In today’s fast-paced world, we often overlook the intricacies behind how top-performing companies operate. We take streamlined processes for granted and rarely question how they work. Yet, behind that efficiency lies a powerful tool: Standardization.
Why Standardization Matters
Standardization makes our lives easier—so seamlessly, in fact, that we often don’t even notice it. Take traffic lights, for example. Whether you’re driving in the U.S., Mexico, Canada, or France, you’ll recognize the same colors and meanings. That’s standardization in action. It allows us to understand systems quickly, without needing to relearn them in every new context.
This same concept applies to business operations. When you standardize processes across departments, it ensures everyone is aligned, understands the data, and can operate effectively—regardless of where they are or what team they belong to.
The IT Perspective: A Common Trap
In IT, we often forget to standardize and then complain about how much work we have. And yes—we usually have a lot of work. But here’s the truth: up to 80% of that workload could be reduced simply by standardizing systems and processes.
Imagine managing a network of:
5,000 computers
200 servers
100 network switches
Now imagine those computers are split: 25% Lenovo, 35% Dell, 35% HP, and 5% Asus. Your servers? A mix of HP, Dell, and IBM. Different models, firmware, configurations—it’s chaos.
Every vendor introduces different patching tools, driver updates, and firmware vulnerabilities. How do you respond to a critical HP firmware alert when you also need to chase patches from Dell, Asus, and IBM?
Without standardization, it’s nearly impossible to respond quickly. It becomes a cybersecurity risk—and a budgetary nightmare.
Time, Tools, and Team Efficiency
Let’s say you’re lucky and you use cloud tools like Atera or ESET. Great—but even those tools can’t magically standardize your environment. To react fast, you need:
A centralized helpdesk
Uniform hardware
Consistent OS and software versions
If 80% of your infrastructure is standardized, you can deploy firmware updates in a matter of minutes—not days. You won’t need to segregate by brand, model, or OS version every time a vendor posts a patch.
Standardization simplifies:
Troubleshooting
Ticket resolution
Training
Device upgrades
Team onboarding
It also reduces the number of specialists required. Instead of hiring experts for each platform (Windows, Linux, VMware, Proxmox, etc.), you can focus on a single stack and scale effectively.
Even printers should be standardized—and ideally leased, not purchased.
The Real-World Impact: A Branch Rollout Example
Here’s a real-life example:
A company used to spend 25 days setting up the IT infrastructure for each new branch, including:
Wiring, plugs, and plates
Network switches and firewalls
Computers, printers, and cameras
Configuration, labeling, and testing
Travel, hotel stays, meals, gas, and other costs
That’s a huge investment of time and money.
The Solution? Standardization.
I created a Branch Kit—a pallet with all pre-configured devices ready to ship. I outsourced local installations to a third-party vendor using a detailed layout with labeled network ports.
The result?
70% cost savings per branch setup
Zero disruption to internal IT support
Happier employees and customers
No missed support calls
Reduced burnout for the IT team
And that wasn’t all.
We also standardized printer models based on actual branch needs. By replacing oversized printers with smaller, appropriate devices, we saved over \$80,000 USD per year in toner and leasing costs.
Support tickets dropped from 25 per branch per month to just 3 to 5. That meant fewer tickets, less stress, and no need for additional IT headcount.
The Bottom Line
Standardization creates a virtuous cycle:
Faster response times
Lower costs
Better scalability
Easier training
Stronger cybersecurity
The more you standardize, the more efficient and cost-effective your company becomes.
Information Technology (IT) is relatively new compared to other fields such as engineering, manufacturing, or accounting. However, IT has evolved since it appeared in the industrial scene. For instance, in the ’70s and the ’80s even in the ’90s it was common for software developers to use their own principles and techniques1. The accumulated amount of changes in just a piece of software, challenged the next developers to understand the logic behind the code2. Same for networks and servers; understanding why a router/firewall had a specific configuration was a nightmare. The servers were named inconsistently, and IP addressing was assigned as an isolated task wihtout considering the future expansion needs andscalability3.
The Power of Standardization.
Standardization is one of the best advantages you could ever have if you learn how.
Without previous experience, method, or mentor who guides you through the process, standardizing would be a challenging process. Once you understand how the standardization works, your will find easier to manage IT processes, devices and even your team.
My Journey with IT Standardization
The first time I worked on a big IT project, I didn’t know anything about standardization in IT. We used to use Novell 5.5, and Groupwise as email service. The company started to experience an international expansion, and the IT management also grew in complexity.
