Posts Tagged ‘IT Management’

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Staffing Diversity Challenges IT Leaders

Thursday, August 20th, 2009

IT Leaders Need To Manage Diversity In Their Teams<br><div xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" about="http://www.flickr.com/photos/clevercupcakes/2980544017/"><a rel="cc:attributionURL" href=They say that the world is becoming a smaller place – I think that they just might be right. IT Leaders are starting to realize that coming up with ways to staff their teams so that they are diverse is quickly moving from being a political nicety to now becoming a business necessity. Does anyone have any suggestions on how best to go about doing this?

The Problem

Most IT departments are no longer single site operations. In fact, with the growth of outsourcing a single IT department may now have offices in multiple countries: China, India, Russia, etc. This type of distributed operation is a great way to ensure that more work gets done at a lower price; however, it also poses a significant staffing challenge for IT Leaders.

It’s all too easy to think that we can take a few high-performing IT Leaders from the U.S., plunk them down in one of our remote offices and have them be a an effective leader. The reality is that all too often, this doesn’t work. If you haven’t groomed someone on your team to step in and run / interface with a remote office, then they aren’t going to be able to do it.

In the U.S., IT managers are encouraged to use frank talk and direct confrontation in order to deal with team issues. However, especially when dealing with teams in Asis, this can come across as being rude and offensive.

What’s An IT Leader To Do?

The trick to solving IT staffing challenges for remote offices or just to deal with remote offices is to create what the experts call a “talent plan“. Doing this will allow you to provide unique levels of value to your remote IT offices.

The first part of a talent plan is to identify what positions on your team you are going to have to fill and what types of cultural skills those  positions are going to require. It’s important to note that it’s not always necessary to hire a person of a given nationality in order to deal smoothly with a remote office that has other staff members of that nationality. Finding someone who is sensitive to that nationality and who has dealt with them before can fill this need.

Filling a position to manage a remote office should not be a sudden effort. IT Leaders realize that every position will eventually need to be filled because the person in that spot now will be promoted, let go, or will move on. A key part of any talent plan is to early on identify who the potential replacements are. This allows an IT Leader to take the time to make sure that the potentials get an opportunity to get trained in both the skills and the corporate values that they will need if they fill the position.

Final Thoughts

Staffing mistakes can be very expensive and picking the wrong person to lead a remote IT office or to interface with such an office can flat out be disastrous. IT Leaders realize that if they wait until the last minute when an position suddenly has to be filled, then it will be too late to do it correctly.

Instead, if they take the time to create a talent plan then their investment of upfront time and effort into grooming the right replacements will ensure that the correct staffing decisions are made. Learning to add diversity management to your IT team will mean that you will have found a way to transform yourself from an IT manager into a true leader.

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Even in tough economic times, IT Leaders are still concerned about losing talent. Studies are showing that we are losing our IT Leaders at a much faster rate than new ones are being produced. On top of this, up to 30 million managers and leaders are going to become eligible to retire in the next five years. How can an IT Leader help to replace these leaders?

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Recruiting Is Something That IT Leaders Need To Start Thinking About Again

Thursday, August 13th, 2009
IT Leaders Need To Think Differently About How They Will Do Recruiting In The Future

IT Leaders Need To Think Differently About How They Will Do Recruiting In The Future

It’s starting to look like the economic winter just might be getting ready to thaw. Once this happens, IT Leaders realize that they’re going to have a massive task added to their already overloaded plate – recruitment.

During the economic downturn IT workers were staying put because they didn’t know what was going to happen next. Additionally, firms stopped hiring except for the most critical functions. When things start to pick up again, this will all change. Are you going to be ready IT Leader?

The Problem With The Way That IT Recruits

We all need to remember that recruitment is really a game that we are playing with our competition – we want to get all of the good talent in order to boost our firm and our competition wants to do the same. On top of all of this, who among us has ever been trained on how to properly do recruitment?

The good folks over at Forrester Research realize that we need some help and so they’ve done some research for us. Their conclusions just might surprise you a bit. They believe that there is something that we need to start doing if we want to be successful in attracting the right kind of talent: we need to diversify our talent pool.

The Way That IT Recruiting SHOULD Be Done

Right now all of us pretty much do the same thing when we want to fill a position in our IT department: we start looking at other firms who do what we do in hopes of finding an IT professional who is willing to leave and come work for us. This has worked for a long time because there have been so many people working in IT. However, with outsourcing and the Baby Boomers starting to retire, this isn’t going to keep working much longer.

Instead, Forrester tells us that what we need to do is to expand the pool of talent that we recruit from when we go looking to fill a position. This means that we need to start looking at college students and non-IT business professionals as potential sources of new recruits.

College students have always been an underused resource. The reasons are many, but more often than not it boils down to the simple fact that it takes time to guide them when you give them a task – you can’t just “fire and forget”. Sometimes poor management of college students results in poor performance and this can leave a lingering sense of frustration that causes IT Leaders to shy away from working with college students.

