Beyond Blinking Lights and Acronyms

'I taught it, they didn't learn it, it's on them' Thu 19 Mar 09

IT's attitude towards helping our users learn may need some re-thinking

I heard a great story on NPR yesterday, "D.C. Schools Chief Turns To Rookie Teacher Corps".  It's about Michelle Rhee, chancellor of the District of Columbia public schools and what she is doing to improve the schools there.  It's a great story and worth listening to.

What really caught my attention was a section where they talked about the attitude displayed by some teachers:

Guest Post - The Courage To Lead Mon 23 Feb 09

Terry Seamon is one of my favorite bloggers.  He writes Here We Are. Now What?, a blog dealing with leadership, transition, and as he says "Facilitating wisdom to make the world a better place."

He is running a series of guest posts on the topic "Leading in the Crisis" and has honored me by asking me to guest post on this topic.  You can find my post "The Courage To Lead" on his site.

Thank you Terry.

Nurturing IT Wed 07 Jan 09

In a recession, keeping your IT staff happy is critical.

"People, Process and Technology" is the cliché about what you have to manage to be successful in information technology. We often focus mainly on these in the reverse of the order listed because it is easier.

Technology is cleaner, it's factual, it's quantifiable and it's not personal. Dealing with people involves all the things technology isn't. It's messier and much more difficult. However, People are what will make Process and Technology work.

Unfortunately, the recession is going to highlight our People issues and make our jobs more challenging in oh so many ways. As CIOs, you have a number of specialists you heavily rely on because of their technical expertise and institutional knowledge.

It is difficult to imagine how you can cut these positions if called upon to make staff cuts. At the same time, it is difficult to keep these same people motivated and engaged if you have to cut back on new projects and need to have everyone pitch in to help with day-to-day activities.

Like all the other C-level executives, we are challenged to "do more with less." It will require us to make some hard decisions and to be creative with how we manage our most important asset--our employees. Here are some areas CIOs should focus on in 2009.

Staff Retention: First, let's put aside the knee-jerk reaction of, "In times like these they should be thankful they even have a job." It really isn't very helpful. If you've had to make staff cuts, the people you have left are the best and most valuable, and you probably have had to sacrifice bench strength. In this situation you really can't afford to have a key person leave.

Also keep in mind that the recession will impact other companies and industries differently. So although you may be operating in a tight environment, someone down the street may be hiring.

Hiring the Right / Wrong IT People to Achieve Alignment Mon 19 May 08

Dr. George E. Strouse had a great article recently on CIO.com entitled "Are You Hiring the Wrong IT Staff to Achieve Your Alignment Goals?"  Strouse contends that the major cause of business and IT mis-alignment is that IT is not hiring the right kind of people.   He states "The right people need strong backgrounds in both business and technology. Most IT hiring managers place too much emphasis on strong technology backgrounds."  Although I cannot comment on whether or not this is the major reason for the misalignment I wholeheartedly agree with his comment on the needed background nonetheless.

The most popular post I've made (accounting for about 20+% of site visits) is one that contains what I thought was a good business analyst job description.  While this job description does contains some technical requirements as you might expect it also contains skills that are not often found in traditionally trained IT folks.  These are the types of skills that are needed for an business analyst to understand business.

Dr. Strouse contends that the reason business can not get the right people is that we are asking for people with a Computer Science degree rather than an Information Systems degree.  As a professor of information systems at York College in Pennsylvania he is eminently qualified to layout the distinction and makes a strong case.  Now before anyone with a Computer Science degree gets upset please read his article carefully.  As he points out there is a need for both types of degrees but each is better suited for different functions.

Are We Too Smart For Our Own Good? Mon 26 Nov 07

There are a lot of smart people in IT.  In fact the stereotype of IT folks are the smart guys and gals that are good a computers, math and science but are horrible at social skills.  There is some truth, I believe, in this stereotype although the stereotype is greatly over exaggerated.  It isn't that IT people don't have social skill it is just that they often choose not to use them since after all the power of their logic and the strength of their reasoning and knowledge is more than sufficient isn't it?

A recent post by Penelope Trunk at the Brazen Careerist blog entitled "Stop thinking you'll get by on your high I.Q." would suggest otherwise.  She laments that we seem to value high IQ over social skills as if high IQ was all that mattered.  In reality it is a balance between the two.  But because we in IT are so comfortable with the technical side we tend to forget the people side.  We have to remember that success is just as dependent on the social aspects at it is the technical on ones - the old people, process and technology cliche.

