Posts Tagged ‘leadership’

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IT Managers Know That Trial By Fire Is The Best Way To Pick New IT Leaders

Thursday, September 1st, 2011
Image Credit True IT Management Talent Is Forged In The Fires Of Challenge

True IT Management Talent Is Forged In The Fires Of Challenge

I’ve got some bad news for all of you IT managers out there: it turns out that 25% of the best workers in the IT department are planning on leaving within the next 12 months. Not to depress you even more, but it turns out that those internal job change programs that you have perhaps created that are intended to develop the next generation of IT leaders don’t seem to be working – 40% of the internal rotations that are made by IT “high-pots” (high potential) employees end up in failure. Let’s take a look at what problems you need to solve …

Problem: The Wrong People Are Managing Your Top Talent

Jean Martin and Conrad Schmidt are researchers who have been looking into what makes leadership transitions successful. What they have discovered is basically bad news for IT managers.

In order for an IT manager to grow their star talent, IT managers need to be able to first identify who this talent is and then they need to find ways to put them in positions of increasing responsibility in order to get them ready to lead the company. All too often this isn’t happening.

The people in the IT department who are best able to initially identify high potential candidates are the coworkers who are working with the majority of the IT workers. If developing the best and the brightest talent is left to these members of the IT department, it’s just not going to happen.

Instead, what needs to happen is that you as IT manager need to actively participate in the process. This means that you need to work with frontline staff so that when potential star talent is identified, they can be slotted into development programs. Make sure that you reward coworkers for finding high-quality talent so that they’ll be motivated to share their best with you and won’t be tempted to hoard those workers that they believe can make their lives easier.

Problem: Playing Over-Protective Parent To Your Up-And-Coming Future IT Leaders

Once you’ve identified your star IT talent and you’ve got them enrolled in your talent development program, you really don’t want them to fail. Or do you?

All too often what IT managers do is to hand pick the assignments that are given to up-and-coming stars. The goal is to find positions where they will be challenged, but not too much. Since you’ve already invested time and energy in getting them this far (and since there are a limited number of stars), you really don’t want them to fall flat on their face. This means that you don’t want to place them in a position where they might fail.

This is the wrong thinking. Although yes, you really don’t want to put anyone in a situation where they can’t win, at the same time you do want to put your best performers in difficult situations so that they can have a chance to become “battle hardened”. The military does this all the time – you have to have seen actual combat if you want to eventually become a General someday.

Only by coming face-to-face with a truly difficult IT / business situation will your talent be able to prove their mettle. Yes, some will fold under the pressure, but you’d rather find it out now than later on when you’ve invested even more in them. Place your best talent in situations where they can prove that they really are the best that the IT department has to offer.

What All Of This Means For You

Nobody ever said that growing the next round of IT leaders was going to be easy, but who knew that it was going to be this tough? Ensuring that the firm has a deep bench of future talent is one of an IT manager’s key jobs.

Mistakes that an IT manager needs to avoid when developing talent include allowing top talent to be discovered and managed by IT team members. These individuals are too important to be left to chance within the small world of a given department. The other mistake is for IT managers to work too hard to shield their star talent from failures. Talent needs to be exposed to challenging circumstances in order to be given the ability to fully develop.

IT managers need to understand that they can’t put their best and brightest staff in a closet with the hopes that they can bring them out when the need arises. Instead, they need to spend time every day working to ensure that the talent is growing and getting ready for the positions that they’ll eventually fill.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Management Skills™

Question For You: What do you think that an IT manager should do if a star talent is put into a position in which they fail?

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

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental IT Leader Newsletter are now available. Learn what you need to know to do the job. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

When I work with IT Leaders who are looking for ways to get that next promotion, I tell them that they are going to need to demonstrate leadership. This is an easy thing for me to say and a very hard thing for them to do. Complicating matters even more is the fact that IT managers are finding themselves drafted onto team that they are just members of, not leaders of. What’s an IT manager to do?

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Posted in management | No Comments »

You’re Not In Charge IT Manager – Now Lead!

Thursday, August 18th, 2011
Image Credit How do you lead a team when you're not the boss?

How do you lead a team when you're not the boss?

Talk about whining! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been working with newly minted IT managers who come to me and complain that people aren’t listening to what they say. A little bit of digging on my part and I discover that they’re part of some sort of cross functional team or that they are working with vendors. They’ve found themselves in the classic situation where they need to lead a group of people who don’t report to them. Good luck!

All The Responsibility, None Of The Authority

How many times have we all found ourselves in this situation? Our management has tasked us with solving some problem and put us on a team that we are supposed to lead. Unfortunately, they forgot to tell anyone that we’re in charge!