After seeing how complex this IT infrastructure and services became, our corporate IT director decided to migrate everything to Microsoft Windows 2000 Enterprise Edition and standardize it across the corporation. When I was first introduced to the project, I was amazed at how they managed the project and the entire IT processes. I couldn’t comprehend how they handled such a vast amount of data and equipment. The only clear information I had was that we were going to switch from Novell to Windows.
As a novice in IT, I was hesitant to adopt the new methodologies and standards. I wasn’t sure how they would benefit me, but I sensed that this change was for the better. To streamline the transition, the IT Steering team decided to hold monthly meetings with all site admins to explain the new rules and procedures.
One of these rules and the main one was : Standardization.
As the entire company was undergoing standardization of processes and procedures, IT was no exception. Our corporate IT steering team developed a strategy to adopt this new IT methodology, ensuring alignment with the company’s overall vision.
Implementing Standardization
The goal was to establish a standardized process to keep IT operations clean, efficient, and consistent. Key changes included the creation of new Active Directory users, implementation of naming convention standards, and improvements to the physical infrastructure.
Simultaneously, I observed similar changes across various departments such as production, quality control (QC), human resources (HR), manufacturing, and shipping/receiving. The common theme was, once again, standardization.
Everyone in the company was engaged in the same standardization process. One of the most remarkable transformations was on the production floor, which underwent a complete turnaround. It evolved from a dusty, disorganized space filled with scrap to a clean, organized, and productive area.
While this project was ongoing, we were also trained in Six Sigma (Green Belt). Unbeknownst to me, the company had initiated extensive training for all managers and middle management, and I was part of this team. Shortly after completing the Six Sigma training, I was invited to participate in a production project that no one else wanted to tackle. This project was a significant challenge for me as it was outside my comfort zone, focusing on the production area rather than IT.
Expanding My Skills
I embraced the challenge and collaborated with the production team to understand the problem and apply the techniques we had learned in our Six Sigma Green Belt training. Ultimately, I managed to reduce scrap by 15%.
Upon returning to my office, I realized that the methodologies and standardization principles we applied in the production project could also be applied to IT. This experience helped me understand why our corporate IT team chose this approach to manage our IT department.
Now what?
After several years of implementing IT standardization, achieving significant savings in IT services, and spearheading new projects, I received an opportunity to join a new company. I identified numerous areas for improvement and began standardizing IT servers, network switches, firewall rules, network wiring, procedures, documents, and processes. I was appointed as the Project Manager for the ERP rollout across two sites. Applying the same principles of standardization, I received positive feedback from everyone. The Plant Director even remarked, “I like it, this is what we did in Detroit years ago, thank you!”
Six months after I started, the company division’s IT Director visited our site and commented on the IT transformation, saying, “This is the best IT site in our division, even better than our plant in Germany, which is brand new.” That feedback made me feel proud of the work we had accomplished.
How to Standardize Your IT: A Step-by-Step Guide
Standardizing your IT infrastructure can bring numerous benefits, from streamlined processes to reduced troubleshooting time. Here’s how you can achieve this in a few simple steps:
1. Apply the 5S Methodology
The 5S methodology is crucial for success. It involves:
Sort: Remove unnecessary items. Begin by decluttering your IT environment. Remove outdated equipment and unnecessary items.
Set in Order: Organize your IT area. Organize remaining items logically. Ensure tools and equipment are easily accessible.
Shine: Clean and maintain the workspace. Clean your workspace regularly to maintain a tidy environment.
Standardize: Establish consistent procedures. Develop and document standard procedures for common tasks.
Sustain: Maintain and review standards regularly. Regularly review and update standards to ensure they remain relevant
2. Standardize Computer Hostnames
Create a consistent format for hostnames. Use a combination of country code, business unit number, and asset number. For example:
US99-1234 for the United States
CA99-1234 for Canada
MX99-1234 for Mexico
UK99-1234 for United Kingdom
If your company operates domestically, use state abbreviations:
TX01-1234 for Texas
CA01-1234 for California
AZ01-1234 for Arizona
Assign consecutive numbers if asset numbers are not used.
3. Standardize Server Names
Use a clear naming convention for servers. Use country code+business unit+servercode+consecutive
For example:
CA01MFP01: for servers in Canada.
US01MFP01 for servers in the US
MX01MFP01 for servers in Mexico
FR01MFP01 for servers in France
4. Standardize Network Switches
Apply a consistent format for network switches:
US01-MDF01-D01 for the main distribution frame in the US branch 01, located at the Main distribution Frame and attached to the Patch panel 01 (Demarcation 01).
US01-IDF01-D01 for the intermediate distribution frame.
