In this post, we will continue our discussion on effective communication skills and the role they play in our careers. This two-part blog entry is 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 [...]

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 [...]

This post is for individuals who are looking for ways to make change happen for themselves or others. In my experience, nothing fuels action to change more than a good reason.  If you want to energize yourself and/or others for change, especially difficult changes, spend significant effort indentifying the best and most compelling reasons for [...]

Database administrators are ultimately responsible for guaranteeing the quality of their organization’s database environments. From protecting against unauthorized access to providing 24×7 availability – “the buck stops at the DBA Unit.” Although the database infrastructure (DB binaries, O/S, hardware) doesn’t change much, there is one component that usually changes a lot – the application. This [...]

IT Managers face more change than most other management positions.  Thus, I suggest that making an effort to learn how to make change happen better and faster can be a big asset to IT Managers.  The best way I know to accomplish this is by learning to reduce or eliminate any/all resistance to change. On [...]