Archive for 2009

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IT Leaders Deal With The Three D’s: Death, Divorce, and Disease

Thursday, November 12th, 2009
Image Credit You Never Know Who's Going To Come Knocking For Your Team...

You Never Know Who's Going To Come Knocking For Your Team...

Bad things happen. Sometimes they are not all that bad – key employees leaving for example is bad, but not really all that “bad”. However, sometimes things really are bad: staff die or become seriously ill for long periods of time. What’s your plan for when this happens? What’s that, you don’t have a plan? You think that it’s the role of HR to take care of personal issues like this? Guess again…

Hey Pollyanna, Why Don’t We Ever Plan For The Worst?

You would think that since we work in an industry that has spent so much time trying to prepare our IT systems to deal with bad things, that at least some of this careful planning would have spilled over into how we manage our IT teams. You would be wrong. Just like little kids, IT Leaders for some unknown reason can’t imagine themselves or anyone on their staff dying (death), leaving (divorce), or getting seriously ill for a long time (disease).

One of the reasons that we never seem to get around to doing any proper succession planning is that we always seem to be too focused on the here and now. In order to plan for a future that has a different cast of characters in the IT department, IT Leaders need to sit down and do some serious thinking.

Why Bother Planning – Won’t Things Just Change Anyway?

Sure we all know that just like motherhood and apple pie IT team succession planning is a good thing to do. But do we really know ?WHY? it is a good thing to do? It turns out that there are two main reasons.

The first is the same problem that the U.S. faces with its 4-year presidential terms – continuity of leadership. Right now in your IT department you have plans that are asking for funding, you have plans that are underway, and hopefully you have plans that are just about to wrap up. If the firm loses key member(s) of the team or even you, then would these plans still complete successfully? Even if they did, would anyone have a clear idea of what to do next?

The second reason has to do with intellectual property. I speak from experience when I say that much of the value in any IT department is not in its written procedures or the code that lives on its servers, but rather what is in its employees heads. If you lose one of these staff members, the IP loss could be staggering if you don’t have a working succession plan in place.

What’s The Right Way To Do IT Department Succession Planning?

Gary Perman is an IT consultant who has spent a great deal of time creating IT succession plans. From his vantage point all IT succession plans have two key characteristics:

  • Simplicity: A succession plan has got to be easy to use. When an individual is no longer available to do a job, then it has to be clear who has been trained to step into their spot. Oh, and it also has to be clear who will take things over for that person.
  • More Than A Replacement Plan: A succession plan can’t just be a list of name. Instead it has to be a complete development plan that shows who is where in the skill development path that it is going to take in order to be ready to step into a particular role.

What All Of This Means To You

As an IT leader you’ve got to anticipate changes that will happen to your teams, including things happening to you. It is your responsibility to make sure that there is a plan in place to deal with the loss of any of your staff.

Since not everyone can do everyone else’s job, this means that you’ve got to create a succession plan and then you’ve got to publicize it. This is not a place for secrets. Once you publicize it, you’ve got to make it everyone’s responsibility to ensure that they are ready to step into the role(s) that they are slotted for.

You can help make this happen. Using techniques such as cross-training and job rotation will ensure that your staff will have an opportunity to develop all of the skills that they are going to need. Bad things happen, this doesn’t mean that you can’t be ready for them when they come.

Do you think that your department’s succession plan should be public knowledge?
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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Stop. I know that your normal day-to-day is crazy, you are overworked, underpaid and nobody really appreciates all of the fine things that you do. I get all that. My question for you is do you have any idea why you are doing what you are doing? What are you really working towards? If you don’t know, then perhaps now is the time to find out…

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The Answer Is 9, But Do You Know What The Question Is?

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

Image Credit
Your Technical Skills Aren't Going To Get You Your Next Promotion...

Your Technical Skills Aren't Going To Get You Your Next Promotion...

What is it going to take for you to get promoted? What set of skills as an IT Leader do you need to develop in order to have any chance at moving up to the next level? If you don’t know what you need to know, then how is that promotion going to happen?

It turns out that once upon a time that the oldest man in the IT department at my company sat me down and explained to me what it was going to take to move up in my IT department. Now I’ll pass that information on to you.

