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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]