The Great Hybrid Confusion: 5 tips for making hybrid work in IT

This post “How CIOs become IT thought leaders” was first published in my “Developing IT Leaders” column on CIO.com. When COVID-19 hit, IT had to adjust its internal processes and procedures, logistics, and security policies at the same time it was helping the rest of the organization pivot to a full work-from-home environment. Then, adding additional complexity to an already difficult situation, along came The Great Resignation, where many employees, particularly baby-boomers, decided not to return to work. For IT, this is doubly complex. For years, IT leaders have competed in the War for Talent to hire the right people with the right skill sets and experience at the right time.  Many of the people deciding to retire early in The Great Resignation were working on legacy technologies, such as Microsoft ASP pages, PowerBuilder, and other platforms that were leading-edge marvels in their day, but through the passage of time, have become the technical debt within our data centers—and notoriously difficult to hire for. Added to this is the ongoing need to support the billions of lines of production COBOL, which will outlive us all. While the move home was mandated by municipal regulation and fear of a widening pandemic, moving back to the office, staying fully virtual, or going hybrid is based on management decision. And it is proving to be much more complex than the move home in 2020—hence the Great Hybrid Confusion. Here are five tips that will help you successfully navigate running a hybrid IT organization. Use “time [...]

By |2022-05-24T14:58:05+00:00May 24th, 2022|

CIO as business partner: 4 prerequisites IT leaders must master

This post was first published in my “Developing IT Leaders” column on CIO.com. IT says it.  Human Resources says it.  All other internal business silos that provide services to the customer-facing business functions say it. They want a seat at the table. They want to be seen and treated as an equal business partner and be involved in helping define the organization’s strategic vision, objectives, values, and decisions. These are the four competencies IT leaders must to demonstrate to earn their seat at the business strategy table. 1. Superior technical execution For IT, consistent, quality daily operations is job #1. Everything else is secondary. As an IT leader, if you cannot meet this requirement, then at best you’ll be disrespected and/or ignored.  At worst, you’ll be replaced. Quality IT can be divided into three generic types of services: operational, on-demand, and project-based. Operational services are the continued availability and uptime of all existing production systems, data communication, email, internet access, and all other related services. On-demand services are the help desk, service desk, and other reactive IT functions that serve those outside of IT itself. Project-based services, as the name suggests, are all planned tasks with specifically defined outcomes, such as major software upgrades, new system implementations, and process reengineering efforts. IT’s failure in any one of these three service areas, degrades the credibility of the IT leader responsible for that area as well as the CIO and the overall reputation of IT within the organization because those outside of IT don’t [...]

By |2022-03-04T14:25:10+00:00March 4th, 2022|

6 Tips on Maximizing IT Client Service

As an IT Manager, never forget the importance of teaching and emphasizing the importance of client service to your staff. I was in Washington DC for the second time in three weeks to provide training to a client.  On my first trip to Washington, I was able to stay at a Marriot Fairfield Inn right next door to my client’s office.  For the second trip, however, I was forced to stay at a hotel about three miles away because there was a convention in town and my hotel of choice was filled. On the morning of the last day of my second trip, I returned to the Fairfield Inn with luggage in hand.  The person behind the registration desk recognized me from my prior stay at the hotel and asked me if I wanted to check it.  I told her that not being able to secure a reservation at her hotel because of a local conference, I had stayed a few miles away at a different hotel.  I went on to say that I had come to the hotel that morning to ask if they would please check my suitcase for a few hours so I would not have to bring it to my client’s meeting.  Being a frequent Marriot client, she happily agreed to provide me assistance and even offered me cup of coffee as I was leaving the hotel.  This may seem like a trivial, easy and no cost way to help a customer.  Well, it is, but for the [...]

