As we all know, effective verbal and written communication is critical to the success of any business activity. The more complex the activity or the more coordination that is required to complete a given task, the more important effective communications becomes. There are very few tasks in the DBA profession that don’t require some level of coordination between DBAs, other support units, and end users. No matter how well you execute the technical activities required to complete the administrative task, if you don’t efficiently coordinate and communicate with others, bad things usually happen.
I use change management as a simple example. Oracle states that 90% of all database failures can be attributed to human error. Poor communication is certainly one of the problems that we can categorize as a human error. The last thing you want to hear from an operator when you are requesting the restoration of a tape backup to a different disk is, “I thought you wanted me to restore the files in their original location – not to that spare disk. I think I just overlaid your prod database…”
Remote DBA Experts provides remote database administration services to organizations across the globe. We perform 100% of our administrative activities to customers that we rarely see in person. We have become experts at effective verbal and written communications. So, let’s talk about communication skills and the important role they play in our careers.
This two-part blog entry will be a somewhat lighthearted look at my own life’s lessons on effective communications (or lack thereof). In future posts, we’ll look at different mechanisms we can use to communicate and coordinate more effectively with others. We’ll also learn how we can use effective communications to keep our customer base happy.
It used to be that you could get by with a total lack of interpersonal skills in our profession. Well those days are long gone. If you want to succeed, you’ll need to learn how to communicate effectively and play well with others. These posts contain a few pearls of wisdom, and a story or two, to help you become a well-rounded technician that is on the fast track to a successful career.
The DBA’s Evolving Role
You have read numerous articles on the changing role of the DBA. How the various database vendors are making their products so easy to administer that, sooner or later, DBAs will no longer be required to be expert technicians (or be required at all). If you have been reading this blog, you’ll know that I totally disagree. It is my opinion that database administrators will always need to be just as technically proficient as they had to be in the past. I will agree that database environments are becoming easier to administer. Oracle Grid Control allows us to administer, monitor, tune and troubleshoot an Oracle database without having to go as deep technically as we had to in the past. Although, we won’t have to know as much about the internals as we used to, our skill sets will become much broader in scope.
The database engine is taking on a much more strategic role in most organizations. It provides the mechanism to store physical data along with business rules and executable business logic. The entire application environment (data storage, business rule enforcement, application program storage, communication, system monitoring) is now controlled by the database. Over time, the database engine will store more information related to the understanding of the business, the meaning of the data stored (metadata), and the mechanisms to control and track versions of the database, access programs and related software. As the database’s area of influence expands, so does the DBA’s. Can any one of us predict what IBM, Oracle and Microsoft have up their sleeves in their next “latest and greatest” release? Not me. But THAT is what makes this job exciting. Our area of technical influence will be expanding, not contracting.
The Importance of Soft Skills
Now that I have expressed my opinion on the expanding role of the DBA, let’s talk about the importance of soft skills. Before we begin, I define soft skills as the ability to communicate in both written and verbal forms and the ability to interact with fellow employees in a positive manner. In the past, a technician’s lack of interpersonal skills was often overlooked. The more technically proficient the technician was, the more leeway he or she was given. Let me provide you with a couple of quick examples.
When I first started in this profession, I attended a meeting at a large financial institution that included some pretty high-level representatives from both the business and technical areas. One of the technicians that attended the meeting was a mainframe operating system support technician. The guy was well known to be very good at his job and as nasty a person as you would want to meet. The meeting started and it quickly became apparent that most of the issues being discussed would be about business processes. The O/S expert slammed his pen and pad down on the table and declared, “It looks like this is going to be a waste of my time. I have work to do. Call another meeting with me when you need technical advice.” He then promptly walked out. Being a junior level programmer, I was in awe. I asked my boss after the meeting who he was. He stated “one of our mainframe gurus, don’t act like he does until you get as good as he is.”
A dozen years later, I saw a technician raise his hand at an enterprise-wide IT meeting when the CIO asked (rhetorically I think), who was the most important person in the organization. I think the CIO thought the answer would be “the CEO.” The techie who raised his hand said “I am.” I think every manager attending that meeting shrunk down in his or her seat. When the CIO asked him why, he stated, “When my computers go down, all business stops.” At a previous job, I had a 20-minute conversation with a UNIX admin who never bothered to turn around from her screen to look at me.
Although my examples may be over the top, they show you the mindset that often plagues our profession. As the years have gone by, I have migrated from DBA to DBA Unit Manager and now DBA Operations Manager. I have seen too many excellent technicians end up with a mediocre career because they achieved a reputation for “not playing well with others.” I talk from experience. If you want to excel as a technician, you will need to be technical, but you will also need to work well with others.
Next week, in the conclusion of this two-part blog entry, we’ll continue our discussion on the importance of communication in achieving customer happiness with more words of wisdom and personal experiences.
Thanks for Reading,
Chris Foot
Oracle Ace
Director Of Service Delivery