For branches in different countries:
MX01-MDF01-D01 for Mexico
CA01-MDF01-D01 for Canada
5. Standardize Firewalls and Routers
Use the same principles for firewalls and routers:
Standardize the physical layer of your network with color-coded cables:
Blue for data
White for voice
Yellow for ISP services
Green for surveillance
Red for servers
Orange for iLO/DRAC ports
Black for BackUp/NAS/SAN
Invest in high-quality wiring like Belden or Panduit and upgrade gradually. If possible, replace your keystones to match the patch cords colors.
7. Standardize User’s Devices
Always purchase the same brand and model for IT equipment and user devices. This simplifies troubleshooting. If you solve a problem on one device, you can apply the solution to all similar devices, reducing support time and stress. Evaluate the best quality/price equipment, then standardize the company computers/laptops, monitors, mouse, keyboards, UPS, printers. You don’t need to do it all at once, you can buy the new devices or replacements using the new standardization.
Benefits
If you work on DevOps, Networking, Server’s management or even IT Support, you will improve your troubleshooting time, upgrades will run easier and your scripts will drastically be reduced and easier to manage/update. There are more benefits that you can get once you standardize your IT Department.
Conclusion
Standardizing IT processes offers multiple benefits, including faster resolution times, time management efficiency, and you can create a more efficient and manageable IT environment, and of course peace of mind.
Photo by EKATERINA BOLOVTSOVA: https://www.pexels.com
The S.M.A.R.T. methodology is a simple tool issued for the first time by George T. Doran in his paper called “There’s a S.M.A.R.T. way to write management’s goals and objectives.” Since then, the SMART acronym has had several adjustments and sometimes changes to the original words, however, the core of the message remains the same: Create sustainable projects.
This powerful acronym is a simple way to have a mnemonic word to enclose the main characteristics of an important and impactful project.
As most of the readers know now, the SMART acronym stands for:
Specific: A clear target for improvement.
Measurable: Quantify the result of the outcomes that indicate progress or performance.
Assignable: A clear set of tasks that someone will specifically do.
Realistic: A project with achievable goals within the company resources.
Time-related: A specific time frame for the project goal.
Despite the modified words through the time, we will keep these original words since we are vintage IT guys.
The SMART approach is a good way to limit the scope of the projects and promotes critical thinking about the possibilities of being successful (or not) in a given goal. Since IT is an evolving area, the use of tools to create extraordinary results for critical projects is a must.
In order to develop SMART projects in IT you first are required to start with the right questions, how to determine every stage of the SMART acronym to make my project actually SMART.?
Lets to start with these right questions:
1. What is the problem?
2. How do I believe I will fix it.?
3. What should be the outcome if we make this change?
4. How many resources do I need to achieve this goal? (People, money, time).
5. What are the KPIs to control the outcomes?
Starting from these simple questions, we might have a big portion of our SMART project. Here the explanation about every stage of the SMART project.
Specific.
Having a specific goal and well-delimited boundaries in a project is essential for the project buy-in. Here the list and examples about how to make the right questions to make it specific:
What.- What is the specific purpose of the project, what do you want to accomplish with it.
Why.- Specific reason why we must resolve this problem. What are the benefits of the project once completed, what other issues we are facing because of the current issue.
Who.- Specific person who will be responsible of the specific task or tasks to achieve this project completion and problem resolution.
Where. – Specific area of scope where this project will impact the company/business.
Which.- Specific areas where this problem is affecting the company/business performance.
When.- This question is related to the time boundary. When it will start, and then, when it will be finished out.
Once you complete these questions you are now all set to say your project has a specific scope and delimited area of influence. In IT, this is usually delimited to our Servers, Network, Telecommunications, Services, SLAs, Cybersecurity, Databases, Web services, Software Development and/or Service desk, there might be others, like Finance and HR, however, those are the typical areas where we have most of the influence.
For instance, I had the project where I planned to reduce the IT costs on new branches openings and improve the IT resources utilization.
What: Reduce IT costs on new branches openings.
Why: Reduce new infrastructure costs, IT Operational Costs, reduce the human resources required to setup the branch (costs), reduce Cybersecurity threats (reduce frauds-costs) and improve the branches’ network performance.
Who: IT Director/Manager/3rd Party
Where: US
Which: Long time and high level of expenses before/during/after the branch opening. Deficiencies in the use of the local IT human resources.
When: 6 months, from the project start to the finish.
Measurable.
