Enjoying and using your computer at work to its fullest potential is often hampered by your IT department and the policies it sets. Want to use GMail instead of the icky Lotus Notes installation the company set up for you? No luck: It’s blocked. Want to install an application that will shave hours of tedium from your work week? No luck. The IT department decides what goes on your computer, and Day Master 3000 is most definitely not on their list. Oh, you can ask them to “bless” the application, but that will take a long time and ultimately depend on how the stars align.
So why, oh why, do IT departments do the things they do? Aren’t they supposed to help you use your computer better and thus add shareholder value?
To understand, you have to understand the IT department’s main mission: Keep the computers and the network running. That’s what the company is paying them for. If the computers or the network stop working, unpleasant things happen to IT workers. Escorted-off-the-premises type unpleasant.
Notice what the IT department’s mission does not include: Make company employees more efficient and happy.
Which doesn’t mean that IT workers don’t want the people they support to be more efficient and happy, it’s just that it’s not part of their job description, so if they want to keep their jobs, they will always err on the side of caution. The copy of Day Master 3000 that would make your life so much easier might make Word start crashing, flood the network with packets, send corporate secrets to the Russian mafia, or a bunch of other untoward things that will make IT workers’ lives unpleasant. Sure, it most likely won’t, but what if it does?
Solution: Keep it off the company computers.
In other words, there are reasons why your IT peoples’ eyes start to glaze over when you talk about how great Day Master 3000 is—for the IT worker, there’s only downside.
This is not to say there aren’t power-mad sadists working in IT departments. Trust me, I’ve had to work for and with some of them. It sucks. They’re the kind of people who decide that no, you can’t change your desktop wallpaper. Why? Because you might use an inappropriate wallpaper. Muhahahaha! Dance, peon, dance! They are the minority, though, praise your deity of choice.
Unless your particular IT staff happen to be of the sadistic, power-mad variety, there are ways to make them more receptive to your ideas. The first thing you can do is incredibly simple: Make their lives easier. If you’re the kind of person who makes them reset your password once a week, they will be deaf to your ideas. Once you get the bozo label, you and Day Master 3000 will never meet at work. Ask any IT person, and they will tell you that the people whose offices they don’t know the locations of are their friends. So, stay off the bozo radar.
The second thing you can do is to find the upside for the IT department. If Day Master 3000 will save them work, you can bet it will find itself fast-tracked onto the approved list.