Posts Tagged ‘promotion’

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IT Leader Start-Up Issues: What Have You Gotten Yourself Into?

Thursday, March 11th, 2010
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IT Leaders In New Positions Need To Take The Time To Do An Assessment

IT Leaders In New Positions Need To Take The Time To Do An Assessment

Every IT Shop Is Different

In the life of an IT Leader, there will come the day that you find yourself in a new position. You might be working for the same company and just be in a different role or you might be starting a new job – no matter, the challenge is the same. Where do you start? It turns out that doing nothing right off the bat might be the right idea…

Doing An Assessment Of Your Team

When you find yourself in a new IT Leader position, you might be tempted to do what many of us have done in the past – make some noise. We’ve all see others do this before: almost immediately upon assuming a new position, they do a reorganization or some such action just to show that they are going to “shake things up”. That’s all fine and good, but it really doesn’t accomplish anything.

Instead, your time would be better spent doing an assessment of the IT team that you’ve just inherited. To use the popular terminology of the day, this needs to be a 360-degree assessment of both those people who will be on your team as well as the people that you will now be working for.

What you’re going to be looking for is to develop a good understanding of how things are right now. You might be overflowing with things that you want to accomplish (or you might have been told what you will have to accomplish), but now is not the time to be making changes before you know what is going on.

You’re not going to find what you need written down anywhere, instead you’ve got a lot of talking to do. Your situational assessment needs to cover a lot of ground. Specifically you’re going to want to know about the following four areas:

  1. The IT ecosystem (hardware, network, communications, endpoints, etc.)
  2. Applications (business and support)
  3. Corporate organization and hierarchy
  4. Processes and procedures for common IT tasks

Results Of An IT Team Assessment

As you can probably guess by now, an IT assessment is not something that you can do overnight. It’s going to take some focused effort to uncover the information that you’re going to need.

What you should be looking to assemble out of all of this data collection are a set of key indicators that will tell you where you need to be spending your time. Each one of the areas that you’ve collected information on can probably by now be broken down into an additional level of detail: specific hardware systems (e.g. storage), specific applications, etc. Each of these IT components will have their own status.

This status in its simplest form can be thought of as being a traffic light: red, yellow, or green. The green status areas can safely be ignored for now – they are under control. Things get more interesting when you start to take a look at the yellow and red areas.

Clearly the red areas need immediate attention. However, it’s the yellow areas that will provide you with the greatest value for having done the whole assessment task. These are the areas that while they may be under control for now, have the potential to “go red” and quickly turn into a problem that could consume your hours, days, or even weeks.

What All Of This Means For You

When an IT leader is placed into a new position, his or her first actions can often set the stage for their long term success. Starting things off by taking actions just to look like you are doing something won’t help – it may do more harm than good.

Instead what you need to do is to take the time to do an assessment of your new IT environment. This will require you to look both up and down the company hierarchy. You’ll be trying to understand how all of the components of the IT department fit together (or don’t!)

A well done IT assessment will provide you with a clear roadmap on where you need to be spending your time. The areas that are either not doing well or just getting by are where you’ll need to be spending your time. Focus your time and talents here and you’ll be able to shine in your position.

Question For You: What do you think the most important thing that you can do is when you are just starting a new IT position?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

In order to be successful as an IT Leader (no matter where you are at in the company’s management hierarchy), you’re going to have to do what you are told. Well, wait a minute, maybe I should phrase that differently. How about something like this: you are going to have to find out what they want you to do and then you are going to have to do it?

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Oh, Oh – What To Do When You Don’t Get That Promotion

Thursday, February 18th, 2010
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What Should You Do If You Fall Off The Career Ladder?

What Should You Do If You Fall Off The Career Ladder?

Things are tough all over. If you were counting on getting a promotion this year, you might want to scale your hopes back just a bit. A lot of IT Leaders are discovering that their career plans are having to be put on hold. Maybe we should spend some time talking about what you should do now…

The Root Of The Problem

Have you noticed just how far down the U.S. stock market has dropped over the last couple of years? Since most of the baby boomer generation that is currently working in IT has their retirement funds tied up in stocks, they’ve seen their dreams of a well funded retirement take a hit. What this means is that they won’t be retiring any time soon.

What this means for all other IT Leaders is that the normal process of IT staff retiring each year and opening up senior management positions that are then filled by junior IT staff won’t be happening this year. Dang!

The folks over at Watson Wyatt Worldwide Inc. have done a survey of more than 2,200 U.S. employees and they’ve found that 44% of workers who are over 50 plan on postponing their retirement. Just to make things even worse, about half of these folks are now planning on working at least three years longer than they had originally planned on.

The Promotion Problem

So let’s talk frankly here: no matter what level your IT career is currently at, you are going to be blocked. Just to make things even worse, the experts are telling us that we shouldn’t expect promotions to come back any time soon.

So what should you do? Quit? In this economy? I don’t think so. Instead we should take a look and see if we can come up with a different solution.

As always, if you are expecting a promotion and you don’t get it, you need to take a look at the underlying reasons for you not getting the promotion. If you determine that your promotion was postponed because of either the company’s economic situation is poor or because there is a human logjam before you, then you still have hope.

Now you’ve got to plot your next step.

Solutions

The easiest way to solve this problem is if you are willing to accept an alternative to a promotion – like money. This is sometimes called a “retention reward” and it’s a bonus that is paid to employees when they deserve a promotion but one is not currently possible.