This is a simple task if you already have KPIs as part of your performance IT review, however, this is not limited to the technical resources, but the financial and human resources areas of IT. In the previous example the performance indicator was the expenses submitted by IT on every new branch opening. In our project, the company used to spend more than 25,000 dollars to open a new branch, and the use of the IT human resources to install and configure the new IT infrastructure was creating high service desk delays for the other 2,000 branches and the main offices. The hypothesis of the reduction of the IT expenses on every new branch opening has to be built against the historical data of the previous branches’ openings. This is somehow easy; the finance department can provide the expenses related to these past projects using their data and share it with you to compare the current costs against the new proposals with hypothetically lower costs.
Current costs.
Network wiring: 8,500.00
Network Switch/Routers: 2,500.00
Computers: 5,000
Trip/Hotel/meals for IT personnel: 9,000
Time frame: 25 days
I would say these are the average expenses from the last 20 branch openings. None of them worth the expense since they were not adding value to the process the way they were applied. This is important for the SMART project since it contains the costs as a KPI for every new branch. The company didn’t have this metric as KPI, however, I started to track it to see the cost per opening and then provide them with the before and after results.
Assignable.
This is obviously a project portion of the big one, the opening of the new branch had its own PM and this person was in charge of the full process from the beginning to the end. When I came on board, I noticed the PM wasn’t so much experienced, so I decided to provide support and several tools to make these opening even more successful. On the IT perspective, I was assigned as the IT Champion for these openings. Of course I had an IT Support Specialist guy who used to be the “IT guy”, where people discharged all the IT responsibilities among the project tasks. I trained him and took other IT person to work as a team to achieve this goal. Both of them were great workers. So, bottom line, I was the main responsible for this project from the IT perspective and I had an excellent and well experienced guys who just required direction to make this job, easier, faster and more “profitable”. As a bottom line of this project, I was also engaged to improve the quality of the work done my team, from work hard to work smart. They were the guys who were at the branches, installed the network wiring, computers, routers, cameras, etc, so I was decided to remove these tasks for them and the company and become more like project coordinators than hardware installers, and I did it.
Realistic.
In order to have a REALISTIC goal you have to be 100% honest with yourself, with your team, and with your envision of the goal you are expecting to have. Having a realistic goal might be easy to determine if you have data and you make Data Analysis to determine correlations or regression analysis, just to say a couple of them. However, if the information is not organized, vague or incomplete, it can make the goal outcome a little blurry to foresee and difficult to envision it too. On the other hand, if you are an experienced professional and you have worked these same projects before in different companies, then the outcome is also easily to forecast and work thru it. In our case, I had previous experiences making this same project for different companies, so, the REALISTIC stage for me was easy to determine. Just be careful, if the people around you does not share your same envision, due to a lack of knowledge, envision, data or experience, then you might face some resistance to the project goal, even if the data shows the possible positive results. If this is your case, try to be patient and explain your realistic outcome as easy as possible and use as much data as possible to change their perception of the goal, share the benefits to their areas or customers, that will alleviate the possible tensions you migth face. If you don’t have experience using Change Management tools, don’t worry, I have a new post to speak about it.
Our goal: Reduce IT Cost in the new Branch openings.
This was realistic and very achievable.
Time-related
All projects have to have an end, this is important not only by procedure but for the people, the relief that the human brain feels after a project has been completed is very pleasant. Projects have to have a time bound in order to limit the scope, the actions and the number of the performed tasks. In our case, the old process for the new branches opening didn’t have any time bound, the result was that every opening was taking up to 25 day to complete, I was really surprised when I saw this information, it was too much time for a single branch. The costs reduction goal implied also to reduce the time spent in these new branches IT setup. So, we had to go from 25 days to 5 days to complete the IT infrastructure, from 0 to 100% of the IT network wiring, computers, setup, internet service, printers and scanners setup, testing and finally release it. By the end of the year, we were able to complete the projects in 4 days as an average. We broke our own goal.!
The final goal was reached out: Reduce the cost of the new branches opening from USD 25,000 to USD 7,000 USD.
This was a big achievement, we reduced the project cost up to 78% of the original budget. Other benefits of this SMART project was the network standardization, processes standardization, 5Ss implementation, cost control, suppliers development. The other aside benefit from this project was the reduction of the service desk tickets from these new branches, they were reduced almost 90%, this mean, we came from 100 tickets to just 10 in a year (tickets related to the network performance, cameras or any other device installed for the branch opening).
