhibitor, and you need to remove yourself from actively running a project to get it done. It’s a subtle art, but realizing when your own presence is getting in the way of your vision can make the difference between getting things done on your watch and seeing your goals accomplished after you exit.

One final Nigel Tufnel moment serves as a parable for IT management. In one of This Is Spinal Tap’s funniest scenes, Nigel delivers an interminable guitar solo that silences the crowd. When he assumes the patented, heavy-metal-guitar-solo crouch — for the uninitiated, that means down on your knees, leaning farther back with each note — he leans so far that he is unable to right himself, becoming immobilized until the roadies come from the wings to remove him as if he were a stage prop. Nigel didn’t know when to stop playing; make sure you do.