Picture
courtesy of Frank Sheeman
Today marks a special occasion and perhaps not one
that you might expect I would bring to everyone’s attention. Yes, on this day
March 2, 1970, I began my career in IT. As a trainee “Cadet Programmer”,
working for steelworks south of Sydney, I spent two years learning the art of
programming. At that time of lowly pay structure for cadets of any discipline
in the steelworks, I just couldn’t wait to move on and to take one more step in
a career that would continue to this day.
In the posts to this blog I have covered many
aspects of my life in IT so I won’t revisit it in this post. However, it was in
my early days working for Tandem Computers that I ran into the practice within
Tandem of producing tee shirts to celebrate almost any occasion. Be it a new
program, a new product or even just a feature, the creation of a new department
or the opening of a new building, they were all celebrated with a tee shirt.
One colleague told me that his parents thought he had joined a clothing company
given the frequency with which new clothes arrived at his house.
The particular tee shirt appearing in the photo
above was created in 1989 as I recall. It came at a time when Stephen Schmidt,
VP of Operations, was following up on more public comments expressed just a few
years earlier. In a May 25, 1987 Tandem interview with CNN Money many Tandem
executives provided quotes but it was Steve who said, “It used to be hard to
get a resolution on certain things. A strong individual could go to the mat and
the consensus process couldn't change it. Jim (Treybig) went from being
reluctant to order people to do things, to being willing.'' Yes, consensus was
waning and patience thinning and yet it was also the year where Tandem
rebounded in a big way to top $1 Billion in revenues for the first time.
To look back on that interview with CNN, HOW
JIMMY TREYBIG TURNED TOUGH His Friday beer blasts and laid-back style made
Tandem Computers a Silicon Valley legend … just follow the
hyperlink or cut and paste this url into your browser: https://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1987/05/25/69054/index.htm
I have never been one for patience. But then again,
perhaps I have been a bit too lucky through the years. It was the twentieth
century American author, Wilfred Peterson, who wrote that, "Many a man has
left the dock just before his ship came in. Time has great power to solve
problems. Counsel patience." While Steve was looking to give patience a
kick up the backside, and for good reason, to bring Tandem out of complacency
driven by consensus it was a message appropriate for the times as with the
passage of time very little changed at Tandem in this regard.
And yet, the number of times I have left the dock
before my ship had even berthed are too numerous to recount. I have always
wanted more; frustration is never too far away from patience or the lack of
patience. When it comes to IT I have always been a voice for all those who
think that yes, we can do more. “Is that all you’ve got” is perhaps my most
common thought when looking at what lies just around the corner. Not immune to
the real progress enterprise IT can make it still comes as a surprise to read of
the reluctance of some in our industry who consistently champion the status
quo. However, stepping off the dock too soon simply lands you in deep water and
you better be a strong swimmer.
Picture
courtesy of Frank Sheeman
When you read what was printed on the back of
Steve’s tee shirt the apparent frustrations of then Tandem executive gives way
to something a little more substantial. It is OK to step off that dock
sometimes when you know the waters are extremely shallow. There are times when
simply wandering up and down the dock without any clear understanding of where
you are is no substitute for leadership. Attracting followers in such a
situation only leads to a crowded dock and not to setting a direction. As for
me, looking back at the day I began my IT career, I couldn’t even see the end
of the dock let alone step off. It was more a time to let things develop and to
seriously pay attention to what might happen next.
It was Peter Economy, co-author of many of the “…
for Dummies” books including Managing for Dummies and Consulting for Dummies
who in a post to Inc.com wrote of how, “We get so much instant gratification
from text messages and social media these days that we may forget
that sometimes the best things in life aren't delivered to us instantly or on
demand.” As someone who blogs pretty much daily, on reading this, it hurt. And
yet, as IT professionals where time is limited, perhaps continuing to be
impatient truly does come at a cost.
I am becoming impatient to see a return to in-person
events. I look forward to networking with the NonStop community and to hearing
directly from all NonStop stakeholders what their plans are for the next year
or so. I am becoming impatient too when it comes to NonStop being in the news.
For too long the consensus view has been that there really is anything exciting
to report on NonStop. Technology developments are heading in a direction that
leads away from Nonstop, or so we are being told. Nothing could be further from
the truth.
The attributes of availability and scalability
haven’t lessened and indeed, arguments could be made in support of these very
attributes being what’s missing in our race to experience the cloud everywhere.
Then there is the ease of networking and of integration. It was unimaginable
only a few years ago for NonStop to participate in modern deployments as easily
and as readily as can happen today. Any enterprise with that application that
is their core process around which the rest of the business pivots can benefit
greatly from the presence of NonStop. And yes, I am getting really impatient
over how slow the industry is to grasp this reality.
But will our patience over just how good is NonStop
in time reward us? Will we see an uptick in reporting? What could drive this may very well center on
the latest initiative of HPE, GreenLake. For that percentage of enterprises that
recognize the value of the cloud experience and accept the presence of NonStop,
maybe their patience will be rewarded after all. Lead, follow or get out of the
way? We may recall hearing this said many times before and it has been thought
to have come from Thomas Paine, and eighteenth century political commentator
about the time of the American War of Independence, but it has also been used
by everyone from General Patton to Chrysler boss Lee Iacocca to sailing’s
Captain Outrageous, Ted Turner.
However it does suit present times as well. For
those who believe patience brings its own reward then I have some sympathy. But
not much! If stepping off the dock is not advisable then perhaps taking no
steps at all is far worse. We may not like this world of instant gratification
or the rapid-fire delivery of content everywhere we turn, but it’s the world in
which we all find ourselves living. NonStop has a much bigger role to play and
that role is only just beginning to emerge. If mainstream press remains slow on
the uptake of news about NonStop then it will likely be from text messages and
social media where news about NonStop first breaks!
My impatience over how long it’s taken to once again
meet as a community, in-person, has been slaked. However, has your patience for
news on NonStop begun to wear thin? Perhaps the time has come once again to get
out there and lead as if it isn’t us as a community, then who? This date is
certainly memorable for me even if it is a reminder of the passage of time but
then again, it’s also a reminder of an accumulation of experience, of
observations and of many conversations.
What I cannot do though is sit still as yes, the
water at the end of the dock beckons even as I do see the sails of a ship
headed our way. Will you be wanting to take that next step, too?
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