IT managers can generally get things done by telling people who work for them what they need to be doing. Clearly this strategy won’t work when you are a member of a team of people who don’t work for you. All too often I find the IT managers that I’m coaching struggle to switch gears – they keep trying to tell people what they need to be doing. They then become frustrated when their directives go unnoticed.

Let us agree on one thing: when you are not in charge, you can’t just “take over’ by brute force. That’s never going to work. Instead, you are going to need to find a way to get the rest of the team to “elect” you to be their leader.

That Leadership Thing

In the end, this all boils down to a question of leadership. When you are a part of a team and nobody directly reports to you, you’re going to have to lead them, not manage them.

You really can’t ask the rest of the team to accept you as their leader, you need to show them that they should accept you. This is not a formal thing – no vote will be taken. It will be your attitudes, attributes, and your behavior that will make them accept you. If you can convince them to accept you as their leader, then it will just happen.

Finally, what are the criteria that will make the rest of the team accept you as their leader? It comes down to several things. Your reputation will be an important part of their decision – are you known for performing hard work? Are you honest? Do you have the ability to bring good ideas to the table? Your ability to be accepted as a leader will be based on how others perceive you on these topics.

What All Of This Means For You

IT leaders often find themselves in situations where they are expected to lead a team that does not report to them. At first this can be an overwhelming situation – how ever are they going to get anything accomplished?

The secret to getting a team to accomplish a shared goal, no matter if the members of the team report to you or not, is to show them leadership. Your ability to convey a clear sense of purpose, the ability to be relied on, and a demonstration of subject matter expertise will convince the team to follow your direction.

Although what needs to be done may be clear, by no means is this an easy task to accomplish. As I tell the IT managers that I’m working with, if leadership was easy, then you’d see everyone doing it. As you struggle to do this task correctly, take comfort in the realization that the skill that you are developing is exactly the skill that you’ll need when you get promoted!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Management Skills™

Question For You: What’s the one thing that you can do to get a team that doesn’t report to you to accept you as their leader?

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

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental IT Leader Newsletter are now available. Learn what you need to know to do the job. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

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Posted in leadership | No Comments »

IT Managers Know That Trial By Fire Is The Best Way To Pick New IT Leaders

Thursday, August 4th, 2011
Image Credit True IT Manager Talent Is Forged In The Fires Of Challenge

True IT Manager Talent Is Forged In The Fires Of Challenge

I’ve got some bad news for all of you IT Managers out there: it turns out that 25% of the best workers in your IT team are planning on leaving within the next 12 months. Not to depress you even more, but it turns out that those internal job change programs that you have perhaps created that are intended to develop the next generation of IT leaders don’t seem to be working – 40% of the internal rotations that are made by IT “high-pots” (high potential) employees end up in failure. Let’s take a look at what problems you need to solve …

Problem: The Wrong People Are Managing Your Top Talent

Jean Martin and Conrad Schmidt are researchers who have been looking into what makes leadership transitions successful. What they have discovered is basically bad news for IT managers.

In order for an IT manager to grow their star talent, managers need to be able to first identify who this talent is and then they need to find ways to put them in positions of increasing responsibility in order to get them ready to lead the company. All too often this isn’t happening.

The people in the IT department who are best able to initially identify high potential candidates are the coworkers who are working with these IT workers. If developing the best and the brightest talent is left to these members of the IT department, it’s just not going to happen.

Instead, what needs to happen is that you as an IT manager need to actively participate in the process. This means that you need to work with the rest of your team so that when potential star talent is identified, they can be slotted into development programs. Make sure that you reward coworkers for finding high-quality talent so that they’ll be motivated to share their best with you and won’t be tempted to hoard those workers that they believe can make their lives easier.

Problem: Playing Over-Protective Parent To Your Up-And-Coming Future IT Leaders

Once you’ve identified your star IT talent and you’ve got them enrolled in your talent development program, you really don’t want them to fail. Or do you?

All too often what IT managers do is to hand pick the assignments that are given to up-and-coming IT managers. The goal is to find positions where they will be challenged, but not too much. Since you’ve already invested time and energy in getting them this far (and since there are a limited number of stars), you really don’t want them to fall flat on their face. This means that you don’t want to place them in a position where they might fail.

This is the wrong thinking. Although yes, you really don’t want to put anyone in a situation where they can’t win, at the same time you do want to put your best performers in difficult situations so that they can have a chance to become “battle hardened”. The military does this all the time – you have to have seen actual combat if you want to eventually become a General someday.

