Tag Archives: mike sisco

Can you identify Mike Sisco?

Posted on May 13, 2011 | Leave a comment

I have an analytical challenge for you. Can you pick me out of the baseball team photo from my youth? Take a close look at the photo, decide, and answer the poll before you scroll down to see the answer.

1962 Lewis County Dixie Youth Baseball Team

Take a guess in the poll and we will see how many get it. Three clues follow to help you zone in on me. Click on the image for a closer view.

Three clues
First of all, , , a current photo of me is in the right-hand panel of this page, , , it should help you find me on the team photo. Surely, I haven’t changed that much in 49 years.

Got another surprise for you. My brother, Larry, who is 11 months younger than me is also in the team photo and there is one player sitting between us.

Need another tip? I’m wearing a baseball cap and Larry isn’t. This should give you the answer.

Make your best guess in the poll above before scrolling down to see the answer. I’m really interested to see how good your analytical skills are.

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I’ve had people stop me in an elevator, , , in the airport, , , and in a hotel and ask me if I was “Mike Sisco”. It usually catches me off guard until I learn they are headed to the same meeting as I am.

Got your answer submitted yet?

The answer is below, , , answer the poll before looking, , , no peeking!

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, , , , ,    here we go , , ,

The red arrow points to me and the blue arrow points to my brother, Larry. I was a little guy as you can see but made up for it by hustling and working harder than the bigger guys. Even my brother who is a year younger always seemed bigger than me.

Don’t wear glasses anymore, , , eye surgery took care of that nuisance.  Sorry for throwing you off track by mentioning the photo on the right-hand column, , , couldn’t help myself.  🙂

Larry is driving up from Florida to visit for a couple of days and thought he might enjoy this photo so I printed it and others I received from an old friend to give him. Terry Jones made these available and is the guy sitting between Larry and me.

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Hundreds of free IT Downloads at IT Business Edge

Posted on May 12, 2011 | 1 comment

Do you know about IT Business Edge (www.itbusinessedge.com)?

Have you seen their IT Downloads section?


If not, you are missing one of the best values and IT manager resources in our industry, , , hundreds of free IT tools and templates downloads.

Lots of informative tips, insights, and tools, , , and easy to find what you are looking for with a search. Search by keyword or browse through the Type or Topics lists. You can even see what the most popular downloads are and what people are downloading.

I have provided several downloads for ITBE’s site including the following:

  • Cost of Downtime Calculator
  • IT Initiatives Portfolio
  • Annual IT Accomplishments
  • Annual IT Survey
  • Client Rescue Guide
  • , , , and many more

IT Business Edge has been a great partner since 2004. This week, I agreed to work on a special project for them as they launch a new product to enhance the content on their site, , , look for an announcement soon.

ITBE is a free subscription and offers the IT manager community a significant amount of insight and tools to help you manage your business.

Check ITBE out at www.itbusinessedge.com.

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Clear your calendar and block out the time

Posted on May 11, 2011 | Leave a comment

You haven’t heard from me for a few days. It’s because I’m working on a major project and have been “heads down and in the weeds”.

Remember me suggesting you “have to block out time to focus on a major project”, , , like developing your budget, , , building a strategic plan, etc.?

Well, it’s no different for me. I have been trying to work on a big writing project for some time and haven’t been able to focus like I need to, , , so I cleared my calendar and have been focused like a laser beam for the past couple of weeks.

No travel, pulled back on my IT Manager Institute class schedule, , , and focused time and energy to the project work I need to work on. Guess what, I’m seeing some results.

The project is going well although slower than what I would like. Isn’t that always the case?

Look for my announcement in a few weeks to let you know what’s coming.

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Quarterly strategy meeting

Posted on April 23, 2011 | 1 comment

Every quarter Tom Mochal and I meet to discuss our two companies. Often, we have others join us who can contribute to the process. This time, Tom and his wife visited us at Camp Liberty and spent the night on the Buffalo River.

Tom and I prepare to meet at “The Point” above the Buffalo River

Our meetings are fairly short, but they mean a great deal to me for many reasons:

  • motivation
  • gaining insight from other viewpoints
  • additional analysis and feedback on my work
  • collaborative process

It’s important for you to collaborate your strategies with others and hear their feedback. It’s not always the feedback you want to hear, but you need to listen closely to what others think of your ideas. Honest opinion from those you trust is extremely valuable, , , and your strategies will be better because of it.

It’s also important for you to hear other strategies, especially if they have a similar business as in the case of Tom and me. Listening to other people’s strategies and ideas can be a great catalyst for your own thought process.

I can’t tell you how many times the light bulb has turned on in my head with a new idea when discussing something in these meetings. It happens at least once in every meeting.

Our 20 Minute IT Manager product concept was spawned in such a meeting way back in 2005. After developing the idea, Tom and I developed weekly training sessions for three years, , , 162 of them as a result. CLICK HERE for info.

