I had the opportunity (for a class) to interview Brad Barber a few months ago. Who’s Brad? You mean besides being former Guilford County Commissioner Mike Barber’s brother?
Well, read on…
Even though Brad Barber has to bury his head in technical journals, proposal papers and other information technology reports to stay informed about his company’s products and services, his job also entails communicating effectively with hundreds of people on a daily basis. As vice president of information systems at Laboratory Corporation of America (LabCorp) in Burlington, Barber has to maintain open communication with his 10 direct reports, 160 people in his department and 70 others whom he sets direction for.
When you have to communicate with that many people about such things as strategic information or a new work process, you have to rely on others to help move the message along. “More than 9,000 people sign on to our systems each day. It’s very difficult to accomplish distributing information to so many,” says Barber, who has to make sure not only LabCorp employees are informed about technical changes, but also he has to communicate those changes to customers such as physicians and lab workers who use LabCorp systems. Information is passed on through newsletters developed by the technical writing team. And when Barber has to write documents for the masses? “If Deborah (his assistant) doesn’t understand it, it doesn’t go out.” His writing can primarily be classified as persuasive and not academic and most has a standard format (reports and proposals) that he must conform to, some can exceed 30 pages.
Barber says he believes that you can’t overcommunicate. “We have to do a good job of staying on the same page.” One of the most telling examples of when he and his staff aren’t on the same page is when help desk calls increase because of a change the department has made. The information systems department received 2,000 help desk calls last month (September, ’04). As Barber tried to dig into the information to determine if those calls could be grouped into specific areas, he found that his team wasn’t getting summaries of the calls. “You have to go out and tell (support staff) to ask (users),” what the issues are, Barber says. “Then you have to verify what (users) want. You physically have to go places,” in order to see the problems and have a conversation about the solutions.
As vice president in a technical area for a $3 billion company, Barber says he has to do little public speaking, limited mostly to presentations to upper management and staff. He has to speak to a group at least once a month about strategy or new processes. He also speaks at regular planning meetings. Most of his day revolves around meetings where he participates and helps lead discussions, but he rarely has to prepare formal speeches or presentations.
The rewards, Barber says, include working with other intelligent people. He’s spent time working with Ph. D’s discussing molecular biology, been involved with entrepreneurs seeking ways to mass produce tests for diseases such as muscular dystrophy and talked with pioneers in the fields of genomics and diagnostic analysis. “It’s very thrilling to work with very intelligent people,” Barber says. “ If I’m lucky, some of it will rub off.”