But I’m an IT Manager.
THE DISCUSSION
I like Facebook. In fact I’ve become reacquainted with five old high school mates via Facebook. I don’t use MySpace since I have a Facebook account. There’s only so many sites I can keep up with. I’ve looked at YouTube videos. Mostly old Richard Pryor videos. I’m a big LinkedIn user. I have joined a number of Groups and continue to update my profile, post comments, and participate in Answers. I actually spend quite a bit of time on the small number of social network sites I have joined.
All of these sites are blocked by my network administrators. I THINK THAT IS A GREAT IDEA.
In a perfect IT world and as an IT manager I’d block all sites and only open sites by exception. Unfortunately users do silly things and network security can become an issue. Oh, well, I’ll just send a touch labor tech over to remove that adware. So much for the perfect IT world. But I digress.
Twitter is another thing. Twitter is not blocked. I won’t talk about the security issues of Twitter; the hijacked accounts, the clickjacking attacks, the possible security issues with Google Docs, or the more then probable for official use only information about your company or business being spread by Tweet’s. I am more concerned about the management time spent and wasted by users on Twitter.
You’re an IT manager. If you are like me you have a 200-300 item to do/tracking list. You’re spending time fighting fires, working projects, supervising your direct reports, and doing all of the other things an IT manager does. So you have 100 friends on Twitter and follow perhaps another 100. How much time are you spending on Twitter? Can you afford to spend this time on Twitter? But it doesn’t take that much time, right. After all you only have 140 characters. So you work a little on a project, you Tweet, you work a little on a project, you Tweet, you work a little on a project, you Tweet. OK, so you get the picture.
As an IT manager, as I said above, your attention is already split on many things. Perhaps too many things. Twitter is a disruption to your daily work activities. You’re paid and expected to produce results. Twitter (or any similar other social networking site) reduces your effectiveness at work by splitting your attention in short tiny bursts. Using Twitter at work is, to put it simply, a distraction. You can’t perform at your peak if you constantly break your concentration.
Remember; after all, in today’s economy anything that makes you less effective needs to be trimmed from your daily work routine.
THE ACTION
Simple, don’t Tweet at work. Keep it at home and off work hours.
HINT: It’s time to trim.
-DO IT NOW AND ENGAGE-