In this weekend’s meeting, Tom and I decided to revive the 20 Minute IT Manager and develop more sessions for our audiences. You will see our announcement soon, , , we plan to begin releasing new sessions in June.

It was a great meeting with great friends, , , and I didn’t even charge them the standard Camp Liberty Hotel room rate. 🙂 🙂

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Start an employee training program in minutes

Posted on April 6, 2011 | Leave a comment

In my last post, I emphasized the need your IT people have in training and education, , , it is a key motivator for IT people and ranks as one of the top 3 reasons people say they stay with their company in surveys year after year.

How would you like to have the ability to customize your own training curriculum in minutes and make it available to your employees?

Tom Mochal and I spent three years developing weekly 20 Minute IT Manager (20MITM) training sessions to make a comprehensive training library available to IT managers.  There are 162 sessions in the series, each 20 minutes or less in length, , , an ideal time to focus on a specific topic.

Many of our clients host weekly training lunches or early morning training breakfasts for their team where they deliver a 20MITM session while everyone eats. At the end of the session, they discuss the training material and how it applies to their situation or what they can take from the session to improve their business.

The 20MITM sessions focus on 5 major categories that are important for IT organizations in any industry:

  • IT management
  • Project management
  • People management
  • Leadership
  • Personal development

In these categories, there are dozens of training classes that are appropriate for every IT employee to learn about, not just your IT managers. For instance, all your employees would benefit in learning about:

  • Problem solving techniques
  • Project roles
  • Simple project management tools
  • Fundamental status reporting
  • Dealing with an unhappy client
  • Effective communication tools
  • Understanding IT employee work behavior
  • Prioritizing your work
  • Coping with stress
  • Active listening is the key to effective communication

CLICK HERE to download and review the entire list of 162 sessions.

From such a large and diverse list of topics, you could create several training tracks for your staff, , , one for managers and supervisors, one for project managers, one for Help Desk staff, another for the programming support team, , , even one for your desktop technicians.

You could also put the training programs onto your Intranet and make them available for anyone in your company via the Enterprise license.

Create a specific program targeted to a group of people or make it available as needed in your company. The point is that you are making an investment in your people’s education and growing their professional skills, , , and this investment is valuable for your employees and your company.

Why is it valuable? Simple, , , one single tip or tool discussed in any one of the 20MITM sessions could be worth thousands of dollars to your company in cost savings, improving productivity, or avoiding a key risk.

Purchase individual licenses for $499.00 each or an Enterprise license for $2,000.00 that gives anyone in your company access to 162 online training sessions via your Intranet. It also gives you a great vehicle to develop teamwork and improve productivity of your IT organization.

CLICK HERE to learn more.

GET STARTED in minutes by ordering the complete 20MITM series, 162 sessions in all.

or

20 Minute IT Manager sessions are also available in single sessions at $9.99 each. Details are available at www.20minuteitmanager.com.

 

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Dinner at Moxie’s

Posted on March 31, 2011 | Leave a comment

The IT Manager Institute is highlighted with a class dinner toward the end of the program. In last week’s class we held the dinner the night of the last day. Everyone was very relaxed as you will see from the photos.

CLICK HERE or on the image above to take a look.

What a great time we had. All of our dinners have been fun and every one of them unique. This one was great fun and the photos prove it. Moxie’s turned out to be a super place and this group of Canadians made it all the more enjoyable.

There was some “jabbing” going on, but I always get the last jab, , , because I’m a professional when it comes to jabbing and having fun with people. See the dinner photo captions and you will see why I can say this.

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On the road again

Posted on March 24, 2011 | Leave a comment

Snow and travel have been a bit of a struggle for me lately. Last December I was stranded in the Amsterdam airport for 2 days on my way back from Tanzania.Yesterday as we pull into the Toronto, Canada airport an hour late, , , it was snowing hard. The good news is that my connecting flight was delayed so I had plenty of time to make it, , , plenty of time.

My flight to London, Ontario was held up for two hours due to the snow conditions. I finally reached my destination, but I must say I was getting a bit nervous hearing flight after flight getting cancelled over the PA system.

Today’s class was great. unusual in the sense that we started on a Thursday so I may have to check my calendar every morning to know what day it is. We will meet Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and next Monday. Will be here for 6 nights.

Right now, I’m sitting in the bar lounge and just finished off a nice meal and kicking back a bt after the first day.  Decided to create an ITLever Blog post so at least it looks like I’m doing something productive to those around me, , , and I guess I actually am.

The first day of a class is always the toughest, , , primarily because I have to get accustomed to standing up all day to present the material. Each day gets easier as I get used to the routine.

This class is great, , , they all know one another being from the same organization so there is some jabbing going on already, , , some of it is even directed my way.