Once you realize that your deserved promotion may be delayed, you need to start to take steps to boost your value to the company. What you really want to do is to make it very easy for the company to slide you into the promotion once it becomes available. This means having a talk with your boss in order to find out if there are ways to get some of the experience that goes along with the promotion position even if you can’t get the title right now.

As with all requests like this, you do need to be careful. You don’t want the company to get too comfortable with you doing the work of the higher level position while being paid at your current lower rate.

What All Of This Means For You

The world is working against you – just when you are expecting a promotion, everything gets flipped upside down and you find your way up the career ladder blocked. These things happen and you need to find ways to deal with it.

Quitting is always an option; however, unless you have another job already lined up it’s probably not the way to go right now. Instead, ask if you can get a bonus to replace the promotion that you won’t be getting right now. At the same time see if there is any way that you can gain more experience doing the type of work that you will be doing when the promotions free up once again.

Promotions will eventually return. As a top-notch IT Leader you need to use this delay to build the skills that will ensure that you will be one of the first to get promoted once things start moving again. Take these actions now and you’ll be ready for the big day whenever it finally comes…

If your next promotion gets delayed, what steps would you take?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

As an IT leader you’ve got a lot to do. As though it wasn’t enough to stay on top of your staff keeping them happy, engaged, and productive, you are also constantly working to stay on top of all of that changing technology. It turns out that you have an additional task that you might not be taking the time to do: figuring out where your company is trying to get to.

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New Job, Same Company: What’s An IT Leader To Do?

Thursday, February 4th, 2010
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Moving From One Job To Another Can Be A Big Hassle

Moving From One Job To Another Can Be A Big Hassle

Changing To A New Job In The Same Company Can Be Difficult

Times of change can be difficult for everyone, including IT Leaders. We all know how hard it can be to lose your job – in fact I think that we’ve probably either experienced it or have friends who have gone through it. 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?

When an IT department shrinks, there are suddenly fewer people to do all of the work that was being done before. If you were working on a project that all of a sudden becomes less important, then there’s a good chance that you may get “repurposed” to work on a new (to you) project. Got any skills to make that transition?

Ways To Make The Change Go More Smoothly

In my life I’ve moved residences a number of times. Sometimes they were big cross-county moves, and sometimes they were short across town moves. What I’ve found is that the big cross-county moves always went better. That’s because I took the time to sort things out, packed properly, and scheduled enough time to do things right. The cross-town moves were always a disaster – I’d throw things in the car and move them bit by bit losing things and never taking the time to put things where they really deserved to go.

Likewise, moving to a new IT job in the same company can be a disaster if you don’t do a good job of managing the move. Unlike going to work for a new company, a lot of the players and the rules are the same. However, it’s not the same job – there are differences. This is where things can trip you up.

In order to provide you with a little guidance on how best to manage this move, Jane Porter has gone out and talked with people who have lived through it in order to get their advice on what you need to do to make this a successful move:

  • Talk, Talk, Talk: When you get assigned to a new IT job, it’s sorta like being married to two people for awhile – your old boss and your new boss. Just like having two spouses, things can get awkward quickly if you aren’t careful. What you need to do is as soon as possible sit down with both bosses and review what they are expecting you to do. Instead of having you push back when they want you to do the work of two people, have them come to a mutual agreement on what and when you’ll be doing work for both of them.
  • Learn The Rules (Again): you used to know how things worked but you can no longer make that assumption. Silly little things like when your boss expects you to be available and if a weekly status report is still required are some of the details that you need to quickly get a handle on. Once again, communication is the key here: asking what is expected is the best way to make sure that nothing is missed.
  • Don’t Close Your Door: it’s not just your new boss that you need to be talking with, but also your new co-workers. If your job was just created, then nobody knows what you are supposed to be doing. If you are replacing someone who got let go, then you’ve got to help everyone work through their resentment of you. Either way, you’ve got to take the time to build bridges not only to people within your new department but also to those in other departments that you will now be working with.
  • Prepare To Leave (Again): nothing lasts forever, and your new job just might last for a very short time. All too often after a reorganization, something will happen that will require you to return to your old job for awhile in order to deal with a big issue. Although successfully solving problems is a good thing, you need to remember that your career no long lies with this old job. Keep your new boss updated while you are gone and make sure that your new tasks are being covered by someone.
  • Network: hopefully this goes without saying, but we’ll cover it again anyway. You need to start reaching out to everyone from your first day on the new job. Your old network is still there, but its value is now less. You need a new network that can support you in your new job and you are the one who is going to have to build it.

What All Of This Means For You

You can go to countless book stores and find books on how to start a new job at a new company. However, starting a new job within your existing company is a bit more difficult because the rules are not so clear.

Realizing that you need to treat this change of jobs as seriously as you would joining a new company is a good first step. Next you’re going to have to take the steps that we’ve outlined in order to quickly make yourself valuable and well connected in your new position.

Change happens and there’s not a lot that we can do about it. Savvy IT Leaders understand that developing the political skills needed to switch jobs within a company can go a long way in boosting their careers…

What do you think is the #1 skill that you need in order to do a good job when you suddenly find yourself in a new position?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

As the global recession starts to fade away, IT Leaders who are searching for a new job are starting to feel some new hope and IT Leaders who still have jobs are starting to get the itch to take a look around at what other opportunities there might be out there. Sounds like it’s time to get some resumes in order…

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Posted in IT jobs | 1 Comment »

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

Thursday, November 5th, 2009

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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 | 2 Comments »

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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