Special thanks to Roy Atkinson (Twitter @RoyAtkinson) for helping to create this post.
ITMinefield is the Twitter name of Leslie Knight, oldest child of Larry F. and Joan, sister to Larry G. and David, sister-in-law to Michelle and Karen, aunt to Mitchel, Meredith and Nicki and companion to Precious (the 4-legged friend).
Leslie grew up during the height of the feminist movement and was somewhat influenced by it but—like Margaret Thatcher—feels she owes more of her success to her parents and God than she does to the feminists. She enjoyed a variety of sports growing up and now enjoys golf (she has a 10 handicap).
As a teenager, Leslie showed a strong aptitude for math (except for principal and interest problems; she never really got those), logic and related disciplines, though Computer Science was not a degree program in most schools (yes…she really is that old…but very well preserved). While she didn’t know she would be working with computers, she knew she would be working closely with men as a respected peer.
Upon finishing with a degree in Math and Computer Science (fell in love with computers her freshman year), she started working with Amoco, Inc. (later absorbed by British Petroleum) as a systems programmer, reading hex dumps, writing operating system level code in Assembler and telling IBM how to fix their code. Those were heady days…being 20 something and responsible for the entire mainframe complex of a multinational company. The men she worked with were old enough to be her father and respected her skills…she was doing what she knew she would be doing as a teenager.
If you Google her name, you’ll find several papers Leslie and professors co-authored on the subjects of genetic algorithms and NP-complete problems which are published in prestigious journals.
By this time, you may have correctly guessed that she was and is a geek or a nerd (holds a Masters in CompSci)…but she is one who talks to her clients in their own language.
Sometime during her career, the best supervisor possible came into her life, Keith Ruter. This was true though neither of them knew it at the time and both were dreading the prospect. He took the young systems programmer and let her know there was more to her than technical skills and she could use those other skills to go much farther. It was during these years that her leadership skills were further honed and came to the forefront. Leslie says of Ruter, “Wow! What a mentor and a friend. I still owe you a lot, Keith. My teams know dynamite comes in small packages. Keith took the dynamite and turned it into a shaped charge.”
Leslie Knight later accepted a position with Gartner (www.gartner.com) working with clients to define their total cost of ownership (TCO) of computing. She advocated on behalf of the CIO and IT Department to the CEO and CFO. Her analysis often resulted in savings and the realization that spending on IT was not adequate to support the business strategy.
That brings us to the present. For the last few years, she has been the “sorcerer’s apprentice,” working with mentors to develop new skills and taking skills developed in IT beyond the IT arena. She is emerging from that phase as a trusted advisor to small business owners, in areas strategy development and execution, team development, leadership and operations management.
So what prompted her first book, Navigating the I.T. Minefield – Straight Talk for the Small Enterprise? Well, she was tired of walking into small businesses and seeing the malpractice that has been foisted upon them: lack of basic processes, documentation and practices. “I want business owners to be able to make informed decisions about IT and hold their service providers accountable. I want IT service providers to treat small businesses with the same care as a large business.”
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