I may need to warn them, , , I’m a skilled professional when it comes to jabbing others. Click on the photo above to see what I mean. The downside of being an “adept jabber” is that when you dish it out, you need to expect to get a lot of it back, , , all in good fun, though. 

I love this aspect of working with people. Being able to have fun with one another while working as IT managers is one of the best parts of the job. I no longer manage an IT organization so it is the part I probably miss the most from not working in a bigger company, , , the camaraderie you have with the people around you.

One of the things I point out in the IT Manager Institute class is a discussion about the personality tendencies of IT people. My reasearch shows that over 70% in IT are introverted, , , that basically means most of us are shy. I certainly fit into this elite group of people even though most don’t believe it when I tell them I’m a very shy person. It’s true.

In years past, there is no way I would venture to the bar lounge and have dinner alone. It was too uncomfortable. As I get older, I actually enjoy being where other people are, , , not to socialize with them mind you, , , but to be in an area where there are things going on as opposed to being secluded in my hotel room.

In class, I become much more social and outgoing just like I did when working as an IT manager and CIO. Changing who you are all day tires you out so when I went back to the room I called my wife and talked for a while and then took a quick 20-minute nap, , , something that happens after the first day of almost every class. It’s necessary to re-energize my batteries.

That’s something to ponder yourself. If after work you find yourself quickly falling asleep when you get home and sit down for the evening, , , it could be because you are changing who you truly are at work. It takes a lot of energy to be outgoing and social all day when that’s not who you truly are as a person.

For years, I was doing this unconsciously. It wasn’t until 1990 when I learned about work behavior profiles and personality types that I started to understand this. What I learned in using some tools for 8 years awakened me to things I never knew before, , , much of it was a better understanding of myself. My wife already knew these things intuitively, but it took me a very long time to understand.

London, Ontario is very pretty, albeit very, very white with snow right now.  WOW, , , it’s almost April and snow is everywhere. Two days ago it was 82 degrees in Columbia, Tennessee where we live.

It’s great that I don’t have to go outside since we are holding the class in the hotel where I’m staying, , , I like the 1-minute commute.

Day-2 is tomorrow and a day where I give all my students a little surprise. I hope they like it.

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Quick results from the IT Manager Institute

Posted on March 21, 2011 | Leave a comment

One of the things that gets me excited and encourages me to work even harder is when I receive a positive message from one of my IT Manager Institute students or someone who is using one of my IT manager tools.

The best messages are the ones that talk about the value they are getting from something they learned from me.

Kelly Reed attended my IT Manager Institute class a couple of weeks ago, our 44th program since delivering the first one in 2003. He is getting some quick results and that’s exactly what we like to hear.

Here is what Kelly told me yesterday in an email message:
“Just wanted to let you know that I received my IT Business Manager Certificate. Thanks again for everything, I feel like I have true purpose and direction now as I embrace my new role.

On a cost saving note, I am in negotiations with our company’s wireless provider. Looks like we are looking at a savings of $18,000 per year!  My CFO has been so impressed with what I am doing now (Cost Savings, IT Assessment and even how I am talking to her with less detail), she wants me to make sure I take your class again next year as a refresher!”

This is what it’s all about, , , helping IT managers of the world achieve more success. Thank you Kelly for sharing with me.

We receive hundreds of positive comments like this one every year and it always “makes my day” when I hear about someone achieving more success in their company. GREAT STUFF !!

In a few situations, I’ve actually had managers tell me on the last day of the IT Manager Institute class that they have talked to people in their company about something they learned in class and have already started to find some cost savings or beginning to use a new management tool.

Do you think a CFO or CEO notices this when you start focusing on the business value opportunities that exist in managing an IT organization, , , or finding ways to save money in your company without being told to look for it?

You bet they do, , , and as in Kelly’s case his CFO noticed a change almost immediately upon his return to their company. What’s even better is that his CFO told him about it and realizes the value of the company’s investment in Kelly’s IT manager training.

Let me say this again, , , POWERFUL STUFF  for both Kelly and his company!!

Here are a few quotes from our most recent IT Manager Institute class:

“The value of this material exceeded my expectations. The course was exceptional and I would recommend it for any current or future IT manager.” 
Greg Horton, Nashville, TN

“Best seminar and learning class I have taken. Wish I had this class many years ago. I plan to implement several things with my team in the next couple of weeks” 
Ken Schernekau, Atlanta, GA

“Mike, I want to thank you for your class and your real world experiences that you brought to the table.  It very much gave greater meaning to the material being taught.” 
Steven Payne, Charlotte, NC

“Mike presented information thoroughly on a level of great understanding. This material will assist me as I grow and hone my skills as a leader.”
Kamela Breeding, Atlanta, GA

“Fantastic! Hit all areas of IT and business, really opened my eyes. The material and tools are priceless! This experience has by far gone way above and beyond what I could have ever expected.” 
Kelly Reed, Couer d’Alene, ID

The IT Manager Institute is available in classroom and in an online self study format, , , same material including the ability to earn your IT Business Manager Certification (ITBMC).