Only by coming face-to-face with a truly difficult IT / business situation will your talent be able to prove their mettle. Yes, some will fold under the pressure, but you’d rather find it out now than later on when you’ve invested even more in them. Place your best talent in situations where they can prove that they really are the best that your IT team has to offer.

What All Of This Means For You

Nobody ever said that growing the next round of IT leaders was going to be easy, but who knew that it was going to be this tough? Ensuring that the firm has a deep bench of future talent is one of an IT manager’s key jobs.

Mistakes that an IT manager needs to avoid when developing talent include allowing top talent to be discovered and managed by coworkers. These individuals are too important to be left to chance within the small world of a given team. The other mistake is for IT managers to work too hard to shield their star talent from failures. Talent needs to be exposed to challenging circumstances in order to be given the ability to fully develop.

IT managers need to understand that they can’t put their best and brightest staff in a closet with the hopes that they can bring them out when the need arises. Instead, they need to spend time every day working to ensure that the talent is growing and getting ready for the positions that they’ll eventually fill.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Management Skills™

Question For You: What do you think that an IT manager should do if a star talent is put into a position in which they fail?

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

P.S.: Free subscriptions to The Accidental IT Leader Newsletter are now available. Learn what you need to know to do the job. Subscribe now: Click Here!

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

When I’m working with IT managers, all too often I see them trying very hard to get things “just right”. I know what they are thinking. They believe that if they can get things set up correctly, then the team that they are in charge of will just run itself. I guess that they might be right if it wasn’t for one critical thing that they’ve overlooked – things change.

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Posted in leadership | 1 Comment »

New Ways For IT Managers To Keep The Staff That You Have

Thursday, May 19th, 2011
Image Credit Are Your Best Team Members Getting Ready To Fly The Coop?

Are Your Best Team Members Getting Ready To Fly The Coop?

First the bad news: it turns out that 25% of the best workers in the IT department are planning on leaving within the next 12 months. Do I have your attention now? Not to depress you even more, but it turns out that those internal job change programs that are intended to develop the next generation of IT leaders don’t work – 40% of the internal rotations that are made by IT “high-pots” (high potential) employees end up in failure. Let’s take a look at what problems you need to solve …

Problem: You Aren’t Engaging Your Best IT Workers

Jean Martin and Conrad Schmidt are researchers who have been looking into what makes leadership transitions successful. What they have discovered is basically bad news for IT managers.

Among the companies that they studied, what they found is that way too many of your IT rising stars are planning on becoming leaders at other firms! Specifically, 25% are currently planning on leaving your company within one year, 33% are not fully committed to their job (slackers), 20% have different career goals than they think the company has planned for them, and 40% have little confidence in their coworkers or the company’s senior management.

Clearly you have a problem here – your best & brightest are feeling disengaged. As an IT manager you need to find ways to get them to reengage with the company and with their careers at your company.

The researchers say that you can get them to both reengage and remain at your company. However, it’s going to take both time and effort on your part. What you are going to need to do is to provide them with the one thing that they crave above all others – public recognition for the work that they are doing. On top of this, you need to find ways to integrate their actions more closely with the company. This means that the company’s goals need to become their goals and you need to find ways to allow them to help tackle the company’s biggest challenges.

Problem: High-Pot Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Good Leader

Every IT worker wants to be classified as being a high-potential worker. What does this really mean? Researchers point out that what a company really wants from its high potential workers are leaders who will be able to grow into larger jobs and then deliver results in those jobs.

Studies have shown that more than 70% of the IT workers who are classified as being “high potential” still lack critical skills that will be needed in order be successful in future bigger jobs. What this means for you as an IT manager is that you may be wasting your precious limited talent development budget and resources on the wrong people.

The researchers say that there are three characteristics that an IT manager should be looking for when trying to determine if it would be worthwhile to make further investments in a high-potential team members: ability, engagement, and aspiration.

Your best team members need to have both the hard (technical) and soft (management) skills needed to take on bigger jobs. Additionally they are going to have be engaged with both the company and its mission – if they don’t believe, they won’t be willing to help you achieve. Finally, the IT worker’s career goals, their aspirations, also need to be in line with what the company is both willing and able to provide them with.

What All Of This Means For You

The job of an IT manager actually has very little to do with technology and everything to do with developing people. Not all team members are created the same and IT managers really want to find ways to hold on to their best workers. The problem is that they aren’t doing a very good job of this.

In order to keep your best and brightest team members engaged, you are going to have to make a special effort to recognize them and work with them to make sure that what they are working on really matters to the company. Likewise, not all high-pots are created equal. Only the ones with ability, true engagement in what the company does, and aspirations that are in line with what the company can offer will be the ones who can grow into true IT leaders.

