Posts Tagged ‘information technology’

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6 Management Suggestions To Help IT Leaders In Tough Times

Thursday, May 21st, 2009
Tough Times Call For Solid IT Leadership Skills

Tough Times Call For Solid IT Leadership Skills

Can it get any worse than it already is? Does anyone see a light at the end of the tunnel yet? Times are tough all over, and being an IT Leader right now is just about the toughest job out there. It would be all too easy to tuck your head down, turn off the lights, and not talk to anyone until this is all over. However, you are an IT Leader and you can’t do that.

In these tough times you need to overcome your base instincts and do what good managers should do – lead. As a reminder of just what that really means in these tough times, here are six things that you should be doing right now:

  1. Treat your employees as responsible adults. Yes, sometimes in these dark days they don’t seem to act that way, but they are. This means that you can’t boss them around or soothe their fears with made up half truths.
  2. Reach out. This means that tough times call for you to reach out beyond your normal contact groups and have more fingers that go deeper into the company. This is the only way that you are going to be able to discover what is REALLY going on. This is the information that you’re going to need to be able to communicate to your team.
  3. Practice emotional intelligence. It’s true that your team will perform better even under all of this fear and doubt if they believe that you really do understand and respect them. This means providing opportunities for everyone’s opinions to be heard.
  4. Be Fair: Tough times won’t last  forever and you’re going to need your team to stick around when they no longer have to. This means that when you have to do distasteful tasks like layoffs, you need to be open and honest about why certain decisions were made. Everyone may not agree with you, but at least they’ll understand why you did what you did.
  5. Open The Door Wider. Allow your employees to being more of themselves to work. Time are tough and you are going to be asking more from your remaining staff, you need to make it easier for them to balance all parts of their life.
  6. Enjoy Your Job: It is critical that you find some part of your job that brings you joy and happiness. Even in these tough times, you need to let others know that this one thing makes you very happy. Your enthusiasm will be noticed and it’s catching – you’ll bring everyone’s mood up.

How many of these six management actions are you currently doing? Are they being successful? Do you disagree with anything that’s on my list? Did I leave anything off? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Posted in management | 1 Comment »

Networking 101 For IT Leaders

Thursday, May 14th, 2009

Even IT Leaders Need To Work At Developing Their Professional Networks

Even IT Leaders Need To Work At Developing Their Professional Networks

I don’t care if you’re the best IT Leader this world has ever known, you may still find yourself without a job sometime – especially in this economy. It’s at this point that you will want to rely on the contacts which you have made during your current employment.

However, despite the fact that most of us have access to reliable broadband from sites like http://www.o2.co.uk/broadband/, along with smartphone technology – which should make networking easier than ever – many of us have become complacent about doing so. It always seems to be something that we’re just too busy to do.

Yeah, yeah we all know that we should have been networking like crazy all along; however, the sad truth is that all too often we neglect this career responsibility until it’s too late and we’re out on the street. What’s an IT leader to do then?

I’m sure that even the worst networkers among you have a stack of other people’s business cards somewhere. The sad truth is that every day our networks get just a bit more out of date. If you were to go through your current list of contacts, how many of those do you think would have moved on to new jobs and phone numbers / email addresses?

The reality of modern IT Leader life is that you always have to be ready to move on. You may not see the end of your current job coming; however, when it comes you need to make sure that it is no surprise to you. The new career rule is that you always have to be ready to move at a moment’s notice.

So how do you jump start a professional network that you’ve allowed to grow old? The first step is to find the people who WERE in your network. There are many different ways to do this:

  • Email them (often there may be an auto reply with their new email address)
  • Use the Internet to search for them – this is when it’s great to have contacts with unusually spelled names!
  • Ask coworkers to reconnect you to people that they’ve stayed in touch with better than you.

Need I mention online professional social networks like LinkedIn and Plaxo? These days everyone seems to be using these and one of the nice benefits is that once you connect to them, you’ll be able to reach them even if they change jobs.

There’s more, but we’ll talk about that next time…

Is your professional network up-to-date? How much time do you spend working on it each week? Have you ever had to use it? Did it work out for you? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Posted in career | 1 Comment »

Whoops – You’ve Been Reorganized IT Leader!

Thursday, May 7th, 2009
IT Leaders Need To Take Action When A Reorganization Occurs

IT Leaders Need To Take Action When A Reorganization Occurs

So there you are, doing a great job of being the best IT Leader that you can be and all of a sudden, everything changes around you. You’ve been reorganized!

In a recession (like we are in now), reorganizations are common either before or after a layoff. Just when you though that you knew what you were supposed to be doing and what everyone else was supposed to be doing, the music plays and everything is different.

When a reorganization occurs, the worst thing that you can do is nothing. You’ve got to realize that it’s almost like starting to play a game all over again. You’re going to have to quickly adapt to this new world and as you’re doing this you are going to have to take a long hard look at the future of your job.

Eileen Gunn over at the Wall Street Journal has taken a look at what we’re supposed to do when a reorganization happens to us. She’s got some tips that just might help us out:

  • First Meetings Count: Just like a first impression, your first meeting after a reorganization can be critical. This is a time for you to be bold – ask the questions that everyone else is thinking. However be careful, your new management may not have all the answers. Don’t drill them too hard if they start grasping for answers.
  • Look Inside: This is probably the best time ever for you to sit down with yourself and do an inventory of what you bring to the new world order. You need to make sure that your skills match what your boss is looking for – if they don’t, then you are going to have to change.
  • Meet The Big Guy / Gal: If the reorganization has resulted in you having a new boss, then  you’re going to want to have some one-on-one face time with them as quickly as possible. Basically, you’re going to have to interview for your job even if they don’t ask you to do so. You need to show them what you can bring to the table so that they will know what you are capable of.
  • Deal With It: You may not be happy with the new world order that has resulted after a reorganization; however, you don’t run the world (yet). The quicker you get over feeling this way and become a valued contributor once again, the more secure your job and career will be.