Details at:   https://itlever.com/it-manager-institute/
Class photos at:  https://itlever.com/institute-photos/

helping IT managers of the world achieve more success


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Eagle watching this weekend

Posted on July 3, 2010 | Leave a comment

We are at our Camp Liberty for the 4th of July weekend and planning to have a super weekend. Will do some work around the camp today and get ready for the cookout tomorrow, , , then chill out and do some major relaxing late afternoon and evening.

It’s so peaceful on the river and we enjoy our times we can spend down here. We stumbled onto this property after looking for some river property in this area for more than 4 years. Our friends who have a camp up river say it is a “miracle camp that was meant to be Mike, Dorine, and Eddie’s”.

We have bald eagles on the river. We have seen a couple but it’s rare to see them. An impressive sight to see a bald eagle in flight or perched on top of one of the trees overlooking the river. I got the photo above last year.

Big cookout tomorrow with family and friends. It will be a small group, only about 15 of us. Nothing quite like a July the 4th cookout, , , means a lot to us in the states. I look forward to it every year.

Nothing really special planned, just grilled hamburgers and hotdogs, Dorine’s potato salad and baked beans, , , maybe a beverage or two or three, , , even some home made ice cream. Well, when I start listing it all, , , it is very special, especially when you throw in friends and family !!

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Dress for success

Posted on June 30, 2010 | Leave a comment

One of the things that helped me early in my career was advice and a gift from my manager at a small company. He simply gave me a book titled, Dress for Success by John T. Molloy and suggested I read it.

I had just come from IBM so it wasn’t like I didn’t know how to wear a nice suit in those days. I actually had some very nice suits, lots of white shirts (obviously), and some really great ties. I like nice ties, , , but my wife says I tend to buy ties that look the same all the time. I don’t really agree but I guess many of them do have a similar “power look” with some red in the tie. Oh well.

The point this CEO was making in giving me the book was that you need to be conscious of how you look in your professional life. To get ahead, senior management needs to see you as professional, polished, a good example and role model, , , especially when you are managing and leading other people. How you dress has some things to do with all of that.

It’s a misconception that IBM required you to wear a white shirt and pin-stripe suit. Not true, at least not so when I was with IBM in the late 70’s and early 80’s. However, most of us wore white shirts and conservative suits because it did not create any issues with our customers, , , it was just a cultural thing that “this is what we wear to work”. Pink, yellow, even blue shirts at the time were considered to cause some level of discussion so we avoided all of this by wearing a white shirt and conservative suit. No issue to get in our way of working with our client.

Today, dress is far more relaxed, , , and I love it. Many companies, even IBM has gone to “business casual” versus requiring you to wear a suit and tie. On the flip side, some companies are now going back to the suit and tie because they feel it makes their staff more professional and possibly the relaxed dress code has made the work a bit too relaxed, , , or they have lost some productivity.

Personally, I like the business casual code – nice trousers and a nice shirt (dress shirt or a polo golf shirt with collar), and a nice pair of shoes.

The challenge is that some of your employees are not as professional as they might need to be. If you want to maintain a professional atmosphere, especially important if your staff meets with clients, it is important that you set a positive example and reinforce appropriate dress in your company.

Senior management looks at you and inspects you every day:

  • How you dress
  • Are your shoes polished
  • Is your haircut nice and neat
  • How you handle yourself in meetings
  • What does your staff look like
  • etc., etc., etc.

Believe me, , , your senior management team is sizing you up a lot to determine if you are material for a bigger role at some point. Your image and how you present yourself day to day is an important part of their inventory of your work, , , not just the results you attain, , ,  so don’t limit yourself by being slack when it comes to putting yourself together in the morning.

Take advantage of the opportunity “dressing for success” gives you, , , we all need every advantage we can get to reach our full potential.

The book I mentioned, Dress for Success, has been written and revised many times, , , it continues to be a big seller. There is also a book for women, , , both can be found on Amazon.com.

One final comment. Many companies go with “casual day” on Fridays or the end of the work week where you can wear blue jeans and tennis shoes. I like these days too, but be sure you wear nice jeans and nice shoes, not raggedy jeans or dirty tennis shoes.

Even though it’s “casual Friday”, you are setting the tone with your staff and if you wear grubby jeans and shoes, , , they will take it a lot farther and before you know it the company needs to back off of their casual dress days because it doesn’t reflect a professional image with clients and one another.

Obviously, companies are different. Small start-up companies are often much more relaxed than larger financial institutions. Regardless of how lax your company is, I would recommend you always do your best to present a professional image, , , it is to your benefit in the long run.

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