Be a leader of IT Professionals

James Callaghan once said "A leader must have the courage to act against an expert's advice."  Now, while this is accurate for most, leaders of IT professionals know that there are certain facts that should not be eroded if they wish to achieve maximum performance from their IT teams.  IT Professionals have the patience of a gnat and the tolerance of a pig you are teaching to sing.  Along with these attributes, IT professionals have their ideas about the direction their work should be focused and get annoyed when decisions are made that are outside of their tolerance zones.

To make matters worse for those of us that will manage these IT professionals, each of them has a different "hot button" and acceptable tolerance level that we need to work with.  There are several things that management does to screw up the delicate balance of having a happy IT group and having an energy-drink and coffee infused lynch mob that can put your project in jeopardy.

1) IT professionals use tools to power their abilities.  Whether it is hardware (server, desktop) or software (development, productivity), IT people need to have somewhat modern equipment and software to enable them to use their skills effectively.  Many companies see an investment in hardware and software as a cost in depreciating assets rather than an investment in the productivity and efficiency of the IT staff.

2) Management has a determination to make decisions because "they know the business better". Yes, this may be true, but who knows the technical challenges and facts behind the business.  The IT staff.  Making a decision without involving them will set up the organization for failure because the decision makers did not understand the full effect of their decision.  At least, by involving the IT staff, management can make an educated decision, rather than having to scramble to fix the effects of the decision after it has been made.

3) Why is it that management looks at training as a waste of time, money and resources.  Many feel that IT staff can teach themselves.  What these manager fail to understand is that every individual learns differently and at different paces.  This is one of the benefits of training, since it will encompass most of these learning methods.  Some IT staff are not given the time and/or resources to go through material or work in a test environment to teach themselves.  Another comment I have heard many times is "if I train them, they will just go to another company".  Perhaps, but think about how those IT folks may go looking elsewhere that does provide training to keep them engaged and on top of the technology.  Another alternative is having an unskilled workforce maintaining status quo because they have no other choice but to stay.  This stalemates the company growth as well as the IT staff career goals.

4) Drop the "business-speak" with the IT staff.  The IT folks see right through the use of such business buzzwords to the point that they discount everything being said.  As a manager, do not try to talk "tech", especially if that is not an area of expertise for you.  IT staff will focus and listen if you just give it to them straight and drop the big words and business-speak.

5) Many IT people work better when left alone and in their own world.  Some management understand this, but that leads to a problem.  If IT staff is left alone, management has no opportunity to become a leader because they don't understand everything the IT staff is working on or what problems are troubling them.  Don't let the IT staff work in a vacuum, but don't spend so much time with them that you suffocate them either.  There is a fine balance that you must find with each individual.

I have been on both sides of this chasm. I started out as an IT resource and moved into several management roles.  As an IT resource, these are the areas that I saw mistakes being made many times.  In a management role, I could use this information to become more than a manager, but to be a leader.

How about you? What other items would you add from an IT resource or management perspective?

Teaching a Pig to Sing

Sometimes we run our projects as usual and something happens that changes the direction of the business.  This change causes the organization to no longer require the output of the project we are running.  Many organizations that are faced with this type of scenario are unsure of how to address this.  In the face of uncertainty, these organizations will choose to keep the project and the project team together until completion.

We know this does not make sense, if the output of the project is not what is required, but in lieu of developing alternatives, our sponsors choose to keep these project moving forward.  The problem is that these "black sheep" projects are not good for a project managers' career.  Yes, the project manager will be the one to take the fall on these projects if not carefully managed.

From a business standpoint,

Social Project Management

As project managers, we are all very aware of the need to communicate to our project teams as well as our stakeholders.  The basic formula for calculating possible communication channels is N(N-1)/2, where N is the number of stakeholders and/or project members.  For all intents and purposes, project members are stakeholders as well, so stakeholders will be the general term used in this post.

Why is communication so important as well as understanding the number of possible communication channels?  Let's first think about whether we are "project managers" or "project leaders".  I tend to use this a spark to networking conversations. Warren Bennis and Joan Goldsmith call out 12 distinctions between managers and leaders in their Learning to Lead workbook. See how many of these you can recognize in your organization.