Non-IT business professionals, sometimes called “super users“, are a fantastic under-tapped resource. This resource has both the technical and business knowledge that can prove invaluable to any IT department. Providing existing employees with an opportunity to rotate into the IT department can be a win-win situation: you get the talent that you need and the employee gets a brand new career track.

Final Thoughts

What are we really looking for when we go to fill an IT position? We’d really like to find candidates that have three things: technical skills, business knowledge, and interpersonal skills. The ponds that we’ve been fishing from for these types of workers has just about dried up. In order to meet the staffing challenges of the future, we’re going to have to start fishing in other ponds.

Rethinking about how we attract, develop, and then retain college recruits can pay huge dividends. Who wouldn’t want to hire someone that they already knew and who they had groomed for a specific role in the organization? Likewise inviting non-IT business professionals to join the IT department solves staffing problems and breaks down internal walls.

Learning to do a better job of fishing for new talent will mean that you will have found a way to transform yourself from an IT manager into a true leader.

Questions For You

Where do your new hires come from – other IT companies? Have you used college students before? How did that work out? Could you list 5 “super users” who work in your company right now? How many of those would be interested in working in IT? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

They say that the world is becoming a smaller place – I think that they just might be right. IT Leaders are starting to realize that coming up with ways to staff their teams so that they are diverse is quickly moving from being a political nicety to now becoming a business necessity. Does anyone have any suggestions on how best to go about doing this?

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Handling A Promotion Is Something That An IT Leader Needs To Know How To Do

Thursday, July 9th, 2009

When IT Leaders Get Promoted, That Changes EverythingIt may seem a little crazy to talk about how to handle promotions during an economic downturn, but they are still happening (hey, sometimes self-promotion yields results!) Additionally, once the world economy picks up again, there will be even more of them. What’s an IT Leader who was once “one of the guys” to do when he /she is suddenly their boss?

Definitions Count

Nell Minow is the co-founder of The Corporate Library and she’s gone through this very experience. One of the lessons that she’s learned is that how you go about defining things really counts. One of the biggest changes that Minow had to go through was how she defined “we” and “they” (we ALL use these terms everyday). What she discovered was that the wider she made her definition of “we”, the better off everyone was.

Parenting Skills Help

When all of a sudden you find yourself in charge of a group of IT professionals, you may discover just like Minow did that your built-in parenting skills are going to be called on. Your interaction with your team is going to be broken into two types of activities. They will come to you and say “Look at what I did!“, and you’ll have to say “Good job – do more!” Likewise, sometimes they will come to you and say “He took my stuff!” (budget, staff, office) and you’ll have to say “Give it back.”

What To Do Right After You Are Promoted

Immediately after you are promoted, you need to have a talk with your former colleagues. Minow points out that your relationship with them has been changed and this needs to be addressed. She used this as an opportunity to say “If you have a problem, then I have a problem.” However, at the same time she told them “I refuse to be responsible for a problem that is not brought to my attention.” Minow also insists that anytime someone brings her a problem, they also have to propose a solution to it. Not just any solution, she insists that the solution must cost less than the problem!

Final Thoughts

We all love to be promoted. It’s an acknowledgement of what we’ve been able to accomplish at our job. However, every IT Leader knows that promotions change the relationships that we’ve developed with our colleagues. These changes need to be dealt with in the open in order to allow our teams to move forward. If you can do this successfully, then you will have found a way to transform yourself from an IT manager into a true leader.

Questions For You

Have you ever been promoted to be in charge of people that you used to work with? How did that affect the relationships that you had with those people? Have you ever worked for one of your colleagues who got promoted? Did they take the time to redefine your relationship? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking. Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental IT Leader Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

It’s starting to look like the economic winter just might be getting ready to thaw. Once this happens, IT Leaders realize that they’re going to have a massive task added to their already overloaded plate – recruitment.

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Your Mother Was Right: How IT Leaders Dress For Success

Thursday, June 18th, 2009
IT Leaders Need To Dress For Success

IT Leaders Need To Dress For Success

So if you could wear anything that you wanted to work, what would it be? Would you be showing up in shorts and flip-flops? How about jeans and a T-shirt? Well why don’t you? The answer to this question is something that we normally don’t spend a lot of time thinking about, but because it can have a big impact on our careers, perhaps we should…

What, Me Worry?

The first issue that we need to tackle is trying to figure out why is there an issue in the first place. Face it, although we’ve always been told not to judge someone by the clothes that they wear, we all do it anyway.

That’s why how you go about dressing can determine how the people that you interact with perceive you while you are at work. Additionally, it can have a big impact in how you feel about your self. I almost hate to say it, but it’s true, how you dress can have an effect on your ability to get a job in the first place.