To summarize, the process was done as follows:
1. Determine your SMART project.
2. Apply 5Ss to the current process.
3. Make the process lean.
4. Train your team
5. Standardize the processes, computers, network and all devices to have just one brand across all the branches.
6. Have external suppliers.
7. Develop/train your suppliers.
8. Execute.
Final outcomes:
1. Cost reduction from 25,000 to 7,000 USD
2. Reduce service desk tickets 90% per new branch
3. Reduce work schedule for the IT Infrastructure from 25 to 4 days.
4. Standardize the IT process
5. Reduce stress for the IT team
6. Reduce complains from branches
7. Increase the IT team engagement with their own growth.
8. Created meaningful tasks for IT
9. Internal customers were happier now
10. Final customers were happy receiving better services every time they visited these branches.
Now, changes were made using several tools to achieve the goal in 4 days. Some of them were easily accepted, some others were not accepted in the first trial, but eventually they were adopted by the employees and some stakeholders. It is important to know and understand that SMART doesn’t come alone, actually, there is no project coming alone, we have to use different tools during the process, such as project management, change management, budgeting, 5Ss, Kaizen and several other tools that will support our projects in our companies, however, use the SMART approach can give you a good direction to achieve your project goal.
We all know IT plays a core role in companies now-a-days, however, few (except technological companies) fully understands the true of IT value to your business.
In the Digital era, IT became the cornerstone for the businesses. IT is so impactful that even other departments have had to add IT skills to their functional areas. IT used to be “easy” back in the eighties and ninethies, however, as technologies evolve we have to evolve too and leave some skills behind us to learn new ones.
These new skills are the red point for every IT professional. We are self-pressed to learn new technologies, new methodologies or even new soft-skills to “satisface the company requirements”. Believe me, its very stressful.
Since IT has to deal with current company technologies and at the same time work hard to upgrade them, the time constraining makes this job a very interesting challenge.
Allowing IT to have the time and resources to continuously improve the company’s technology is a valuable asset to strategically drive the business to the success.
Supporting IT migth be somehow overwhelming for non-IT people since is really difficult to understand the IT world and why we do what we do.
According to my experience, most of the non-IT directors/Chiefs fails to understand the IT needs and most of the IT Directors/Chiefs fails too to explain in plain words why IT requires such and such investments. Remember: If you can not explain it, you can not be trusted. This is a misunderstanding loop that has the parts trapped out in every company. IT evolves so fast, that by the time we understand AR, we now have Cloud Computing, then Blockchain, then AI, then Edge Computing, then bitcoins, and so on. That is why is really complex for non-IT people to catch all these new technologies.
Now, let’s to describe how IT adds value to your company.
Business Innovation.
IT is constantly changing around the world, the IT Management/Direction is the responsible to add innovation to the businesses to add value to the product or service provided by the company. Generate new solutions, requires time, effort and patience; our value stands in have the ability to use the current resources to create new solutions for the company challenges. We are usually dealing with the introduction of new products to the companies, changing processes, automate repetitive tasks, and, as a matter of a fact, attach new technological products (either hardware or software) to the current infrastructure sometimes requires a new envision of the IT perspective.
Integrates Technology.
IT has the beautiful challenge of integrate old and very old, then the oldest technology to the new, the newer and the newest technologies. Companies direction and management have the challenge to add these new technologies in order to increase their productivity and tools to compete against the world, however, we in IT must be particularly careful to select the new technology for our companies. We could fall into pitfalls that could have an important impact in the IT budget, company financial system and even open a hole in our cybersecurity system.
Lead Digital Transformation.
Digital Transformation is often driven by the IT department or any other IT related area, we have seen companies opening the Digital Transformation Department (or Manager/Director). IT develops and directs (too) the Digital evolution in companies. Leading Digital Transformation is one of these new waves where IT plays an important role, even if IT is not directly responsible for this change, we are usually a pillar in this important process.
Data Management and BI
As you know, data now-a-days is one of the most valuable assets for companies. Having data storage secured and remotely accessible for the employees so they can process it is an essential task. IT and the teams that surrounds it (Servicedesk, DBAs, Devs, NetAdmins, Cybersecurity Engineers, etc.) create the whole “ecosystem” to have the rest of the users able to browse their requested data and feel confident they are working under a safe environment.
Business Continuity.
Directors and CEOs are usually worried about the Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plans.
IT has to have a plan for it, if you don’t know how to build one, keep reading us, we will submit one article describing how to create one. (comming soon).
DRP and BCP works together to ensure the company can continue providing the product and/or service they sell, either by brick and mortar or online. So IT plays this important role too in this matter.
Reduce Operation Costs.
As an IT leader I have implemented several projects where the cost of the services or processes were significantly reduced. Software development processes, network infrastructure, telecommunications, ERPs, Voice services, Licensing, and a variety of products or services that have reduced the business operation costs.
