The Best Way

The best way to do something is honestly the way that makes you the laziest.

Think about a tweak you have to do to a server, or something that is a registry key entry. Why do it on each server? You'll have to ensure that every time a new server is deployed, or if something happens to that server, that that configuration is present on everything from that point forward.

Good documentation can take the place of that - but come on, we're all in IT. Who actually reads documentation?

The best way to get something out there is to do it once and just forget about it. Write a custom group policy that applies the setting to a bunch of servers in a specific OU. Add something to the logon script. Become a scion of laziness, and you will succeed in ultimate efficiency. As ironic as it is, it's the best way to go.

This applies to making images, too. Don't put things on images that can be done with policy. Honestly, the only thing you should ever have installed on an image is security updates. Keep the rest as a deployment package template on a per-group or per-department basis. You don't have to have SMS to do it - batch files are still good. VBScripts are even better.

Some people argue that when you do these kinds of things you threaten your own job. I tell you, negative nancys - if you can never be replaced, how will you ever move up?

Losing your Humanity

Fear is one of those things that cripples people from being effective. Fear of losing a job, of being wrong, and even of going out on a limb and taking a risk. Fear sickens me because it drives people to be less than human - to be sheep, to be ant drones that only exist to serve the whims of the queen.

Risk, as Sir Anthony Hopkins said in the film masterpiece "The World's Fastest Indian," is the spice of life.

I've seen fear cripple people into making horrible decisions that do nothing but promulgate stagnation. I've seen people in authority breed a culture of fear which actually causes the effectiveness of their subordinates to enter into negative territory. Yes, actually making people devolve into something stupid. Devolve into "resources" without independent thought. Sickening. A human is not a resource. A human is a human.

Fear is the literal Flowers for Algernon. It makes you stupid. And, it makes everyone around you stupid.

If you never admit that you are at fault or at wrong, you are not human. The only way you can never be wrong is if you are a tool - an insignificant unimportant piece of a machine. A gear, designed only for one purpose - to turn, and to turn only when the gears around it turn. You serve only one purpose - the whims of your watchmaker.

And all the watchmaker cares about is what time it is.

The Aversion to Risk

Risk is one of those weird things that people tend to isolate on one end of the benefit/detriment scale. In my opinion, it's kind of like a lot of people's understanding of 21 CFR Part 11 and SOX requirements - unclear, paranoid-driven, and overzealous to provide complicated processes due to a fundamental lack of understanding.

Risk is defined as "uncertainty" in whatever you're looking at - projects, process, etc. But it's the uncertainty of something that could cause harm (via cost overrun, schedule delay, etc.) as well as the uncertainty that it could cause extreme benefit (cost savings, ahead-of-time implementation, etc.)

What if you could cheat with risk? What if you knew the worst possible outcome and mitigation possibilities of each decision, and as such, every risk was just suddenly a scale on the amount of positive it brought? It's true that - yeah - it's kind of like betting black when you see 5 red rolls on a roulette table in a row, but wouldn't that make life a lot easier?

The whole PMBOK project management philosophy is providing tools for planning, as opposed to reaction. The more you plan for risk - the more you embrace it, and the more you see that all plans are malleable and are subject to alteration, meaning that in the end, it's all about the positive.

Shining lights in dark places is scary, but it's a lot better than getting your head bitten off when you don't turn on the flashlight by something that was afraid of light to begin with.

Standardization

Chaos breeds growth, resistance, and advancement. Always improving and always being able to destroy that which you have built can be an extremely nourishing environment.

But, chaos can not exist without order - especially in the IT industry. Standardization is good, stability is even better - but only if it allows for chaos. A stable hardware platform with a stable operating system environment is one of the most coveted things any company can achieve. It's like one of those "congratulations on passing the white belt course in karate" gold trophies made out of fake plastic.

But, what's even better, is having such a robust imaging and deployment system in place that your users can do whatever the hell they want and understand that going back to the corporate standard is an incredibly easy and pain free process.

If you could jump out of a plane all day every day and never worry about hitting the ground, wouldn't you try to fly at least once?

Floating to the Top

It's interesting to think about what you say when you meet up with relatives, or you are trying to make a first impression on someone at work. There's always the inevitable "What have you been up to?" or "Tell me about yourself" kind of deal.

More often than not I tend to blurt out something that is somewhat of a new development in my life, or is something that I think is very important to me - even if I haven't necessarily put enough mental capital into it to actually rank it as a priority. Those little side-projects that you're completely psyched about, or even something you read that very same day that got you excited.

Why do these things tend to float to the top? Well, I think it's because they stimulate your natural motivation. They are things that you, at your core, find completely interesting and are willing to spend time on with the sole reward of satisfying your own curiosity. It's these kinds of things that drive people to excel and venture to places thought impossible.

Good managers pick up on things that motivate their employees and do everything in the world to cater to that. Even if it doesn't fit their immediate agenda.