By |2021-04-30T00:30:15+00:00June 21st, 2021|

Delegation Based on Programmed and Lateral Thinking

I’d like to begin by describing the difference between thinking programmed and lateral thinking.  Programmed thinking is the process of using structured methodologies and/or logical algorithmic processes to solve problems, make decisions, and/or create new product offerings.  Lateral thinking is, by its nature, more creative than programmed thinking and facilitates pattern recognition, language, and out-of-the-box thinking. As an IT Manager, an understanding of this concept can help you effectively delegate tasks to your staff in a way that plays to each employee’s personal strengths.  Good managers tend to do this through intuition and experience (lateral thinking), but by defining it, it can provide added insights and a more structured way (programmed thinking) to effectively delegate. To see this principle in action, let’s say you have two tasks you would like to delegate.  The first task is reviewing your monthly vs. actual budget report and the second task is writing a client proposal with the hope of gaining additional business.  At first glance, you may believe this is easy, namely ask the programmed thinker to review the budget and the lateral thinker to write the new business proposal.  Well, this may or may not be the case.  For example, you may be having trouble managing your budget because business conditions and product/vendor costs have varied widely from what you had originally anticipated.  Therefore, while programmed thinking is required to properly report expenditures; lateral thinking will be required to find creative ways to modify your expenses in future months to keep the budget in [...]

By |2021-04-30T00:24:13+00:00June 7th, 2021|

Writing Meeting Agendas: Tips and Tactics

Believe it or not, a well written agenda can enhance your meeting and help you achieve your business goals. If done correctly, a meeting agenda can greatly enhance your meeting by: Setting expectation of meeting attendees Keeping the meeting on track in regard to discussed topics and subject matter Helping manage the time spent on each topic Allowing people to mentally prepare for the topics being discussed Helping you keep away from topics you don’t want to discuss in the meeting (because it’s not on the agenda) Acting as a check list to assure that all needed topics are raised during the meeting As additional food for thought, the simple act of distributing your meeting agenda a few days prior to the meeting taking place, via the email-based invitation or other automated or manual means, has the following advantages: Allows meeting participants to properly prepare for the topics being discussed Saves people who are not interested in the topics being discussed from attending the meeting Helps assure that people who have a vested interest in the topics being discussed will attend your meeting Provides general status information to those who can attend the meeting as to what you are working on With the advantages of using a meeting agenda now defined, the question is “How should an agenda be written to maximize its effectiveness?” The first and most obvious requirement is that an agenda must clearly outline the topics that will be included in the meeting and order in which they will [...]

By |2021-04-30T00:21:17+00:00May 31st, 2021|

Protect your schedule using the “Near-Time Far-Time” concept

As an executive, very often your most limited resource is your own time.  This concept, which I have personally used for many years, has three great benefits: Helps protect you from filling your schedule with meetings and events that are less than optimal toward meeting your business goals Used in reverse, helps you schedule time with other busy people Used in reverse, helps you secure the best possible people for your future projects This may seem like extraordinary advantages for a time management technique, but it’s true and this is how it works. The underlying concept behind this technique is that people are much more protective of their commitments and schedule in the near-time (the next two or three weeks), than they are of their far-time (out two or three months from now).  The reason for this phenomenon is that people generally have a strong mental picture of their short term: Business commitments and work deliverables Longer range projects nearing their delivery dates Problems which have arisen and must be dealt with Unforeseen business opportunities that have seemingly come out of the blue Personal time commitments, such as doctor appointments and kids’ soccer games The uncomfortable feeling that your calendar is so filled with meetings that you will not have time to complete/perform the previously mentioned items For all of these reasons, busy people are very protective of their short-term time because they can mentally calculate their short-term workload. People’s far-time schedule is much less defined. Many business commitments and work deliverables [...]

By |2021-04-30T00:18:21+00:00May 24th, 2021|

Advice on Managing Knowledge Workers

A “Knowledge Worker” can best be described as a person who works more with his/her mind than with his/her hands, uses trained judgment and creativity as part of his/her job, holds a job requiring a high level of education and professional expertise, and uses this acquired knowledge to perform needed tasks.  Professions that classically fall into this category are accountants, lawyers, doctors, computer programmers, analysts of all types, economists, consultants, engineers, and other similar job types. Managing these types of people can be both extremely rewarding and extremely frustrating based on your personal management style and/or the temperament of your knowledge workers. Regarding the temperament of your knowledge workers, assuming technical competence, their success or failure in a specific job tends to be based on the following factors: The relationship with their manager Their fit, from a personality perspective, with their coworkers Their manager’s ability to keep them mentally stimulated The job’s ability to meet their intellectual needs The manager’s willingness to allow them to use their expertise to make level-appropriate decisions, creative process improvements, and professional judgments Ability to enhance their professional stature, knowledge, and organizational position should they aspire to do so. Certainly the knowledge worker’s personality and job alignment with their skills and aspirations is a key factor, but don’t underestimate the role you play as their organizational leader.  As their manager, when looking at the above list, take note that many of the factors that drive their success, motivation, and job satisfaction is directly related to your ability [...]

