There are heroes among us

Post by Michael Warden

Thank you!

Every day, we are presented with a unique opportunity - to help our customers to return to productivity.  Our customers - the faculty, staff and students of the University - are here to change the world.  Whether we replace a faulty keyboard, fix a bug in a web application, help them understand their educational mandatories or provision virtual infrastructure - we are helping them to either start or get back to work.  Their ability to change the world depends on our ability to keep them productive and in doing so I believe we are heroes.  We are doing something meaningful, something to take a great amount of pride in.  We are not exaggerating when we feel we make a direct difference in the quality of young doctors who are trained, the staff who serve the community, the discoveries that are made or the patients who are healed.

This section from our MSIS vision speaks to these opportunities:

MSIS is uniquely positioned to understand our customers’ needs.  We recognize that we play a key part of a much larger system of organizations and individuals.  Every day we help our customers to create, teach and use information.  As a result we learn more about our customers than anyone else and we influence the environment from this unique, well-informed perspective.  We can initiate projects that deliver value others haven’t recognized, and we know where we can help by learning from the services we provide.  We do this with a deliberate focus on who we are, what we do and exactly what value we deliver - striving to increase that value in tangible, meaningful ways.  

Every so often, our customers take the time to let us know how much of a difference we make.  It is right to recognize and celebrate them for taking the time to do so - I know it  has motivated me to put in extra effort or go the extra mile.  This quarter, MSIS once again had many instances of this act of recognition - 39 in total.  Specifically, we had the following activity in the Making a Difference award program:

Awards By Team	Number of Awards
AV Support	2
Barracuda BigEye	7
Barracuda SharpFin	3
Data Management Services	2
Database Administration	1
Instructional Design and Tech	1
MSIS Administration	3
Med Campus Support	2
NCRC Support	7
Performance Improvement and Management	1
Research IT	1
Service Desk	5
Services Delivery Administration	1
Software Delivery Administration	2
Strategy and Governance	1

I'd like to add to these specific congratulations my heartfelt appreciation for all everyone does here at MSIS.  You all help to make Michigan great, keep it up!