One of my challenges at work is to effectively utilize a company that manages our internet servers. In an ideal world, if there is a problem at 3am, they take care of it so I don't every have to carry a pager. But the ideal world is far from reality.

A couple of incidents this weekend illustrate the difference in motivation vs. expertise.

The first incident -- I received a phone call that our IT company thought our servers were slow. My phone had been turned off, so by the time I got the message, they had already called down the escalation matrix to someone else and the problem appeared to go away on its own. But I felt bad that I had missed the call and started watching my email a little more carefully until I heard a series of new emails come in indicating another problem. I logged on to the server, noticed it was a real problem this time, then reset the server. I emailed the IT company; they had noticed it too, but it seemed intermittent to them.

Tomorrow, we have our regularly scheduled monthly meeting and I'm sure we'll talk more about monitoring and troubleshooting, but I really wonder if we can ever expect a consultant to have that same feeling--the cold sweat that breaks out when the pager goes off and the sense of urgency--that you need to get on that server and get things working again before you start getting emails, pagers alerts, and phone calls from the CEO. I hate that feeling, but as long as the buck stops with me, I feel like I have to have that mindset.

Our IT company has tons more experience than I do. But I have been on the operational front lines of internet technology for almost 13 years now and became very resourceful out of necessity. I'm an intuitive person and when I sense a problem, it usually is real. Contractors just look at the data and don't see anything conclusive.

Part of the challenge in working with a consultant is to give them the tools they need and the authority to do what is necessary...and we are still working on that. They don't know how to restart the application. They don't know how to tell if there is an application problem happening and to them, if the cpu and memory are ok and the web page loads, it is fine. So we fine tune things...but it is very bureaucratic feeling. They have a complicated escalation matrix and all sorts of rules to standardize their approach and allow them to support us through a 24x7 Network Operations Center. But I think I'll still be getting that call at 3am.

A second incident was an email our tech team received late Friday night from our lead consultant developer (different company). He had noticed a problem on our testing site from a new build he delivered Friday afternoon, logged in, figured out the problem, wrote a fix, and deployed the fix then emailed us all with the resolution. Wow. That's the kind of contractor I want!

Now not to take anything away from Mike's technical ability--he is great--but what he did was so much better than just being an expert. He cared enough to anticipate that his help would be needed. He was motivated.

I think for a startup...and I hesitate to say this because it digs my own grave...the idea of outsourcing IT operations is not best for the company. If we are going to host a 24x7 service that is revenue generating, we need a person who not only sweats bullets when the pager goes off, but leaps into action to solve the problem and then figures out how to make sure it never happens again. We can't have monthly status checks and problems that go on for 60 minutes or more while someone calls down the chain of command to find someone who can do something.

On the other hand, our experience with our software developer consultants illustrates that it is possible to create that working relationship where motivation and pride pushes someone who is not a direct employee to go the extra mile. It is not too much to ask or expect. But I still have to figure out how to ask it effectively.