Posts Tagged ‘technical skills’

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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 | 3 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…

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Posted in innovation | 1 Comment »

How IT Leaders Build A Mentor Network For Their Career

Thursday, October 1st, 2009
IT Leaders Need Mentors To Be Successful (c) - 2008

IT Leaders Need Mentors To Be Successful (c) - 2008

I’ve got a quick question for you: what is the next step in your career? What do you want to get promoted to? In fact, as long as we are talking about that, what comes after THAT promotion? If you want to become a real IT Leader, then the career ladder generally goes: IT worker, manager, director, executive director, CIO. Got a plan on how you are going to get to that next step?

The Problem With Career Mentors

It used to be that what you needed in order to climb out of an IT postition was a mentor - someone who would take you under their wing and guide you during your career. Bad news – those days are long gone.

It wasn’t that there was anything wrong with the old way, it’s just that the world started to move faster. Nowadays nobody stays in a given position long enough to act as a mentor to you for any reasonable length of time. Even if they did, they are probably too busy to spend enough time with you keeping your career on track.

The old way of picking a mentor and having them work with you over time to shape and guide your career is gone – things move too fast and change too often to allow this to work any more. Instead, you need to discover how to create networks of mentors that they can use to provide the career guidance that you will need over the years.

If you thought the old way was tough, just wait until you try to figure out how to do things using the new way!

The New Way Of Managing Your Career

Dr. Dawn Chandler (CA Polytech State University), Dr. Douglas Hall (Boston University) and Dr. Kathy Kram (Boston University) have spent some time looking into this problem with the modern workplace and they’ve got some ideas about how we can fix things.

Since there is really no way for you to get a single individual to agree to act as your mentor for the 40-45 years that your IT career is going to last, instead you are going to have take a different approach. You are going to have to create a network of mentors that you can use to accomplish what you need to get done.

Oh, there is one small problem with this clever solution: most of us are not all that good at creating a mentor network like this let alone trying to maintain it. It looks like you are going to need some suggestions on how best to do this.

Building And Maintaining A Mentor Network

One of the first things that you are going to have to realize about building your mentor network is that the people that you are going to ask to be a part of your network will not all be the same. This means that you are going to have develop a special set of skills in order to be able to (1) find them, and (2) create relationships with them that will make them want to mentor you.

Here is what you are going to have to do in order to create a mentoring network that will help your IT career move to the next level:

  • Talk, Talk,Talk - you are going to have to be willing to take the initiative and reach out to those people that you want to be a part of your mentoring network – they aren’t going to contact you. Once you’ve contacted them the first time, then you are going to have to work at maintaining contact with them so that they don’t forget about you.
  • Be Sensitive – Not everyone that you talk to is going to want to be your mentor. It’s going to be up to you to take the time to pick up on the message that they are sending your way. Few people will actually come out and say “no”, so it’s up to you to detect those folks who would like to decline the opportunity.
  • It’s The Takeoff That Counts – when you’ve found someone who is willing to be a member of your mentor network, then you’ve got to be willing to make an extra effort to make sure that your initial interactions with that person go very well. They will set tone for the rest of your relationship. Show up early for meetings, follow up quickly on actions, and pay attention when they are talking.
  • Be Prepared – make sure that you get ready for every meeting with someone who is in your mentor network. Research what you want to ask them, make sure that you can show that you are making progress in your career, and come prepared to ask questions about challenges that you are currently facing.
  • Information Is The Key – you need to be willing to share information with your mentoring network. This does not mean that you have to tell them all the details about what you had for breakfast today, but rather that you be willing to lay out your current challenges and failures that you’ve had – you know, stuff that can be hard to talk about.
  • It’s A Two-Way Street – if someone agrees to be a part of your mentoring network, then you have agreed to do your best to help them out also. This means that you have a responsibility to help your mentors out whenever you have an opportunity to do so. This can be as simple as passing on information that you run across to actually doing work for them.
  • Be A Nice Person – Nobody want to work with a jerk and they certainly don’t want to mentor one. No matter what kind of day you’ve had, always be on your best behavior when you interact with a member of your mentor network.
  • Be Positive – how you choose to view the world is a key part of how others see you. If you have a positive attitude you will naturally attract people to your mentor network and you’ll be able to keep them there. If you’ve got a negative attitude, then nobody is going to want to lend you a helping hand.

