By Hank Marquis

The 7 Habits of Highly Defective IT Experiences

Habits that made you successful in the past are hard to change. But without failure, there is no learning. Don't doubt yourself. Instead, learn from mistakes and develop new and better habits!

If you're a pattern person, a lateral thinker or you've worked in IT long enough, you begin to see some patterns. Some time ago, I realized the importance of mentally ticking off seven patterns of behavior that reminded me of a popular self-help book that talked about habits and how to form and re-form them.

I've seen these "habits" over and over again in the pursuit of IT service experience excellence. I'm way past judging, and neither will I bemoan why these bad habits arise, but I know how to recognize and fix them.

We all know that decisions are only "bad" in hindsight. We can probably agree that it's fruitless to second-guess decisions already taken.

You can learn from them, though. And I've found that many leaders make the same IT-experience-zapping mistakes in pursuit of IT experience excellence.

The habits I found trouble-shooting IT experience failures over the years reminded me of Covey's famous self-help book. Only in reverse!

I want you to be successful when you embark on your IT experience improvement journey.

Please enjoy the 7 habits leading to highly defective IT experiences.

The Habits

The habits that lead to low business value from poor IT product or service experiences are:

1. Ignoring self-development and working yourself to death by not trying new things, vs. sharpening the saw.
2. Reacting to external events and circumstances, not taking charge or assuming responsibility for IT experience, vs. being proactive.
3. Working on fun stuff first, tackling engineering jobs without a vision for the desired IT experience, vs. beginning with an end in mind.
4. Focusing on what's easy, ignoring what brings you closer to your vision of the IT experience, vs. putting first things first.
5. Not building strong positive relationships with users, customers, and IT staff, vs thinking win-win.
6. Jumping right into solution design without engaging the day-to-day IT users and the support staff, vs. seeking first to understand, then to be understood.
7. Failing to co-create solutions with IT customers and users—an engineering bias—vs. synergizing.

Which have you seen?

Which are you guilty of?

Which have you overcome?

Which do you still struggle with?

21 Days

These 7 habits are just that — habits. It is widely accepted that you can break a bad habit and form a new one in just about 21 days if you try. In other words, if any of these things resonated with you, you are only 21 days away from a new and better habit!

It starts with understanding what you are doing now ("bad" habit) and consciously changing your behavior ("good" habit). Do this long enough, and you will make a new habit — and start to exhibit the 7 Habits of Highly Effective IT Experiences ... but that's another article!

Please comment or reach out and let me know what you think, I'd love to talk with you!

Best,
Hank

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