As you can read, IT provides these and a lot of more value to your business, that is the reason why the smartest companies support their IT teams to a level where they can provide new solutions to complex requirements. As part of the business strategy, IT should become the driver in the innovation and technology support for the companies, creating a competitive advantage and increasing the company profits.
Is not a secret that 80% of interpersonal conflicts are related to a lack of communication or ineffective communication. Although we have a complete dictionary to learn new words, speak face to face, and even though we have emoticons nowadays, communication or effective communication is still a topic that we ignore every single minute of the day.
Working in IT is like working in Medicine, communication is a thing. Don’t you believe me?
Imagine a surgeon having wrong communication with their team by the time they are working in a patient surgery.
Try to ask ChatGPT something you believe is the right question and see what it says as a response.
Is not the same as asking ChatGPT: Hey, can you please create a picture of a guy fishing, than hey can you please create an image of a guy fishing. It seems the same, but they are different, they differ not only lexically, but semantically. A picture is not the same as an image, not at least for ChatGPT.
Well, the same happens with humans, as an IT Leader I have dealt with communication issues within my teams (and outside of them). I usually try to be clear and concise with my instructions, however, we always have room for improvements. The methodology I use to ensure effective and natural communication usually works fine, however, you can’t always control what the receptor listens, understands, and then interprets as instruction or information.
As Tony Nadal says in his TedEx Talk in one of his stories when an upset father approached to him after watching a disastrous game his son did in the tennis court, ” is that what you are teaching to my son?”, then Tony replied, “No, that is what he learns, what I teach him is something totally different”.
In one of these family days, we went to dinner at Chillis and the waitress asked us for the dinning request, we told her our specific plates, for me, for my wife and for my kids, however, she messed up everything, ha!, mam, you writed down our dinner’s plates in your food order notepad. Why this communication failed then?
There is another similar story with one of the company managers, I asked him to provide me some data in Excel ( I was new at the company by that time), I created the Excel template and sent it out to him, that Excel had certain headers sorted with a very specific requirement. I also explained in the body of the email what and how I wanted it, columns and rows, guess what… yes, he sent me the columns as rows, and the rows as columns. I said, what? Why not just follow the instructions I gave? I even provided the template to avoid errors or interpretations. Why?
I can continue with examples and examples that I have seen thru my career, not only with me, but with a chain of emails where I was copied, people responding any other thing but not what they were asked for.
So, I believe, at this point you got the point, right.?
Well, let’s see what I do everytime I require to have a clear conversation with anyone outside my body.
Number one: Listen.
Yes, it sounds very basic for you, but, believe me, I have “seen” how people does not actively listen, they usually listen to reply, but not to understand. As a good friend of mine said, ” We have two ears to listen and one mouth to speak, however, we speak more than we listen”. One of my best bosses I have had in my career, said in a conversation with other peer after he requested important information to fix an urgent problem in the network, this was for me the most clever statement that I have ever heard:
“That is a good answer, for something I didn’t ask for.”
Effective communication is a vital skill that can help individuals build strong relationships, resolve conflicts, and achieve their goals. Try to not interrupt the other person while he/she speaks, that will give you the opportunity to get the full idea, data or information about the discussed topic. I always say to the people who interrupts me or someone else : ” Do not talk while I interrupt.!”
Pay attention to what others are telling you, be attentive and try to “listen slowly”, that will allow you to pass judgement and prejudices that might arise while others are speaking about a topic.
Number two: Write.
Yes, once you had carefully listened to your partner, start to write down the instructions or the important information from that conversation. For instance, if you are receiving direct instructions from your boss, you can type them in your computer or in your pocket notebook to make sure you got the right words in the right context.
If you are in a meeting, write down the most important words or direct instructions for you, for your team or for the company.
Writting is a tremendous tool we have to improve our communication and understanding of the conversation.
Number three: Repeat.
It might sound a little bit weird for someone but its actually a useful method for an effective communication. After you listened your interlocutor and take the important notes of the full and direct instruction, repeat is the confirmation of what you listened and wrote down in your note pad. Repeat is so powerful not only by the fact that you actually are telling your partner that you paid attention, but by the fact he or she feels safe after hear you to get the clear instruction or data and he/she will not longer have to worry about the outcomes after your conversation with him/her. Repeat helps you to understand the information you are receiving. You can also use silence frames to allow the other interlocutor to process the information that is getting back from you.
Number Four: Confirm.
After you repeated what you wrote in your note pad, your interlocutor should confirm what you wrote and confirm is actually the rigth process to validate the instruction or data they provided in the conversation.
