Impossible Children

[yesthattom]

One of my sisters works as a nanny. Whenever we get together I hear a lot of stories about parents with “impossible children” that become entirely manageable once the parents leave the house and they are lone with her. She has a bunch of simple rules and techniques that enforce boundaries. She’s constantly educating parents about how child say they want everything, but what they really want is consistency from their parents. It’s comforting and reassuring to get that consistency. Alas, when a child is crying they give in.

I work as a system administrator. Whenever I talk other system administrators they say how their users demand everything and their boss doesn’t know what they are doing. It’s really about setting boundaries. A document on the internal IT web page that says the scope of responsibility goes a long way towards giving the sysadmins the ability to say “no”. An occasional, “I’m sorry, but we don’t do that. You need to call the vendor yourself, or complain to my boss.” reinforces boundaries.

I keep hearing a radio commercial for The Total Transformation Method of parenting. I get the feeling that they’re just teaching the basic frameworks that parenting classes teach, but backs you up with a toll-free number you can call when you have an urgent question.

Has anyone reading this LJ tried the TTM stuff with their kids? Any comments or reviews?

And most importantly, since the DVD is free (you pay $15 shipping), would it be rude to carry 2-3 around with me and hand them to parents that can’t control their kids?

Comments

[dossy.livejournal.com]

Being a parent of two very spirited children myself, my experiences (and a very useful seminar) have taught me that you're right: children need boundaries. The whole point of childhood is to explore and understand your environment -- your limitations. Children thrive when they get consistency, because it lets them build new understandings on solid foundations of past experiences.

The trouble here is not the children. It's the parents. Providing a safe, limited but not stifling, consistent environment takes a lot of work and discipline from the parents. Children's behaviors (at young, pre-adolescent ages) is rarely the child's fault. Yes, I'm making a huge accusation here: it's mostly the parents' fault. It's their lack of self-discipline, their lack of consistency and follow-through, and their inability to control themselves that produces the children they have.

While I think it might be rude to drop a DVD on a parent of unruly children, it'd be pointless anyway: a DVD alone won't teach grown adults self-discipline and self-control.

If you find something you think could teach parents those skills, definitely consider investing in whatever will teach them most effectively. Those skills are universally valuable, in my opinion.

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

The flip side of this that I've seen all too often is the arrogant IT department that thinks it is the business, rather than there merely to serve the business. This is why engineering departments in most large computer companies spawn their own captive IT support departments: the corporate one is often either useless, or (worse) actively obstructionate.

The usual failing is at the top: the CEO needs to make it clear to the CIO that IT is a support function, like accounting, and can be outsourced if it fails to serve the other business units that actually make money. Unfortunately, most CEOs are flummoxed by IT, and so never have that conversation.

[dossy.livejournal.com]

Most companies can and should be outsourcing their IT, if it's not their core competency.

About the only IT function a non-IT company really needs in-house is Desktop Support, because, well, it's kinda hard to replace bad RAM or a failing hard drive in a non-technical user's desktop remotely.

Custom software development should be done by a company who specializes in it. One whose sales team understands how to sell it, and by a company managed by people who realize that their success revolves around their ability to serve their customers, as you pointed out.

Many companies that insist on keeping this business activity in-house are merely exhibiting fear due to an irrational need to have excessive control. Mostly because their management is so incompetent, and they think having excessive control is effective risk management, compensating for a track record of past failures. Sigh.

[xeger.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid that I don't agree with that. I think that outsourcing can be a viable solution, but it should be weighed and balanced like any other business decision. There's really no One True Way (tm) - just many variations and alternatives.

[la-directora.livejournal.com]

My sentiments exactly. And, for the opinion stated further down that people's opinions on this went along with which side of IT they've worked on, I've been both a consultant at a firm that was outsourced to and an in-house IT person. And I saw pros and cons to both situations for the various companies I did IT related work for. I think the fastest way to make sure a business doesn't do well is to assume that any one answer will work for all businesses.

[kimuchi.livejournal.com]

Actually, the only internal IT function that's been outsourced at any of the companies I've worked at has been desktop support, and it was done quite well.

[dossy.livejournal.com]

Outsourced, but on-site, right? Like contracting out to IBM Global Services where they place warm bodies on-site to do the stuff that requires physical access, etc.?

Yes, that can work quite well, too. :-)

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

That's a very well-defined task. The problem is that companies that do such outsourcing do so because "they don't know anything about IT"... thus they sign a contract that doesn't make sense because they don't know any better. Witness Lucent, who signed a 10-year deal with IBM-GS without consulting their IT department because they were afraid the IT folks would sabatage it. The contract didn't include things like backups and had all the wrong incentives. It was a big part of ruining the company, but luckily Carly's financial shenanigans got more PR.

