Wait -- you can have happy users?! Tips on how to improve relationships between the IT Dept and users

Treat your user’s time as the most valuable commodity in the business.

This is a problem I have observed in too many IT support staff: they forget that they are there to service the business. In most businesses, information technology is just a tool that people use to get their jobs done - like pens, like telephones, and so on. Noone cares where a pen comes from, or what it's made of, or how the ink-delivery mechanism is designed - they just need a pen to write things down. The sales person whose point-of-sale machine won't work is unable to do his job. The accountant whose laptop won't work is unable to do her job. The warehouse administrator whose stock system is glitching is unable to do their job. When these people call the IT Help Desk, it's because their work tool is broken. They're not trying to cause trouble, they're not trying to disrupt the IT support employee's day, they're just trying to do their job.

A help desk employee is there to fix those tools. That's the reason for their job. A developer is there to build those tools. That's the reason for their job. But the tools don't exist in a vacuum. They exist to support other people do their jobs, or even to perform work autonomously. Too often, I've seen IT people perceive their fellow employees as pesky "users", rather than the employees performing the company's productive business. The fanciest sales software in the world won't make a single dollar for the business until the sales person enters a customer's order into it.

In most businesses, the IT department is just the modern-day equivalent of a quartermaster or supply office: their primary purpose is to supply the tools that other people need to get work done. The tools have no value in and of themselves - only insofar as they help other people do work.

(Of course, there are exceptions, where information technology is the core product of a business - but most businesses don't sell information technology. They sell food or clothes or cars, or provide medical services or fix trucks or supply financial advice.)

I've seen too many IT workers who see themselves as more important than their colleagues on the front line. They forget that information technology is there to service the business, not the other way around. The tail does not get to tell the dog when and how to wag.