Confirmation is also used in IT processes, handshake process, even a ping, requires a pong (return back the ping, as acknowledge).
Servers, routers, switches, etc, all of them uses the confirmation to validate an effective communication.
So, going back to the human communication, confirmation is the last but not the least step to have an effective communication within your teams, family, company, department, peers, etc.
Final thoughts, all these 4 steps work for people around the world, you can use it with your peers at Japan if you are from the US, you can use it for your suppliers in Mexico if you are in Canada or India, or Europe and viceversa.
I honestly hope you find this article a good piece of piece of advice and tool to improve your communication with whom you interact every day, and remember, you must stay open to feedback, even if you do not agree with it.
There are several reasons why people give up on their day to day challenges. Now-a-days the world runs in a fast pace, and not everyone has the tool set to succesfully face these challenges. Believe it or not, our digital life is demanding more and more of our time and energy, and for some people this is just unaffordable. Have a guidance to “Keep Calm and Carry On” is important to achieve your happiness, whatever this means for you. During a conversation with one of the MBA professors, he asked me to write my top ten advices to someone who is not resilient or has not developed the resiliency as a method of reduce the stress in our Digital Era. I thought it was a good idea to make this list, so I created these bits of advice, and hopefully, you can use it to improve your resilience.
Disclaimer: The following advices have not been proven by any scientist, those are just based in my own and meandering experience.
I will spend these advices:
1.- Embrace challenges.
Challenges will be there even if you ignore them, in fact, if they are ignored, they will be bigger every time. As Eckhart Tolle said: ” Accept the place your are, the situation you are and embrace it”. Embrace your situation, accept it and resolve it. One by One, from the easiest to the hardest.
2.- Laissez-Faire.
There will be events in your life where you can’t do anything about it, just “let it go”, and carry on.
3.- Don’t take too much responsibility.
You can try to fix the world, the country, the state, the county, the city, the neighbourhood or your entire family, however, in the end, the only person you are responsible to fix is you. You are not supposed to fix the world, fix yourself and select your battles.
4.- Be assertive.
Say the correct things to the right person, right in the moment it is happening.
5.-Accept your failures.
Accepting your failures will provide you the opportunity to make a better approach to the problems you need to resolve.
6.- Fix disagreements asap.
I have had experiences where people had some misconception of myself, usually, due to 3rd party comments. The times I didn’t clarify these misconceptions the relationships were broken and unable to fix them. On the other hand, those where I spoke and clarified disagreements, ended up as a very good friendship.
7.- Listen music,
Listen relaxed music, or high energy music, that makes you feel better, happier and relaxed.
8.- Achieve small goals every day.
From making your bed to complete your project milestones, complete small achievements every day will provide you self-confidence and it will give you more resilience to the difficult moments. Set a goal, work in steps to achieve the goal, as I was told once:” How an ant eats and elephant?, bite by bite!”
9.- Make exercise.
Exercise your body will allow you to “think in nothing”, this will be a time to rest your mind and clarify it, then you will get the ability to find the best solutions to your concerns. If possible, go to parks, run along the river banks, or in a forrest, any place where you can breath fresh air and see the green trees, chipmunks, squirrels or birds chirping.
10.- Get away:
from people, places, things that over-stress you. Pace of mind is a key to be resilient.
Bonus Track:
Uninstall your social networks apps, these are stealing your precious time, which is unrecoverable. Most of the time, these do not provide you with the full reality of the world, they are just a portion of what others want you to see, and that creates a distorted vision of your reality since you tend to compare yourself with these buddies, who, usually are not living the life they show in their social networks.
Cloud computing is a game changer in our digital era, it has changed the way we process, access and store our information. Cloud Computing has allowed us to have access to the data anywhere in the world on line and without investing a high amount of money in hardware and software. But, hey, we have to deal with some other tricks the cloud has. Lets to dig in about these limitations before we can get into the title of this article. Cloud computing has a lot of benefits, however it has some opportunity areas, were we can improve its powerful services, here some of them: bandwidth, privacy, security, and, latency (yes, its always latency). That’s where edge computing comes in.
Ok, now, what is Edge Computing?
The use of Edge Computing technology brings a new level to the Cloud, the process of the data is made inside the network demarcation, which makes it faster and more secure. Now-a-days the IoT devices are right in our homes just to the reach of our fingertips or voice commands, these devices perform its tasks locally without using the cloud to process data, that is called Edge Computing. This is very significant since reduces the data transfer and processing speed and obviously its response time, all of this, of course, compared to the Cloud performance.