[kimuchi.livejournal.com]

I don't think so. At this site everyone had laptops (also imaged by the outsource company), and if you had any physical problems with the laptop you simply dropped it off with your departmental admin for pick-up by the maintenance company). They came on-site for things like major OS upgrades (although there, too, you the user brought your laptop to the upgrade area, rather than having a person come by to lay on hands in your space).

[holzman.livejournal.com]

How many days of downtime is that for the person who drops off their laptop?

[kimuchi.livejournal.com]

I can't really say, since I didn't see any of the people I worked closely with go through this. I do know there was at most a day downtime for people who had their laptops stolen, so I imagine it would be similar.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

And that is why you are wrong.

IT is the innovation engine that, leveraged, empowered, and properly funded, will help your company be faster, better, and more efficient; thus killing your competition.

If you treat it like the accounting department, you will end up like Lucent or AT&T.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

When the business is about processing information, that makes sense. But if IT is driving most innovation in companies in other sectors, you've probably siing management that lacks the ability to create processes, so IT ends up doing it by default. That's not the way it should work.

Management should say "we want to do this; how hard would it be?" But when management has no idea what to do, at least the techiical priesthood can step up to the plate.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Would you classify a cement company as being not a "information processing" company?

I ask that because Cemex (the big Mexican cement company) changed the industry by innovating in IT to better schedule their deliveries. The found they could increase their price 50% if they could provide delivery practically "on demand". Construction sites often find week-long delays because the cement delivery was scheduled months ago and plans have since changed.

It rocked the construction industry. Soon everyone wanted to pay more money for cement because of the net savings of having the site working without a pause. It took years for the rest of the industry to catch up.

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

I think that's a great example of where IT shouldn't have to lead, but it's better that they do than nobody does. It doesn't require any special IT knowledge to reengineer business processes. But for a couple of decades, IT has been vacuuming up most of the people with the kind of minds to slove those problems, so that's where the innovation ends up coming from.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

IT didn't take over the entire company. They simply had a good relationship with a visionary CIO who saw the opportunity and collaborated with the CEO to make it happen.

If their IT was outsourced, the new project would have come under the "unplanned services" clause, which is the most expensive way to do things. It would have stopped any CEO in their tracks and scuttled the good idea.

If you IT is outsourced, your "good ideas" for improvement go to the outsource company, not to you. An idea to be more efficient is squelched if it means less money for the outsource company, and if the idea is how to improve the entire business, the outsource company isn't going to tell you because it isn't "in the contract".

[barking-iguana.livejournal.com]

I should have made clear that I'm not arguing for outsourcing. But I am responding to your statement that IT is the innovation engine. I guess it depends on what you mean by engine, but that soulnds akin to having defense contractors say to DOD "look at this cool new weapons system we can build" rather than having DOD and a fairly elected President (I can dream, can't I?) saying "it would solve a lot of problems if we had a wapons sytem that could do thus and such, can you make one?"

[catness.livejournal.com]

This section of the thread amuses me because I find that people's opinions on this topic depend almost entirely on which side of the IT department they've worked. ;)

In my experience, I've seen IT departments be incredibly "obstructionate" and therefore useless or worse, but I've only ever witnessed that in an environment where management treated IT as a cost center *only*, instead of a necessary and valuable part of their business. This devolves into the IT department using information as power to protect themselves, and therefore holding an iron grip on business without actually helping it run. If things get to this point, it's time to start over (usually with an entirely new staff), but most companies can't get out of their own way well enough to identify this, let alone figure out an effective solution.

That's not to say that outsourcing is always the wrong answer, because for some particular operations (especially smaller businesses), it could be the best path in the short term. However, "core competency" or not, IT outsourcing can actually do more harm than good. Paid yes men (which is often what "customer service" turns out to mean) depend on a company's money, and they do not *want* their customers running at 100% efficiency, or their billable hours decrease. (Speaking from the experience of The Mercenary Consultant, I think there are a lot of other reasons that outsourcing isn't always the best choice for businesses, but I'll let those lie for now, as I've deliberately avoided dwelling on them since I left that line of work. ;)

The bottom line is, you need very clueful people overseeing your IT department, whether it's outsourced or in-house. And *those* people are hard to find, not just because they're rare, but also because such oversight isn't yet considered necessary to business, and because someone without the ability to do that job wouldn't be able to recognize and hire someone who could. However, I strongly believe that this role needs to be filled, in every company that requires technology to do its business. A company needs someone clueful in technology to know that what's being done in IT is the right stuff to keep everything up and running securely, it needs someone skilled in politics (or outside it, like the baseball commissioner) to keep IT and non-IT folks communicating well, and it requires a customer advocate, who can get IT folks to understand and appreciate the very real needs of the business and the user base while helping to set user expectations reasonably. (Ideally, this would be one person, but I'm sure that's about as reality-based as those chirpy "Help Desk" television ads in which just showing up with an insanely large problem gets the magic Instant Solution button pushed by a decent looking geek. Talk about unreasonable user expectations. *laugh*)

Um, rambling. Sorry.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

That's a really excellent point.

