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 [...]

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 [...]

Who are the managers you have had in the past that have inspired your management style? The interesting thing about this question is that inspiration can come from many unexpected places. Have you ever had a great manager that you looked up to? As a child did you have a sports coach that you looked up to? Did you volunteer your time to a charitable, religious, or civic organization and are spellbound by the leadership’s ability to lead and inspire others? In many ways managing people is like raising children. That said, can you draw management inspiration from your mother and/or father? Did you have a high school teacher or college professor who changed your life? If you think it’s easy to properly manage a classroom, you should try it.  Like most things in life, it’s much harder than it appears. Is there a person in your life, such as a relative or friend, who you admire and try to emulate? Management inspiration can also come from negative experiences.  Have you ever had a manager who was indecisive, unorganized, professionally incompetent, uninterested, or just plain mean?  The reason it’s very appropriate to learn from your worst managers is because it teaches you what not to do.  Working for a really poor manager teaches you what it feels like to report to this type of person.  Chances are you don’t want your team to look at you the way you look at and think about your less than desirable managers. The reason that [...]

There are two great reasons I decided to write a blog on this topic. The first is that the combination of good manners, respect for those you work with, and showing appreciation to those who work for you is not only good taste, but it’s also good business.  The second great reason for me writing this column is that it will make my mother proud.  Yes mom, all those years ago as a kid I was listening, thank you. From a business perspective, good manners, respect for your colleagues, showing appreciation and being good to those working for you each brings its own advantages. Good manners to all those you work with, including vendors, peers, your staff, customers, and those above you organizationally help you build a high quality professional brand of being a team player and someone of character.  There is an old expression that gets to the heart of the matter on this topic. It says you get more bees with honey than with vinegar.  You should be nice to people because it’s the right thing to do, but also feel free to reap the benefits and rewards that common courtesy can help bring. Showing respect to the people working with you is also the right thing to do, but, like good manners, in the long run can be much to your advantage, or at least not to your disadvantage. Early in my career I worked with a person, we’ll call him Joe, who for some reason didn’t like the [...]

From a strategic thinking perspective, diversity in the workplace is a true blessing. Let me explain this statement by first defining strategic thinking, then describing my definition of diversity, and then explain the magical connection between the two. I consider strategic thinking to be the process of defining the successful future state of an existing issue, topic, or direction.  As a contrast, I consider strategic planning to be the process of defining a plan to bring you from the current state to the successful future vision created via a strategic thinking exercise. I consider diversity as being the differences between people in a way that provides different perspectives, philosophies, perspective on the world, values, and thinking processes.  These differences could be based on ethnic background, gender, age, professional discipline, level of education, life experience, and any other factor that makes someone unique. I’m quite confident that almost everyone who reads this column has heard the expression “Two heads are better than one”.  At its essence, this is the basis for the value of diversity.  Two heads bring two different perspectives, thus allowing the problem at hand to be analyzed in two different ways. Now let us expand on this two heads are better than one theory.  Let’s say that you have ten people on your staff, with the following types of diversity: People in their 20’s through their 70’s and beyond Some men and some women Three different religions Various ethnicities including Hispanic, Caucasian, African American, Asian, and Indian Some born in [...]