Are you laser-focused on being wildly successful? April 16, 2007
Posted by Phillip in : geek , trackbackOk. So I’m not really going to write a motivational blog posting. My intention is to whine and complain about how much I hear these business buzzwords. They are prevalent on conference calls, in slide decks and lately even in common conversation. Why is that? I remember some years ago when “ecosystem” and “synergy” were big. Why is it that execs and management-type folks grab on to these words and throw them around like they mean something.
Is it that they actually believe that “holistic ecosystem of heuristic technology” means something to the people that are designing & deploying solutions? My guess is no. I think that it’s easier to say something when you say nothing at all. I have even caught myself doing it.. I was speaking with a friend last week and I was talking about how XYZ software would drive environmental enablement for technology ABC. I literally had to stop myself and back the truck up. Was I really saying this? What has 8 years in the IT industry done to me?
It started long before I came to work at Novell. Even while I was at Rackspace I realized it — no matter what position you are in, to some extent, you have to be a sales guy. At Rackspace, I was a Linux Engineer in IT, but when I went into meetings to convince managers and other techs that the solution I designed was the end-all-be-all, I had to sell to them. So what does it mean? Am I getting more salesie then techie? I don’t think so — I may have “extended” my vocabulary a bit, but I can still troubleshoot like mad-man and design a killer infrastructure. ;-)
Comments»
Phil, You you definitely have that salesman quality to you. Specifically the used car kind.
tell me sir, what is it going to take to get you into this blog today?
You had me at “synergy”