The Oldest Man In IT

Ah, the early days in your IT career. All you really needed to know was one programming language and maybe some database skills and you were off and running. Nowadays it seems like you’ve got to know three or four languages, at least a couple of database dialects, and one or two web-based frameworks to get your job done.

What I hadn’t realized in my youthful exuberance was that learning more languages, databases, or web skills was NOT what the company wanted me to do in order to be considered for my next management promotion. This is what Carl told me on that day that changed my career forever.

Carl was the oldest guy working in the company’s IT department. Nobody actually knew how long he had been there, but we all knew that it was longer than we had been on board. Carl’s cube had the most amazing collection of “stuff” from magnetic tapes stacked on the floor to punch cards left over from when the “big transition” had happened to online storage. Oh, and he had a lot of ashtrays from when you could still smoke at your desk – that’s how long he had been on board.

Life Lessons From Carl

Carl and I got along fantastically. I don’t think that I had any special qualities, it was probably just that I was less of a young jerk than everyone else. The fact that I could admit when I was wrong and ask for help probably went a long way also.

At any rate, after I had been in the same frontline programming job for a couple of years, I happened to be having lunch with Carl one day and I blurted out that I was unhappy with my job. I told him that after two years I thought that I deserved to be promoted and I couldn’t figure out why it hadn’t happened yet.

Carl, in his slow, easy going way, asked me what I was going to do about this. I told him that I was going to show the powers that be that I deserved to be promoted: I was going to sign up for every training course and get every technical certification that I could. Carl sorta smiled at me and said “You can do all that, but it’s not going to get you promoted.”

Just How Do You Get Promoted In IT?

Carl went on to explain to me that I was looking at the problem all wrong. He said that in IT as in all parts of a business, management really just does two things. Oh yeah, sometimes you’ll see exceptions to the rule in IT where managers will still be coding, but watch them: they probably won’t go far above their current position.

What Carl told me next is what has stuck with me for all of these years. He told me that in IT, just as in the rest of the company, mangers don’t actually do anything. That is, they don’t actually create things. Instead, the work that they do can be broken down into two separate tasks: they manage people and they manage budgets. If you understand this, he told me, you’ll be on your way to being promoted.

“Great, I don’t have experience doing any of that” I can remember telling him. Carl looked at me and said “Well then, there are nine things that you are going to have to learn before you can be promoted.” You can bet that I was reaching for a napkin to write down this golden advice. Here’s the list of things that I was going to have to learn to do that Carl shared with me:

  1. Understand your workforce
  2. Active listening
  3. How to be truly appreciative
  4. How to communicate clearly
  5. Use humor wisely
  6. Inspire a team
  7. Organization
  8. Time management
  9. Budget management

I can remember looking at that list somewhat in disbelief – I had none of these skills, how the heck was I going to prepare to be promoted?

What Does All Of This Mean For You?

Knowing what it takes to get promoted into the higher levels of IT management is, of course, only one part of the battle. I would argue that knowing what you need to learn is the first and the most important part of getting your next promotion.

You are not going to find all of the information that you need in one place. Sorry, going out and getting that MBA is not the silver bullet that will get you your next promotion.

What you are going to have to do is launch a multi-pronged strategy to acquire the skills that you need. Initial knowledge can be picked up by doing some reading; however, to really learn what you need to know, you are going to have to find ways to actually do the work in the real world before you get promoted.

Everything is possible, you just need to realize that even in IT, technical skills will only take you so far. Learning the skills that you need to become an IT leader is what is going to allow you to get to the next level in your career.

What single skill do you think that is a must have in order to get promoted in IT?

innovative?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Bad things happen. Sometimes they are not all that bad – key employees leaving for example is bad, but not really all that “bad”. However, sometimes things really are bad: staff die or become seriously ill for long periods of time. What’s your plan for when this happens? What’s that, you don’t have a plan? You think that it’s the role of HR to take care of personal issues like this? Guess again…

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Posted in promotion | 3 Comments »

It Takes A Village To Innovate Like An IT Department

Thursday, October 29th, 2009
Innovation In An IT Department Is Not Done Alone

Innovation In An IT Department Is Not Done Alone

So IT Leader, what are you going to do about boosting the innovation within your team? Your hands are tied when it comes to giving out raises – not that money really helps innovation. You don’t have any spots to offer promotions into because the company has adopted a “flat” organizational structure. Oh, and all of your workers are running around afraid that they might lose their jobs any day now. Good luck with making innovation happen here!