• Managers administer
  Leaders innovate
• Managers ask how and when
  Leaders ask what and why
• Managers focus on systems
  Leaders focus on people
• Managers do things right
  Leaders do the right things
• Managers maintain
  Leaders develop
• Managers rely on control
  Leaders inspire trust
• Managers have short-term perspective
  Leaders have long-term perspective
• Managers accept the status-quo
  Leaders challenge the status-quo
• Managers have an eye on the bottom line
  Leaders have an eye on the horizon
• Managers imitate
  Leaders originate
• Managers emulate the classic good soldier
  Leaders are their own person
• Managers copy
  Leaders show originality

If you have been in any size organization, you will have surely noticed many managers and executive team members go off and make a decision on something they have absolutely no clue about.  These decisions are being made because management feels they know more about the area or for whatever reason, just refuse to consult with the subject matter experts that can provide the guidance needed to make the informed decision.

This is how managers work, leaders do not operate in this vacuum.  They talk with people to gather ideas, new ways of doing things, and more.  Leaders offer information knowing that this will repay them many times over.  Leaders listen to knowledgeable people and this helps them make an informed leadership decision, not a management decision.

So, why do I bring this up? In many of the organizations I have worked with, the management and executive teams seemed to have this understanding that those higher up on the organization chart knew more. This may be true in a small number of organizations, but for the majority it is not.  This is where social media comes into play, but why?

Social media removes the bureaucracy and just connects people to people.  These people are typically the ones that do know things, rather than those that are assumed to know them.  There are real conversations happening, albeit in 140 characters or less.  This is the beauty of it, though.  It forces the crap out and delivers only the relevant information.  These connections listen and provide unique perspectives on what challenges your organization and/or projects.  There is no dotted line hierarchy for reporting, no "you cannot have this resource" discussions.

So, if we look back at the communication path calculation again.  Let's assume we have 18 people we interface with directly.  This is 18(18-1)/2 = 153 possible communication paths. Good for a manageable project.  If we extend this communication path out beyond the walls of our organization and onto Twitter or Facebook, we have a much larger range of communication possibilities. Each "follower" is a communications path, so let's say I have 350 followers. This would put our communication paths at 350(350-1)/2 = 61,075.  Compare that to our meager 153 communication paths by staying within the walls of our organization.  This is one of the ideas behind "crowdsourcing", where we utilize the power of social media to assist in our challenges.

As project managers or project leaders, we need to learn to embrace social media to help us out where it is appropriate.  Of course, company confidential or proprietary information would not be best served through crowdsourcing, however, steps can be taken to mask the actual product or project being developed to still allow you to leverage social media to your advantage.

How are you using social media for managing/leading your projects?

Project Management through the rear view mirror?

 

 

 

 

 

 

It still surprises me how often I see many organizations, large organizations, still managing their projects through the rear view mirror.  Let's think about this analogy for a minute.

Most of us understand the speed and efficiency we gain when moving from point A to point B while driving a car.  We also understand how much slower things can get if we try to move from point A to point B by driving in reverse as we are looking in the rear view mirror.  Along these same lines, it would be disastrous if we were to move forward from point A to point B by only looking in the rear view mirror and not paying attention to where we are going.

It is this idea of focusing on where we have been rather than where we are going that I have seen too many organizations get caught up in and stalemate in analysis paralysis.  When this happens, the goal of the project is either not achieved or the scope is changed to match what can be accomplished.  By focusing too much on past efforts, we are setting ourselves up to repeat the failures.  We need to learn from our past, but not let it drive our future projects.

Project management is about continually learning and making our processes better.  If we continually drive forward by looking at the past, we will stall because we can no longer "learn" or get better results out of our performance due to our narrow vision of what can be achieved.  Only by trying different things can we truly understand what creating better processes and efficiencies is about.

In the end, we want to keep moving forward and using the past performance and issues as a guide to help steer clear of the potholes on the project management highway.