Reorganizations happen for a variety of reasons and they always seem to come at the worst time – just when we almost had everything figured out. They are a part of life and these suggestions can give us the tools that we need to turn these changes from pitfalls into opportunities.

Have you been through a reorganization lately? How did you feel about where you ended up after the dust had settled? Did you change your behavior starting with the first meeting? Have you met with your new boss yet? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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How IT Leaders Can Grow Good Ideas

Thursday, April 30th, 2009
IT Leaders Need Practical Ways To Grow Innovative Ideas Within Their Departments

IT Leaders Need Practical Ways To Grow Innovative Ideas Within Their Departments

Innovation, innovation, innovation. Everyone seems to be talking about it, but nobody seems to have any clear guidance for IT Leaders when it comes to telling them HOW to grow good ideas within their IT departments. Well we’re going to change that starting right now.

Dr. Jan van den-Ende and Bob Kijuit have spent some time thinking about this problem and they’ve got some suggestions for us. The problem that they’ve been doing research on is just how to come up with systems that will allow IT departments to nurture GOOD ideas while at the same time getting rid of BAD ideas.

In a nutshell, what they have found is that if you can come up with a way to tap into the input of many people early on in the idea process, then you can make sure that the good ideas make it all the way to the top.

In most companies, new ideas are often collected via some form of  the old fashion “suggestion box”. Using this method, literally thousands of ideas can be submitted in a company of medium size if you have an enthusiastic work force. The problem that this causes is that then someone has to review all of those suggestions and identify the worthy ones. Good luck with that!

What the research has found is that if people take the time to discuss their ideas with colleagues then this helps out a lot. These discussions can help further refine the idea in terms of technical issues or market feasibility. If the idea is really a stinker, then it will cause it to be quickly discarded.

The researchers have also discovered two additional things:

  • if ideas are discussed with colleagues who work outside of the submitter’s department instead of colleagues inside his department, then there was a better chance of the idea eventually being accepted.
  • if ideas were discussed with friends and trusted colleagues then once again the idea had a better chance of eventually being accepted.

The reason for these higher acceptance rates is probably because both close friends and outsiders can give the most frank feedback.

IT Leaders can help their departments to generate innovative ideas. They just need to introduce this additional review and discussion step into the process in order to improve the quality of the ideas being submitted.

Does your IT department have a program to collect ideas from department members? Does anyone currently review and take action on these ideas? Do you get too many or too few ideas submitted? Do you think that adding a peer discussion step in the process would help in your department? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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Posted in innovation | 2 Comments »

IT Leader Book Review: “Lead Well And Prosper”

Thursday, April 16th, 2009
Nick McCormick Wrote The Management Book "Lead Well And Prosper"

Nick McCormick Wrote The Management Book "Lead Well And Prosper"

So how is an IT Leader supposed to keep on top of his / her game? There were very few college courses that we had to take during our undergraduate years that dealt with management (or even better, leadership). Even if you’ve gone on and gotten an MBA, precious little time is devoted to the day-to-day skills that one needs to be a good leader.

That’s where books like Nick McCormick‘s Lead Well And Prosper come in to play. Nick reached out to me awhile ago and asked me to take a look at a copy of his book in order to get a bit of publicity for it. I agreed.

I’ve read a lot of management books in my time and I generally come away from them with mixed feelings. Books like Jack Welch’s “Jack: Straight from the Gut” always strike me as a good read, but don’t really provide me with any tools that I can use – Jack got lucky and did a good job.

There are a lot of other management books out there that read like a textbook because, in fact, they are. These always seem to be just a bit too removed from my reality to do much good.

Nick’s book, “Lead Well and Prosper”, attempts to strike a middle ground between these two extremes. By in large, he does a pretty good job. The one thing that struck me when I was reading this book was that Nick’s style of writing is very conversational. This means it feels like you are having a talk with the author when you read the book. This will work for some and won’t work for others who looking for books to be having a one-way dialog with them.

In the 15 chapters that make up the book, Nick starts each chapter off by presenting a fictitious scenario between two workers: Joe Kerr the manager (“Joker” – get it?), and Wanda B. Goode. After this scenario is presented in which Joe almost always makes a management mistake, Nick spends the rest of the chapter dissecting the situation and explaining what SHOULD have been done.

The scenarios are a little contrived, the analysis is a bit on the basic side, but I have to give to Nick – he hits most of bases in regards to what it takes to be a good manager.

So who should read this book? It’s a quick read at 75 pages and so it won’t take anyone too long to get through it. As I was reading it, I tried to think about who I would give it to. I came away with the impression that it would make an excellent gift for anyone who has been newly promoted. Yes, they probably already know many of the things that the book covers. However, when you are going into a new job is just the time to be reminded about what it takes to be a true leader.

Go out and pick up a copy of Nick McCormick’s book Lead Well and Prosper and when you are done reading it, pass it on to your next friend who finds themselves in a new position where they need to be reminded of what a leader really is.

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Posted in management | 1 Comment »

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