Final Thoughts

As a member of an IT department, you are undoubtedly busy. However, it turns out that you have yet another job on top of your “day job” – managing your career. You can’t do this by yourself and so you’re going to need to have someone guide you – a mentor network.

Creating and maintaining a mentor network is no easy task. However, if you go about doing it in the right way it can become a powerful force that will cause your career to shoot ahead and make sure that you don’t get left behind.

Take the time to build and maintain a good network of mentors who will be willing to work with you and 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

Too little time, too much to do. Does that adequately describe your IT leader job? I don’t know about you, but often is the time that I’ve looked with envy at my peers who are great multitaskers and wished that I could be more like them. It turns out that I was wishing for the wrong thing – multitaskers actually do a lousy job at just about everything.

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Posted in career | 1 Comment »

What Do IT Managers Really Do?

Thursday, September 24th, 2009
IT Leaders Are A Lot Like Music Conductors, But ...

IT Leaders Are A Lot Like Music Conductors, But ...

So what do IT Leaders actually do? Generally I’d agree with you if you answered something like “create IT solutions“; however, I’ve been giving this some thought and I think that we’re missing the mark if that’s our answer.

If you think about it, what we really spend our time doing is managing people and hoping that they will help us to make our IT projects successful. That being said, did you ever get any training on how to mange people?

IT Leaders Don’t Make Beautiful Music

One of the more popular ways to think about the how IT Leaders do their job is to picture them as being orchestra conductors. You can almost imagine yourself standing in front of your team, tapping your conductor’s wand on the sheet music stand in front of you, and then with a flourish you begin.

First up is the requirements team, before they are done the system architects  step in followed by database developers and user interface developers softly at first and then louder as time moves on. Nice mental picture, eh?

Too bad life doesn’t really work out this way. Dr. Henry Mintzberg at McGill University says that in reality what you’d be hearing is what a pre-concert warm-up sounds like – everyone out of tune and playing over the top of each other. Now that’s what I am familiar with!

Dr. Mintzberg points out that each and every one of us is flawed - there is no such thing as a perfect IT Leader. However, the really good IT Leaders are less screwed-up and that is something that we can shoot for.

It’s All About The Interruptions

Think about how your yesterday went. Did you start the day with a plan and then were you able to accomplish that plan? I’m willing to bet that the answer is probably not. It’s a fact of life for the modern IT Leaders that every day is basically a stream of interruptions – one after another.

Don’t even get me started on what Blackberrys and email have done to compound the interruption problem. One top of this madness we need to find a way to mange the people that we work with – and it sure looks like we’re doing it the wrong way.

The Three Planes Of IT Leader Management

IT Leaders are never taught how to manage people to get results. This means that too many of us end up hiding behind emails and sticky notes when we are trying to get our virtual teams to accomplish tasks.

Dr. Mintzberg has identified three different “planes” of how we can mange people. We need to use all three, but we are currently not balancing how we use them.

  • The Direct Plane – this is where IT Leaders “get their hands dirty” and jump right in and manage actions directly. You know what this looks like – we mange projects, we write code. In all honesty this is the easiest way to do things because we don’t have to go through the effort of getting others to do work for us.
  • The Manage People Plane – this is the tricky one. If IT Leaders can find the time, then they can work with the people that they need to take action in order to make their IT project a success and motivate them, train them, build teams, etc. In other words, make it so that they can take action and be more effective. Easy to say, hard to do.
  • The Manage Information Plane – all too often this is where IT Leaders choose to hide out. Here we can mange information in order to drive people. We use budgets, objectives, we delegate tasks, set organizational structures, etc. All very powerful stuff, but note that we don’t necessarily have to deal with real people and all of the messy issues that that might entail.

Final Thoughts

Nobody ever taught you how to manage the people that you need to convince to do what you need them to do in order to make your IT project a success. You’ve probably discovered by now that you’ve got a lot of different ways to make things happen.

The worst kind of IT Leader manages only by using information. Sure this is a comfortable way of doing things and seems to be the simplest way to get things accomplished. However, it’s always better to spend the time working with the people that you need on your side. In the end you’ll be glad that you did and 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

I’ve got a quick question for you: what is the next step in your career? What do you want to get promoted to? In fact, as long as we are talking about that, what comes after THAT promotion? If you want to become a real IT Leader, then the career ladder generally goes: IT worker, manager, director, executive director, CIO. Got a plan on how you are going to get to that next step?

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Posted in management | 1 Comment »

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