It’s All About Words

Sure we read about big “innovation generation” exercises that those fancy firms put on where they haul everyone out into the woods for a week and make them climb trees together until they agree to work together if only they’d be allowed to return home and eat normal food once again. It turns out that as an IT Leader, you can make innovation happen within your team by doing something much simpler (and less costly).

Innovation happens when the right person talks with the right person. As an IT Leader it’s your job to make this happen. This means that you’ve got to know both your team and the rest of the company. Since you know your staff, you know what their talents are. Using this information, you need to have them go out and talk with the other parts of the company where there are people with complementary talents.

Just Make A Decision Already!

If you want to kill innovation in your department, then the simplest thing that you can do is to make it hard to get permission to test a new idea. All too often the decision making processes that we have in place are legacy artifacts that are left over from days gone by.

If you take a look at just what it takes in order for a fresh idea to bubble to the surface and get permission to be tested, then you’ll know what needs to change. This process should have as little friction as possible and should be perceived as being easy to do.

Who’s In Charge Here?

When it’s time to come up with a new idea, the person that you appoint to run the show will be key to its success or failure. I’m just as guilty of this as anyone but we naturally tend to choose the best performers in one particular area to lead the team that is in charge of innovating. It turns out that this is the wrong decision.

What we should be doing is realizing that success in this area is going to really be more dependent on connections that the leader has with other parts of the company instead of any special technical skills that they may have. This means that we need to find those team members who are the best “hooked in” and let them lead the team.

Come Together, Right Now…

Where people sit and who they work side-by-side with is key to their ability to come up with innovative ideas. If you insist that your team members sit in the same location or if you resist transferring people to other departments to work on a project, then you’ll be acting as a roadblock to the very innovation that you are so desperately seeking.

Beware Energy Vampires

Hopefully it goes without staying that it’s much easier to work with positive people instead of negative people. This is something that you’ve got to watch out for and plan around very carefully.

It can be very easy to identify those people that will enable your team to make forward progress and those that will drain both their energy and enthusiasm. Once you know this, then you’ve got to work to keep your team away from the “energy vampires” so that they’ll remain highly productive.

Final Thoughts

Nobody ever said that being an IT Leader was going to be an easy job. One of your responsibilities is to make sure that your team is able to create and deliver innovative ideas. With little budget or other such levers, you’re going to have to get creative.

Knowing that innovation is often caused by having your staff interact with others, you need to make sure that such opportunities exist. Simplifying decision making and ensuring that novel ideas can be tested is a good way to foster innovation. Remember that in the end, an IT team that be innovative will have the ability to solve the greatest number of business problems.

What’s the one thing that holding you back from being more innovative?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental IT Leader Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

What is it going to take for you to get promoted? What set of skills as an IT Leader do you need to develop in order to have any chance at moving up to the next level? If you don’t know what you need to know, then how is that promotion going to happen?

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Posted in innovation | No Comments »

Is Your Body Secretly Sabotaging Your IT Job Interviews?

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

Don't Let Your Body Language Let The Interviewer See You As A Dog (c) - 2009

Don't Let Your Body Language Let The Interviewer See You As A Dog (c) - 2009

Times are tough all over and a lot of IT Leaders are out pounding the pavement looking for their next position. For some of you it may have been a long time since you last had to do an interview – you are much more used to being on the other side of the table doing the interviewing. Well guess what – no matter how well you prepare, your best efforts may be undone by what your body is secretly telling the interviewer…

Why They Didn’t Call You Back

I can’t even begin to tell you how many job interviews that I’ve gone on, left feeling good about how things turned out, and then sat by the phone waiting for them to call me back as eager as a dateless teenager the night before prom. Heck, I had half expected them to give me a call later in the same day that I had interviewed with them saying that I was the perfect candidate for the job and could I start working the next morning. Well that never happened.

