A tale of Two LCD’s

I don’t have any evidence of this but I suspect that software developers were the first big market for the dual monitor configuration that became possible with Windows XP. Before I get a hundred emails about arcane OSs that supported two monitors already in 1972, let me acknowledge the few and brave who were around when those platforms were in vogue. You are acknowledged. And now I’ll move back to my story, which is when most of the rest of us were first exposed to the more-than-one-screen idea.

I was leading a small team, working at a vertical industry software/hardware supplier at the time. I only had three developers on my team so I requested three LCD’s from the IT department – one extra for each developer. This should have been a no-brainer; screens were cheap compared to just about any other upgrade. Everyone was psyched about the new monitors and for once it seemed I could afford something meaningful for every single person on the team.

Request denied. I could not have the monitors. There was no budget for monitors. The IT department had committed the hardware budget to our PC vendor so I could have new PC’s (even the ever-sought high-end laptops for me!) but not monitors. And if IT broke the rules for me, they would have to break the rules for everyone else, resulting in a huge budget problem. Read my lips: no new monitors.

But I did not need new PC’s. My team was fairly new and we had decent PC’s. I could not be bribed with a new laptop when the guys were expecting me to walk in like Santa Claus (fill in your gift-giving cultural fabrication of choice if you don’t believe in Santa) with a sack full of monitors. And anyway, I could not stand for spending more to get a lesser productivity impact. I needed monitors.

Escalating the situation only made things worse. It seems the IT manager had built up an impressive discount with the PC supplier by committing a higher and higher budget to them every year. And now he was unwilling to put that relationship on the table for some pesky developers. Losing even a tenth of a point of discount would mean tens of thousands of dollars. Case closed.

Sheer madness, I thought. How could they forget that the developers made the product that made the money that made the profits that made the budget happen to begin with? And weren’t the PC suppliers our vendor, to be toyed with just as our clients toyed with us? I went to the local superstore and walked out with 3 brand-spanking new monitors, for a total of about $500. The expense report was filed before lunchtime, which is about when the guys had their monitors in place, doubling their visual real estate and quadrupling productivity – or so I hoped.

It did not take long for IT to notice the new screens. Not a good scene. It seems the monitors would have to be removed because they were not official. They could not be insured because they lacked inventory stickers. They could not be supported because they were not from an authorized brand. They could not be properly depreciated because they were not purchased through the proper process. No problem I said… each of the developers got a small bonus and used it to buy a screen which is now his personal property. They each chose to keep their new screen to work. No depreciation, inventory, insurance or support would be needed. Thanks for asking.

Ultimately we did get to keep the monitors and I know I was right on this one, but there are subtleties to the story. This really was a special circumstance because few things will ever have the benefit provided by more screen space at such a low cost. And few things need as little support as a screen. The fact is that in a lot of cases, the IT guys would have been right. Most anything else that I would have wanted would have required them to configure and support new equipment, which means that my cavalier approach would have created real costs for someone else’s team.

What I regret the most however, is that I did not act more decisively. By dragging this out too long, I burnt some relationships with people who were just doing their jobs by telling me ‘no.’ I should have found a way to make them successful while making me successful rather than jousting with them like a toddler in a tantrum. After all, if getting the monitors was the right thing to do and it was that important to do it, I should have been able to get the company to make the right choice by making new rules, not breaking old ones.

Thanks for reading this Management Use Case. I'm the co-author of a new book on software development leadership entitled You.next() that features dozzens of other use cases for leadership. Please see more at www.youdotnext.com.