I find that if IT reports to the CFO, then IT is considered a "cost to be reduced". Bizarre priorities are put in place, which makes it not customer-friendly nor helpful to the business. It creates a feedback loop that justifies more cost reductions, which makes service worse, which justifies more cost reductions, until it flops.

If IT reports to the CTO then IT is treated as an investment in making the company work better. IT has pride in their work, strives to improve things, etc.

The problem is that most people assume that "the helpdesk" is 100% of the IT department. The helpdesk has to be managed differently than the other aspects of corporate technology, and thus it is difficult to have a CTO wrap their mind around how to manage them both very well.

My problem with outsourcing in general is that it has the wrong profit motive. But Erik is a socialist so he wouldn't ... oh wait, he's a libertarian so he better damn well understand this! When you outsource something huge like IT, you end up with a significant chunk of your company working to maximize profit for them, not efficiency for you. When I worked on a contract basis, we met with our customer once a week to discuss issues, etc. However, what the customer doesn't realize is that the hour before that, the outsource company meets privately to strategize how we can "extract the most value from the contract"... i.e. profit the most. So if it was a "up to $1 million contract", then the question on our mind is "what can we do to make sure the customer spends all $1,000,000". We could help them be more efficient by consolidating a process, oh, but then we'd come in at $900,000.... so screw that. Wait... the contracts says they'll pay $x,000 for every server? Ah, time to brainstorm reasons to add a server in their Long Island division. I know, a dedicated email server is the only possible solution!

I have seen outsourcing work well in specific places where you can define the exact needs. For example, managing a WAN, having a NOC, and repair/replace routers that make up the WAN. That works well. However, when it's time for a massive WAN upgrade, keep those people out of the room because they are going to push for the status quo.

When I interview at a company I always find out if IT reports to the CFO or the CTO. If they say CFO, I often reconsider.

[qnetter]

The other side of the coin is that the sills that make sa good CTO often make a miserable manager...

[ceo]

Children need clear and consistent boundaries, yes. Most importantly of all, however, they need to know that they are unconditionally loved. I don't see the word "love" amywhere on the TTM website, and it generally reeks of an authoritarian parenting style that I have little use for.

$15 shipping for a DVD? This must be some new definition of "free" with which I was previously unfamiliar.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

I have a DVD that explains it to you. Just send me $15 for shipping :-)

[pyffe.livejournal.com]

Now now... That shipping AND HANDLING. we all know how much time Handling can take! ;->

[entirelysonja.livejournal.com]

I know nothing about the TTM program other than what I just read on the web site, but it seems that it's primarily intended for children who are already exhibiting serious behavior problems, and parents who are at their wits' end. When that situation arises, you're in a place where your parenting style, whatever it might be, has already failed your particular child. In that case, I suspect learning a new approach is probably worthwhile.

It's actually $15 shipping for 2 dvd's, 7 cd's, and a printed workbook. If you keep it beyond the "trial period," you then pay almost $300 for it. Now that's a truly novel definition of "free"!

[lothie.livejournal.com]

Never heard of it but my kids have always been well behaved.

[porcinea.livejournal.com]

I'm gonna go with "it's a load of crap". If you actually want info. for troubled parents, I can recommend Dr. Sears (not the Zone diet guy, the baby guru). https://www.askdrsears.com/html/6/T060100.asp

[pyffe.livejournal.com]

I make every effort to follow through with my kids. If I tell them, "throw that toy again and you lose it", I take the toy away if they throw it. I've seen too many parents who threaten and threaten and never follow through. Or they threaten with stuff they could never actually do. How many times have you overheard the conversations while shopping where the threats just keep coming and the child keeps acting out?

But the flip side is also true. If you promise to take your kid for a walk in the woods after you finish reading your paper, FOLLOW THROUGH and take the child for a walk. If you don't, he knows you lied to him again. I try, whenever possible, to live up to what I tell my kids I'll do, instead of using words to put them off long enough to forget the promise.