This week marks the start of the great Halloween retail surge. If you’ve ever been involved in a business selling party supplies or costumes, you know what I mean. My life as a CIO is far behind me now, as is the stress of those special seven days before Halloween, but I thought it’d be worthwhile to share a few things I learned along the way. Of course, this applies to any rabid peak-selling season, and the major foaming-at-the-mouth holiday season is the most rabid of them all.

I promise that if you are either the head of an IT group, or working with the IT group as a business user, these simple tips will make for a saner time for everyone.

Tip #1: If you haven’t already, it’s time to freeze all application development and maintenance. I still remember hearing of a story, not too long ago, of a company that implemented a new eCommerce platform in October or November. It did not scale up to volume quickly enough, and was pulled, and considered a failure.

Never mind that a Line of Business Executive spearheaded the implementation, rather than someone from IT. Sadly for us, it’s the CIO who has to be the bad guy in these situations, and just say no. This is a really crummy part of being a CIO, and likely contributed to people like me saying “Dang, I just don’t want to do this anymore. “ Still, until the day I left the job, I knew it was a big part of my responsibility — to be the one who understood the damage that could be done with even the best of intentions.

Brian Kilcourse often says that in his days as a CIO, “making system changes after mid-September would have been a fire-able offense. “ For me, the same was true.

Tip #2: Data security is the one thing excluded from Tip #1. Twenty-first century realities being what they are, we clearly have to continue monitoring the security of the enterprise during the holiday season and do whatever it takes to keep that enterprise secure; even if it irritates Line of Business executives or seems to be like you’re Crying Wolf.

Target started becoming aware that there might’ve been an intrusion early in the season. While on some level it made sense to avoid upsetting the apple cart, in hindsight we know they had an obligation to follow up on every warning, no matter how small it seemed.

Tip #3: Keep your staff fresh. You never know if you’re going to come up against a problem that takes days to fix. It’s all too tempting to say “Hey…we can get a lot of development work done during the holiday season. Let’s put our heads down and get everyone working hard on this new integration (or whatever project has been crying for attention). Then we can roll it out as soon as the holidays are over. “

I used to have a very specific rule: I limited the amount of hours I’d let my team work on major systems development, because I knew come implementation time, we’d all be missing more sleep than we’d like. I was even sort of begrudging about letting them go to work in stores. I felt they’d be better off honing their technology skills. I’ve changed my mind about that one. In fact, it has morphed into something very different. And that brings me to my last tip.

Tip #4: Make sure ALL your employees spend at least some time working in stores. I used to work for a Material Handling company, SDI Industries. I was their first computer person and had the chance to do some very cool things. It was the early days of warehouse automation, and I got in on the ground floor.

The CEO of the company, the legendary Don DeSanctis used to say, “In retail, everyone understands the business. Even the janitor understands why we do the things we do on any given day. “ That was back in the early 90’s, before the massive consolidation we’ve seen in the industry: when a $500 million retailer was considered big and Walmart was a $32 billion dollar behemoth, taking over small towns around the US. Times have changed a LOT.

Over the past decade, benchmark research of all sorts (including ours) show that retailers have become huge, and their departments siloed. Not only do the merchants not quite talk to supply chain folks, but eCommerce and Marketing personnel also dance to the beats of their own drummers. And still, a general complaint is that “IT doesn’t understand the business. “

[Side note: Guess what? A LOT of departments don’t understand the business anymore. I can remember asking the Chief Merchant of a decent-sized department store if he knew The economics of the box. He looked at me like I had nine heads. That’s scary. If you’re wondering, the economics of the box is the theoretical pro forma P&L of a single store in a retail chain. It helps investors understand just how big the chain has to get to achieve economies of scale to support home office and logistics activities.]

Well, the fastest way to solve that is to send your IT staff out to work in stores. Maybe that’s only where 88% of sales are consummated…but hey – that’s EIGHTY-EIGHT percent of sales. Watch the lines get long and deal with them. Watch store associates’ frustration as they try to wend their way through screens and prompts that seemed like a great idea back in the lab. Watch the look on the store manager’s face when an unplanned receipt shows up at 11:30 am on a Thursday. Talk to shoppers and observe their irritation when you can’t tell them where to find what they’re looking for.

These activities will change their (and your) thoughts on alerts, analytics, and empathetic design forever. And your employees will think of themselves less as IT people and more as retailers. I promise, they’ll be more effective for the experience.

As I re-read these four tips, I have vague worries that they’re too basic, too simple. I hope that’s true. But I suspect maybe not so much. It’s my sincerest wish that those of you still in the trenches take these tips to heart. You’ll have a way better career for it. If not, there’s always the Analyst afterlife.