Experienced managers know that most business decisions can’t be judged as simply right or wrong or as black and white.  Most of the decisions made in a management capacity, particularly if the issue deals with employees, risk minimization, future planning, sales forecasting, are more art than science. There is an old expression that says “You gain the experience you need to effectively deal with a specific situation about fifteen minutes after the situation happens.”  A second old expression deals with the experience needed for proper decision making is “Hindsight is 20/20.”  The reason that these expressions have endured the test of time is because they’re true and provide various insights, including the following: When making an important decision, try to sit back and reflect on your potential actions, rather than simply shooting from the hip and making a quick decision. Seek out the advice of your peers or more experienced managers who have previously dealt with that type of situation. When you make a decision, both good and bad, make a mental note of the situation, your decision, and the ultimate outcome. This personal reflection will help you: Grow as a manager Reduce the chance that you will make the same mistake twice Increase the chance that you will be successful more than once Provide you with examples to use when mentoring less experienced employees Help you grow as a person, because very often interpersonal lessons learned at work can help you grow personally Another thing to consider when making a business decision [...]

As a manager, I believe you are not only responsible for the well being of your department and its role within the company at large, but you are also responsible, if not legally then morally, to help the members of your staff grow professionally, and in some cases personally.  As their leader, you are a figure of authority in their life. They may love you. They may hate you. Hopefully, they respect you. If you are a history buff, you may be interested to know that the origin of the word “Mentor” is from Greek mythology. Mentor was a friend of Odysseus who asked him to nurture his foster brother when he left for the Trojan War. As a result, the word “mentor” historically came to mean a trusted advisor. Of course, not all of your staff members may want you as a trusted advisor, but for those that will listen, it could be of advantage to you both. The best managers I had in my career also acted as mentors and teachers to me, and other staff members. They taught me many valuable lessons related to technical topics, office politics, management processes, such as writing a good performance review, making presentations, and in some cases to be a better person, both professionally and personally. Understand, that as a manager, being a good mentor to your staff members is not totally altruistic. It’s also good for your department, your company, and you personally. Let’s begin with how mentoring your staff is good for [...]

When people think about organizational change, it seems that the same old sayings always to come to mind. The more things change the more they stay the same The only constant is change Even though I don’t personally like these sayings, having been employed by corporate America for most of my life, I have found them to generally be true. That said, I believe these sayings to be self defeating, look at organizational change as an ongoing negative, and provide no value when a changing work environment is thrust upon us. I like these expressions much better. Change brings both risk and potential reward Those that embrace change can profit by it I find these expressions to be forward thinking, energizing when faced with change, and helpful when trying to instill a positive attitude in others. Companies change for many reasons. Some organizational change is self-induced, meaning the company management has made the decision to strategically move in a specified direction. Sometimes however, change is forced upon a company in order to survive. That said, organizational change may be initiated for various reasons including the following: Company mergers and buyouts, and takeovers Market pressure caused by innovative competitors Changes in the economy, both good and bad Change in company leadership At a micro level, maybe you just got a new boss Early in my career, I worked for a large software company and truth be told, I loved working there. Then one day, our parent company bought our major competitor and merged [...]

I’m often asked by technologists why they should spend their precious training time and dollars studying soft skills. After all, they know how to ask questions, listen to others and so on, they have been doing it their whole lives. My answer is “Rather than using gut feel when negotiating, influencing, resolving conflict and/or just talking with others, if you learn and use structured interpersonal communication processes and techniques, you can improve your effectiveness through continual process improvement.” That is to say, just like any other defined process, experience using defined soft skill techniques, allows you improve them over time. These soft skills techniques can enhance your job performance, position you for promotion and/or simply help get you the best projects and technologies to work on. This first blog post is an overview of how IT Managers and IT Executives can improve their craft and accelerate their careers using this non-technical side of their skill set. Future posts will dig into each of these topics more deeply. In the IT Management ranks, being a successful IT manager requires four primary types abilities, unrelated to the technology being overseen. These abilities are: • Interpersonal communication skills • Leadership skills • Management skills • Business-of-IT skills Today, I’d like to discuss the seven skills that fall within the “Interpersonal communication” category. When reviewing this list, it may surprise you to see that Emotional Intelligence (EQ) is not among them. The reason is that every successful human interaction requires a certain degree of EQ. Therefore, [...]

By communication, I don’t mean talking about Monday night’s New England Patriots game against the New York Jets, or perpetuating office gossip, I mean accurately and articulately conveying business-related material in an effect manner. By design, a manager’s job is to manage people. This requires telling your staff what to work on and then providing them feedback on their job performance. It also requires that you provide upper management with the status of projects, accomplishments and issues. At a department level, it’s also your role to facilitate the coordination with other department such as HR, finance and your peer departments. The bottom line is that the better you communicate, the easier it will be for you to become an effective manager. Depending on your professional area and your personal strengths and weaknesses, good communication can be a difficult thing to achieve. From an educational perspective, I went to college for accounting and computer information systems. Of the fifty classes I took over four years as an undergraduate student, only one optional elective dealt with personal communication. This was a class on public speaking. For many of us, particularly those of us in technical roles, we were told that we did such a good job as an individual contributor in our profession area, that we should take a new job (as manager) where we had no formal training, no on-the-job experience, and no formal education on proper business communication. Thus, a new manager was born. As a manager, communication takes many forms, as [...]