An IT manager’s most important job is to grow and nurture the next generation of IT talent that will lead the company’s IT teams. In order to do this you are going to have to invest a great deal of your time in ensuring that your best team members don’t leave. It is possible to do this, but it needs to become one of your top tasks. If you can do this correctly, then both your career and the company will benefit from it…

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World IT Management Skills™

Question For You: What percentage of an IT manager’s time should be spent on developing the company’s top IT talent?

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

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Anyone can be placed in an IT leadership position; however, what kind of skills does it take to do a good job of being an IT leader? There are a lot of IT managers out there who would like to know the answer to that question. If you are one of them, then I’ve got good news for you – I know what you need and I’m ready to tell you…

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Posted in retention | No Comments »

It Turns Out That Personal Skills ARE Important For IT Leaders

Thursday, January 28th, 2010
Image Credit
Sure We’re Nerds, But We Still Need To Have Social Skills

Sure We’re Nerds, But We Still Need To Have Social Skills

Why Does Hacking Still Work So Well?

So here’s an interesting question for you: in this day and age, why is it still so easy to hack into a corporate computer system? I mean we’ve had years to invest in sophisticated encryption systems and multi-step identity verification systems. The answer is surprisingly simple – the weakest link remains the people who use the systems and a smooth talking criminal always seems to be able to get the info that he / she needs out of these people.

What this realization means is that no matter how sophisticated we make security technology, it’s always going to be personal skills that we’ll be battling against. This leads to another interesting point: just exactly what personal skills do IT Leaders need to have in order to do their (non-hacking) jobs well?

IT Leaders Don’t Know What They Don’t Know

I can almost see you grimacing when you read the words “personal skills”. Technical professionals have a tendency to poo-poo these types of discussions because we view these skills as being something that can’t be measured. This means that we don’t really value them – why bother if you can’t become Cisco certified in personal skills (would that be CCPS?)

Times they are a changing and IT Leaders are going to have to change along with them. Luis Fernandez-Sanz?” href=” http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/MC.2009.329”>Luis Fernandez-Sanz has been taking a close look at what employers are looking for in IT Leaders and he’s detected a change in the requirements.

This all starts by taking a look at what skills IT Leaders often don’t bring to the table. Sure, we’re skilled technical professionals, but that doesn’t mean that we have all of the skills that will be needed to lead a team. Here’s where we often come up short:

  • Organizational abilities
  • Political skills
  • Public speaking
  • Understanding of business language and jargon

Fernandez-Sanz has found that IT Leaders are often viewed by the rest of the company as being good at what we do – solving technical problems. However, since we often work remotely from the rest of the business, we are also viewed as needing to improve our interpersonal skills.

What Social Skills Do We Need To Have?

When we sit down and try to determine just exactly what skills IT Leaders need to be working to acquire, we find some good news. Fernandez-Sanz has found that the needed skills are not unique to IT Leaders – they are the same skills that any business professional needs to develop.

Analysis of job postings for IT jobs has revealed a wealth of data. The first discovery should come as no surprise to any of us: IT is still a rapidly developing field and new types of jobs are constantly being created. Additionally, IT jobs can be classified into over 250 different areas that run from software development jobs to systems engineering jobs.

Studies of IT job postings over the past 16 years has revealed that not only is IT a growing field, it is also dynamic. It has been noted that the languages, tools, and technologies that are called for have changed dramatically over that time. Clearly this means that by entering into the IT field we have all signed up to a lifetime of constant learning.

In the area of IT leadership, the studies have revealed the top 5 personal skills that IT Leaders need to have. These results have been culled from descriptions of the skill sets that CIOs are asked to have:

  • Proactive behavior
  • Team management
  • Leadership
  • Teamwork
  • Communication skills

What All Of This Means For You

As an IT Leader, you will always be expected to be working to improve your skills. The challenge is to determine just exactly what skills you need to be working on. The technical skills that you’ll need to maintain will be constantly changing as IT moves forward.

Your real challenge will come in identifying the personal skills that you’ll need to be able to bring to the table. Although it is much more difficult to measure these skills, they are just as if not more important than your technical skills.

It turns out that the personal skills that you need to hone are the same skills that ever other business professional is working on. This won’t make your task any easier, but it certainly means that you’ll be in good company!

What do you think the most important personal skill for an IT Leader to have is?

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

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Times of change can be difficult for everyone, including IT Leaders. We all know how hard it can be to lose your job. What this means is that we all have a basic understanding of what to do if it happens. But what if you don’t lose you job, it just changes on you. What do you do then?

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Posted in interpersonal skills | 2 Comments »

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