By |2021-04-30T00:06:07+00:00May 10th, 2021|

7 team rituals to enhance employee performance

Does your team have any informal traditions, such as annual get-togethers, monthly pot-luck dinners, or employee birthday cakes? Do you celebrate project completions with pizza parties? Do you have lost-the-deal pep talks and lessons learned meetings or any other type of event or action that helps your group feel like a team that cries together and celebrates together? If your answer was yes to one or more of the above questions, then you have most likely seen that these organizational traditions have real business value.  This value shows itself in a number of ways, including: An increased morale because people think fondly of previous events and look forward to future events Stronger interpersonal relationships between employees because they have had the opportunity to get to know each other a little better outside the business structures related to job-based task execution An enhanced sense of “team” because these events, by their nature, are communal ways to celebrate success and reduce the disappointments of failure A greater feeling of loyalty to the company in general, you as their manager, and their team (your department) because of their conceptualization of group belonging After reading though the above bullet points you may be thinking “So what, my group likes getting free pizza” or “Big deal, my employees get to know each other a little better.  I just want them to get their jobs done”.  The business value of these types of activities is not simply to give them free pizza, get them to feel like a [...]

By |2021-04-30T00:00:46+00:00May 3rd, 2021|

Hire to your weaknesses, not your strengths

One thing great about being a IT Manager is that, for the most part, you can delegate things you don’t like to do, or don’t do well, to the people that work for you.  I’ll give you a personal example of how I follow this concept.  I’m a terrible proof reader.  If I’m asked to proofread a document that has three typos in it, by the time I’m done, it has four typos.  Knowing this weakness, I always make sure there is someone on my team that enjoys and is very skilled at proofreading.  I truly envy people who have this ability; it’s just not in my skill set. I’ll give you a second example that is experience-based, rather than skill-based.  I started my profession as a computer programmer and over the years moved up through the software development ranks into senior Information Technology (IT) roles.  My specialty was always computer software, not computer hardware.  Therefore, when at an executive level and had both hardware and software reporting to me, I was always very careful to hire a very knowledgeable and competent hardware person to cover my lack of experience in that technical area. Regarding hiring to your strengths, it’s of course, extremely important to always hire great people. However, if you only hire people that are just like you, namely with your strengths, weaknesses, experience, and perspective then you open up yourself and your department to: Quality issues caused by overall skill set deficiencies Reduced possibility of innovation due to a [...]

By |2021-04-29T21:30:42+00:00April 29th, 2021|

When to give up the aisle for a middle seat

There are times in life and at work when it makes sense to make a small sacrifice simply to benefit others. I was flying home on business from California to Massachusetts. By the luck of the draw, I was one of the first people on the plane and got a nice aisle seat near the front of the plane.  There I sat as person after person and suitcase after suitcase went by. As the plane filled almost to capacity, the only seats left were the middle seat in my row and the middle seat in the row diagonally ahead of me across the aisle. Then, on comes a man with his (about) six year old daughter.  The man motions to his daughter to sit in one middle seat across the aisle and then he begins to sit next to me.  Out of the corner of my eye I see this little girl looking longingly to sit next to her dad.  Her one look caused me to give up my aisle seat so that she could sit next to her father.  This middle seat I soon occupied was far less comfortable, but not unbearable, even given the length of the flight. I gave up my seat because I could see that she wanted to sit next to her father more than I wanted to site on the aisle.  In effect, I traded a little to give someone else a lot. My goal in telling you this story is not to show you that [...]

By |2020-09-22T02:13:50+00:00December 28th, 2020|
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