Both, Cloud and Edge computing have opportunity areas where they can compliment each other with a distributed architecture to improve their performance, efficiency, and reduce the operation costs. Here are some of the good reasons (I would say the best reasons) to combine edge and cloud computing:
– Reduced latency:
Yes, latency, You and I again, face to face (I’m watching you). Edge computing can process data in real time without having to wait for the cloud. This can improve the user experience and enable new applications that require low latency, such as telematics, autonomous devices, AR, smart manufacturing, and several other high demanding automatic processes.
– Bandwidth:
Edge computing can filter and compress data before sending it to the cloud. This can reduce the network congestion and save bandwidth costs.
– Security:
Once processed, data can be ciphert from Edge (computing), then upload it to the cloud with a higher security transfer. Sensitive data such as patients names/diseases, companies’ calculations or salaries are protected from the continuous attempts to hijack the cloud servers.
– Reliability:
Edge computing can operate independently even when the cloud connection is unavailable or unreliable. This can ensure the continuity of critical services and applications.
What are some of the most complex challenges by combining these two technologies?
– Complexity and Deployment:
The more devices are in the Edge computing, the more complex becomes. Work on devices deployments under Edge Computing requires a lot of effort and patience, work, a well defined security framework and standardization.
– Standardization:
Most of the standardization is related to other industry areas but IT, however, standardization in IT plays a key role to improve response time in its services. By standardizing the processes, equipment and configurarion from these different platforms in all Edge computing ecosystem, the workload and complexity slides down significantly.
– Increased trade-offs:
Edge computing requires balancing between the benefits and costs of local processing versus cloud processing. This can depend on various factors, such as the type of application, the amount of data, the quality of service, and the available resources.To overcome these challenges, edge and cloud computing need to work together in a seamless and coordinated way.
– Orchestration:
Orchestration manages and coordinates the communication between the devives living in the same neighbor, this is an important task since keeps communication and interaction to the ecosystem. By having this interaction and coordination with all its peers in the network, orchestration can be used to discover new devices, provide automated configuration, health monitoring, updates and even load balancing the workload.
– Edge analytics:
This one of the best resources generated by Egde Computing. Data analytics enhances the devices’ ability to extract data and transform it to a meaningful data visualization through the cloud. This is helpful if you use Machine Learning, AI or any other technique to process data in real time or likely.
– Collaboration:
Edge Collaboration is the ability to communicate and support the network devices up to the cloud level. Some of the protocols used by Edge Computing are: MQTT, CoAP, HTTP/2, WebSockets, gRPC, or QUIC.
In the end, if we understand the capabilities of both technologies together, we could find advantages of both of them, to achieve important and sustainable goals in our companies, by supporting better performance, efficiency, security, reliability, scalability, flexibility, innovation, and value for our data-driven application.
Since social networks begun to shine in the digital world, marketing have played an important role in the sales and production requirements of external customers. These social media have increased the marketing empowerment in the businesses and the ability to create engagement to generate new customers who are willing to be part of the brand’s consumers.
The different merchandising trading channels in our digital world have evolved from brick and mortar to online sales, which is faster than any traditional channel. Concentrating on the whole sales channels is a challenge, not only from the technical perspective but from the marketing perspective. Consumers are always expecting to have good experiences every time they visit any physical/digital store or service provider. Having all those different channels not interconnected creates delays in sales, support and services, and of course, the lost of valuable customers.
Connecting the dots in the whole company’s product and/or services requires effort from different areas. However, the challenge for marketing is to understand and embrace the Digital Transformation processes. Align the company’s product/service goals and at the same time create a sense of personal brand engagement and adoption from customers is a real challenge, customers expects to fulfill their expectations from the product/service the company is selling throughout their different channels.
Marketing and Digital Transformation are a world in its own, they have the goal of redefining their sales channels, breaking of silos and achieve customer satisfaction. The symbiotic between Marketing and the Digital Transformation should be seen as a strategic element of the company’s growth and evolve to a Digitization, then Digitalization and finally achieve the Digital Transformation.
Both of them are important for businesses, their elements of impact within the organization drives the company towards growth and improvement of the product and services. The use of new tools to reach and engage customers to consume your business product/service such as cloud services, machine learning, blockchain, AR, AI and several other trends in the digital world can assist companies to achieve their goals easier and faster than some years ago if they are conducted within the company vision and mission.
As a final reflection, Marketing has an opportunity to grow and make companies grow and shine, and at the same time, companies must (yes I said must) empower their marketing department to support their requirements that are constantly evolving according to the new technological elements added day by day in our digitalized world.