That Professional Look – For Women

I’ve done some asking around and when I opened my mouth, I got dumped on. There are too few women working in IT and this is clearly an emotionally charged topic for many of them. I listened to everyone (for quite some time if I do say so myself), and here are the top four suggestions that were brought up over and over again:

  1. Hose Rule: It turns out that pantyhose (remember them?) are still important. In today’s workplace, bare legs send the wrong message – they aren’t considered to be professional. Even if they are not required, they are required.
  2. Shoe Time: This one sorta lost me because I just don’t pay enough attention to shoes. However, smarter people than I told me that regular sandals and even open-toed shoes are generally considered to be acceptable for the workplace. However, the ultra comfortable flip-flops and toe-post sandals (what are those?) are not.
  3. Tall Patterns: Those women who are tall have a bit of a challenge especially if they work with / for shorter men – their height can make them appear overpowering. The goal here is to not emphasize what you already have – height. Instead, go with a horizontal pattern.
  4. Short Patterns: The goal here is to attempt to buy yourself some height so that you don’t have to kill yourself wearing 4″ heels all the time. The suggestion is that wearing a cropped jacket can help make your legs appear longer.

That Professional Look – For Men

Ok, so we’ve pointed out what women need to do to make the clothes that they wear to the office work for them, not against them. Now let’s see if we can do the same for men:

  1. Watch The Boss: One of the most important things that you can do is to watch what the boss wears and match him. This is especially important on so-called “casual days”.
  2. Super Dressy (Sorta): Things have changed. The #1 dressy look in the office these days is wearing a suit, but with no tie.
  3. Sports: You can’t go wrong if you wear a sport coat. The experts recommend that you go with either earth or gray tones in order to make matching with shirts easier.
  4. Pants: There always seems to be too many choices here. Stick with medium to dark worsted wool and  you can’t go wrong.

Final Thoughts

Mom was right after all – clothes do make the man / woman. Dressing well sends a message to others that says “if I care enough to take the time to dress this way, just imagine how much time I’ll take to solve your problems.” Now that’s the right message to be sending as you transform yourself from an IT manager into a true leader!

Questions For You

How much time do you spend on average each day deciding what you will wear that day? Have you ever worn something to the office that you regretted? Have you ever mis-read a boss and not dressed appropriately? Do you feel that you boss dresses appropriately? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

As though the job of being a IT Leader was not hard enough, there’s also that added responsibility that you have to manage your career. With all of the turmoil of the past couple of years, it’s now more important than ever for IT Leaders to find the time to tend to this task…

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IT Leaders Want To Know About : Non-compete Clauses

Thursday, June 4th, 2009
Noncompete Clauses Can Be A Hassle For IT Leaders

Non-compete Clauses Can Be A Hassle For IT Leaders

(Hopefully it goes without saying that I’m not a lawyer and this blog posting is in no way to be considered legal advice. If you’ve got further questions, go get yourself the best lawyer your money can buy…)

Did you even know that something called an “Non-compete Clause” existed? It turns out that you may have signed one when you started your current job (it differs from company to company). This piece of paper basically spells out the legal agreement between you and the company – they want you to stay and they want to scare you into not leaving.

What Is In A Non-Compete Clause?

Willie Jones over at the IEEE’s Spectrum magazine has been doing some digging on just what non-compete clauses mean. Non-clauses were invented in order to protect a company’s intellectual property. Basically they don’t want employees leaving and divulging trade secrets to their competition.

Once again, this is going to differ from company to company. A non-compete clause generally has 3 basic types of limitations built into it: geographical, time, or line of business.

How Do Courts Feel About Non-compete Clauses?

You would think that once you have signed one of these things, that’s it, right? Well, not really. Courts take a hard look at such contracts. In each case when there is an issue, the courts try to balance the issue of trade secrets being divulged to a competitor against an employee’s basic right to work. Courts try to make sure that a non-compete clause does not place an unreasonable restriction on a worker’s ability to earn a living.

If a court does find that you signed a non-compete clause that was too restrictive, then they can void the clause – you are free! Note that where the case is being heard is important – in California, courts often refuse to enforce such agreements.

What This All Means To You

If you decide to leave your IT job and you’ve signed a non-compete clause you need to be aware of what the ramifications may be. If you go work for a firm that is competing with your current employer and you are going to be doing the same sort of job, then there is a good chance your old employer will go to court to stop you from working for the new company.

How successful they will be is unclear before the trial. A lot depends on what state this is taking place in and just how restrictive the non-complete clause that you signed was. Once final point to consider is that when push comes to shove, your old employer may not want to risk having its trade secrets come out during a lengthy trial. These are all things to consider carefully as you work to transform yourself from an IT manager into a true leader.

Questions For You

Do you know if you signed a non-compete clause when you started your current job? How restrictive is it? What does your company do when someone leaves to go work for the competition? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

I bumped into one of my longtime friends last week, Mark, and he told me how unhappy he was at his IT job. He was feeling a great deal of guilt over this because his firm had just had yet another round of layoffs and he had been spared. He still had his job, but he hated it. What’s an IT Leader to do in this situation?

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