Phyllis Korkki over at the New York Times has done some looking into why sometimes those jobs interviews that IT Leaders think that we’ve nailed end up going nowhere. If it is of any comfort, it turns out that we rarely screw-up an interview because of some huge social mistake such as showing up in shorts and a T-shirt. Nope, our problems are a lot more subtle than that…

How To Get Your Body To Behave During An Interview

Korkki has discovered that in a lot of cases what’s been going on is that we’ve been sending out the wrong signals to the interviewer. These signals are virtually invisible social errors or gaffs that can cause us to be rejected and someone else selected for the position.

“Tell me what I’m doing wrong, tell me what I’m doing wrong” I hear you saying. Sorry, it’s not nearly that easy. There is no checklist of social rules that you can follow in order to avoid making any of these mistakes. You already know the basics: always wear a suit no matter how casual the company’s culture may be – you’re not onboard yet so you still have to dress up, show up on time, be respectful to everyone that you meet, etc.

In order to get your body to actually help you get the job instead of actively working against you need to do two things. First, you’ve got to turn on your “spidy-sense” and make sure that you quickly pick up on the company’s culture.

This starts when you arrive – what does their lobby look like: grand and forbidding or cool and hip? The person who greets you first – what are they wearing, are they smiling, how fast are they moving, do they talk in long sentences or just quick bursts of words? As quickly as possible you’ve got to become a chameleon and match the environment that you find yourself in.

The second thing that you’ve got to do is get your darn body language under control. It turns out that this may be the most difficult thing to do – and the most important.

Just What Is Your Body Yelling To The Interviewer?

Yeah, yeah – you’ve done your research, you’ve got a sharp looking suit on, and your resume has been tweeked by four recent Nobel Prize in Literature winners. In the end it’s going to come down to what the interviewer “thinks” about you and that is something that you really can’t define. If you could crawl inside of your interviewer’s head, here’s what you might discover:

  • Confidence: They want somebody who is going to be confidant enough to get the job done without being so overconfidant that they’ll tick off everyone that they work with. How can they determine this? Well, your ability to get and maintain eye contact is one way. Too little and you’ll come across as lacking confidence, too much and you’ll be pegged as being overconfident.
  • Communication: IT Leaders are people who can clearly communicate their thoughts. In order to show that you are able to do this, you’re going to have to watch your words: how you enunciate, what words you use, and how you use them will all play a role. Clearly cursing is not going to win you any points here.
  • Control: You are going to how to show that you can control the job – that it doesn’t get the best of you. Since you’ve taken the time to research the company that you are interviewing with you should be able to map what you’ve done for other firms to what this company is looking for you to do. The key here is to be able to succinctly show how you’ve made a difference at the companys that you’ve worked at in the past.

Question, Question, Always Have A Question

What do you say when you get to that part of the interview when the interviewer starts to gather up their stuff, pauses for a moment, and then says in a casual, almost offhanded fashion, “do you have any questions?” There are two mistakes you can make here: the first is to not have any questions and the second is to ask the wrong type of question.

Not having a question is inexcusable. Look, there is no possible way that as an outsider you could fully understand how the company operates or just exactly what they are looking to potentially have you do.

The interviewer has taken a chunk out of their day to talk with you and you had better darn well show some appreciation by having something intelligent to ask them that shows that you’ve been paying attention.  Whatever you ask, make sure that it shows that you’ve researched the company and that you are looking for ways that you can make it even more successful if they do hire you.

The second mistake is almost as damaging: asking the wrong type of question. This can come in two different flavors. The first is the ultimate geek screw-up – asking a question that the interviewer has no possible way of knowing the answer to.

Things like “I noticed that you dividend payment was a week later than usual in the 3rd quarter of 1996, can you tell me why that was?” Great – now you’ve made the interviewer look stupid, that should go a long way in helping your chances at getting this job.

The other way that you can go wrong is to ask a question that is focused on you and not the company: how much would I make, how many vacation days would I get, etc. There will be time enough for these types of questions later on if they make you an offer.