As Trunk points out based on an article from the College Journal, recruiters of B-school graduates look for 5 traits:

1. Communication and interpersonal skills

2. Original and visionary thinking

3. Leadership potential

4. Ability to work well within a team

5. Analytical and problem-solving skills

Interestingly enough these traits or competencies are very similar to ones that I wrote about in regard to a Russell Reynolds (a large international executive recruiter) analysis of the competencies required for a CIO.

So why are these so important?

Take The Test: Are You An IT A**hole Or An IT Hero? Wed 11 Jul 07

Stanford Professor Bob Sutton recently wrote a book with the catchy title "The No A**hole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't"  This book deals with a problem that seems to be growing uncontrolled in the corporate world - a**holes in the workplace.  See Kent Blumberg's excellent review for more detail.  In addition to the book Sutton discusses this issue on his blog Work Matters. 

Like it or not this is an issue applicable to our IT departments.  After all IT does have a reputation with a certain a**hole quality about it.  For example:

• we tolerate those uber-geek techno experts that are judged too valuable to get rid of despite being a**holes (Sutton's book really applies here)
• the snide IT attitude
• Saturday Night Live's Nick Burns: Your Company's Computer Guy
• Why IT Sucks
• Staples 'Sup Chumps TV commercial

On his blog Sutton provides a quick 24 question A**hole Rating Self-Exam (ARSE) - Are you a certified a**hole?   This got me to thinking.  Why not a test of a**holiness for IT?  So I've developed my version of a test of for the IT department -- IT A**hole or IT Hero?  I did this on a departmental basis since that is the way we are usually judged, fair or not.  You may also think this to be unscientific, arbitrary, capricious and subjective.  Well you're right.  It absolutely is, but you have to start some place.  So take the test and let me know what you think.  If your not in IT take the test on behalf of your IT department and send them results.  Who knows what fun that will start?

So on to the test.

Thinking of Working From Home? Mon 14 May 07

I ran across a post "My flexible friend the office" by Tomas Mcinernery over at IT@Intel Blog.  Mcinernery does a good job of talking about some of the issues dealing with telecommuting.  He talks about the need to have a policy and working with Human Resources and the Legal departments to determine to what extent can people work from home with out breaching regulations or local work rules and laws.  He also mentions looking at the technical issues to make sure your employees come in via a secure connection.

While Mcinernery does discuss the issues such as employees feeling isolated, the complications of mentoring and developing junior staff I think a lot more needs to be said about the human factor in telecommuting.

Lead Well and Prosper Fri 11 May 07

I just completed reading Lead Well and Prosper (93 pages Be Good Publishing) by Nick McCormick.  This is a fast read book that outlines 15 strategies for becoming a good manager.  McCormick lays this out in a very simple straightforward manner.  He illustrates each strategy with a real world example and then follows this up with a brief discussion.  You can quickly read the whole book or just a chapter here or there as an occasional refresher or reminder.

As an IT guy it was encouraging to learn that in his other life Nick is an IT manager for an information services company.

I especially like that at the end of each chapter he list a couple of quick bullet points on  "Do's", "Don'ts" and "Actions".  One that caught my attention was at the end of the Chapter 1, "Adopt a Serving Attitude".  One of the Don't items was "Constantly refer to the team as 'my team' or 'my group'.  Rather, use the team name (e.g. the accounts payable team) or simply 'our group'."  Some very practical and actionable advise that says a lot about how you think of the team you are managing.

Put me in, coach - I'm ready to play today Fri 04 May 07

This past week my friend and career coach Kent Blumberg was in town and we had the opportunity for a quick ad hoc coaching session.  As luck would have it on the drive home that night I heard John Fogerty's classic song, Centerfield, with the refrain:

Oh, put me in, coach - I'm ready to play today
Put me in, coach - I'm ready to play today
Look at me, I can be center field

This got me thinking.  I'm fortunate to have a coach from outside the company that can provide some independent, objective suggestions.  Our employees usually are not as lucky.  They typically have to dependent on their managers and supervisors (gasp, gulp) -- us!

Revisiting the CIO Reporting to the CFO Fri 27 Apr 07

Back in October I talked about the CIO reporting to the CFO.  A few days later I reported on a "State of the CIO" survey that Chris Koch discussed in his blog.  I suggested that the CIO really needed to report to the CEO rather than the CFO to be strategic.  Back then I said,

The difficulty is in the chicken or egg argument.  Does IT report to the CFO because it is tactical or is it tactical because it reports to the CFO?  But as Koch correctly reports, ". . . something is sure to crop up around the corner that could present an opportunity for a company that uses IT tactically to start using it strategically. Bury your CIO inside finance and you'll be sure to miss that opportunity."

Last week Brian Gillooly in his CIO Nation blog gives us a Sneak Peek at "Defining the CIO" Research.