stupid middle management unable to understand technology clearly the problem is acronyms and not stupid middle managment

Upper management ain't that much smarter

Part of work is communicating with people outside your shop. Middle management doesn't need to know the details. Give them a summary and they'll be happy. If they want more detail than let them ask, but if their eyes glaze over chances are your communication technique is wanting. Remember its easier for you to slow down and explain it to me, the middle manager, like I'm 12yrs old, than it is for me to speed up to your level of expertice.

I find it very interesting that Wayne, being the highly intelligent person that he presents himself as, can't even spell expertise correctly. The challenge with communication is that the backgrounds of individuals in even a small company are very diverse. Instead of pointing the blame at others and belittling someone for their position, try a different approach and embrace each opportunity as a way to teach others about your work and take note of what works and what doesn't work for communicating with different groups within an organization. Maybe you will find out not all subjects have to be spelled out to a twelve year old.

Diggs opened his comment with a statement that contradicted the rest of his comment. I would recommend that sarcasm not be used in business communication; it helps neither your communication, nor your relationships.

If management understood the technical details, then why would they need you? The IT experts are supposed to present business solutions. Do that in business terms.

Unless your company is in the software business, then IT does not produce any revenue. Remember where the money comes from to buy all those high tech toys you want.

Well, the company isn't going to run without an IT dept. Have fun sending emails when you don't have an Exchange admin!

There is no perfect world.

- Some IT and/or business meetings will have different levels of jargon comprehension.

- Some meetings will have a mix of IT and Business folks in attendance.

One way that I have found a middle ground is use a limited amount of IT jargon in presentation slides; yet explain it in business terms.

It all comes down to "KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE"

I manage a $7million budget for my department. I have a tech background, but for the past 7 years have been managing people, projects, process and finance. I've lost touch with alot of the daily acronymns and jargon my engineers use to get their work done.

But when you come to me with your proposal for a new SAN solution or web-based procurement system, you better be able to explain to me in clear terms what the benefit is for the company.

If you lose me in technical mumbo-jumbo either intentionally (to try to BS me or confuse me) or unintentionally (because you don't know any better) chances are you are not going to get the money, and will have to suffer keeping this company moving along on legacy stuff for the next 12 months. You'll probably end up frustrated and quit.

Maybe I'll replace you with someone who can dynamically figure out the technical knowledge level of their audience and communicate clearly to them. I've done it many times before, no big deal.

Damm Boss Remind me not to come work for you unless I have a degree in business first and IT second ;)
heheh
but on a serious note, yes most ppl in IT do not care to learn these soft/business skills that are very crucial to the successful career of an IT professional. Your boss might not know his output from his input.However he can manage to get your dept the funds it needs to keep the infrastructure going.

I have always found it funny when IT goes to a management meeting and they are able to use business jargon all over the place. pictures in power points :O etc etc lol but throw in a few terms like, TB SAN NAS NAT etc etc your crash landing your career and showing what a lack of communication skills you have :)

oh the world such a funny place to be in lol

From Tech

*** stupid middle management unable to understand technology clearly the problem is acronyms and not stupid middle managment

*** Upper management ain't that much smarter

What do acronyms and slang have to do with technology and intelligence? Any industry, group, group of chimps that can speak will have their own slang and acronyms. Stupidity exists across the board, not just management. I still have to explain to DBAs and SAN engineers with >10 years experience the difference between RAID 1+0 and 0+1. If you can't explain technology to a person with average intelligence but not an knowledgeable about your field, you probably don't know your stuff as well as you think or you can't communicate as well as you think. Btw, I've worked with CTOs of Fortune 100s that can follow a C++ code review without missing a beat and write smalltalk code without referring to manuals. Have you noticed that many of the smartest technical minds are also very good writers/speakers? Not all but many are. E.g. Jim Gray, Bill Joy, Gordon Bell, Don Box, Stephen Hawking, etc... I've seen them talk to press, analysts and pure business people and helping them understand, at least conceptually, some of the hard problems they are working on. If an ACM Turing award winner can explain distributed transaction management to a press guy who thinks SQL is spelt sequel, what's your excuse?

*** Well, the company isn't going to run without an IT dept. Have fun sending emails when you don't have an Exchange admin!

We don't have an exchange admin and we're now tracking about 99.95% availability compared to

Just like I don't appreciate my accountant using CPA talk or my attorney speaking legalese, the business people that approve our projects and sign 7-figure checks don't appreciate us telling them about IOPS, MB/s and SRDF instead of telling them how many users and business transactions the system can support and that if the data center magically burns to the ground in 1 minute, they've got a copy of the data safe 2000 miles away and business is back to normal in under 2 minutes.

IT people using jargon like, RAM, SAN, etc. without an explanation in a presentation to the non-IT folks is no worse than the VP's giving a state of the business presentation to non-business folks and using jargon like, ROTC, TWC, ITAR, etc. without an explanation. Like someone else said know your audience.

And Diggs, cut the guy some slack, everybody makes typos once in a while. That's why I always copy my posts into a word processor and spell check it before I hit submit.

maj