Final Thoughts

In the end, a job interview is like an IT project. As an IT Leader you’ve got to convince the interviewer to support you and to do what you want them to do (offer you a job). If you’re going to have any hope of success here, then you’re going to have to get the non-verbal part of interviewing down cold.

This can be done, but it’s not easy. Practicing an interview with friends can be one of the most painful & awkward things that you’ve ever done, but at the same time it can be immensely rewarding. Good luck and make sure that your tie is tied correctly.

What do you think is the #1 social mistake that IT Leaders make when they are interviewing for a job?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental IT Leader Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

So IT Leader, what are you going to do about boosting the innovation within your team? Your hands are tied when it comes to giving out raises – not that money really helps innovation. You don’t have any spots to offer promotions into because the company has adopted a “flat” organizational structure. Oh, and all of your workers are running around afraid that they might lose their jobs any day now. Good luck with making innovation happen here!

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Posted in IT jobs | 2 Comments »

3 Reasons Innovation Doesn’t Happen In IT

Thursday, October 15th, 2009
Innovation In IT Is Hard To Do When There Are Roadblocks In Your Way

Innovation In IT Is Hard To Do When There Are Roadblocks In Your Way

Welcome to the world of overused buzz words! The star of the show these days is “innovation” – everyone wants it, everyone is talking about it, nobody really knows how to get it. IT Leaders find themselves in a situation where if they aren’t careful, they just might make one of three different mistakes that could prevent innovation from happening within their teams…

The Communication Problem

Researchers Rob Cross, Andrew Hargadon, Salvatore Parise, and Robert Thomas have looked into what kills innovation in a department. #1 on their list of culprits is our old friend poor communication.

IT Leaders already know that poor communication is a major problem. However, they may not realize just how much of an impact that it may be having on their attempts to foster innovation in their IT department.

The causes of poor communication can be varied: staff in different physical locations (even working on different floors of the same building can be a hindrance), an organizational structure that may prevent teams from talking to each other, or it could as simple as different IT Leaders being in competition with each other and not being willing to communicate.

The Roadblock Problem

It is my belief that in order to be an effective IT Leader it’s as much who you know as what you know. When it comes to fostering innovation in your IT team it turns out that the same is true.

Within an IT department there are often certain people who become experts about one or more parts of the IT shop. This in turn puts these people in a position of power. Other IT staff must seek them out in order to get the information that they need to do their jobs or to get permission to complete some task that impacts the area under the expert’s control.

Having IT experts is not a bad thing in of itself. However, when these experts are allowed to control the flow of new ideas problems start to arise. Often times these experts will have had experiences that will cloud the way that they see the world. This means that they may quash innovative IT ideas based on their personal experiences that would otherwise benefit the company.

The Insulated Staff Problem

As much as we like to brag about all of the workplace benefits that working in the 21st Century has brought about, our communication networks are still amazingly frail. When IT departments allow staff to remain insulated, innovation can flounder.

A great deal of time and effort goes into setting up the deals that allow IT operations and development to be outsourced to other firms. However, once those deals have been set up, the communication channels between the firms are often left in the hands of just a few people.

This means that any innovation that occurs at either firm will be hard pressed to make it through this narrow communication channel to the other firm. Additionally, if the person who is the conduit leaves the firm, then communication will be damaged or lost.

Final Thoughts

IT Leaders are responsible for fostering and growing innovation within their departments. This job is hard enough without the extra challenge of encountering additional roadblocks to innovation.

Having the ability to recognize the three most common obstacles to a successful innovation program are the first step in dealing with these challenges. Once an IT Leader recognizes that an innovation problem exists, then a solution can start to be crafted.

If you develop the ability to spot these three innovation blockers then you will have found a way to transform yourself from an IT manager into a true leader.

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental IT Leader Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Times are tough all over and a lot of IT Leaders are out pounding the pavement looking for their next position. For some of you it may have been a long time since you last had to do an interview – you are much more used to being on the other side of the table doing the interviewing. Well guess what – no matter how well you prepare, your best efforts may be undone by what your body is secretly telling the interviewer…

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in innovation | 1 Comment »

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