I already had a job as a I.T. department manager but had been looking to move on, so when I saw the position open up, I decided to apply. I made it through to the interview round and it was clear from what was being talked about and the questions in the interview, that the management were not happy with the current department.
They didn’t explain exactly what the problems were but I got the impression that they were not happy with any of the three staff that I would be responsible for and just generally the way the department was performing. They wanted to get someone new in, clear house of the old staff and bring in a new team.
Understandable if they are not living up to expectations but I’m more of an ‘evaluate and then make changes’ kind of guy. I don’t like to jump in, make loads of changes and then find out that the issues that I was told about aren’t actually the problem and the real cause is something completely different. By then of course it’s too late and all you have done is make the situation worse and upset your team.
I was also highly aware that with I.T. systems, you can’t just go in and make changes. You need to get to know the system, understand why it has been built that way and only once you have a full understanding of that do you make slow, progressive changes. Otherwise everything stops working and now you, rather than being the saviour, have just caused the whole organisation to shut down because nobody can get their computer to do what it has happily been doing for years, before you turned up!
During the interview, the question came up – ‘what would you do when you started the job?’ ‘Nothing for three months’, was my reply.
What I meant by that was that I would step in, evaluate the system, evaluate the staff, find the issues and then start to make changes. That apparently was the wrong answer. They wanted someone to come in and shake things up straight away. I did not get the job.
This was about 15 years ago so I can’t even remember the name of the place but I would love to know how things turned out. Maybe someone did come in, stir things up and it’s never been better. Perhaps it all fell apart. Either way, looking back all of these years later, I still think I made the right decision.
I’ve been thinking about this recently as I’m looking to buy a small hosting business off of someone who is moving on to other things. I’ve done this a few times in the past with various degrees of success. If I stick to the plan where I take on the business and just leave things running exactly as they are for a few months, generally things go really well.
To save money, it would make sense to go in immediately, move over all of the systems into my existing ones and then enjoy the benefit of not having to pay out for all of the additional systems, hosting, licenses etc. However what I should do is stick to the plan – get to know the business, get to know the customers and then once I know what I am doing, slowly move everything over so that it no longer sits as a satellite business but rather is fully integrated into my existing systems.
I bought a similar business back in January and it has caused me a lot of additional work and stress because I didn’t stick to my rule.
Only now, six months after the transfer of the business have things settled down.
I’ve been enjoying this recent quiet period as the number of e-mails from customers has dropped down to ‘normal’ levels, rather than me having to scramble around at all hours, fixing things that my impatience had broken and replying to customer e-mails. I’ve just had two days off, visiting friends and generally ignoring my laptop. It has been great to finally get some down time and think about what I did wrong and how I should do things differently in the future.
Normally when I take over a business, I don’t make any changes. I don’t even change the e-mail signatures in the help desk system, keeping the same name of the customer service contact person so that customers think that they are still talking to the same people. I like to make the transition so smooth, that even the customers don’t know what is going on behind the scenes.
If this current deal goes ahead then I will need to be patient, control myself and only make changes once I know exactly how the systems work and once I have got to know the customers a little. The idea of saving a few pounds on outgoing costs is nothing compared to all of the additional time that I have to put in to put right the problems that I caused.
